4
Dec. 45
aides
were in close contact with the Slovak traitors
living in exile and were attempting to establish
more profitable contacts in the semi-fascist
Slovak Catholic People's Party of Monsignor
Andrew Hlinka. In February and July 1938 the
leaders of the Henlein movement conferred with
top men of Father Hlinka's party and agreed to
furnish one another with mutual assistance in
pressing their respective claims to autonomy.
This understanding proved useful in the
September agitation when at the proper moment
the Foreign Office in Berlin wired the Henlein
leader, Kundt, in Prague to tell the Slovaks to
start their demands for autonomy.
This
telegram, our Document Number 2858-PS, Exhibit
USA-97, has already been introduced in evidence
and read.
By this time
midsummer 1938 the Nazis were in direct
contact with figures in the Slovak autonomist
movement and had paid agents among the higher
staff of Father Hlinka's party. These agents
undertook to render impossible any understanding
between the Slovak autonomists and the Slovak
parties in the government at Prague.
Hans
Karmasin, later to become Volksgruppenführer,
had been appointed Nazi leader in Slovakia and
professed to be serving the cause of Slovak
autonomy while actually on the Nazi payroll. On
22 November the Nazis indiscreetly wired
Karmasin to collect his money at the German
Legation in Prague, and I offer in evidence
Document 2859-PS as Exhibit USA-107, captured
from the German Foreign Office files. I read
this telegram which was sent from the German
Legation at Prague to Pressburg:
"Delegate
Kundt asks to notify State Secretary
Karmasin he would appreciate it if he
could personally draw the sum which is
being kept for him at the treasury of
the Embassy."
signed
"Hencke"
Karmasin proved to be extremely useful to the
Nazi cause. Although it is out of its
chronological place in my discussion, I should
like now to offer in evidence Document 2794-PS,
a captured memorandum of the German Foreign
Office which I offer as Exhibit USA-108, dated
Berlin, 29 November 1939.
This
document, dated 8 months after the conquest of
Czechoslovakia, throws a revealing light both on
Karmasin and on the German Foreign Office, and I
now read from this memorandum:
"On
the question of payments to Karmasin.
"Karmasin receives 30,000
marks monthly from the VDA"
Peoples' League for Germans Abroad
"until 1 April 1940; from then on
15,000 marks monthly.
"Furthermore,
the Central Office for Racial Germans"
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle
"has deposited 300,000 marks for