Page 337 - The Chief Culprit

282 y Epilogue

prison yard he overheard Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering and Von Ribbentrop talking.
Von Ribbentrop offered an astonishing piece of information to Goering. He said that when
he visited Moscow in August 1939 to arrange the German-Soviet treaty with Molotov, he had
also signed a secret treaty which was not made public. Von Ribbentrop told Goering: “ is
secret agreement defined spheres of interest in the event of any war.”
e two foreign ministers had drawn a line upon a map along the Vistula and the Bug,
the two rivers that divide Poland. ey had agreed that, should war come, the territory to
the west of the two rivers should become a German sphere of interest, and the territory to
the east would be under Soviet control. e Soviet sphere included Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, the eastern part of Poland, and certain areas of Romania. Von Ribbentrop also
told Goering that the Russians had assured him, since his arrest, that it would be made
easier for him if he did not talk about this secret agreement in court. Stalin clearly wanted to
keep his secret pact with Hitler—to carve up and share Poland and the Baltic states—from
being made public at a time when the Russians were part of an international military court
passing sentence on war crimes that included conspiracy to wage aggressive war and crimes
against peace.
Dr. Seidl realized at once the significance of this secret pact to his client. After the
military action of Germany and the Soviet Union against Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in
June 1940, both Germany and the Soviet Union had denied that any political agreement
existed, apart from the German-Soviet treaty concerning boundaries, which was concluded
on August 23, 1939. It followed that if Dr. Seidl could prove such a secret plan did exist then
Stalin and the Soviet Union were as guilty of waging aggressive war as any of the Nazis in the
dock. Dr. Seidl would be able to argue that his client should be found not guilty or else Stalin
and other Kremlin men should join him in the dock, explained Hutton.
Dr. Seidl set out to find another witness to the secret protocol signing besides Von
Ribbentrop. After a difficult search he managed to come across Dr. Friedrich Gaus, who
had been undersecretary of state in the German foreign ministry and had accompanied Von
Ribbentrop to Moscow for the treaty signing. “Was there such a secret agreement?” Dr. Seidl
asked. “Yes,” confirmed Dr. Gaus, “I remember it clearly.” When asked where a copy could be
found, Gaus said he had no idea since to his knowledge all the important files of the German
foreign ministry had been microfilmed and surrendered to American officials.
Dr. Seidl needed documentary evidence to make his case. When his efforts to find the
document by going through normal bureaucratic channels failed, he spread the word of his
search to all the high-ranking American officers he met socially and told them about the
specific document he was looking for.
One evening as he was leaving the court, an American officer, whom he did not know,
approached him and asked in German, “Are you Dr. Alfred Seidl?” e lawyer nodded. As
Hutton wrote, “ e American introduced himself. He then handed Dr. Seidl a plain sealed
envelope. ‘ is is something that may interest you,’ he said. Dr. Seidl ripped open the enve-
lope, his fingers trembling as he leafed through the contents. It was a copy of the agreement
between Molotov and von Ribbentrop that he was searching for. e American officer dis-
creetly disappeared.”
After studying the document Dr. Seidl saw that it was not a photostatic copy and had
no official seal. He gave the document to Dr. Gaus, who said it seemed to him to be a true