International Military Tribunal - The Nuremberg Trials - Complete Tribunal Proceedings (V. 3)

It was in relation to the remainder of Czechoslovakia and to Poland that the answer to these questions was to be given. So far, up to the time of the Munich Agreement, no direct and immediate threat to Poland had been made. The two documents from which I have just quoted, show of course, that high officers of the Defendant Göring’s air staff already regarded the expansion of the Reich and, it would seem, the destruction and absorption of Poland, as a foregone conclusion. They were already anticipating, indeed, the last stage of Hitler’s policy as expounded in Mein Kampf—war to destroy France and to secure Lebensraum in Russia. And the writer of the minute to Ribbentrop already took it for granted that, after Czechoslovakia, Poland would be attacked. But more impressive than those two documents is the fact that, as I have said, at the conference of 5 November 1937, war with Poland, if she should dare to prevent German aggression against Czechoslovakia, had been quite coolly and calmly contemplated, and the Nazi leaders were ready to take the risk. So also had the risk of war with England and France under the same circumstances been considered and accepted. As I indicated, such a war would, of course, have been aggressive war on Germany’s part, and they were contemplating aggressive warfare. For to force one state to take up arms to defend another state against aggression, in other words, to fulfill its treaty obligations is undoubtedly to initiate aggressive warfare against the first state. But in spite of those plans, in spite of these intentions behind the scenes, it remains true that until Munich the decision for direct attack upon Poland and her destruction by aggressive war had apparently not as yet been taken by Hitler and his associates. It is to the transition from the intention and preparation of initiating aggressive war, evident in regard to Czechoslovakia, to the actual initiation and waging of aggressive war against Poland that I now pass. That transition occupies the 11 months from the 1st of October 1938 to the actual attack on Poland on the 1st of September 1939.

Within 6 months of the signature of the Munich Agreement the Nazi leaders had occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which by that Agreement they had indicated their willingness to guarantee. On the 14th of March 1939 the aged and infirm president of the “rump” of Czechoslovakia, Hacha and his Foreign Minister were summoned to Berlin. At a meeting held between 1 o’clock and 2:15 in the small hours of the 15th of March in the presence of Hitler, of the Defendants Ribbentrop, Göring, and Keitel, they were bullied and threatened and even bluntly told that Hitler “had issued the orders for the German troops to move into Czechoslovakia and for the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich.”

It was made quite clear to them that resistance would be useless and would be crushed “by force of arms with all available means,” and it was thus that the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was set up and that Slovakia was turned into a German satellite, though nominally independent state. By their own unilateral action, on pretexts which had no shadow of validity, without discussion with the governments of any other country, without mediation, and in direct contradiction of the sense and spirit of the Munich Agreement, the Germans acquired for themselves that for which they had been planning in September of the previous year, and indeed much earlier, but which at that time they had felt themselves unable completely to secure without too patent an exhibition of their aggressive intentions. Aggression achieved whetted the appetite for aggression to come. There were protests. England and France sent diplomatic notes. Of course, there were protests. The Nazis had clearly shown their hand. Hitherto they had concealed from the outside world that their claims went beyond incorporating into the Reich persons of German race living in bordering territory. Now for the first time, in defiance of their solemn assurances to the contrary, non-German territory and non-German people had been seized. This acquisition of the whole of Czechoslovakia, together with the equally illegal occupation of Memel on the 22d of March 1939, resulted in an immense strengthening of the German positions, both politically and strategically, as Hitler had anticipated it would, when he discussed the matter at that conference in November of 1937.

But long before the consummation by the Nazi leaders of their aggression against Czechoslovakia, they had begun to make demands upon Poland. The Munich settlement achieved on the 25th of October 1938, that is to say within less than a month of Hitler’s reassuring speech about Poland to which I have already referred, and within, of course, a month of the Munich Agreement, M. Lipski, the Polish Ambassador in Berlin, reported to M. Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, that at a luncheon at Berchtesgaden the day before, namely, on the 24th of October 1938, the Defendant Ribbentrop had put forward demands for the reunion of Danzig with the Reich and for the building of an extra-territorial motor road and railway line across Pomorze, the province which the Germans called “The Corridor”. From that moment onwards until the Polish Government had made it plain, as they did during a visit of the Defendant Ribbentrop to Warsaw in January 1939, that they would not consent to hand over Danzig to German sovereignty, negotiations on these German demands continued. And even after Ribbentrop’s return from the visit to Warsaw, Hitler thought it worthwhile, in his Reichstag speech on the 30th of January 1939, to say:

“We have just celebrated the fifth anniversary of the conclusion of our non-aggression pact with Poland. There can scarcely be any difference of opinion today among the true friends of peace as to the value of this agreement. One only needs to ask oneself what might have happened to Europe if this agreement, which brought such relief, had not been entered into 5 years ago. In signing it, the great Polish marshal and patriot rendered his people just as great a service as the leaders of the National Socialist State rendered the German people. During the troubled months of the past year, the friendship between Germany and Poland has been one of the reassuring factors in the political life of Europe.”

But that utterance was the last friendly word from Germany to Poland, and the last occasion on which the Nazi Leaders mentioned the German-Polish Agreement with approbation. During February 1939 silence fell upon German demands in relation to Poland. But as soon as the final absorption of Czechoslovakia had taken place and Germany had also occupied Memel, Nazi pressure upon Poland was at once renewed. In two conversations which he and the Defendant Ribbentrop held on the 21st of March and the 26th of March, respectively, with the Polish Ambassador, German demands upon Poland were renewed and were further pressed. And in view of the fate which had overtaken Czechoslovakia, in view of the grave deterioration in her strategical position towards Germany, it is not surprising that the Polish Government took alarm at the developments. Nor were they alone. The events of March 1939 had at last convinced both the English and the French Governments that the Nazi designs of aggression were not limited to men of German race, and that the specter of European war resulting from further aggressions by Nazi Germany had not, after all, been exorcised by the Munich Agreement.

As a result, therefore, of the concern of Poland and of England and of France at the events in Czechoslovakia, and at the newly applied pressure on Poland, conversations between the English and Polish Governments had been taking place, and, on the 31st of March 1939, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, speaking in the House of Commons, stated that His Majesty’s Government had given an assurance to help Poland in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist. On the 6th of April 1939 an Anglo-Polish communiqué stated that the two countries were prepared to enter into an agreement of a permanent and reciprocal character to replace the present temporary and unilateral assurance given by His Majesty’s Government.