These are Items 40, 41 and 42 in the Schmundt File. I think it is sufficient to read the caption and the signature.
THE PRESIDENT: What page?
MR. ALDERMAN: Page 66 of the English version.
"Special Orders No. 1." This is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Host Secret. "Special Orders No. 1 to Directive No. 1. Subject: Occupation of territory ceded by Czechoslovakia. Signature: Keitel."
"Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. Most Secret IV a. MOST SECRET. Subject: Occupation of Sudeten-German Territory, signed Keitel." "Subject: Occupation of the Sudeten-German area, signed Keitel." German troops had reached the demarcation line and that the order for the occupation of the Sudetenland had been fulfilled. The OFW requested Hitler's permission to rescind Case Green and to withdraw troops from the occupied area and to relieve the OKH of executive powers in the Sudetenland German area as of 15 October. These are Items 46, 47, and 48 in the Schmundt File. 10 October 1933, signed by Von Brauchitsch:
"My Fuehrer:
"I have to report that the troops will reach the demarcation line as ordered, by this evening. In so far as further military operations are not required, the order for the occupation of the country which was given to me will thus have been fulfilled. The guarding of the new frontier line will be taken over by the reinforced frontier supervision service in the next few days.
"It is thus no longer a military necessity to combine the administration of the Sudetenland with the command of the troops of the army under the control of one person.
"I therefore ask you, my Fuehrer, to relieve me with effect from October 15, 1938, of the charge assigned to me -- that of exercising executive powers in Sudeten-German territory.
"Heil my Fuehrer, Von Brauchitsch." telegram from the OKW to the Fuehrer's train, Lt. Col. Schmundt:
"If evening report shows that occupation of Zone Five has been completed without incident, OKW intends to order further demobilization.
"Principle: 1) To suspend operation "Grun" but maintain a sufficient state of preparedness on part of army and Luftwaffe to to make intervention possible if necessary.
2) all units not needed to be withdrawn from the occupied area and reduced to peacetime status, as population of occupied area is heavily burdened by the massing of troops."
Skipping to below OKW's signature, this appears, at the left:
"Fuehrer's decision:
1.--agreed 2.--Suggestion to be made on the 13 October in Essen by General Keitel.
Decision will then be reached." Sudetenland was ordered by Hitler and defendant Keitel. Three days later the OKW requested Hitler's consent to the reversion of the RAD Labor Corps from the control of the armed forces. These are Items 52 and 53 in theSchmundt File.
As the German forces entered the Sudetenland Henlein's Sudetendeutsche Partei was merged with the NSDAP of Hitler. The two men who had fled to Hitler's protection in mid-September. Henlein and Karl Hermann Frank, were appointed Gauleiter and Deputy Gauleiter, respectively, of the Sudetengau. In the parts of the Czechoslovak Republic that were still free the Sudetendeutsche Partei constituted itself as the National Socialistic German Worker Party in Czechoslovakia under the direction of Kundt, another of Henlein's deputies. official report, Document 998 PS. spirators, the plan for the conquest of the remainder of Czechoslovakia. With the occupation of the Sudetenland and the inclusion of Germanspeaking Czecks within the greater Reich, it might have been expected that the Nazi conspirators would be satisfied. Thus far in their program of aggression the defendants had used as a pretext for their conquests the union of the Volksdeutsche, the people of German descent, with the Reich. Now, after Munich, the Volksdeutsche in Czechoslovakia has been substantially all returned to German rule.
world. I now refer and invite the notice of the Tribunal to the "Voelkischer Beobachter," Munich edition, special edition for 27 September 1938, in which this speech is quoted. I read from page 2, column 1, quoting from Hitler:
"And now we are confronted with the last problem which must be solved and will be solved. It is thelast territorial claim -
THE PRESIDENT (interposing): Is this document in our documents?
MR. ALDERMAN: No. That I am asking the Court to take judicial notice of.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. ALDERMAN: It is a well-known German publication.
(continuing) "It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is a claim from which I will bot swerve and which I will satisfy, God willing."
And further:
"I have little to explain. I am grateful to Mr. Chamberlain for all his efforts, and I have assured him that the German people want nothing but peace; but I have also told him that I cannot go back beyond the limits of our patience." This is page 3, column 1.
(continuing) "I assured him, moreover, and I repeat it here, that when this problem is solved there will be no more territorial problems for Germany in Europe. And I further assured him that from the moment when Czechoslovakia solves its other problems - that is to say, when the Czechs have come to an arrangement with their other minorities peacefully and without oppression - I will no longer be interested in the Czech State. And that, as far as I am concerned, I will guarantee it. We don't want any Czechs!" Document TC 28, which I think, will be offered by the British Prosecutor. mates of the military forces required to break Czechoslovak resistance in Bohemia and Moravia.
I now read from Item 48, at page 82, of the Schmundt File. This is a top secret telegram sent by Keitel to Hitler's headquarters on 11 October 1938 in answer to four questions which Hitler had propounded to the OKW. I think it is sufficient merely to read the questions which Hitler had propounded.
"Question 1: What reinforcements are necessary in the present situation to break all Czech resistance in Bohemia and Moravia?
"Question 2: How much time is required for the regrouping or moving up of new forces?
"Question 3: How much time Will be required for the same purpose if it is executed after the intended demobilization and return measures?
"Question 4: How much time would be required to achieve the state of readiness of October 1?"
THE PRESIDENT: Sent on October 11?
MR. ALDERMAN: Yes, 11 October. land was handed over the civilian authorities, a directive outlining plans for the conquest of the remainder of Czechoslovakia was signed by Hitler and initialed by the defendant Keitel.
I now offer in evidence Document C-136, as Exhibit U.S.A. 104, a top secret order of which ten copies were made, this being the first copy, signed in ink by Keitel. Sudetenland, the Nazi conspirators are already looking forward to new conquests. I quote the first part of the body of the document:
"The future tasks for the Armed Forces and the preparations for the conduct of war resulting from these tasks will be laid down by me in a later Directive.
"Until this Directive comes into force the Armed Forces must be prepared at all times for the following eventualities:
"1) The securing of the frontiers of Germany and the protection against surprise air attacks.
"2) The liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
"3) The occupation of the Memelland."
And then proceeding, the following the number 2:
"Liquidation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia; It must be possible to smash at any time the remainder of Czechoslovakia if her policy should become hostile towards Germany.
"The preparations to be made by the Armed Forces for this contingency will be considerably smaller in extent than those for "Gruen"; they must, however, guarantee a continuous and considerably higher state of preparedness, since planned mobilization measures have been dispensed with. The organization, order of battle, and state of readiness of the units earmarked for that purpose are in peace-time to be so arranged for a surprise assault that Czechoslovakia herself will be deprived of all possibility of organized resistance.
The object is the swift occupation of Boehmia and Moravia and the cutting off of Slovakia. The preparations should be such that at the same time 'Grenzsicherung West' (The measures of frontier defense in the West) can be carried out.
"The detailed mission of Army and Air Force is as follows:
"a. Army: The units stationed in the vicinity of Bohemia - Moravia and several motorized divisions are to be earmarked for a surprise type of attack. Their number will be determined by the forces remaining in Czechoslovakia; a quick and decisive success must be assured. The assembly and preparations for the attack must be worked out. Forces not needed will be kept in readiness in such a manner that they may be either committed in securing the frontiers or sent after the attack army.
"b. Air Force: The quick advance of the German Army is to be assured by an early elimination of the Czech Air Force.
"For this purpose the commitment in a surprise attack from peace-time bases has to be prepared. Whether for this purpose still stronger forces may be required can be determined from the development of the military situation in Czechoslovakia only. At the same time a simultaneous assembly of the remainder of the offensive forces against the West must be prepared."
And then Part 3 goes under the heading "Annexation of the Memel District." It was distributed to the OKH, to defendant Goering's Luftwaffe, and to defendant Raeder at Navy Headquarters. appendix to the original order, stating that by command of the Fuhrer preparations for the liquidation of Czechoslovakia re to continue.
