5
Dec. 45
a
dispatch from M. Coulondre, the French
Ambassador, and it gives another well-informed
version of this same midnight meeting. The
account, which I shall present to the Court, of
the remainder of this meeting is drawn from
these two sources, the British Blue Book
and the French Yellow Book. I think the
Court may be interested to read somewhat further
at large, in those two books, which furnish a
great deal of the background of all of these
matters.
When President Hacha left the
conference room in the Reich Chancellery, he was
in such a state of exhaustion that he needed
medical attention from a physician who was
conveniently on hand for that purpose, a German
physician. When the two Czechs returned to the
room, the Nazi conspirators again told them of
the power and invincibility of the Wehrmacht.
They reminded them that in 3 hours, at 6 in the
morning . . . .
THE PRESIDENT: You are
not reading? I beg your pardon!
MR.
ALDERMAN: I am not reading, I am summarizing.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on.
MR.
ALDERMAN: They reminded them that in 3 hours, at
6 in the morning, the German Army would cross
the border. The Defendant Göring boasted of
what the Wehrmacht would do if the Czech forces
dared to resist the invading Germans. If German
lives were lost, Defendant Göring said, his
Luftwaffe would blaze half of Prague into ruins
in 2 hours and that, Göring said, would be
only the beginning.
Under this threat
of imminent and merciless attack by land and
air, the aged President of Czechoslovakia at
4:30 o'clock in the morning, signed the document
with which the Nazi conspirators confronted him
and which they had already had prepared. This
Document is TC-49, the declaration of 15 March
1939, one of the series of documents which will
be presented by the British prosecutor, and from
it I quote this, on the assumption that it will
subsequently be introduced.
"The
President of the Czechoslovakian State .
. . entrusts with entire confidence the
destiny of the Czech people and the
Czech country to the hands of the Führer
of the German Reich" — really
a rendezvous with destiny.
While
the Nazi officials were threatening and
intimidating the representatives of the Czech
Government, the Wehrmacht had in some areas
already crossed the Czech border.
I
offer in evidence Document 2860-PS, another
excerpt from the British Blue Book, of which I
ask the Court to take judicial notice. This is a
speech by Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, from which I quote one
passage: