THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Von Lüdinghausen, will you kindly get on? As I say, we think you are going into it in far too great detail.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Very well.
What happened now, Herr Von Neurath, in order to get the negotiations going again? On 16 March the British Prime Minister submitted a new plan...
THE PRESIDENT: We have nothing to do with the disarmament program.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, I must nevertheless show what the entire background and mood were, in order to explain more exactly the motives for our withdrawal from the League of Nations, with which we have been reproached; for Germany’s withdrawal followed in the fall of 1933...
THE PRESIDENT: There is nothing against Von Neurath in having influenced Germany to resign from the League of Nations, is there?
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Yes, there is. I can explain the withdrawal from the League of Nations only on the basis of the preceding events. I cannot say in three words that this and that was the reason; rather must I explain how gradually a certain atmosphere came about, and what the circumstances were which left no other choice to the German Government except to leave the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations, for these factors explain the decision of the German Government to rearm. In history and in politics decisions and actions are always the consequence of what went before them. In the development of these political conditions we are indeed concerned with a period of development extending over several years, not with a spontaneous event or a spontaneous decision. In the case of a military order, to be sure, I cannot say that this order came about through orders of the other side; rather must I describe...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Von Lüdinghausen, we do not need all this argument. We only desire you to get on. I am pointing out to you that you have been nearly the whole of the morning, and we have not yet got up to 1933.
VON NEURATH: Mr. President, I shall try to be very brief in coming to this period of time, the withdrawal from the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference.
The negotiations, as I said, dragged on the whole year, into the summer of 1933. In the fall there was again a Disarmament Conference session in which the same subject was more or less debated over again. Well, the result of this conference was that disarmament was definitely refused by the Western Powers and that was the reason why we then first of all withdrew from the Disarmament Conference, since we considered useful work there no longer possible. Following this, we also withdrew from the League of Nations, since we had witnessed its failure in the most widely different fields.