I offer in evidence document C-138 as Exhibit U.S.A. 105, and other captured OKW documents classified "Top Secret".
I shall read the body of this order.
"Corollary to Directive of 21.10.39.
"Reference 'Liquidation of the Rest of Czechoslovakia' the Fuehrer has given the following additional order:
"The preparations for this eventuality are to continue on the assumption that no resistance worth mentioning is to be expected.
"To the outside world too it must clearly appear that it is merely an action of pacification and not a warlike undertaking.
"The action must therefore be carried out by the peacetime Armed Forces only, without reinforcements from mobilization. The necessary readiness for action, especially the ensuring that the most necessary supplies are brought up, must be effected by adjustment within the units.
"Similarly the units of the Army detailed for the march in must, as a general rule, leave their stations only during the night prior to the crossing of the frontier, and will not previously form up systematically on the frontier. The transport necessary for previous organization should be limited to the minimum and will be camouflaged as much as possible. Necessary movements, if any, of single units and particularly of motorized forces, to the troop-training areas situated near the frontier, must have the approval of the Fuehrer.
"The Air Force should take action in accordance with the similar general directives.
"For the same reasons the exercise of executive power by the Supreme Command of the Army is laid down only for the newly occupied territory and only for a short period." Signed: "Keitel." particular copy of this Order, an original carbon signed in ink by Keitel, was the one sent to the OKM, the German Naval Headquarters. It bears the initials of Fricke, head of the Operation Division of the Naval War Staff, Schneewind, Chief of Staff, and of defendant Raeder.
considered would by an easy victory, the foreign office played its part. In a discussion of means of improving German-Czech relations with the Slovakian Foreign Minister Chvalkosky in Berlin on 21 January 1939, defendant Ribbentrop urged upon the Czech Government a quick reduction in the size of the Czech Army. I offer in evidence Document 2795-PS as Exhibit "USA 106", captured German foreign office notes of this discussion. I will read only the footnote, which is in Ribbentrop's handwriting.
"I mentioned to Chvalkosky especially that a quick reduction in the Czech Army would be decisive in our judgment."
Does the Court propose sitting beyond 4:30?
PRESIDENT: No, I think not. The Tirbunal will adjourn.
(Whereupon at 1630 hours the hearing of the Tribunal adjourned to reconvene at 1000 hours on 4 December 1945.)
Official transcript of the International Military Tribunal, in the matter of:
THE PRESIDENT: I will call on the Chief Prosecutor for Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: May it please the Tribunal: Leader of the Nazi Conspirators who are now on trial before you is reported as having said in reference to their warlike plans:
"I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war, never mind whether it be true or not.
The victor shall not be asked later on whether we tell the truth or not.
In starting and making a war not the right is what matters but victory - the strongest has the right."
25 years, been victorious in wars which have been forced upon it, but it is precisely because we realise that victory is not enough; that might is not necessarily right; that lasting peace and the rule of International Law is not to be secured by the strong arm alone, that the British Nation is taking part in this trial. There are those who would perhaps say that these wretched men should have been dealt with summarily without trial by "executive action"; that their power for evil broken, they should be swept aside into oblivion without this elaborate and careful investigation into the part which they played in bringing this war about. Vae Victis. Let them pay the penalty of defeat. But that was not the view of the British Government. Not so would the Rule of Law be raised and strengthened on the international as well as upon the municipal plane; not so would future generations realise that right is not always on the side of the big battalions; not so would the world be made aware that the waging of aggressive war is not only a dangerous venture but a criminal one. Human memory is short.
Apologists for defeated nations are sometimes able to play upon the sympathy and magnanimity of their victors so that the true facts, never authoritatively recorded, become obscured and forgotten. One has only to recall the circumstances following upon the last World War to see the dangers to which, in the absence of any authoritative judicial pronouncement a tolerant or a credulous people may be exposed. With the passage of time the former tend to discount, perhaps because of their very horror, the stories of aggression and atrocity that may be handed down: and the latter, the credulous, misled by perhaps fanatical and perhaps dishonest propagandists, come to believe that it was not they but their opponents who were guilty of that they would themselves condemn. And so we believe that this Tribunal, acting, as we know it will act notwithstanding its appointment by the victorious powers, acting with complete and judicial objectivity, will provide a contemporary touchstone and an authoritative and impartial record to which future historians may turn for truth and future politicians for warning. From this record shall future generations know not only what our generation suffered but also that our suffering was the result of crimes, crimes against the laws of peoples which the peoples of the world upheld and will continue in the future to uphold, to uphold by international co-operation, not based merely on military alliances but grounded, and firmly grounded in the rule of law. novel, is there anything new in the principles which by this prosecution we seek to enforce. Ineffective though, alas, the sanctions proved themselves to be, the Nations of the world had, as it will be my purpose in addressing the Tribunal to show, had sought to make aggressive war an international crime, and although previous tradition has sought to punish States rather than individuals, it is both logical and right that if the act of waging war is itself an offence against International Law these individuals who shared personal responsibility for bringing such wars about should answer personally for the course into which they led their states. Again, individual war crimes have long been recognised by International Law as triable by the Courts of those States whose nationals have been outraged at least so long as a state of war persists.
It would be illogical in the extreme if those who, although they may not with their own hands have committed individual crimes, were responsible for systematic breaches of the laws of war affecting the nationals of many States should escape for that reason. So also in regard to crimes against humanity. The right of humanitarian intervention on behalf of the rights of man trampled upon by a State in a manner shocking the sense of mankind has long been considered to form part of the law of Nations. Here, too, the Charter merely develops a pre-existing principle. If murder, raping and robbery are indictable under the ordinary municipal laws of our countries shall those who differ from the common criminal only by the extent and systematic nature of their offences escape accusation? matters this Tribunal Will apply to individuals not the law of the victor but the accepted principles of international usage in a way which will, if anything can, promote and fortify the rule of International Law and safeguard the future peace and security of this war-stricken world. British Government and of the other States associated on this Prosecution to present the case on Count 2 of the Indictment and to show how these Defendants in conspiracy with each other and with persons now now before this Tribunal planned and waged a war of aggression in breach of the Treaty obligations by which, under International Law, Germany, as other States, had sought to make such wars impossible.
That task falls into two parts. The first is to demonstrate the nature and the basis of the Crime against Peace which is constituted under the Charter of this Tribunal, by waging wars of aggression and in violation of Treaties; and the second is to establish beyond all possibility of doubt that such wars were waged by these Defendants.
As to the first, it would no doubt be sufficient just to say this. It is not incumbent upon the Prosecution to prove that wars of aggression and wars in violation of International Treaties are, or ought to be, International Crimes. The Charter of this Tribunal has prescribed that they are crimes and that the Charter is the Statute and the law of this Court. Yet, though that is the clear and mandatory law governing the jurisdiction of this Tribunal, we feel that we should not be fully discharging our task in the abiding interest of international justice and morality unless we showed to the Tribunal, and indeed to the world, the position of this provision of the Charter against the whole perspective of International Law.
For just as in the experience of our Country, some old English Statutes were merely declaratory of the Common Law, so this Charter substantially declares and creates a jurisdiction in respect of what was already the Laws of Nations.
lest there be some, now or hereafter, who might allow their judgment to be warped by plausible catchwords or by an uninformed and distorted sense of justice towards these Defendants. It is not difficult to be misled by such phrases as that resort to war in the past has not been a crime: that the power to resort to war is one of the prerogatives of the sovereign State; even that this Charter in constituting wars doctrines of National Socialist jurisprudence, namely post factum legislation. But the Charter is in this respect reminiscent of Bills of Attainder - and that these proceedings are no more than a measure of vengeance, subtly concealed in the garb of judicial proceedings which the Victor wreaks upon the Vanquished. These things may sound plausible - yet they are not true. It is, indeed, not necessary to doubt that some aspects of the Charter bear upon them the imprint of significant and salutary novelty. But it is our submission and our conviction, which we affirm before this Tribunal and the world, that fundamentally the provision of the Charter which constitutes wars, such wars as these Defendants joined in waging and in planning a crime, is not in any way an innovation. This provision of the Charter does no more than constitute a competent jurisdiction for the punishment of what not only the enlightened conscience of mankind but the Law of Nations itself had constituted an International Crime before this Tribunal was established and this Charter became part of the public law of the world.
So first let this be said. Whilst it may be true that there is no body of international rules amounting to law in the Austinian sense of a rule imposed by a sovereign upon a subject obliged to obey it under some definite sanction, yet for fifty years or more the people of the world, striving perhaps after that ideal of which the poet speaks:
"When the War Drums throb no longer The Federation of the World" the people of the world have sought to create an operative system of rules based upon the consent of nations to stabilise international relations, to avoid war taking place at all and to mitigate the results of such wars as took place.
The first such treaty was of course the Hague Convention of 1899 for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. That Convention was, indeed, of little more than precatory effect and we attach no weight to it for the purposes of this case, but it did establish agreement that in the event of serious disputes arising between the signatory powers, they would as far as possible submit to mediation. That Convention was followed in 1907 by another Convention reaffirming and slightly strengthening what had previously been agreed. These early conventions fell indeed very far short of outlawing war or of creating any binding obligation to arbitrate. I shall certainly not ask the Tribunal to say any crime was committed by disregarding those Conventions. accepted the general principle that if at all possible war should be resorted to only if mediation failed. I an not relying on them save to show the historical development of the law, and it is unnecessary, therefore, to argue about their effect for the place which they once occupied has been taken by far more effective instruments. I mention them now merely for this, that they were the first steps towards that body of rules of law which we are seeking here to enforce. particular States, agreements which sought to preserve the neutrality of individual countries, as, for instance, that of Belgium, but these agreements were inadequate, in the absence of any real will to comply with them, to prevent the First World War in 1914.
of Europe, not excluding Germany, and of other parts of the world, came to the conclusion that in the interests of all alike a permanent organization of the Nations should be established to maintain the peace. And so the Treaty of Versailles was prefaced by the Covenant of the League of Nations. the various provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. They have been criticized, some of them perhaps justly criticized, and they were certainly made the subject of much bellicose propaganda in Germany. But it is unnecessary to inquire into the merits of the matter, for however unjust one might for this purpose assume the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles to have been, they contained no kind of excuse for the waging of war to secure an alteration in their terms. Not only was it a settlement by agreement of all the difficult territorial questions which had been left outstanding by the war itself, but it established the League of Nations which, if it had been loyally supported, could so well have resolved those international differences which might otherwise have led, as indeed they eventually did lead, to war. It set up in the Council of the League, in the Assembly and in the Permanent Court of International Justice, a machine not only for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, but also for the frank ventilation of all international questions by open and free discussion. At that time, in these years after the last war, the hopes of the world stood high. Millions of men in all countries -- perhaps even in Germany itself -- had laid down their lives in what they hoped and believed was a war to end war. Germany herself entered the League of Nations and was given a permanent seat on the Council, and on that Council as in the Assembly of the League, German Governments which preceded that of the Defendant Von Papen in 1932 played their full part.
