14 Dec. 45

"The Representative of the Armed Forces with the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia." — Signed — "Friderici, General of Infantry."

With the permission of Your Honors, I should like to comment further upon some parts of this memorandum. First, I invite your attention to solution (a). This solution would have called for German infiltration into Moravia and the forcible removal of the Czechs from that area to Bohemia. As Your Honors know, Moravia lies between Bohemia and Slovakia. Thus solution (a) would have involved the erection of a German State between Bohemia and Slovakia, and would have prevented effective inter-communications between the Czechs and the Slovaks. In this manner, the historic desire for unity of these two groups of peace-loving people and the continued existence of their Czechoslovakian State would have been frustrated. Solution (a), it may be noted, was rejected because the surviving Czechs, even though compressed into a "residual Bohemia", would have remained to plague the conspirators.

Solution (b) which involved the forcible deportation of all Czechs was rejected, not because its terms were deemed too drastic, but rather because a more speedy resolution of the problem was desired.

Solution (c), as shown in the exhibit, was regarded as the most desirable and was adopted. This solution first provided for the assimilation of about one-half of the Czechs. This meant two things: a. Enforced Germanization for those who were deemed racially qualified and b. deportation to slave labor in Germany for others. "Increased employment of Czechs in the Reich territory" as stated in the exhibit meant, in reality, slave labor in Germany. Solution (c) further provided for the elimination and deportation "by all sorts of methods" of the other half of the Czech population, particularly the intellectuals and those who did not meet the racial standards of the conspirators. Intellectuals everywhere were an anathema to the Nazi conspirators, and the Czech intellectuals were no exception. Indeed, the Czech intellectuals, as the conspirators well knew, had a conspicuous record of gallantry, self-sacrifice, and resistance to the Nazi ideology. They were, therefore, to be exterminated. As will be shown in other connections, that section of the top-secret report which stated "elements which counteract the planned Germanization are to be handled roughly and eliminated" meant that intellectuals and other dissident elements were either to be thrown in concentration camps or immediately exterminated.

In short, the provisions of solution (c) were simply a practical application of the conspirators' philosophy as expressed in Himmler's speech, part of which we have quoted in L-70, already presented in evidence as Exhibit Number USA-308. Himmler said that "either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves . . . or we destroy this blood."