The Tribunal will recall that in the period 1933 to 1936 the defendants had initiated a program of rearmament, designed to give the Third Reich military strength and political bargaining power to be used against other nations. You will recall also that beginning in the year 1936 they had embarked on a preliminary program of expansion which, as it turned out, was to last until March 1939. This was intended to shorten their frontiers, to increase their industrial and food reserve, and to place them in a position, both industrially and strategically, from which they could launch a more ambitious and more devastating campaign of aggression.
At the moment—in the early spring of 1938—when the Nazi conspirators began to lay concrete plans for the conquest of Czechoslovakia, they had reached approximately the half-way point in this preliminary program.
The preceding autumn, at the conference in the Reich Chancellery on November 5, 1937, covered by the Hossbach minutes, Hitler had set forth the program which Germany was to follow. Those Hossbach minutes, you will recall, are contained in Document 386-PS as United States Exhibit Number 25, which I read to the Tribunal in my introductory statement a week ago today.
“The question for Germany,” the Führer had informed his military commanders at that meeting, “is where the greatest possible conquest can be made at the lowest cost.”
At the top of his agenda stood two countries, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
On March 12, 1938 Austria was occupied by the German Army, and on the following day it was annexed to the Reich. The time had come for a redefinition of German intentions regarding Czechoslovakia. A little more than a month later two of the conspirators, Hitler and Keitel, met to discuss plans for the envelopment and conquest of the Czechoslovak State.
Among the selected handful of documents which I read to the Tribunal in my introduction a week ago to establish the corpus of the crime of aggressive war was the account of this meeting on 21 April 1938. This account is Item 2 in our Document Number 388-PS, as United States Exhibit Number 26.
The Tribunal will recall that Hitler and Keitel discussed the pretext which Germany might develop to serve as an excuse for a sudden and overwhelming attack. They considered the provocation of a period of diplomatic squabbling which, growing more serious, would lead to an excuse for war. In the alternative—and this alternative they found to be preferable—they planned to unleash a lightning attack as the result of an incident of their own creation.
Consideration, as we alleged in the Indictment and as the document proved, was given to the assassination of the German Minister at Prague to create the requisite incident.
The necessity of propaganda to guide the conduct of Germans in Czechoslovakia and to intimidate the Czechs was recognized. Problems of transport and tactics were discussed, with a view to overcoming all Czechoslovak resistance within 4 days, thus presenting the world with a fait accompli and forestalling outside interventions.