Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 10

by Various

Now, Dr. Horn has opened up a much wider question, and one which I submit is entirely irrelevant and beyond the scope of these proceedings.

He wishes the Tribunal to try whether the Treaty of Versailles was signed under duress. Well, that, of course, would involve the whole consideration of the Government of the German Republic, the position of the plenipotentiaries, and the legal position of the persons who negotiated the treaty.

The answer to that is that this Tribunal is concerned with certain quite clearly stated offenses, fully particularized, which occurred at the time that is stated in the Indictment; and all the evidence that is given as to the actions of the pre-Nazi German Government, and indeed of the Nazi Government, shows that for years Versailles was accepted as the legal and actual basis on which they must work, and various different methods were adopted in order to try to secure changes of the treaty, and I need not go into, with the Tribunal, the whole frame work of the Locarno Treaties, recognizing Versailles, which were signed in 1925, and which were treated as existing and in operation by the Nazi Government itself.

With that, these actual facts, it would, in my submission, be completely remote, irrelevant, and contrary to the terms of the Charter, for this Tribunal to go into an inquiry as to whether the Treaty of Versailles was signed under duress.

As I gathered, Dr. Horn was not so much interested in the economic clauses and their rightness or wrongness; but I should respectfully remind the Tribunal that that is a matter which is before them at the moment—that here we have, as I have pointed out before—and I do not want to repeat myself—a number of opinions expressed by people of varying eminence and with varying degrees of responsibility at the time that they expressed them. And while strongly maintaining the position which I have endeavored to express with regard to the treaty, I do equally impress my second point: That to accept as matters of evidence statements which in the main are made from a polemical standpoint, either in answer to an attack or in an attack with background of the politics of the state in which they were made, is simply a misuse of the term “evidence”. That is not evidence of any kind, and I equally—not equally because the first point is one of primary importance, which I respectfully urge to the Tribunal—but I also suggest that to tender in evidence matters of that kind is a misuse of the term “evidence,” that they are matters of argument which an advocate may adopt if the argument is a relevant one, but they should not be received in evidence by the Tribunal for that reason.

THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Francis Biddle, Member for the United States): Sir David, is there anything in the Versailles Treaty that either calls for disarmament by the signatories other than Germany or which looks to such disarmament; and, if there is, could you give us the reference to it?

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, it is the preamble to the Military Clauses. That is the point which is usually relied on. It is about four lines at the beginning of the Military Clauses, and, in quite general terms, it looks to a general disarmament after Germany has disarmed. Of course, the position was that—I think I have got the dates right—disarmament was accepted. Whether, in view of the evidence in this case, it should have been accepted does not matter; it was accepted in 1927. After that, you may remember, there were a number of disarmament conferences which examined that question, and eventually in 1933 Germany left the then existing disarmament conference.

Now, I am trying to be entirely objective. I do not want to put the Prosecution view or the Defense view, but that is the position.

THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): I am not quite clear. When you say “accepted,” you mean that the extent of the disarmament called for had been accepted by Germany?

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, the other way around: that Germany’s response to the demand of Versailles was accepted by the Allies in 1927, and the Disarmament Commission which had been in Germany then left Germany under, I think, a French General Denoue.