In the years from 1919 to that time in 1932, despite some comparatively minor incidents in the heated atmosphere which followed the end of the war, the peaceful operation of the League continued. Nor was it only the operation of the League which gave ground, and good ground, for hope that at long last the rule of law would replace that of anarchy in the international field.
aggression an international Crime. These are no new terms invented by the Victors to embody in this Charter. They have figured, and they have figured prominently, in numerous treaties, in governmental pronouncements, and in the declarations of Statesmen in the period preceding the Second World War. In treaties concluded between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other states, such as Persia in 1927, France in 1935, China in 1937, the contracting parties undertook to refrain from any act of aggression whatever against the other party. In 1933, the Soviet Union became a party to a large number of treaties containing a detailed definition of aggression, and the sane definition appeared in the same year in the authoritative Report of the Committee on Questions of Security set up in connection with the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments. But at this time States were going beyond committments to refrain from wars of aggression and to assist States which were victims of aggression. They were condeming aggression in unmistakable terms. In the anti-War Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation which was signed on the 10th of October 1933, a number of American States subsequently joined by practically all the States of the American Continent and a number of European countries as well, the Contracting Parties solemnly declared that "they condemn wars of aggression in their mutual relations or in those of other States". And that treaty was fully incorporated into the Buenos Aires Convention of December 1936, signed and ratified by a large number of American countries, including, of course, the United States. And previously, in 1928, the Sixth Pan-American Conference had adopted a resolution declaring that as "war of aggression constitutes a crime against the human species...all aggression is illicit and as such is declared prohibited." A year earlier, as long ago as September 1927, the Assembly of the League of Nations adopted a resolution affirming the conviction that "a war of aggression can never serve as a means of settling international disputes and is, in consequence, an international crime" and going on to declare that "all wars of aggression are, and shall always be, prohibited". The first Article of the Draft Treaty for Mutual Assistance of 1923 read in these terms:
"The High Contracting Parties, affirming that aggressive war is an international crime, undertake the solemn engagement not to make themselves guilty of this crime against any other nation." In the Preamble to the Geneva Protocol of 1924, it was stated that "offensive warfare constitutes an infraction of solidarity and an international crime." These instruments that I have just last mentioned remained, it is true, unratified for various reasons, but they are not without significance or value. aggression, testified to the fact that with the establishment of the League of Nations, with the legal developments which followed it, the place of war in International Law had undergone a profound change. War was ceasing to be the unrestricted prerogative of sovereign states. The Covenant of the League of Nations did not totally abolish the right of war. It left, perhaps, certain gaps which were probably larger in theory than in practice. But in effect it surrounded the right of war by procedural and substantive checks and delays, which if the Covenant had been faithfully observed, would have amounted to an elimination of war, not only between Members of the League, but also, by reason of certain provisions of the Covenant in the relations of non-Members as Well. And thus, the Covenant of the League restored the position as it had existed at the dawn of International Law, at the time when Grotius was laying down the foundations of the modern law of nations and established the distinction, a distinction accompanied by profound legal consequences in the sphere, for instance of neutrality, between a just war and an unjust war. of the League. The right of war was further circumscribed by a series of treaties, numbering - it is an astonishing figure but it is right nearly a thousand, of arbitration and conciliation embracing practically all the nations of the world. The so-called Optional Clause of Article 36 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, the clause which conferred upon the Court compulsory jurisdiction with regard to the most comprehensive categories of disputes, and which constituted in effect by far the most important compulsory treaty of arbitration, compulsory arbitration in the post-war period, was widely signed and ratified.
Germany herself signed it in 1927 and her signature was renewed and renewed, for a period of five years, by the Nazi Government in July of 1933. Significantly, that ratification was not again renewed on the expiration of its five years' validity in March of 1938, not renewed again by Germany. Since 1928 a considerable number of States signed and ratified the General Act for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes which was designed to fill the gaps left by the Optional Clause and by the existing treaties of arbitration and conciliation. testified to the growing conviction that war was ceasing to be the normal or the legitimate means of settling international disputes. The express condemnation of wars of aggression, which I have already mentioned, supplies the same testimony. But there was, of course, more direct evidence pointing in the same direction. The Treaty of Locarno of the 16th October 1925, to which I shall have occasion to refer presently, and to which Germany was a party, was more than a treaty of arbitration and conciliation in which the parties undertook definite obligations with regard to the Pacific settlement of disputes which might arise between them. It was, subject to clearly specified exceptions of self-defense in certain contingencies, a more general undertaking in which the parties to it agreed that they would in no case attack or invade each other or resort to war against each other.