VON BUTTLAR-BRANDENFELS: I am not sure of the date on which the new mobilization year of 1939 to 1940 began. From that time on...
MR. ROBERTS: I submit this testimony is not relevant to any issue in this case at all, and it may be somewhat interesting to know the answers that are submitted have no relevancy at all.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t quite understand what the relevancy of the evidence at the moment is.
DR. JAHRREISS: Mr. President, if the Prosecution are right that the Defendant Jodl belonged to a group of conspirators aiming at world conquest and if, as the Prosecution say, that group of conspirators obtained use of the German state machine to achieve their aims, then it must be a somewhat peculiar state system when conspirators are changed periodically. To that extent I believe the case must be presented to the Tribunal for consideration.
THE PRESIDENT: Has he been given the dates of his exchanges, without any cross-examination? He went to Vienna at a certain date, he came back at another date, and we have no challenge of that.
DR. JAHRREISS: Mr. President, that is a different question. The Defendant Jodl has said that if mobilization was decreed before 1 October he was Chief of the Armed Forces Operations Staff and had to leave Vienna for Berlin. Now the witness says that this was only up to the new mobilization year and that then the other would have come along if the war had broken out 14 days later. I think...
THE PRESIDENT: Surely that is extraordinarily remote, Dr. Jahrreiss. You show us a matter of surmise about what would have happened if something else would have happened. That does not help us very much.
DR. JAHRREISS: Mr. President, the testimony of the witness is not a mere conjecture. He only said that the person who held this important position was disposed of in a routine manner according to date. That was the only thing to be shown.
May I continue, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: No, in the interest of time and an expeditious trial, the Tribunal rules you may not go into that.