3
Dec. 45
of the
Charter, as a document of which the Court will
take judicial notice. Article 21 provides:
"The
Tribunal shall not require proof of
facts of common knowledge but shall take
judicial notice thereof. It shall also
take judicial notice of official
governmental documents and reports of
the United Nations, including the
accounts and documents of the committees
set up in the various Allied countries
for the investigation of war crimes and
the records and findings of military or
other tribunals of any of the United
Nations."
Since,
under that provision, the Court will take
judicial notice of this governmental report by
the Czech Government, I shall, with the leave of
the Tribunal, merely summarize Pages 9 to 12 of
this report to show the background of the
subsequent Nazi intrigue within Czechoslovakia.
Nazi agitation in Czechoslovakia dated
from the earliest days of the Nazi Party. In the
years following the first World War, a German
National Socialist Workers Party (DNSAP), which
maintained close contact with Hitler's NSDAP,
was activated in the Sudetenland. In 1932,
ringleaders of the Sudeten Volkssport, an
organization corresponding to the Nazi SA or
Sturmabteilung, openly endorsed the 21 points of
Hitler's program, the first of which demanded
the union of all Germans in a greater Germany.
Soon thereafter, they were charged with planning
armed rebellion on behalf of a foreign power and
were sentenced for conspiracy against the Czech
Republic.
Late in 1933, the National
Socialist Party of Czechoslovakia forestalled
its dissolution by voluntary liquidation and
several of its chiefs escaped across the border
into Germany. For a year thereafter, Nazi
activity in Czechoslovakia continued
underground.
On 1 October 1934, with
the approval and at the urging of the Nazi
conspirators, an instructor of gymnastics,
Konrad Henlein, established the German Home
Front or Deutsche Heimatfront, which, the
following spring became the Sudeten German Party
(SDP). Profiting from the experiences of the
Czech National Socialist Party, Henlein denied
any connection with the German Nazis. He
rejected pan-Germanism and professed his respect
for individual liberties and his loyalty to
honest democracy and to the Czech State. His
party, nonetheless, was built on the basis of
the Nazi Führerprinzip, and he became its Führer.
By 1937, when the powers of Hitler's
Germany had become manifest, Henlein and his
followers were striking a more aggressive note,
demanding without definition, "complete
Sudeten autonomy". The SDP laid proposals
before the Czech Parliament which would in
substance, have created a state within a state.