“1. The inconspicuous air reconnaissance in the German bay, not over the line Texel-Doggerbank, from midday on Z-Day onward, has been approved. C-in-C Air Force will instruct the Air Command VI from midday 7 March to hold in readiness single reconnaissance aircraft to be at the disposal of the C-in-C fleet.
“2. The Minister will reserve the decision to set up a U-boat reconnaissance line until the evening of 7 March. The immediate transfer of U-boats from Kiel to Wilhelmshafen has been approved.
“3. The proposed advance measures for the most part exceed Degree of Emergency A and therefore are out of the question as the first countermeasures to be taken against military preparations of neighboring states. It is far more essential to examine the advance measures included in Degree of Emergency A, to see whether one or other of the especially conspicuous measures could not be omitted.”
That is signed “Keitel”.
The rest of the documents are detailed naval orders—operational orders—and I think I need not read further.
For the historical emphasis of this occasion, Hitler made a momentous speech on 7 March 1936. I have the volume of the Völkischer Beobachter, Berlin, Sunday, 8 March 1936, our Document 2289-PS, which I offer in evidence as Exhibit USA-56.
This is a long speech which the world remembers and of which I shall only read a short portion:
“Men of the German Reichstag! France has replied to the repeated friendly offers and peaceful assurances made by Germany by infringing the Rhine Pact through a military alliance with the Soviet Union exclusively directed against Germany. In this manner, however, the Locarno Rhine Pact has lost its inner meaning and ceased in practice to exist. Consequently, Germany regards herself, for her part, as no longer bound by this dissolved treaty. The German Government is now constrained to face the new situation created by this alliance, a situation which is rendered more acute by the fact that the Franco-Soviet treaty has been supplemented by a Treaty of Alliance between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union exactly parallel in form. In accordance with the fundamental right of a nation to secure its frontiers and ensure its possibilities of defense, the German Government has today restored the full and unrestricted sovereignty of Germany in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland.”
The whole matter of the German reoccupation of the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland caused extensive international repercussions and study. As a result of the protests lodged with the League of Nations, the Council of the League made an investigation and announced the following finding, of which I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice, as being carried in the League of Nations Monthly Summary, March 1936, Volume 16, Page 78; and it is also quoted in an article by Quincy Wright, in the American Journal of International Law, Page 487, 1936.
The finding is this: