3
Dec. 45
of
the considerable increase in the
business transacted by the bureau, and
of the importance which marks the
activity of the bureau in regard to the
co-operation with the Foreign Office,
this desire deserves the strongest
support.
"Herewith
submitted to the personnel department
with a request for approval. Increase of
payments with retroactive effect from 1
August is requested." — signed
— "Woermann."
Under
this signature is a footnote:
"Volksdeutsche
Mittelstelle" — Central Office
for Racial Germans — "will be
informed by the Political Department"
— handwritten marginal note.
We
may only conjecture what financial support the
Henlein movement received from other agencies of
the German Government.
As the military
preparations to attack Czechoslovakia moved
forward in the late summer and early fall, the
Nazi command made good use of Henlein and his
followers. About the 1st of August, the Air
Attaché in the German Legation in Prague,
Major Moericke, acting on instructions from
Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin, visited the
Sudeten German leader in Freudenthal. With his
assistance and in the company of the local
leader of the FS, the Henlein equivalent of the
SS, he reconnoitered the surrounding countryside
to select possible airfield sites for German
use. The FS leader, a Czech reservist then on
leave, was in the uniform of the Czech Army, a
fact which, as the Attaché noted, served
as excellent camouflage.
I now read
from the enclosure to Document 1536-PS, which I
offered in evidence earlier and which bears
United States Exhibit Number 83. I have already
read the first four paragraphs of the enclosure:
"The
manufacturer M. is the head of the
Sudeten German Glider Pilots in Fr."
— that's Freudenthal — "and
said to be absolutely reliable by my
trusted man. My personal impression
fully confirmed this judgment. No hint
of my identity was made to him, although
I had the impression that M. knew who I
was.
"At my request, with
which he complied without any question,
M. travelled with me over the country in
question. We used M.'s private car for
the trip.
"As M. did not
know the country around Beneschau
sufficiently well, he took with him the
local leader of the FS, a Czech
reservist of the Sudeten German Racial
Group, at the time on leave. He was in
uniform. For reasons of camouflage, I
was entirely in agreement with this —
without actually saying so.