“. . . it is especially important from the political point of view that the blow against Yugoslavia should be carried out with the utmost violence and that its military destruction should be effected with lightning speed.”
And a little further back in the document is stated:
“No diplomatic inquiries will be made and no ultimatum presented. . . . The attack will start as soon as the necessary supplies and troops are ready.”
Thus, Hitler was not in the least interested in the factual attitude of one or the other Yugoslav Government toward Germany, but in the factual destruction of Yugoslavia as a state; and he strove to accomplish this destruction with cruelty and lightning speed.
The operational staff of the OKW, meticulously following Hitler’s directive regarding a cruel and rapid destruction of Yugoslavia, speedily worked out a detailed plan for co-ordinated operations of the German and Italian Armies. It was issued as an official operational directive dated 28 March 1941. I consider it essential to reread three lines of this document, already submitted to the Tribunal under the same Document Number 1746-PS. You will find it on Page 352 of the document book. I read Paragraph 4 of this document into the record.
“. . . The German task is to attack Yugoslavia with the greatest possible concentration of forces, to smash its armed forces and destroy it as a state.”
I cannot but remind the Tribunal of the terminology used by Hitler and the other fascist conspirators. Hitler said, “There can be no question of sparing Poland.” He demanded, “Yugoslavia is to be eliminated as a state, ruthlessly and with lightning speed.” Mercilessness, ruthlessness, extermination of peoples and states: such was the style and meaning of the actions of the fascist conspirators.
The aggression against Czechoslovakia, the attack on Poland, the desire to destroy Yugoslavia, all these were links in the same chain. But the chain does not end with these links.
The task of the next representative of the U.S.S.R. Prosecution will be to show Your Honors that the fundamental purpose of these criminals, the main link in the center of all of the Hitlerite conspiracies, was the attack on the U.S.S.R.
The documents relating to the crimes against Yugoslavia will prove that, in attacking that country, the fascist conspirators strictly followed their customary methods. Even in detail they repeated their earlier crimes perpetrated against Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Even in case we did not know who actually organized the attack on Yugoslavia, the very nature of the facts, the sequence of events, the manner in which the crimes were perpetrated, would unmistakably indicate the culprits.