“. . . under reservation of their particular relations with third powers, to engage in mutual consultation in the event of questions of common interests which might show a risk of leading to international difficulties. . . .”
He was then still hoping, to quote the French Ambassador in Berlin, to “stabilize peace in the West in order to have a free hand in the East.”
Did not Hitler make the same promises to Austria and Czechoslovakia? He signed, on 11 July 1936, an agreement with the Viennese government recognizing the independence of Austria, an independence which he was to destroy 20 months later. By means of the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938, he promised subsequently to guarantee the integrity of the Czech territory which he invaded less than 6 months later.
Nevertheless, as early as 5 November 1937, in a secret conference held at the Reich Chancellery, Hitler had made known to his collaborators that the hour had come to resolve by force the problem of the living space required by Germany. The diplomatic situation was favorable to Germany. She had acquired superiority of armaments which ran the risk of being only temporary. Action should be taken without further delay.
Thereupon started the series of aggressions which have already been detailed before this Court. It has also been shown to you that these various aggressions have been made in violation of international treaties and of the principles of international law. As a matter of fact, German propaganda did not challenge this at the time. It merely stated that those treaties and those principles “had lost any reality whatever with the passage of time.” In other words, it simply denied the value of the word once pledged and asserted that the principles which formed the basis of international law had become obsolete. This is a reasoning which is in line with the National Socialist doctrines which, as we have seen, do not recognize any international law and state that any means is justifiable if it is of a nature to serve the interests of the German race.
However, it is worth while examining the various arguments which German propaganda made use of to justify the long-planned aggression.
Germany set forth, first of all, her vital interests. Can she not be excused for neglecting the rules of international law when she was engaged in a struggle for the existence of her people? She needed economic expansion. She had the right and the duty to protect the German minorities abroad. She was obliged to ward off the encirclement which the Western powers were directing against the Reich.
Economic expansion was one of the reasons which Hitler put forward, even to his direct associates, in the secret conferences he held in 1937 and 1939 in the Reich Chancellery. “Economic needs,” he said “are the basis of the policy of expansion of Italy and of Japan. They also guide Germany.”
But would not Hitler’s Germany have been able to seek to satisfy these needs by peaceful means? Did she think of obtaining new possibilities for her foreign commerce through commercial negotiations? Hitler did not stop at such solutions. To solve the German economic problems, he saw only one way—the acquisition of agricultural territories—undoubtedly because he was incapable of conceiving of these problems under any other form than that of “war economy.” If he affirmed the necessity of obtaining this “agricultural space”—to use his own words—it was because he saw therein the means of obtaining for the German population the food resources which would protect it against the consequences of a blockade.
The duty of protecting “the German minorities abroad” was the favorite theme which Germany’s diplomacy made use of from 1937 to 1939. It could obviously not serve as an excuse for the destruction of the Czechoslovakian State or for the establishment of the “German Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia.” The fate of the “Sudeten Germans,” that of the “Danzig Germans” was the Leitmotiv of the German press, of the Führer’s speeches, and of the publications of Ribbentrop’s propaganda. Thus, is it necessary to recall that in the secret conference of 5 November 1937, in which Hitler draws up for his associates the plan of action to be carried out against the Czechoslovakian State, he does not say one word about the “Sudeten Germans” and to recall that in the conference of 23 May 1939 he declares that Danzig is not the “principal point” of the German-Polish controversy? The “right of nationalities” was, therefore, in his mind only a propaganda method intended to mask the real design, which was the conquest of “living space.”