Specifically, Nazi Germany countered these alliances with promises of economic gain for cooperating with Germany. To some of these countries she offered extravagant promises of territorial and economic rewards. She offered Carinthia in Austria to Yugoslavia. She offered part of Czechoslovakia to Hungary and part to Poland. She offered Yugoslav territory to Hungary at the same time that she was offering land in Hungary to Yugoslavia.
As Mr. Messersmith states in his affidavit—that is 2385-PS, on Page 5:
“Austria and Czechoslovakia were the first on the German program of aggression. As early as 1934, Germany began to woo neighbors of these countries with the promises of a share in the loot. To Yugoslavia in particular they offered Carinthia. Concerning the Yugoslav reaction, I reported at the time:
“ ‘The major factor in the internal situation in the last week has been the increase in tension with respect to the Austrian Nazi refugees in Yugoslavia. . . . There is very little doubt but that Göring, when he made his trip to various capitals in southeastern Europe about 6 months ago, told the Yugoslavs that they would get a part of Carinthia when a National Socialist Government came into power in Austria. . . . The Nazi seed sown in Yugoslavia had been sufficient to cause trouble and there are undoubtedly a good many people there who look with a great deal of benevolence on those Nazi refugees who went to Yugoslavia in the days following July 25.’
“Germany made like promises of territorial gains to Hungary and to Poland in order to gain their cooperation or at least their acquiescence in the proposed dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. As I learned from my diplomatic colleagues in Vienna, Von Papen and Von Mackensen in Vienna and in Budapest in 1935 were spreading the idea of division of Czechoslovakia, in which division Germany was to get Bohemia, Hungary to get Slovakia, and Poland the rest. This did not deceive any of these countries for they knew that the intention of Nazi Germany was to take all.
“The Nazi German Government did not hesitate to make inconsistent promises when it suited its immediate objective. I recall the Yugoslav Minister in Vienna saying to me in 1934 or 1935 that Germany had made promises to Hungary of Yugoslav territory while at the same time promising to Yugoslavs portions of Hungarian territory. The Hungarian Minister in Vienna later gave me the same information.
“I should emphasize here in this statement that the men who made these promises were not only the ‘dyed in the wool’ Nazis but more conservative Germans who already had begun willingly to lend themselves to the Nazi program. In an official dispatch to the Department of State from Vienna dated October 10, 1935, I wrote as follows:
“ ‘Europe will not get away from the myth that Neurath, Papen, and Mackensen are not dangerous people and that they are “diplomats of the old school.” They are in fact servile instruments of the regime and just because the outside world looks upon them as harmless, they are able to work more effectively. They are able to sow discord just because they propagate the myth that they are not in sympathy with the regime.’ ”
I find that last paragraph very important and worthy of emphasis. In other words, Nazi Germany was able to promote these divisions and increase its own aggressive strength by using as its agents in making these promises men who on outward appearances were merely conservative diplomats. It is true that the Nazis openly scoffed at any notion of international obligations, as I shall show in a moment. It is true that the real trump in Germany’s hand was its rearmament and more than that, its willingness to go to war. And yet the attitude of the various countries was not influenced by those considerations alone.
With all those countries, and I suppose with all persons, we are not always completely rational, we tend to believe what we want to believe, and if an apparently substantial and conservative person like the Defendant Von Neurath, for example, is saying these things, one might be apt to believe them, or at least to act upon that hypothesis. And it would be the more impressive if one were also under the impression that the person involved was not a Nazi and would not stoop to go along with the designs of the Nazis.