Morning Session
THE PRESIDENT: I call on counsel for the Defendant Seyss-Inquart.
DR. STEINBAUER: Your Lordship, High Tribunal, I open the defense case with the last words spoken by Dr. Schuschnigg as he resigned from the Austrian Chancellorship on 11 March 1938: “God protect Austria.”
It is a coincidence in history that at a time when the question of the Anschluss is being discussed here with reference to the person of Seyss-Inquart, the four Foreign Ministers are preparing the peace treaties on the basis of the same events. May I, therefore, draw the Tribunal’s attention to my documents on this matter and ask that I be permitted to quote from them at somewhat greater length than I had originally intended?
Now, with the permission of the Tribunal, may I begin with the examination of the defendant as witness in his own defense.
[The defendant took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your full name, please?
ARTHUR SEYSS-INQUART (Defendant): Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: I swear by God—the Almighty and Omniscient—that I will speak the pure truth—and will withhold and add nothing.
[The defendant repeated the oath in German.]