It is Document Number 1866-PS, which becomes Exhibit Number GB-273, and it is an account of conversations between Ribbentrop and Mussolini and Ciano on the 13th of May 1941, signed by Schmidt.
It carries the question very little further, but of course the question has existed, and still does exist—the question, of course, as to whether or not the flight to England was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of Hitler, or any other members of the Government, or on his own initiative and in complete secrecy. He himself has always maintained that he did it secretly. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how he could have been planning it and practicing it for months before and having tried three times before, without anybody knowing.
This account of the conversations with the Italians casts little further light on it; but it does show anyway what Ribbentrop is saying to the Italians, their allies, three days later. I would ask the Tribunal to look at and read the first page of this document, and the paragraph of the next page:
“To begin with, the Reich Foreign Minister conveyed the Führer’s greetings to the Duce.
“He would shortly propose to the Duce a date for the planned meeting, which he would like to take place as soon as possible. As the place for the meeting he would probably prefer the Brenner. At the present moment he was, as the Duce could well understand, still busy with the Hess affair and with a few military matters.
“The Duce replied that he would agree with all the Führer’s proposals. . . .”—and so on.
“The Reich Foreign Minister then said that the Führer had sent him to the Duce in order to inform him about the Hess affair and the conversations with Admiral Darlan. With regard to Hess’s affair he remarked that the Führer and his staff had been completely taken aback by Hess’s action and that it had been the deed of a lunatic.
“Hess had been suffering for a long time from bilious attacks and had fallen into the hands of magnetists and nature-cure doctors who caused his state of health to become worse.
“All these matters were being investigated at the moment, as well as the responsibility of the aides-de-camp who had known about Hess’s forbidden flights. Hess had for weeks carried out secret practice flights in an ME-110. Naturally he had acted only from idealistic motives. Disloyalty towards the Führer was utterly out of the question. His conduct had to be explained by a kind of abstractness and a state of mind caused by his illness.”
And it goes on, and the gist of it really is that Ribbentrop is emphasizing again that it was done without the authority of Hitler or without the knowledge of anybody else in Germany. I say he does not carry. . . .