THE PRESIDENT: Will you be able to finish tonight?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, I shall, if Your Lordship will allow me 5 minutes. That is what I have been trying to do.
[Turning to the defendant.] Do you agree that you were in favor of the harshest treatment of people in the occupied countries?
VON RIBBENTROP: I did not understand. Could you repeat the question?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My question is, would it be a fair way of expressing your point of view to say that you were in favor of the harshest treatment of—I will put it first of all—of partisans?
VON RIBBENTROP: I do not know whether I ever expressed myself about the treatment of partisans. I do not recall having done so. In any case, I was against it.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: All right, look at Document D-735, which will be Exhibit GB-295. That is a discussion between you and Count Ciano in the presence of Field Marshal Keitel and Marshal Cavallero in the Führer’s headquarters after breakfast on the 19th of December 1942. Now, if you will look at Page 2, you will see that there is a passage where Field Marshal Keitel told the Italian gentlemen that:
“The Croatian area was to be cleaned up by German and Italian troops working in co-operation; and this while it was still winter, in view of the strong British influence in this area. The Führer explained that the Serbian conspirators were to be burned out, and that no soft methods were to be used in doing this. Field Marshal Keitel here interjected that every village in which partisans were found had to be burned down. Continuing, the Reich Foreign Minister declared that Roatta must not leave the third zone, but must on the contrary advance, and this in the closest collaboration with the German troops. In this connection Field Marshal Keitel requested the Italian gentlemen not to regard the utilization of Croatian troops to help in this cleaning-up operation as a favoring of the Croatians. The Reich Foreign Minister stated in this connection that the Poglavnik to whom he had spoken very clearly, was 100 percent ready to come to an agreement with Italy.”
Did that represent your view, that “the Serbian conspirators should be burned out”?
VON RIBBENTROP: Please?