mans to vote National Socialist on the 14 September for the first time and which led to the subsequent progress of the Party's rise to power. Nevertheless, these causes were assuredly among the foremost and even the other causes which played a part in the decision of many voters can be traced back in finality to the fatal effects of the Treaty of Versailles and refusal of the victorious powers, especially France, to consent to a revision of the treaty. This applies in the first place to the claim for equality of rights. raised by all subsequent democratic governments.

When the German nation had disarmed in fulfillment of the Versailles Treaty it was entitled to expect the victorious powers to disarm also, in accordance with the obligation assumed by them in the Treaty. This was not carried out and there can be no doubt that their denial of the equality of rights as evidenced by their refusal to disarm themselves, figures among the most decisive causes of the rise of National Socialism in the years 1931 and 1932. And if any of Hitler's arguments ever found a response in the German nation, it was that equality of rights could not be denied in the course of time, even after a lost war, to a nation like the German nation with a population of over 75 millions situated in the heart of Europe and with a cultural past of which few other nations can boast. It has already been remarked in this room that a nation which has produced a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe and a Beethoven cannot be indefinitely treated as a minor nation.

Again and again Hitler had occasion to remark upon the fact that the statement of the Weimar Republic left no method untried to arrive at a peaceful revision of the more unbearable clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. For eight years the statesmen of democratic Germany, a Stressmann, and a Bruening, went to Geneva to obtain at last the repeatedly promised equality of rights for Germany and they were repeatedly sent home with empty hands. The dangers produced by this situation could not remain concealed to anyone. In fact, the world was warned by German statesmen, as well as by shrewd politicians of Germany's former enemies. All these warnings were scattered to the winds.

When finally in 1932 the National Socialist Party with 250 seats in the Reichstag had become by far the strongest party in Germany, it could only be a question of time until Hitler and his party would be entrusted with the taking over of government leadership. In the long run this could be avoided all the less since the previous governments of Herr von Papen and General Schleicher had no worthwhile following in the Reichstag at their disposal and exercised their governmental authority exclusively by the means of emergency decrees in accordance with Article 48 of the Weimar

as limiting property were declared valid, also outside of the legal limitations otherwise designated for it.

From a formal viewpoint there can be just as little doubt about the validity of this decree as there can be about any other so-called constitutional or basic state law issued by the Reichstag, the Reich Cabinet, the Ministerial Council for Reich Defense, or by Hitler himself.

Gentlemen of the Tribunal:

On behalf of the defendant Rudolf Hess, I have already stated that he assumed the full responsibility for all laws and decrees which he has signed in his capacity as the deputy of the Fuehrer, as Reichsminister and member of the Ministerial Council for Reich Defense.

I have refrained from presenting documentary evidence in reference to accusations which, as a sovereign state, merely concern the domestic affairs of the German Reich and have no bearing on the crimes against peace and crimes against the laws of war asserted by the Prosecution. I shall, therefore, now also only touch on such laws and constitutional and political measures which have some recognizable connection with the actual counts of the Indictment and the common plan or conspiracy asserted by the Prosecution.

The Indictment accuses the defendant Rudolf Hess of having sponsored the military, economic and psychological preparations for war and to have participated in the political planning and preparation of wars of aggression. As evidence for this assertion, the Prosecution pointed to the fact that the defendant Rudolf Hess, in his capacity as Reich Minister with Portfolio, co-signed the law of 16 March 1935, for the reconstruction of the armed forces. This law reintroduced general conscription in Germany and stipulated that the German peace army was to be divided into 12 corps commands and 36 divisions.

For this trial the proclamation which the Reich Cabinet directed to the German people in connection with the publication of this law and which was placed ahead of the law in the Reichsgesetzblatt, appears to me no less important than the contents of this law. I refer to the contents of this proclamation which has been presented as an exhibit.

This proclamation of 16 March 1935, contains no essential arguments on this question which had not already previously been brought out by the democratic German government at the time of the Weimar Republic.

Your Honors, the Tribunal has permitted me at least to read some of my brief in connection with this question. With reference

view the facts which actually led to the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in the year 1938.

In order to save time, again I shall refer to the extensive statement made by the Defense Counsel for the co-defendant Dr. SeyssInquart.

Whatever now concerns the participation of the defendant Rudolf Hess and the Party in the execution of the annexation, the evidence has shown here only that the annexation of Austria was an incident which did not have anything to do with the National Socialist Party in the Reich as such. It is sufficient to refer in this connection to the testimony of the defendant Goering and to that of Dr. Seyss-Inquart on the witness stand, which shows that the question of the annexation was solved exclusively by the Reich; that is, therefore, by state authority and not by the Party.

If any doubts should still have existed about this, then they are removed by Document USA-61, 812-PS, presented by the Prosecution. It deals in this case with the letter of the Gauleiter of Salzburg, Dr. Friedrich Rainer, to Reich Commissioner District Leader Josef Buerckel, and in which he states, among other things: "Soon after the seizure of power in the Eastern Province, Klaussner, Globocnik and I flew to Berlin in order to give a report to the deputy of the Fuehrer, Party Comrade Rudolf Hess, about the incidents which led to the seizure of power."

A report naturally would not have been required if the deputy of the Fuehrer and the Party itself had been directly and decisively participating in the solution of the annexation question. I do not mention this in order to give reasons of justification or excuses on behalf of the defendant Rudolf Hess. The findings are rather made exclusively in the interests of the historical truth.

I now come to the question of the Anschluss of the Sudetenland. Three and one-half million Sudeten-Germans were incorporated into a state with eight and one-half million Czechs and Slovaks, without being granted a decisive influence on the state. All attempts of this national group to receive autonomy within the Czechoslovakian state structure remained without success. When the question of annexation with regard to Austria was solved, it could not but happen that the future position of the Sudeten Germans, which after all consisted of three and one-half million. persons and whose membership in the German nation is beyond. any doubt, was also subject to a test.

Now, I do not have the intention to take a stand in all questions of the annexation of the Sudetenland to the Reich in the actual and