27 Feb. 1946 A. Yes. Now, these were the two communications that I had received before the orders from the Government regarding the No Separate Peace Pact, of which I have told you. Q. This message that you referred to yesterday that you got on the first or the second of December 1941 came from the Foreign Office also, did it not? A. I am not absolutely certain whether this communication regarding the No Separate Peace Pact came before or after the one that told me of the orders to burn code books. In any case I may be a couple of days off in my dates and I have the feeling that this one regarding the No Separate Peace was around the third of December - I just wish to clear up this matter of dates. Q. These telegrams or these dispatches that you received from the Foreign Office, I suppose, were all signed MATSUOKA? A. MATSUOKA was no longer Foreign Minister at this time. In any case, signature or no signature, all these dispatches came from the Foreign Minister. The Foreign Minister at this time was TOGO. Q. Did TOGO succeed MATSUOKA as Foreign Minister? A. No. Toyoda came in between. Q. So that then MATSUOKA was succeeded by Toyoda and Toyoda was succeeded by TOGO, and TOGO was the Foreign Minister at the time of these messages we have just been talking about. A. That is correct. Q. Yesterday you mentioned the fact that you had a conversation with Dietrich, whom you identified yesterday, sometime in November. Would you tell us what it was Dietrich said to you on that occasion? A. I went to see Dietrich as I believe I told you regarding the wishes of some of our correspondents who wished to receive permission to visit the Russian Front. The point was that other members of my staff had already approached him and been unsuccessful so that the correspondents wanted me to take it up directly. As a matter of fact I do not know Dietrich very well. He was generally at this time at Supreme Headquarters, which I think was in East Prussia. In any case when he came back to Berlin I called on him, and in the course of the conversation he quite suddenly told me that Hitler had said at one time that should there be a United States-Japanese war Germany would also enter the conflict. That was all; I relayed this information to the Japanese Foreign Office and it was based on this that when they sent me the dispatch regarding the No Separate Peace Pact that they suggested that it should be possible to get Germany to make such a promise. Q. Did Hitler ask Dietrich to deliver that message to you? A. No. As I go on in my narrative regarding negotiations leading up to the No Separate Peace Pact I think you will be able to get a clearer picture of this information that Dietrich gave me. Q. Proceed. A. Following the receipt of this dispatch containing the orders from the Japanese Government I conveyed the message to Ribbentrop. In this regard it was a practice of Hitler and Ribbentrop to spend a great deal of their time at Supreme Headquarters during this period, and they were generally not around Berlin. I had thought that perhaps I might have to go to Supreme Headquarters, but it just so happened that Ribbentrop was back in Berlin at this time. If I remember correctly, and I am pretty sure that I am right, Ribbentrop told me that he was on his way to Hungary at the invitation 153