7 Dec.
45
the territory or possessions of
the following independent nations and above all that they will not
march into them."
And he
goes on to name the following as the countries in question:
"Finland,
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium,
Great Britain, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland,
Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia,
Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and
Iran.
"Answer: I started off by taking the trouble to
find out in the case of the countries listed firstly, whether they
feel themselves threatened and secondly, and particularly, whether
this question Mr. Roosevelt has asked us was put as the result of a
demarche by them or at least with their consent.
"The
answer was a general negative, which in some cases took the form of a
blunt rejection. Actually this counter-question of mine could not be
conveyed to some of the states and nations listed, since they are not
at present in possession of their liberty (as for instance Syria) but
are occupied by the military forces of democratic states and therefore
deprived of all their rights.
"Thirdly, apart from
that, all the states bordering on Germany have received much more
binding assurances and above all much more binding proposals than Mr.
Roosevelt asked of me in his peculiar telegram."
You
will see that although that is sneering at Mr. Roosevelt, it is
suggesting in the presence, certainly, of the accused Göring as
being quite absurd that Germany should nurture any warlike feeling
against her neighbors. But the hollow falsity of that and the preceding
guarantee is shown by the next document. May I put this document, TC-42
(a) in as Exhibit GB-101.
The next document (L-79) which is
Hitler's conference of the 23rd of May has been referred to many times
and is Exhibit USA-27. Therefore I need only very shortly remind the
Tribunal of two passages. First of all, on the first page it is
interesting to see who was present: The Führer, Göring,
Admiral Raeder, Brauchitsch, Colonel General Keitel, and various others
who are not accused. Colonel Warlimont was there. He, I understand, was
Jodl's deputy.
Well now, the purpose of the conference was an
analysis of the situation. Then may I refer to the third page down at
the bottom. The stencil number is 819:
"What
will this struggle be like?"
And
then these words:
"The
Dutch and Belgian air bases must be occupied by armed force.
Declarations of neutrality must be ignored."