THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. COUNSELLOR RAGINSKY: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Now, we will proceed to deal with the supplementary applications. The witness can retire.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If Your Lordship pleases, the first application is that of Dr. Seidl’s with regard to two witnesses. First of all witness Hilger, who was previously granted as a witness for the Defendant Von Ribbentrop but withdrawn by counsel on the 2nd of April. I believe that the witness is in the United States and that there is a report that he is too ill to travel. But apart from this, My Lord, the purpose of the witness is to give evidence as to the discussions and treaty negotiations which took place in the Kremlin at Moscow before the German-Soviet agreement of the 23rd of August 1939; and the allegation states the conclusion of the alleged secret agreement dealt with in the affidavit of the witness Gaus.
My Lord, the other application is for a witness Von Weizsäcker, who is going to deal with the same point.
The Prosecution, of course, loyally accept the decision of the Tribunal on the admissibility of the Gaus affidavit, but they respectfully submit that that does not affect this point. What is desired is to call witnesses as to the course of the negotiations before these treaties—before an agreement was arrived at in respect to these treaties—and that is a point which we have had several times; and, of course, while all circumstances have a slight difference, the Tribunal have—as far as I know—ruled universally up to now that they will not go into antecedent negotiations which have resulted in agreements.
There is also the position that, of course, Dr. Seidl has put in the Gaus affidavit, and he has had his opportunity to examine the Defendant Von Ribbentrop; and the Prosecution respectfully submit that to call two secondary witnesses—without any disrespect to their position in the German Foreign Office, they are witnesses of a secondary importance compared with the Defendant Von Ribbentrop—to discuss these negotiations seems to the Prosecution to be going into irrelevant matter and entirely unnecessary for the purposes of this case.
I confess I do not myself appreciate any special relevance that these witnesses could have to the case of Hess, but I do not put it so strongly on that ground; I put it on the ground which I have just outlined to the Tribunal.
With regard to the third application of Dr. Seidl, I am not quite sure whether he means that he wants the Prosecution to provide him with an original or certified copy of the secret agreement, or whether he desires to tender a copy himself. But with regard to that, again the Prosecution take the line that that point—which, after all, is only one tiny corner of one aspect of the case—is sufficiently covered by the evidence which has already been brought out before the Tribunal from the affidavit of Ambassador Gaus and the evidence of the Defendant Ribbentrop.
That is the position of the Prosecution with regard to that.