5
Dec. 45
"It
is to be observed" — and the
fact is surely not without significance
— "that the towns of Mährisch-Ostrau
and Vitkovice were actually occupied by
German SS detachments on the evening of
the 14th March, while the President and
the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
were still on their way to Berlin and
before any discussion had taken place."
At
dawn on March 15, German troops poured into
Czechoslovakia from all sides. Hitler issued an
order of the day to the Armed Forces and a
proclamation to the German people, which stated
distinctly, "Czechoslovakia has ceased to
exist."
On the following day, in
contravention of Article 81 of the Treaty of
Versailles, Czechoslovakia was formally
incorporated into the German Reich under the
name of "The Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia." The decree is Document TC-51,
another of the documents which the British
Delegation will present to the Tribunal later in
this week. It was signed in Prague on 16 March
1939, by Hitler, Lammers, and the Defendants
Frick and Von Ribbentrop.
I should
like to quote the first sentence of this decree,
"The Bohemian and Moravian countries
belonged for a millennium to the Lebensraum"
— living space — "of the German
people." The remainder of the decree sets
forth in bleak detail the extent to which
Czechoslovakia henceforth was subjected to
Germany. A German Protector was to be appointed
by the German Führer for the so-called "Protectorate"
— the Defendant Von Neurath. God deliver us
from such protectors! The German Government
assumed charge of their foreign affairs and of
their customs and of their excises. It was
specified that German garrisons and military
establishments would be maintained in the
Protectorate. At the same time the extremist
leaders in Slovakia who, at German Nazi
insistence, had done so much to undermine the
Czech State, found that the independence of
their week-old state was itself, in effect,
qualified.
I offer in evidence Document
1439-PS as Exhibit USA — I need not offer
that. I think it is a decree in the Reichsgesetzblatt,
of which I ask the Tribunal to take judicial
notice, and it is identified as our Document
1439-PS. It appears at Page 606, 1939, Reichsgesetzblatt,
Part II.
The covering declaration is
signed by the Defendant, Ribbentrop, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and then there is a heading:
"Treaty
of Protection to be extended by the
German Reich to the State of Slovakia."
"The
German Government and the Slovakian
Government have agreed, after the
Slovakian State has placed itself under
the protection of the German Reich, to
regulate by treaty the consequences
resulting from this fact. For this
purpose, the