DR. HORN: Did Von Ribbentrop during the course of the war ask that Rome and Florence be spared?
VON STEENGRACHT: So far as I know, yes. He did speak with Hitler on these subjects.
DR. HORN: Are you acquainted with an article by Goebbels in the _Reich_, or perhaps the _Völkischer Beobachter_, dealing with lynch justice?
VON STEENGRACHT: Yes. Once by chance I came to Ribbentrop when he was reading a paper and was again very excited. He asked me if I had read the article yet, this shocking article by Goebbels. It was an article on lynch justice.
DR. HORN: Did Von Ribbentrop lodge a protest with Goebbels about this article?
VON STEENGRACHT: As far as I know, he charged our press chief who had the liaison with Goebbels to lodge a protest against this article. But to his surprise he was forced to see that this protest was useless since the article had not only been inspired but, I believe, ordered by Hitler, and thus there was nothing more to be done.
DR. HORN: What attitude did the Foreign Office take in view of the trend of this article?
VON STEENGRACHT: The Foreign Office repudiated the article vehemently, because it comprised an offense against international law and thus made us depart from international law in another field. Moreover, it appealed to the lower instincts of man, and both in internal and external policy did great damage.
Besides, such an article, that has been read by several hundred thousands or by millions, does irreparable damage anyway. We therefore insisted that under no circumstances should such things appear in the press again. I must regretfully state, however, that we had a very difficult stand in this matter, especially since low-flying enemy craft often shot peasants in the fields and pedestrians in the streets, that is to say, purely civilian people, with their murder weapons. And our arguments that in our field we wanted to observe international law under all circumstances, were not taken into account at all either by most German officers, or above all by Hitler personally. On the contrary, in this case too we were regarded again only as formal jurists. But later we did try, as much as we could, with the help of military offices, to prevent the carrying out of this order.