4
Dec. 45
breaking
resistance and taking risks. Even
setbacks are unavoidable: Neither
formerly nor today has space been found
without an owner. The attacker always
comes up against the proprietor. The
question for Germany is where the
greatest possible conquest can be made
at the lowest possible cost."
In
the course of that conference Hitler had
foreseen and discussed the likelihood that
Poland would be involved if the aggressive
expansionist aims which he put forward brought
about a general European war in the course of
their realization by the Nazi State. And when,
therefore, on that very day on which that
conference was taking place, Hitler assured the
Polish Ambassador of the great value of the 1934
Pact with Poland, it can only be concluded that
its real value in Hitler's eyes was that of
keeping Poland quiet until Germany had acquired
such a territorial and strategic position that
Poland was no longer a danger.
That
view is confirmed by the events which followed.
At the beginning of February of 1938 the change
from Nazi preparation for aggression to active
aggression itself took place. It was marked by
the substitution of Ribbentrop for Neurath as
Foreign Minister, and of Keitel for Blomberg as
head of the OKW. Its first fruits were the
bullying of Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden on
February 12, 1938 and the forcible absorption of
Austria in March. Thereafter the Green Plan for
the destruction of Czechoslovakia was steadily
developed in the way which you heard yesterday —
the plan partially foiled, or final consummation
at least delayed, by the Munich Agreement.
With
those aspects, those developments of Nazi
aggression, my American colleagues have already
dealt. But it is obvious that the acquisition of
these two countries, their resources in
manpower, their resources in the production of
munitions of war, immensely strengthened the
position of Germany as against Poland. And it
is, therefore, perhaps not surprising that, just
as the Defendant Göring assured the
Czechoslovak Minister in Berlin, at the time of
the Nazi invasion of Austria, that Hitler
recognized the validity of the
German-Czechoslovak Arbitration Treaty of 1925,
and that Germany had no designs against
Czechoslovakia herself — you remember, "I
give you my word of honor," the Defendant Göring
said — just as that is not surprising, so
also it is not perhaps surprising that continued
assurances should have been given during 1938 to
Poland in order to keep that country from
interfering with the Nazi aggression on Poland's
neighbors.
Thus, on the 20th of
February of 1938, on the eve of his invasion of
Austria, Hitler, referring to the fourth
anniversary of the Polish Pact, permitted
himself to say this to the Reichstag — and
I quote: