Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 36
		3 Dec. 45 Humanity and War Crimes under Counts Three and Four as to Western Occupied countries. Following that, the Russian chief prosecutor will make his opening statement and will present corresponding evidence regarding War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Eastern countries. That, in very rough outline, is what we have in mind to present. I turn now to the third section in the detailed chronological presentation of the aggressive war case: Aggression against Czechoslovakia. The relevant portions of the Indictment are set forth in Subsection 3, under Section IV (F), appearing at Pages 7 and 8 of the printed English text of the Indictment. This portion of the Indictment is divided into three parts: (a) The 1936-38 phase of the plan; that is, the planning for the assault both on Austria and Czechoslovakia. (b) The execution of the plan to invade Austria; November 1937 to March 1938. (c) The execution of the plan to invade Czechoslovakia; April 1938 to March 1939. On Thursday, last, I completed the presentation of the documents on the execution of the plan to invade Austria. Those documents are gathered together in a document book which was handed to the Tribunal at the beginning of the Austrian presentation. The materials relating to the aggression against Czechoslovakia have been gathered in a separate document book, which I now submit to the Tribunal and which is marked "Document Book 0." The Tribunal will recall that in the period 1933 to 1936 the defendants had initiated a program of rearmament, designed to give the Third Reich military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations. You will recall also that beginning in the year 1936 they had embarked on a preliminary program of expansion which, as it turned out, was to last until March 1939. This was intended to shorten their frontiers, to increase their industrial and food reserve, and to place them in a position, both industrially and strategically, from which they could launch a more ambitious and more devastating campaign of aggression. At the moment—in the early spring of 1938—when the Nazi conspirators began to lay concrete plans for the conquest of Czechoslovakia, they had reached approximately the half-way point in this preliminary program. The preceding autumn, at the conference in the Reich Chancellery on November 5, 1937, covered by the Hossbach minutes, Hitler had set forth the program which Germany was to follow. Those Hossbach minutes, you will recall, are contained in Document 386-PS 36
		Text: English     International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 3, p. 36     Last modified: October 10, 1998 Copyright © 1998 The Mazal Library and The Holocaust History Project. All rights reserved. Technical/administrative contact: webmaster@holocaust-history.org Find a typo? Let us know.