Numbers 63 and 64 are two speeches, one by Mr. Emery and another by Mr. Churchill, dealing with the position in Greece at the end of 1940, some two months after the beginning of the Italian campaign against Greece.
Number 71 is an undated directive with regard to the study of routes in Belgium, which doesn’t seem to us to have any evidential importance.
Number 76 comes out as the Altmark.
THE PRESIDENT: Did you say 76 came out?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, My Lord, that is the Altmark. It is the same one that is in Number 71. I am sorry, My Lord, it should have been marked out.
Number 99 is the minutes of the ninth meeting of the combined Cabinet Council on the 27th of April 1940, and it deals with a suggestion of M. Reynaud with regard to the Swedish ore mines. As it was long after the Norway campaign and it was never, of course, acted upon in Norway, it seems to us to have no relevance for this Trial.
Numbers 102 to 107 I have dealt with under one. They have certain very small unimportant memoranda relating to the Low Countries.
Number 112 is a French document in which Paul Reynaud quotes a statement from Mr. Churchill that he will fight on to the end, which again doesn’t seem of much importance in 1946.
Now, My Lord, the next group are documents which were rejected by the Tribunal when applied for by the Defendant Ribbentrop. The first two deal with British rearmament and the others with the Balkans and Greece. The Tribunal will probably remember the group which they did reject in the Ribbentrop application; and the fourth group are other documents of the same series as those rejected by the Tribunal in the case of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop. The fifth group are really objectionable on the tu quoque basis. I think they are entirely French documents which deal with proposals in a very tentative stage and which were arranged, but never followed out, with regard to the destruction of oil fields or the blocking of the Danube in the Middle East. My Lord, they are documents dated in the spring of 1940 and, as I say, they deal with the most tentative stages and were never put into operation. The plans were never in operation.
The sixth group are documents dealing with Norway, which were captured after the occupation of France. As I understand Dr. Siemers’ argument, it is not suggested that these documents were within the knowledge of the defendants at the time that they carried out the aggression against Norway; but it is stated that they had other information. Of course, as to their own information, we have not made any objection at all; and that these documents might be argued to be corroborative of their agents’ reports. Actually, as is shown by Document Number 83, to which we make no objection, they also deal with tentative proposals which were not put into effect and were not proceeded with; but in the submission of the Prosecution, the important matter must be what was within the knowledge of the defendants before the 9th of April 1940; and it is irrelevant to go into a large number of other documents which are only arguably consistent with the information which the defendants stated they had.