in the circle of those in the know. It is understandable if the extreme men avoided him owing to his well known opinions. Also he was not initiated into the secret of people who at the same time washed to be both Hitler's friends and murderers, and he was not advised by the group of people who were Hitler's enemies, but who kept their truisms secret with a novel kind of courage. Faithful to the end, defendant Sauckel cannot to this day understand what has happened. Must he, like aheretic, recant his error in order to find grace? He lacks the contact with reality which would make understanding possible. or a bad cause? Nothing is either good or bad,but thinking makes it so. One thin,g however, is always and under circumstances good, and that is good intentions. This good intention was shown by the Defendant Sauckel. Therefore, I ask that he be acquitted.
THE PRESIDENT: I call on Dr. Exner for Defendant Jodl.
DR. EXNER (Counsel for defendant Jodl): Mr. President, may it please the Tribunal, in this unique trial the discovery of the truth is faced with unique difficulties. At a time when the wounds of the war are still bleeding, when the excitement of the events of the last few years is still felt, at a time when the archives of one side are still shut, a just verdict is t be given with dispassionate neutrality. Material for the trial has been spread out before us which covers a quarter of a century of world history and events from the four corners of the globe. simultaneously. That makes it terribly difficult to keep one's eye clear for the guilt and the responsibility of each individual, for inhumanities of an almost unimaginable vastness have come to light here, and the danger exists that the deep shadow which falls on some of the defendants may also darken the others. Some of them appear, I fear, in a different light because of the company in which they are here than they would if they were alone on the defendants' bench. making joint accusations, mixing legal and moral reproaches. They said that all of the defendants had enriched themselves from the occupied territories, that there was not one who did not shout, "Die, Judah," and so forth. No attempt to prove this in the case of each individual was made, but the statement alone creates an inimical atmosphere to all of them? make the clearing up of the question of individual guilt more difficult is the fact that the defendants Keitel and Jodl are treated as inseparable twins one common plea against them by the British Prosecutor, one common trial bri by the French Prosecution, and finally the Russian Prosecution spoke very little about the individual defendants but, rather, heaped reproach after reproach upon all of the defendants. server to clear up the question of individual responsibility. Indeed, the Indictment goes still further. It stretches beyond these 22 defendants and affects the fate of millions -- this through the prosecution of the organizations, which, taken in conjunction with Law Number 10, has as its result that one can be punished for the guilt of other persons.
form of summary treatment of the defendants. The Prosecution is bringing in the conception of a conspiracy to reach the result again that persons can be made individually responsible for something wrong that others did. I must go into this point in greater detail, as it concerns my client as well.
It is actually clear, I think, from the previous speakers' statements that a conspiracy to commit crimes against the peace, the laws of war and of humanity didnot in fact exist. Therefore, I shall show only one thing: If such a conspiracy did actually exist, Jodl, at least, did not belong to it.
The Prosecution has admitted that Jodl's participation in the conspiracy before 1933 could not be proved. In fact, anyone whose attitude toward the whole National Socialist movement was so mistrustful and who spoke with such skepticism about its seizure of power did not conspire to help Hitler into the saddle. But the Prosecution seems to think that Jodl joined the alleged conspiracy in the period before 1939. Actually, his attitude toward Hitler was now a lawfully loyal one, for it was Jold's respected Field Marshal von Hindenberg who had called Hitler into the government, and the German people had confirmed this decision with more than 90 per cent of its votes.
Added to this was the fact that in Jodl's eyes -- and not alone in Jodl's eyes -- Hitler's authority was bound to rise powerfully in view of his marvelous successes at home and abroad, successes which now followed one aft another in quick succession, but personally Jodl remained without any connection with Hitler. He did not participate in any of the big meetings at which Hitler developed his program. Hitler's book, Mein Kampf -- the Bible o National Socialism -- Jodl had read only parts of. Jodl remained just an unpolitical man, quite in accordance with his personal inclinations which lay far from Party politics and in accordance with the traditions of the old family of officers from which he sprang.
Inwardly of liberal leanings, he had little sympathy for National Socialism; outwardly he was forbidden to belong to the Party, and he was without all rights to vote and all political activity. was the instrument of cohesion between the defendants, then one asks in vain what cohesion actually existed between Jodl,and, let us say, Sauckel, or between Jodl and Streicher. Of all the defendants, except the officers, the only one he knew before the war was Frick, from one or two official conferences in the Ministry of the Interior. He kept out of the NSDAP, and his attitude towards its organizations was even, in some sense, inimical. His greatest worry during these years, as later right to the end, was the danger of Party influence in the armed forces. into a subsidiary Wehrmacht, to prevent the handing over of the Customs Frontier Guards to Himmler, and he notes triumphantly in his diary that after the withdrawal of Colonel General von Fritsch, Hitler did not, as was feared, make General von Reichenhau, who had Party ties, commander in chief of the army but the unpolitical General von Brauchitsch, and so forth. behaved in the opposite manner on each of these points. spirators -- not on 5 November 1937 -- Hitler's testament remained unknown to him -- nor at Obersalzburg in February 1938, nor at the meetings on 23 May 1939, nor of 22 August 1939.
No wonder. Jodl was after all at that time still much too small a man to be brought into occasions which were of such decisive importance to the state. People do not conspire with lieutenant colonels or colonels on the General Staff. They are simply told what to do, and that settles the matter as far as they are concerned:
have belonged to no conspiracy to wage aggressive war is his absence of ten months' duration just before the beginning of the war. Jodl had left the OKW in October 1938 and was sent to Vienna as artillery commander. At that time there was in his mind so little probability of war that, before leaving Berlin, he drafted on his own initiative a deployment in all directions. In this he moved the mass of the German forces to the center of the Reich because he could not see in any direction definite opponents against whom a deployment plan would have to be prepared. German transcript, page 10,856. spirator for aggressive wars drew up a purely defensive General Staff job, and, although he know definitely that in case of war he would have to return to Berlin, this possibility seemed so distant that he transferred to Vienna, together with all of his furniture.
had the Mountain Division at Reichenhall promised him for 1 October 1939. Lastly, as late as July he procured shipping tickets for a sea trip planned to last several weeks and which would have begun in September. up to the time he was called to Berlin shortly before the outbreak of the war, Jodl had no official or private connections with the OKW. The only letter he got from them at that time was the one which promised him his transfer to Reichenhall on 1 October. conspirators were discussing and working out the Polish plan, Jodl was out of all contact for ten months with the authoritative persons and knew no more of what was happening than one of his second lieutenants. worthwhile to Keitel to introduce Jodl to him, although Jodl was called upon in the event of war to carry out the alleged common aggresive plan as strategic commander to the supreme commander. had been a member of the conspiracy to launch the war.
Mr. President. I have reached the end of a paragraph, and this perhaps might be an opportune more to recess.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 19 July 1946 at 1000 hours.)
DR. EXNER: (Counsel for defendant Jodl) Mr. President, may it please the Tribunal: page 7 in the middle of the page. Jodl, in any event, up until the year 1939, was net a member of a conspiracy and could not have been -- correction, page 9. 1939. in the place indicated for him in carrying out a war plan can never be considered a conspirator. He does, in fact, have a plan in common with his superior, but he had not adopted it willingly, nor has he concluded an agreement, but, within the normal order of service, he simply does whatthe post he occupies demands.
Jodl can be considered a typical example of this. He did not go to Berlin on his free decision. It had already been laid down long before that he had to enter the Fuehrer's staff in case of war. The arrangements for the current mobilization year laid this down. This mobilization year ended on the 30 September 1939; for the following year General von Sodenstern was already designated as Chief of the Wehrmacht Operational Staff. Therefore, if the war had broken out six weeks later, Jodl would have entered the war as commander of his mountain division. He would then, in all probability, not be on this defendants' bench today. One sees that his whole activity in the war was fixed by a ruling which was independent of his will and had been laid down in advancelong before. This fact is, in my opinion, in itself already striking proof that he did not participate in a conspiracy to wage wars of aggression.
war hadalready been laid down for the 25 of August. For reasons unknown to him it was then postponed another six days.. The plan for the Polish campaign lay ready. He did not need to conspire to produce it. If a conspiracy against Poland existed at that time, the co-conspirators were quite somewhere else, as we now know as a result of the secret German-Russian treaty.
Jodl was not introduced to the Fuehrer until the 3 September 1939, i.e., only after the war had begun, at a time when what had to be decided had already been decided. One must actually add, close to his physically only. He wasnever really close to him. Now, too, he did not learn Hitler's plans and intentions, and was only let into them as the occasion arose, to the extent that his work absolutely demanded. Jodl never became Hitler's confidant and never had cordial relations with him. It remained a purely official relationship--and often enough one of conflict.
