DR. HORN: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: And have you any other witnesses to call besides the defendant?
DR. HORN: No. I would like only to submit an affidavit by a witness requested by me, Counsellor of Legation Gottfriedsen, dealing with the personal financial circumstances of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, former Minister for Foreign Affairs. Gottfriedsen was the Foreign Office official whose task was to look after the official income of the Foreign Minister and who is also very well acquainted with his private financial affairs. He can give information about the personal and official estates belonging to the Foreign Minister and the Foreign Ministry. I have embodied this information in the form of a few questions in an affidavit. If the Prosecution have no objection to this affidavit, I could dispense with the calling of the witness, Gottfriedsen. However, if the Prosecution want him to appear, then I would question him on the contents of the affidavit.
I have no other witnesses for the Defendant Von Ribbentrop. When all my documents will have been presented, the case for the Defense will be concluded.
THE PRESIDENT: Would the Prosecution tell us their view on this?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, as far as the British Prosecution is concerned, we have now had six document books, I think, taking us up to Number 214, roughly two-thirds of the documents which Dr. Horn wishes to tender, and we have been able to go through up to Number 191. I made out a list—I could hand one to the Court and give Dr. Horn another one—of those documents that we object to, which are very briefly set out. I should think we object to something like 70 or 80, between the Numbers 45 and 191, maybe a little more. The Soviet Delegation are, I think, in a position to tender their objections, which are practically entirely in accord with ours, though they were prepared separately. M. Champetier de Ribes has at least two batches of documents to which he wishes to make objections. I think I may say that Mr. Dodd is more or less leaving this point to me and will act in accordance with the British Delegation’s view on the point. So that is the position. It probably would be convenient if I handed in a very outlined list of objections which I have up to date.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal would like to know, Sir David, what the position of the Prosecution is about the translation of the documents. You remember that the Tribunal did make an order that the Prosecution should object to documents, if possible, before they were translated, so as to avoid unnecessary translations, and in the event of any disagreement between the Prosecution and the Defense any matter should be referred to the Tribunal. It was thought that there were a great number of documents on which agreement could be achieved in that way, and the labor and time taken up in translating would be obviated.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes. The difficulty we have been in over these documents, is that we did our best to try to formulate our view on the index, but it is a very difficult matter to form a view when you get a short description of only a line and a half about a document. But it might be that that would be the most practical way of doing it, despite its difficulty. If the Prosecution were given an index with as good a description as possible of the document, the Prosecution then formulated their objections on the index, and the Tribunal heard any outstanding differences before the documents were translated, I should think—I am afraid I can put it only tentatively—it would be worth a trial. Otherwise, you would get a terrible blockage in the Translation Division of the Tribunal by a vast number of documents, such as we have had in this case, to which ultimately we are going to make full and numerous objections, but that holds up the translation of all the documents belonging to the subsequent proceedings. So I should be prepared—and I think my colleagues would support me—in making a trial, if the Tribunal thought it could be done, to hand in an objection on a list of documents and see if we could in that way arrive at the results which would obviate the necessity of translating them all.
THE PRESIDENT: Would it be of assistance to the Prosecution, supposing the defendants’ counsel were to give them the entire documents in German with also a full index in English, and then the Prosecution, or some member of the Prosecution who is familiar with German, could go through the documents in German and the Prosecution can then make up their minds in that way? Would that be an assistance to the Prosecution? They would have not only the index to inform them as to what was the nature of the documents, but they would have the documents in German.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I think that would be a great help, especially if he underlined the more material passages.