4
Dec. 45
therefore,
to occupy, on receipt of a special
order, the territory of Holland, in the
first instance in the area of the
Grebbe-Maas line. It will depend on the
military and political attitude of the
Dutch, as well as on the effectiveness
of their flooding, whether objectives
can and must be further extended."
The
Fall Gelb operation had apparently been planned
to take place at the beginning of November 1939.
We have in our possession a series of 17
letters, dated from 7th November until the 9th
May postponing almost from day to day the D-Day
of the operation, so that by the beginning of
November all the major plans and preparations
had in fact been made.
On the 10th of
January 1940 a German airplane force-landed in
Belgium. In it was found the remains of an
operation order which the pilot had attempted to
burn; setting out considerable details of the
Belgian landing grounds that were to be captured
by the Air Force. Many other documents have been
found which illustrate the planning and
preparation for this invasion in the latter half
of 1939 and early 1940, but they carry the
matter no further, and they show no more clearly
than the evidence to which I have already
referred, the plans and intention of the German
Government and its Armed Forces.
On
the 10th of May 1940 at about 0500 hours in the
morning, the German invasion of Belgium,
Holland, and Luxembourg began.
And so
once more the forces of aggression moved on.
Treaties, assurances, the rights of sovereign
states meant nothing. Brutal force, covered by
as great an element of surprise as the Nazis
could secure, was to seize that which was deemed
necessary for striking the mortal blow against
England, the main enemy. The only fault of these
three unhappy countries was that they stood in
the path of the German invader, in his designs
against England and France. That was enough, and
they were invaded.
[A
recess was taken.]
SIR
HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: On the 6th of April 1941
German Armed Forces invaded Greece and
Yugoslavia. Again the blow was struck without
warning and with the cowardice and deceit which
the world now fully expected from the
self-styled "Herrenvolk". It was a
breach of the Hague Convention. It was a breach
of the Pact of Paris. It was a breach of a
specific assurance given by Hitler on the 6th of
October 1939.
He had then said this:
"Immediately
after the completion of the Anschluss, I
informed Yugoslavia that from now on the
frontier with this country