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| 26 July 46 |
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| Afternoon
Session |
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THE PRESIDENT: I call on the Chief
Prosecutor of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS (Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom): May it
please the Tribunal; like my distinguished colleague, whose succinct, able, and
eloquent speech I cannot hope to emulate, I desire on behalf of the British
prosecutors at this Trial to lay before the Tribunal some comment. I am afraid
it ,is of some length on those salient and outstanding features of the evidence
which, in our submission, make clear the guilt of these defendants. Although
throughout these proceedings the representatives of the prosecuting powers have
worked in the closest co-operation and agreement and although there are certain
matters which I shall be laying before the Tribunal on behalf of all of us, we
all thought it right at this final stage, even at the cost of some inevitable
repetition and overlapping, that we should prepare our final submissions quite
independently so that the Tribunal and our own countries might know exactly the
grounds on which we seek the condemnation of these men; and if it turns out
that several of us point to the same evidence or reach similar conclusions, as
no doubt it will, that very coincidence reached independently may perhaps add
force to our submissions that each of these defendants is legally guilty.
I say legally guilty. That these defendants participated in and are
morally guilty of crimes so frightful that the imagination staggers and reels
back at their very contemplation is not in doubt. Let the words of the
Defendant Frank, which were repeated to you this morning, be well remembered:
“Thousands of years will pass and this guilt of Germany will not be
erased.” Total and totalitarian war, waged in defiance of solemn
undertakings and in breach of treaties; great cities, from Coventry to
Stalingrad, reduced to rubble, the countryside laid waste, and now the
inevitable aftermath of war so fought – hunger and disease stalking
through the world; millions of people homeless, maimed, bereaved. And in their
graves, crying out, not for vengeance but that this shall not happen again: 10
million who might be living in peace and happiness at this hour, soldiers,
sailors, airmen, and civilians killed in battles that ought never to have been.
Nor was that the only or the greatest crime. In all our countries when
perhaps in the heat of passion or for other motives which impair restraint some
individual is killed, the murder becomes a sensation, our compassion is
aroused, nor do we rest until the criminal is punished and the rule of law is
vindicated. Shall we do less when not one but on the lowest computation 12
million |
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| 433 |
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