You have, on the 1st of October, Document C-2, which is Exhibit Number USA-90, and that is a long document putting forward an almost infinite variety of breaches of international law, which were likely to arise or might have arisen from the action in regard to Czechoslovakia; and on all these points the opinion of the Foreign Office is sought. That, of course, remained a hypothetical question at that time because no war resulted.

Then, if the Tribunal please, we come to the second stage in the acquiring of Czechoslovakia: That is, having obtained the Sudetenland, arranging so that there would be a crisis in Czechoslovakia which would give an excuse for taking the rest. The Tribunal will remember the importance of this because it is the first time that the German Government went outside its own statement about not going beyond German blood.

On that point, again, this defendant was active. On the 13th of March, as events were moving to a climax, he sent a telegram to the German Minister in Prague, who was under him, telling him to “make a point of not being available if the Government there wants to get in touch with you in the next few days.” That is Exhibit Number USA-116, Document 2815-PS.

At the same time this defendant saw a delegation of pro-Nazi Slovaks in Berlin. At a conference with Hitler, at which this defendant was present, Tiso, one of the heads of the pro-Nazi Slovaks, was directed to declare an independent Slovak State, in order to assist in the disintegration of Czechoslovakia. That is Exhibit Number USA-117, Document 2802-PS, and the Tribunal might care to compare it with a previous meeting with another Slovak, Tuka, a month before, which is shown in Document 2790-PS, Exhibit Number USA-110. So that this defendant was assisting in the task, again, of supporting internal trouble.

Then on the 14th of March 1939, the next day, Hacha, the President of Czechoslovakia, was called to Berlin. This defendant was present at the meeting and the Tribunal will remember the usual pressure and threats which resulted in the aged President’s purposing to hand over the Czechoslovak State to Hitler. The Tribunal will find that subject dealt with on Page 911 of the transcript (Volume III, from Page 158), and the relevant exhibit is Exhibit Number USA-118, Document 2798-PS, which is the minutes of the meeting between Hitler and Hacha that this defendant attended. You will also find it dealt with in Exhibit Number USA-126, Document 3061-PS, which is the Czechoslovakian Government report.

That was the end of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia. The following week this defendant signed a treaty with Slovakia which I now put in. It is Document 1439-PS, and I put it in as Exhibit GB-135, and the important part is Article 2, under which the German Government was given the right to construct military posts and installations and keep them garrisoned within Czechoslovakia. Again, I am not going to read it at length, but I hope the Tribunal will stop me if there are any of these documents which they would like read instead of summarized.

In that way this defendant by the terms of that treaty, after completely finishing Bohemia and Moravia as an independent state, had got military control in Slovakia.

Before I pass to Poland, there is one interesting little point on the Northern Baltic which I put before the Tribunal to show how this defendant could hardly keep his hands out of the internal affairs of other countries, even when it did not seem a very important matter. The Tribunal will remember that on the 3rd of April 1939, as shown in GB-4, TC-53(a), Germany had occupied the Memelland. It would have appeared, as far as the Baltic States were concerned, that the position was satisfactory; but if the Tribunal will look at Document 2953-PS, which I put in as Exhibit GB-136, and Document 2952-PS, which I put in as GB-137, they will find that this defendant acted in close concert with the conspirator Heydrich, who is dead, in stirring up trouble in Lithuania with a group of pro-Nazi people called the “Woldemaras supporters.” Document 2953-PS shows that Heydrich was passing to the Defendant Ribbentrop the request for financial support for the . . .

THE PRESIDENT: You are going to read 2953?

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, My Lord, that is the one I was going to read. That is a letter from Heydrich to the Defendant Ribbentrop and it says: