Minister Schmidt has testified here that it was Herr Von Ribbentrop who, on 25 August 1939, after the Hitler-Henderson meeting, sent him to Sir Nevile Henderson with the verbal communiqué, presented as TC-72/69, in which the contents of Hitler’s proposals were summarized. At the same time Herr Von Ribbentrop adjured Henderson to submit Hitler’s proposals personally to the British Government for favorable consideration. According to the British Blue Book, Sir Nevile Henderson could not refrain from calling these and subsequent proposals exceptionally reasonable and sincere. They were not the customary Hitler proposals, but pure “League of Nations” proposals.
No one studying the negotiations of the subsequent fateful days can deny that everything was done on the German side at least to get negotiations under way on a workable basis. The opposite side did not let it come to that, because they were determined to take action this time. The good services of England ended with the breaking-off of all mediation without having been able to bring Poland to the conference table.
Herr Von Ribbentrop has been blamed for having practically defeated the purpose of the last decisive discussion with the British Ambassador, Henderson, by having read the German proposals to Poland so fast, contrary to all diplomatic custom and international courtesy, that Sir Nevile Henderson could not understand them and, hence, could not pass them on. The interpreter, Minister Schmidt, was present at this decisive discussion. He has testified here under oath that this statement is not true. One may consider Hitler’s order to acquaint Sir Nevile Henderson only with the substance of the memorandum as unwise. The fact is that not only did Herr Von Ribbentrop read the entire contents at a normal speed to the British Ambassador; but he also, by having the interpreter present, made it possible for Sir Nevile Henderson to become familiar with the entire contents and, moreover, to have explanations given on it. Besides, upon the initiative of Reich Marshal Göring, it was transmitted to the British Embassy during the same night by telephone to the Counsellor of the Embassy, Mr. Forbes. Thus the British Government should have been able to render the good services offered for opening negotiations based on positive proposals.
By reason of these facts here deposed, one must rightly doubt the truth of the allegation that the defendant had done everything to prevent peace with Poland.
At the beginning of my defense speech I stressed that legal considerations concerning aggressive war are not possible without knowledge of the circumstances leading to an armed conflict. Before I proceed to the legal aspects of the conflict with Poland, may I make some additional statements concerning the causes that led to the war.
The period between two World Wars is characterized by the conflicting reactions of those powers which were satisfied and those which were dissatisfied. It seems to be an inevitable law that after great war repercussions, the victorious states tend as far as possible toward the re-establishment of the prewar status and prewar mentality, whereas the vanquished are forced to find a way out of the consequences of their defeat by new means and methods. Thus after the Napoleonic wars there came about the Holy Alliance which under Metternich’s leadership, using legitimacy as an authorization, tried to ignore the effects of the French Revolution.
What the Holy Alliance did not achieve, the League of Nations equally failed to achieve.
Created in an atmosphere of fervent belief in human progress, it was quickly transformed into a tool of the satisfied states. Every effort to strengthen the League of Nations meant a new bulwark for the maintenance of the status quo. Under cover of the elegant diction of juridical formalities power politics continued. Besides, the obsession by the idea of sécurité soon deprived the newly-created body of any breath of freshness and life.
In this fashion, naturally, a solution of the problems created by the end of the first World War could never be found. In international relations a coalition of interests of the conservative powers content with the status quo and of the revolutionary powers trying to do away with it, became increasingly apparent. It could only be a question of time until under those circumstances the political initiative would pass to the dissatisfied powers. The formation of this front depended exclusively on the force of the revolutionary spirit which was crystallizing in opposition to the political self-complacency and hankering after the past. In this fertile soil grew the doctrines of National Socialism, Fascism, and Bolshevism, obscure in many parts of their programs, elastic and incoherent in others. Their power of attraction was based not so much on their programs but on the fact that they admittedly offered something new and that they did not exhort their followers to worship a political ideal that had failed in the past.
The economic crisis of the postwar period, the controversies about reparations and the occupation of the Ruhr, the inability of democratic governments to obtain anything for their distressed peoples from the other democracies, unavoidably led to a test of the doctrines which had not yet been tried out. The practical results of this revolution, as we experienced them in Germany after 1933, could, aside from the social program, consist only in abolishing the peace settlement of 1919, which constitutes a classical example of failure to understand the revolutionary character of a world crisis. For this revolution these tasks were not legal questions but doctrines, exactly as it had long become a doctrine of the satisfied states to maintain the status quo at all costs, even at the price of a new world war.