(C-138)
This particular copy of the order, an original carbon signed in ink by Keitel, was the one sent to the OKM, the German naval headquarters. It bears the initials of Fricke, head of the Operational Division of the Naval War Staff, of Schniewind, Chief of Staff of the Naval War Staff, and of Raeder.
As the Wehrmacht moved forward with plans for what it clearly considered would be an easy victory, the Foreign Office played its part. In a discussion of means of improving German-Czech relations with the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Chvalkovsky, in Berlin on 21 January 1939, Ribbentrop urged upon the Czech government a “quick reduction” in the size of the Czech army. The captured German Foreign Office notes of this discussion bear the following footnote, in Ribbentrop’s handwriting:
“I mentioned to Chvalkovsky especially that a quick reduction in the Czech army would be decisive in our judgment.” (2795-PS)
L. Extension of Fifth Column Activity
As in the case of Austria and the Sudetenland, the Nazi conspirators did not intend to rely on the Wehrmacht alone to accomplish their calculated objective of “liquidating” Czechoslovakia. With the German minority separated from Czechoslovakia, they could no longer use the cry, “home to the Reich.” One sizeable minority, the Slovaks, remained within the Czechoslovak State. The Czechoslovak Government had made every effort to conciliate Slovak extremists in the months after the cession of the Sudetenland. Autonomy had been granted to Slovakia, with an autonomous cabinet and parliament at Bratislava. Nonetheless, despite these concessions, it was in Slovakia that the Nazi conspirators found men ready to take their money and do their bidding. The following picture of Nazi operations in Slovakia is based on the Czechoslovak official report. (998-PS; 3061-PS)
Nazi propaganda and “research” groups had long been interested in maintaining close connections with the Slovak autonomist opposition. When Bela Tuka, who later became Prime Minister of the puppet state of Slovakia, was tried for espionage and treason in 1929, the evidence established that he had already established connections with Nazi groups within Germany. Prior to 1938 Nazi aides were in close contact with Slovak traitors living in exile and were attempting to establish more profitable contacts in the semi-fascist Slovak Catholic Peoples Party of Monsignor Andrew Hlinka. Out of sympathy with the predominantly anti-clerical government in Prague, some Catholic elements in Slovakia proved willing to cooperate with the Nazis. In February and July 1938 the leaders of the Henlein movement conferred with top men of Father Hlinka’s party and agreed to furnish one another with mutual assistance in pressing their respective claims to autonomy. This understanding proved useful in the September agitation when, at the proper moment, the Foreign Office in Berlin wired the Henlein leader, Kundt, in Prague to tell the Slovaks to start their demands for autonomy. (See 2858-PS.)
By this time, mid-summer 1938, the Nazis were in direct contact with figures in the Slovak autonomist movement and had paid agents among the higher staff of Father Hlinka’s party. These agents undertook to render impossible any understanding between the Slovak autonomists and the Slovak parties in the government at Prague. Franz Karmasin, later to become Volksgruppenfuehrer, had been appointed Nazi leader in Slovakia and professed to be serving the cause of Slovak autonomy while on the Nazi pay roll. On 22 November the Nazis indiscreetly wired Karmasin to collect his money at the German Legation in person. The telegram, sent from the German Legation at Prague to Bratislava (Pressburg), reads as follows:
“Delegate Kundt asks to notify State Secretary Karmasin that he would appreciate it if he could personally draw the sum which is being kept for him at the treasury of the embassy.
“HENCKE” (2859-PS)