In other ways, too, Jodl had remained a stranger to the party. There is no idea of his having sought contact in Vienna, for instance, with the party leaders there, although this would have been natural enough. only when they visited the Fuehrer's Headquarters from time to time. With the exception of one officers, he continued to have no relations with them. The party clique on the headquarters he hated and considered it an unpleasant foreign body in the military framework. He never ceased to fight against party influence in the Armed Forces.
He still did not participate in party functions. He did not participate in Reich party rallies, apart from the fact that he once watched the Wehrmacht's exhibition there, having been oredered to officially. He avoided every one of the Munich anniversaries on the 9 November. in spite of all this, Jold identified himself with the party and its efforts, and that he was, after all, not a soldier but a politician and that he was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's as well.
Gauleiter speech, is not the manuscript of this speech out a collection of materials put together by his staff, on the basis of which Jodl then drafted his manuscript.
Over and above this, the speech was made extemporaneously. Not a single word ofthis document proves that Jodl really spoke it.
Also the occasion ofthe speech must be taken into account. After four hard years of war, after the breaking off of Italy which had just taken place before the fresh, terrific burden which Hitler planned to impose on the population as the extreme effort, - at this critical moment everything depended on the people's will to continue remaining intact. For this reason, the party tried to get expert information upon the war situation so as to be able to buey up the sinking courage again. For this task the Fuehrer earmarked General Jodl, no doubt the only competent person. Some people would have welcomedthis opportunity to make themselves popular with the Party leaders, but Jodl accepted the task against his will. The title of the lecture is "The military situation at the beginning of the fifth year of war." Its contents are purely objective description of the war situation on the various fronts and of how this situation was created. The beginning and the end giv e at least according to the document before us, a paen of praise to the Fuehrer from which the Prosecution draws doubtful conclusions. When a lecturer has first and foremost to win the confidence of his listeners, these consisting of Party leaders, and when the task is to spread confidence in the supreme military leadership, then such rhetorical phrases are something quite understandable.
Besided, Jodl does not deny that he sincerely admired some of the Fuehrer's qualities and talents. But he was never his confidant or his fellow-conspirator and he remained in the OKW the non-political man he always was.
Jodl was therefore not a member of a conspiracy. No concept of a conspiracy can help to makehim responsible for actions which he did not himself commit as a guilty man.
reproached. with certain crimes against the peace, against the laws of war and against humanity, which crimes are specified in the Charter and for which the personal criminal responsibility of the guilty individual was laid down. If we disregard for the time being the crimes against humanity, which cone under a special heading, there are two preliminary conditions under which the individual punishment of the defendants can take place: co-guilty in some respect. The meaning of this whole trial and the meaning of the Charter after all lies in the fact that the force of the rules of international law is to be strengthened by penal sanctions. If, therefore, some special kind of Violation of international law is committed, net only the responsibility of the particular country which violated the law will come in as heretofore, but in addition guilty individuals are also to be punished for it in future. Therefore: There can be no punishment without a breach of international law. individuals in the case of all trenches of international law, but only for those which are explicitly named in the Charter. Article 6 (a) specifics the crimes against peace, paragraph 6 (b) crimes against the laws and usages of war. Other actions, oven if they are contrary to International Law, do not belong here. taken those two points into account right from the beginning, because as is to be shown, there is a tendency to accuse the defendants beyond these limits of actions contrary to international law which are net specified in the Charter; but this is not all: they are to be called to account also for deeds which are not at all contrary to law, but which can at most be considered as unethical Angle-American trial brief and add to it what was brought up,against Jodl by the two other Prosecutors.
Point one: The collaboration in the seizure and consolidation of power by the National Socialists has, as has already been pointed, out been dropped. Rhineland. military service nor with rearmament. Jodl's diary contains not a single word about re-armament. He was a member of the Reich Defense Committee, which was not, however, concerned with the re-armament questions. He was here concerned with the measures which were to be taken by the civilian authorities in case of mobilization. There was nothing illegal in that. We were not forbidden to mobilise, for instance, in case of an enemy attack. The preparations in the demilitarized zone which were proposed to the Committee by Jodl limited themselves also to the civilian authorities and consisted only of preparation for the evacuation of the territory west of the Rhine in order to defend the line of the river Rhine in case of a French occupation. The preparations were purely of a defensive nature. kept very strictly secret, this is not evidence of any criminal plans, but only the natural thing to do. As a matter of fact, particular caution was imperative, for the French occupation of the Ruhr was still fresh in peonies' memory.
Neither had Jodl anything to do with the occupation of the Rhineland; he learned about it only five days before the execution of this decision of the Fuehrer's. Further statements are superfluous, for according to the Charter neither re-armament nor the occupation of the Rhineland -- whether they were contrary to international law or not -- belong to the criminal actions under Article 6. aggressive war was seen in them. But who would have thought of an aggressive war at that period? In 1938, owing to lack of trained troops, we could not have put into the field one sixth of the number of divisions our expected enemies, France, Czechoslovakia and Poland, could have produced. The first stage of re-armament was supposed to be reached in 1942. The Western Wall was to be completed by 1952.
Heavy artillery was lacking entirely. Tanks were at the testing stare. The ammunition situationwas catastrophic. In 1937 we did not possess a single capital ship. As late as 1939 we did not have more than 26 seagoing U-beats, which was less than one tenth of the British and French figure. As far as war plans are concerned there existed only a plan for the protection of the Eastern frontier. The description of our situation in the Reich Defense Committee is very typical. It was said, in a matter of fact way, that a future war would be fought on our own territory; hence that it could only be a defensive war. This -- please note -- was a statement made during a secret session of this Committee. The possibility of offensive action was not mentioned at all. But we were than not capable of serious defensive action either. Forthis very reason the generals already thought of themselves as gamblers at the time of the occupation of the Rhineland. But that any one of then could have been sufficiently utopian to think an offensive -- there is not even the semblance of any evidence for such thinking.
As Points 4) - 6) the Trial brief designates participation in the planning and execution of the attack on Austria end Czechoslovakia.
A deployment plan against Austria did not exist at all. The Prosecution quoted the document C 175 as such. But this is a misunderstanding. It is merely a program for the elaboration of the most various war plans; for instance for the war against England, against Lithuania, against Spain, etc. Among those theoretical possibilities of war, the "Fall Otto" is also mentioned; that is an intervention in Austria in case of an attempt to restore the Habsburgs. It says in the document that this plan is not to be elaborated but merely to be "thought out". But, as there was no indication whatsoever of such an attempt by the Habsburgs, nothing at all was prepared for this. Two days later came the order to propose certain deceptive actions, obviously in order to put pressure on Schuschnigg so that he should comply with the Obersalsberg agreements. There is nothing illegal in this, even if the Prosecutor speaks about "criminal methods".
Fuehrer's decision to march in. The Fuehrer gave this order to march in by telephone. Jodl's written order served only to file it. If this had been the authoritative order, it would after all have come much too late. It was issued at 0900 hours on the 11 March and the march in took place on the following morning. Its course was described to us. The troops had purely peace-time equipment. The Austrians crossed the border to meet and welcome them. Austrian troops joined the columns and marched with the German troops to Vienna. It was a triumphal procession with cheers and flowers.
As lateras the spring of 1938 Hitler stated that he did not intend "to attack Czechoslovakia in the near future." After the partial Czech mobilization, which was unprovoked, he changed his view and decided to solve the Czech problem after the 1 October 1938, and not on the 1 October 1938, as long as there was no interference to be expected from the Western Powers. Staff. He did it in the conviction that his work would remain theoretical because -- as the Fuehrer wanted under all circumstances to avoid a conflict with the Western Powers -- a peaceful settlement was to be expected. Jodl tried to achieve only one thing -- that the plan should not be interfered with by Czech provocation. And really things happened as he expected they would. After the examination by Lord Runcinan had show the untenableness of the racial conditions in Czechoslovakia and the justification of the German national point of view, the Munich Agreement with the Western Powers took place. might be organized as a motive for marching in. He has given us the reasons for it. But the incident did not take place. This memorandum is not a breach of international law, even if only because it is a question of internal considerations which never achieved importance outside. And even if this idea had been put into execution, such guiles have always been used, every since the Greeks built their Trojan Horse. Ulysses, the initiator of this idea, is praised for this by the ancient poets as "a man of great cunning" and not branded as a criminal. I do not see anything unethical in Jodl's behaviour either, for, after all, in the relations between states somewhat different ethical principles are applied from those in boarding schools for young Christian girls.
fully as that of Austria. Greeted enthusiastically by the liberated population, the troops entered the German areas, which had been evacuated to the agreed line by the Czech troops. Both these marchings in are not crimes according to the Charter They were not attacks (this presupposes the use of force) still less wars (they presuppose armed fighting), let alone aggressive wars. To consider such peaceful invations as "aggressive wars" would be to exceed even the notorious conclusion based on analogies of National Socialist criminal legislation.
