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Volume V · Page 6
| Thus, if the
prosecution now claims that the Incorporated Eastern Territories are not German
soil, they either refuse to acknowledge these de-Germanization processes, or
purposely conceal this fact. It may be correct that in 1939 only 7 percent
Germans remained in the areas under discussion, while 86 percent of the
population were Poles. But in 1918, for example, there were still 70 percent
Germans there, while only 30 percent Poles had their permanent residence in
West Prussia. The Versailles peace treaty which, as was only recently admitted again by American spokesmen, has never been a scholastic example of wisdom and moderation, and could not solve the old problem of national minorities. On the contrary, where the map of Europe had been changed, hotbeds of national conflict had been created. President Wilson's idea of national self-government, doubtlessly based on high moral principles, was used one-sidedly in the Versailles Treaty, and more or less as a pretext or instrument to weaken the beaten enemy's position in Europe. This could not but give fresh impetus to the already exaggerated historical and national consciousness of the European nations or our ill-assorted continent. At the same time it inevitably led to new and greater difficulties in the application of the principles of nationality because of the existence of small and even minute language islands and ethnographically mixed areas. |
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| * * * * * * * * * * | |
| b. Selections from the Evidence of the Defense | |
| TRANSLATION OF SCHWALM DOCUMENT 126 SCHWALM DEFENSE EXHIBIT 126 |
|
| EXTRACT FROM
"TESTIMONY OF THE TIMES" FROM THE HISTORY OF THE EAST EXTRACT FROM TESTIMONY OF THE TIMES [ZEUGNIS DER ZEITEN] ARCHIVES, DOCUMENTS, MEMOIRS FROM THE HISTORY OF THE EAST HERBERT KRANZ |
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| [Page 370] | |
| The Struggle for Souls | |
| When the time of rebellions against the German domination had passed in the East, the struggle for souls began. Educational associations and agricultural assistance funds became the means of Polonization, carried out with uncanny energy; and one of | |
