Note on the incorporation of the Memel territory into East Prussia

Date: 23 March 1939

Literal Title: Marginal Note to the law concerning the Reunion of the Memel Territory with the German Reich of 23 March 1939.

Total Pages: 1

Language of Text: English

Source of Text: Nazi conspiracy and aggression (Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.)

Evidence Code: TC-53

Citation: IMT (page 943)

HLSL Item No.: 450650

Notes:See document TC 8 for the status of this territory under the Versailles Treaty.

Trial Issues

IMT count 2: crimes against peace (wars of aggression) (IMT) Wars of aggression

PROTEST BY THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE GERMAN VIOLATION OF THE MUNICH AGREEMENT
M. Georges Bonnet, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to M. Coulondre, French Ambassador, Berlin
Paris, 17th March 1939
Please ask for an audience of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to transmit to him the note of which I enclose the text. (A similar demarche has been ordered for your British Colleague).
By a letter dated March 15th 1939, his Excellency the German Ambassador communicated to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the French Republic, at the command of his Government, the text of an agreement concluded on the night of March 14/15 between the Fuehrer and Chancellor and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Reich on the one hand, and the President and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic on the other hand.
In the same communication it was stated that at 6 o'clock in the morning German troops had crossed the Czechoslovak frontier and that the necessary measures had been taken to prevent any resistance and any bloodshed, and to permit of an orderly and peaceful completion of the occupation and pacification of the territory.
The French Ambassador has the honour to inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Reich of the formal protest made by the Government of the French Republic against the measures which the communication of Count de Welzeck records.
TC-53
The Government of the Republic consider in fact that, in face of the action directed by the German Government against Czechoslovakia, they are confronted with a flagrant violation of the letter and the spirit of the agreements signed at Munich on September 9, 1938.
The circumstances in which the agreement of March 15 have been imposed on the leaders of the Czechoslovak Republic do not in the eyes of the Government of the Republic legalize the situation registered in that agreement.
The French Ambassador has the honour to inform his Excellency the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Reich that the Government of the Republic cannot recognize, under these conditions, the legality of the new situation created in Czechoslovakia by the action of the German Reich.