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[in…] habitants of Slovak descent living there, the independence
of the Slovaks.
It is not my task at this time to prove historical
facts. As far as this is necessary in individual cases, I shall do so. I only
beg permission to point out to this Honorable Tribunal that in the last two
years, after the collapse of Germany, millions of Germans were expelled from
the Czech State, and caused much trouble, especially to the occupation
authorities of the American Zone of Germany, on account of the density of
population there. I believe I need not elaborate any further concerning the
correctness of the facts indicated by me, if 1 call attention to this migration
of people. It shows that actually millions of Germans lived in that country. It
shows that it was only natural for them to endeavor to turn towards a state in
which they might speak their mother tongue, in which they might send their
children to schools which were not suppressing, but teaching, their mother
tongue.
In this light, Your Honors, Germany saw this problem in the
year 1938, and thus every German could see it. If, in the Munich Pact — a
state treaty negotiated mutually with the great powers, England and France
— a solution of this burning question was found, a man such as, for
example, my client, could not suppose that the gentlemen, Chamberlain and
Daladier, signed a treaty, the justification of which they, themselves, did not
acknowledge. He could not suppose that the conferences and investigations of
the British envoy, Lord Runciman, were falsehood and deceit, and that, perhaps
knowingly, he wished to harness himself to Hitler's war chariot to aid and abet
his preparations for war and plans for world domination. The IMT claims Hitler
had no intention to abide by the Munich Agreement. But Hitler, at that time,
did not make it known to the public that such was his intent. Neither did the
IMT say that this was known then. That and that alone is the issue.
Surely, many a German may have termed the ways and means Hitler used to
realize his plans regarding the Sudetenland as lacking in nicety. But he will
not have suspected falsehood and deceit when he heard of the Munich Agreement.
Neither could he presume falseness when he read in the papers that Chamberlain
believed that he had gained "peace for our time."
When, in the course
of these events, the German Reich, on the strength of a treaty, had assumed
sovereignty over the Sudetenland as part of the German Reich, a German Ministry
deemed it necessary to appoint a trustee [Treuhaender] for the Sudeten-German
plants of the Verein fuer Chemische and Metallurgische Produktion [Prager
Verein]. It was a known fact that in this region great unrest prevailed and
that the plants at Aussig and |
376 |
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