The four signatory powers could have included these invasions, which were still a recent memory, in Article 6, but this was not done because it was obviously intended to restrict the completely new kind of punishment of individual persons to wars, but net to penalize such unwarlike actions. Quite generally speaking, it must be said: any interpretation of the penal rules of the Charter which extends them is inadmissible. The old saying applies: "privilegia stricte interpretenda sunt". Here we have an example of privilegium odiosum. Indeed there has probably never been a more striking example of a privilogium odiosum than the unilateral prosecution of members of the Axis Powers only. for having drafted an invasion plan against Czechoslovakia at a time when a peaceful settlement was not yet ensured. But Jodl reckoned with a peaceful settlement and had good reason to expect it. He therefore lacked the indention of preparing an aggressive war.
To this statement of facts which exclude Jodl's guilt must be added a legal consideration: We have decided - and there should be no doubt about it: There is no punishment for crimes against the peace without a violation of International Law. Now if the Charter makes preparations for aggressive war subject to punishment, it clearly means that a person who prepared an aggressive war which actually took place should be punished. On the contrary, war plans, which remained nothing but plans, do not belong here. They are not contrary to International Law. International Law is not concerned with what gees on in people heads and in offices. Things which are immaterial from the international point of view are not contrary to International Law. Aggressive plans which are not executed in the same way as more aggressive intentions - may be unethical, but they not contrary to law and do not come under the Charter. It is here a question of plans which were not carried out because the peaceful occupation of the Sudetenland based on international agreement was not an aggressive war, and the occupation of the rest of the country, which furthermore was accomplished without resistance and without war, no longer had any connection with Jodl's plans.
March 1939 need not be discussed in greater detail here, for Jodl was at the time in Vienna and did not take part in this action, Neither did he have anything to do with its planning, for it has no connection whatsoever with Jodl's former work in the General Staff. Since then the military situation had changed completely; The Sudetenland with its frontier fortifications was in German hands. The unopposed marching in which then took place, therefore, followed totally different plans, if such plans existed at all. Jodl did not take part in this marching-in. Poland: the essential things have already been said on this subject: At the moment when Jodl left Berlin, no deployment plan against Poland existed. When he returned on the 23 August 1939 the intention existed to outer Poland on the 25th. The plan for this was naturally ready; Jodl did not have a share in it. Poland in the Fuehrer's train on the 3rd September and that this was a proof that he took part in the war. Is this, too, a reproach against a soldier? countries from Norway to Greece. The Trial brief gathers these seven wars together into one point and quite rightly too. They from one unit, because all of them resulted with military necessity and with logical consequences from the Polish war and from England's interference. It is for this very reason that the fact that Jodl had nothing to do with the unleashing of the war against Poland is so important when judging him.
it is known how everything really came about. The only criterion for the judgment of Jodl's behaviour is how he saw the situation at its various stages, whether, according to that what he saw and knew. He considered Hitler's various decisions to wage war justified and to what extent he influenced developments. That is all that we are concerned with here.
to refer to the statements made by Dr. Siemers the day before yesshould like to make an insertion at this point. It seems to be a statement regarding international law which is not contained in my manuscript.
In reference to the statements made by Dr. Siemers in this regard day before yesterday, in order to avoid any misunderstanding I should like to add the following:
1. There is not the slightest doubt that the merchant ships of a state at war may cross the neutral coastal waters. If its enemy, in order to prevent any traffic of that sort, mines the coastal waters, this fact is a clear breach of neutrality. Capital ships and battle ships have the right of passing through, insofar as they adhere to the rules which have been stipulated and do not participate in any combat action in the coastal waters. And if this applies even to capital and battle ships, it applies all the moreso to ships who are transporting prisoners of war.
2. The fact that a war is a war of aggression does not in any way influence the validity and application of the normal war and neutrality right. A contrary opinion would lead to absurd results and would serve only to become a grave-digger for the complete right of war. There would be no neutral states, and the relations between the belligerents would be dominated and determined by the principles of brute force and its applications. Each shot would be murder, each instance of capture would be punishable deprivation of freedom, and each bombardment would be a criminal material damage.
such principles by either side, and even the Prosecution does not uphold the point of view.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on.
DR. EXNER: Nor does the Prosecution maintain this point of view, otherwise they would not have charged the defendant with certain deeds as being crimes against the laws of war and neutrality laws. The entire reproach under point three would be quite senseless and not understandable. And apart from that, Prof. Jahrreiss dealt with this question on Pages 32 to 35 of his final argument. from Hitler himself - about the fears of the German Navy that England intended to go to Norway. He then received information which left no doubt that these fears were basically right. He also had regular reports according to which the waters near the Norwegian coast were coming more and more into the English sphere of domination, so that Norway was no longer actually neutral.
Jodl was firmly convinced - and still is today - that the German troops prevented the English landing at the last minute.
No matter how Hitler's decision may be judged legally, Jodl did not influence it; he considered the decision justified and was bound to consider it as such. So, even if one wished to regard Hitler's decision as a breach of neutrality, Jodl did not give criminal help by his work on the General Staff.
(b) Belgium-Holland-Luxemburg. the war in the West to its conclusion, there was no other course but a military offensive. In view of the inadequacy of the German equipment at the time and the strength of the Maginot-Line, there was, however, from a military point of view, no otherpossibility for an offensive than through Belgium. operating through Belgium. But Jodl also fully knew, as did every German who experienced August, 1914, how difficult a political decision was faced thereby as long asBelgium was neutral, i.e., was prepared and in a position to keep out of the war. justified doubts could arise now, showed that the Belgian Government was already co-operating, in breach of her neutrality, with the general staffs of Germany's enemies. This, however, can be dropped here in the defense of Jodl. It suffices to know -- and this is indisputable -- that part of Belgium's territory, i.e., the air over it, was being continuously used by Germany's Western enemies for their military purposes.
And this applies perhaps even more strongly to the Netherlands. Since the very first days of the war, British planes have flown over Dutch and Belgian territory as and when they pleased. Only in some of the numerous cases did the Reich government protest, and these were 127 cases.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Exner, will you refer the Tribunal to the evidence which you have for that statement?
DR. EXNER: Please?
THE PRESIDENT: Will you refer me to the evidence that you have for that statement?
DR. EXNER: What statement, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: That protests were made in 127 cases.
DR. EXNER: I am referring to the statements made by the witness von Ribbentrop. He was the one who said that 127 protests went out.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on.
DR. EXNER: The prosecution does not put the legal question correctly. Before air warfare gained its present important position, conditions were such that a state which wished to remain neutral could withheld its territory from continual military use by one of the belligerents as and when the latter wishd, or else give clear notice of the termination of its neutrality. Since air warfare became possible, a state can hand over, to have to hand over, to one of the belligerents the air over its territory and yet remain outwardly and diplomatically neutral. But, by the very nature of the idea, the defense of its neutrality can be claimed only by a state whose whole territory lies, de facto, outside of the theatre of war. no longer de facto neutral, for the air over them was, in practice, with or against their will, freely at the disposal of Germany's enemies. What contribution they thus made towards England's military strength, i.e., towards the strength of only one of the belligerents, is known to everybody. It is necessary only to think of Germany's Achilles' heel: The Ruhr. barrier constituted by Holland and Belgium protected our industrial areas against air attacks, their neutrality was to be disregarded; but when it protected France and England, its violation was a crime.
Jodl naturally realized the situation. His opinion on the legal question, was, of course, a matter of complete indifference to Hitler.
THE PRESIDENT: One moment, please.
Dr. Exner, is it your contention that it is is accordance with international law that if the air over a particular neutral state is made use of by one of the warring nations, the other warring nation can invade that neutral state without giving any warning to the neutral State?
DR. EXNER: In this connection, Mr. President, I should like to say that this continuous use of the air space of a state -- that is, for the purpose of attacking; having those planes over this territory with the idea of attacking Germany--was a breach of nuetrality.