4
Dec. 45
homeland
as a base for the carrying on of the war
against Germany . . . . Preparations for
the entire operation must be completed
by mid-August."
But
the first essential condition for that plan was,
I quote:
"
. . . the British Air Force must morally
and actually be so far overcome that it
does not any longer show any
considerable aggressive force against
the German attack."
The
Defendant Göring and his Air Force, no
doubt, made the most strenuous efforts to
realize that condition but, in one of the most
splendid pages of our history, it was decisively
defeated. And although the bombardment of
England's towns and villages was continued
throughout that dark winter of 1940-41, the
enemy decided in the end that England was not to
be subjugated by these means, and, accordingly,
Germany turned back to the East, the first major
aim unachieved.
On the 22d of June
1941 German Armed Forces invaded. Russia,
without warning, without declaration of war. It
was, of course, a breach of the usual series of
treaties; they meant no more in this case than
they had meant in the other cases. It was a
violation of the Pact of Paris; it was a
flagrant contradiction of the Treaty of
Non-Aggression which Germany and Russia had
signed on the 23rd of August a year before.
Hitler himself said, in referring to
that agreement, that "agreements were only
to be kept as long as they served a purpose."
The Defendant Ribbentrop was more
explicit. In an interview with the Japanese
Ambassador in Berlin on the 23rd of February
1941, he made it clear that the object of the
agreement had merely been, so far as Germany was
concerned, to avoid a two-front war.
In
contrast to what Hitler and Ribbentrop and the
rest of them were planning within the secret
councils of Germany, we know what they were
saying to the rest of the world.
On
the 19th of July, Hitler spoke in the Reichstag:
"In
these circumstances" — he said
— "I considered it proper to
negotiate as a first priority a sober
definition of interest with Russia. It
would be made clear once and for all
what Germany believes she must regard as
her sphere of interest to safeguard her
future and, on the other hand, what
Russia considers important for her
existence. From this clear delineation
of the sphere of interest there followed
the new regulation of Russian-German
relations. Any hope that now, at the end
of the term of the agreement, a new
Russo-German tension could arise is
childish. Germany has taken no step
which would lead her outside her sphere
of interest, nor has Russia. But
England's hope to achieve an
amelioration of her own