MARSHAL (Colonel Charles W. Mays): If it please Your Honor, the Defendant Streicher and the Defendant Kaltenbrunner are absent this morning due to illness.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: May it please the Tribunal, before the Tribunal adjourned, I was dealing with the share of the Defendant Neurath in the aggression against Austria. Before I proceed to the next stage, I should like the Tribunal, if it be so kind, to look at the original exhibit to which I am referred, Document 3287-PS, Exhibit USA-128, which is the letter from this defendant to Sir Nevile Henderson, who was then the British Ambassador. The only point in which I would be grateful is if the Tribunal would note Page 92 of the document book. When I say original, that is a certified copy certified by the British Foreign Office, but the Tribunal will see that the heading is from the President of the Secret Cabinet Council. That is the point that the Tribunal will remember. The question was raised as to the existence or activity of that body and the letterhead is from the defendant in that capacity.
The next stage in the Austrian aggression is that at the time of the occupation of Austria, this defendant gave the assurance to M. Mastny, the Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to Berlin, regarding the continued independence of Czechoslovakia. That is one document at Page 123, TC-27, which I have already put in as Exhibit GB-21. It was to Lord Halifax, who was then Foreign Secretary; and if I may read the second paragraph just to remind the Tribunal of the circumstances in which it was written, M. Masaryk says:
“I have in consequence been instructed by my Government to bring to the official knowledge of His Majesty’s Government the following facts: Yesterday evening (the 11th of March) Field Marshal Göring made two separate statements to M. Mastny, the Czechoslovak Minister in Berlin, assuring him that the developments in Austria will in no way have any detrimental influence on the relations between the German Reich and Czechoslovakia, and emphasizing the continued earnest endeavor on the part of Germany to improve those mutual relations.”
And then there are the particulars of the way it was put to Defendant Göring, which have been brought to the Tribunal’s attention several times, and I shall not do it again. The 6th paragraph begins: “M. Mastny was in a position to give him definite and binding assurances on this subject”—that is, to give the Defendant Göring on the Czech mobilization—and then it goes on:
“. . . and today spoke with Baron Von Neurath, who, among other things, assured him on behalf of Herr Hitler that Germany still considers herself bound by the German-Czechoslovak Arbitration Convention concluded at Locarno in October 1925.”
In view of the fact that the Defendant Von Neurath had been present at the meeting on the 5th of November, 4 months previously, when he had heard Hitler’s views on Czechoslovakia—and that it was only 6 months before that really negotiated treaty was disregarded at once—that paragraph, in my submission, is an excellent example on the technique of which this defendant was the first professor.
I now come to the aggression against Czechoslovakia. On 28 May 1938 Hitler held a conference of important leaders including Beck, Von Brauchitsch, Raeder, Keitel, Göring, and Ribbentrop at which Hitler affirmed that preparations should be made for military action against Czechoslovakia by October; and it is believed, though not—I say frankly—confirmed, that the Defendant Von Neurath attended. The reference of that meeting is in the transcript of Pages 742 and 743 (Volume III, Page 42).
THE PRESIDENT: Sir David, is there any evidence?
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: No. Your Lordship will remember the documents, a long series of them, and it does not state who was present; therefore, I express that and put it with reserve.