THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Horn, the Tribunal is not expecting you to give a complete picture at this stage. All you are doing at the present moment is introducing the evidence. You are going to give the complete picture when you make your final speech. It is intelligible, this document. It is a document which is well known; it is perfectly intelligible without telling us what Hitler or what the Defendant Ribbentrop did.
DR. HORN: Regarding these questions raised by the Russian Prosecutor, I have already asked for the Defendant Von Neurath as a witness. I can interrogate him on this point only after the Defendant Von Neurath is in the witness box. But I can still refer now to these facts that are counterevidence.
THE PRESIDENT: But, you see, that would be his function. If you are going to tell us what you think the Defendant Von Neurath is going to say in answer to questions which you put to him, that would be making an opening statement. Well, that has not been provided for by the Charter. We must wait until you call Von Neurath or until you question Von Neurath.
DR. HORN: Then I will read from this document just mentioned, Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 1, on Page 10 of the document book:
“The German Government are now forced to face the new situation created by this alliance, a situation which is made more critical by the fact that the Franco-Soviet pact has found its complement in a pact of alliance of exactly parallel nature between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. In the interest of the elementary right of a nation to safeguard its borders and to guarantee its defensive capacities, the German Government have therefore re-established the full and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, effective today.”
I ask the Tribunal to accept the entire document as evidence. Through this step of the German Government certain articles of the Treaty of Versailles which were concerned with the demilitarization of the Rhineland zone had become obsolete. Since this morning, by decision of the Court, the taking of a position on the Versailles Treaty is not permitted, I will omit the corresponding material from the document book of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, and turn now to the document Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 8, which is on Page 21 of the document book.
May I put another question first, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly.
DR. HORN: Is it permitted to submit the official documents on the Treaty of Versailles that were exchanged between governments before the conclusion of the treaty? These are purely government documents and not any arguments on the treaty itself. May these documents be submitted after the decision of the Tribunal today?
THE PRESIDENT: Which are they, the one on Page 21?