THE PRESIDENT: Well, this comes from a White Book. That is a printed document, I suppose, I do not suppose it contains the original of the statement of this Luxembourg man.
DR. SIEMERS: The White Book is a collection of numerous documents, and the single original documents are in the possession of the Foreign Office; in part they were from the files of the French General Staff, and partly they were records of court proceedings. Regarding the contents of this document...
THE PRESIDENT: M. Dubost, you are not proposing that we should strike the document out, but the Tribunal will certainly take into account the facts to which you have drawn our notice.
M. DUBOST: This is an application that the Tribunal shall refuse to admit that document, Mr. President. At the same time this is a protest against the assertion made by the Defense that French soldiers violated Belgian neutrality in the course of the month of April. I hope the Tribunal will allow me to add a few words of explanation. The White Book, which we have here, comprises two parts. The first part reproduces texts and the second part gives photostatic copies of these texts. In the first part, which simply reproduces the texts, is found the document which I ask the Tribunal to strike from the record. We have searched in the second part which gives the photostatic copies of the documents in the first part, and we do not find it. We state to the Tribunal that the original of the document, which we ask the Tribunal to strike out, has not been reproduced in the German White Book, since it is not to be found in the second part.
DR. SIEMERS: Mr. President, I believe that M. Dubost’s entire explanation refers to the question of the value of the document as evidence and not to the question of the admissibility of the document. That this document is in order appears to me to be quite clear, since it is a record of court proceedings where a certain person, namely Grandjenet, has been interrogated. Everything said by M. Dubost referred more to the contents of the document than to the question of its value as evidence. May I ask therefore that the document be admitted, as has been done up to now, and ask that consideration be given to the fact that the document has value in connection with the other documents which have been granted to me and to Dr. Horn in his document book with reference to Holland and Belgium.
If, in the second part of the document book there is no photostatic copy...
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Siemers, and M. Dubost, the Tribunal will consider the objection that has been made.
DR. SIEMERS: May I merely mention, Mr. President, that if the photostat is not in the book, as M. Dubost states, then this is due to the fact that this court record in its original text was German, and the facsimiles are those prepared from the original text in French, that is to say, of those documents which in their original version were in French. If necessary I would appeal to Geheimrat Von Schnieden as a witness regarding this record, since he at the time was informed about all the records of this type and helped in the work of compiling the book.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well, the Tribunal will consider the objection.
FLOTTENRICHTER KRANZBÜHLER: Mr. President, with the permission of the Tribunal I should like to say that the interrogatory put to the American Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Nimitz, is available. I received it the day before yesterday and in the meantime it has gone in to the interpreters for translation. With the permission of the Tribunal, I should like to submit it now, in connection with the cases of Admiral Dönitz and Admiral Raeder.