I read from that document:
“Yesterday information reached me to the effect that Landesleiter Leopold”—and may I interrupt for a moment to point out that the word “Landesleiter” is the title of the leader of the Nazi community in Austria—“also on his part has started negotiations with Chancellor Schuschnigg. Thereupon I have asked the Foreign Office to investigate the truth of this information and, in case it is true, to take care that such negotiations are not held because they would merely disturb the proceedings of the other negotiations.
“Just now I got word from the Foreign Office that they received a report from the embassy in Vienna confirming the facts. I therefore would like to know whether it would not be more appropriate to forbid Landesleiter Leopold and the other members of the country’s leadership to negotiate with Chancellor Schuschnigg as well as with any Austrian Government authorities as to the execution of the pact of the 11th of July 1936, unless it is done after contacting and in agreement with the authorities in charge in the Reich.”
Now below, if I may call the attention of the Tribunal to the note that appears in this letter. It is written in blue pencil, and, while the translator has not indicated the initial below that note, it is a large “G”; and I have no doubt that that note was written by the Defendant Göring. It reads:
“Agreed, Minister Hess or Herr Bormann can give this order best! Keppler ought to ask therefore by telephone!”
If I may direct your attention to the upper right corner, there is another note in pencil, “Transmitted to Herr Keppler on the 11th of February 1938 by Fräulein Ernst;” and it is signed with initial “G,” which in this case, however, we are quite sure is the initial of Miss Grundmann, who was one of Göring’s secretaries.
The third document I offer as Exhibit Number USA-583, our Document 3471-PS. The first letter of this exhibit is written by the same Keppler to the same Bodenschatz mentioned a short while ago, but who is now a general. I shall not read from this exhibit, with the permission of the Tribunal, but I shall briefly summarize it. This letter and the annexes show that Leopold, the Nazi Landesleiter in Austria, was apparently not completely amenable to the orders given by Berlin and pursued his own methods for accomplishing an Anschluss. The second annex to this letter, addressed to Keppler, who appears from this letter to have been an SS Gruppenführer, shows that prominent Nazis had declared themselves in favor of a Major Klausner to succeed Leopold as Landesleiter; and I would like to call the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that in the left margin of the covering letter appear some red crayon marks in the characteristic color employed on several occasions, to our knowledge, by Göring; and they would seem to show that Göring personally had seen these documents and that General Bodenschatz had brought them to his attention. In any event these letters again demonstrate that Göring was one of the principal conspirators in the Austrian affair.
When the time finally came, on 11 March 1938, to consummate the Anschluss, Göring was in complete command. Throughout the afternoon and evening of that day he directed by telephone the activities of the Defendant Seyss-Inquart and of the other Nazi conspirators in Vienna. The pertinent portions of these telephone conversations, it will be remembered, were read into the record.
It will be recalled that early on the same evening of 11 March he dictated to the Defendant Seyss-Inquart the telegram which the latter was to send to Berlin, requesting the Nazi Government to send German troops to “prevent bloodshed.” Two days later he was able to call the Defendant Ribbentrop in London and gleefully relate to him of his success and that “this story that we had given an ultimatum is just foolish gossip.”