“In order to ensure fair trial for the defendants, the following procedure shall be followed: . . . (b) During any preliminary examination . . . of a defendant he shall have the right to give any explanation relevant to the charges made against him; (c) A preliminary examination of a defendant . . . shall be conducted in, or translated into, a language which the defendant understands.”
Those provisions of the Charter, in the opinion of the Tribunal, show that the defendants may be interrogated and that their interrogations may be put in evidence.
DR. STAHMER: I was prompted by the idea that when it is possible to call a witness, direct examination in court is preferable, since the evidence thus obtained is more concrete.
THE PRESIDENT: You certainly have the opportunity of summoning the defendant for whom you appear to give evidence himself, but that has nothing to do with the admissibility of his interrogation—his preliminary examination.
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: This extract is TC-90, which I put in as GB-64. I quote from the middle of the first answer. It is at the end of the 7th line. The Defendant Göring says there:
“On the day when England gave her official guarantee to Poland, the Führer called me on the telephone and told me that he had stopped the planned invasion of Poland. I asked him then whether this was just temporary or for good. He said ‘No, I will have to see whether we can eliminate British intervention.’ ”
THE PRESIDENT: Ought you not read the question before the answer?
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: I go back to the question:
“When the negotiations of the Polish Foreign Minister in London brought about the Anglo-Polish Treaty, at the end of March or the beginning of April 1939, was it not fairly obvious that a peaceful solution was impossible?”—answer—“Yes, it seemed impossible after my conviction”—I think that must be a bad translation—“according to my conviction.”