“This quotation was read to Schacht, and he said it was correct.”
This assertion by the Prosecution is therefore wrong. I said, “It may be that I said something to that effect,” but I did not say that this statement that was submitted to me was correct.
Then, fortunately, in my imprisonment here, I succeeded in getting hold of my book, a book which I wrote about the termination of reparation payments, which was published in 1931 and in which I luckily put down the text of my statement about the matter we are dealing with now. I have the exact text, and I would like to say that this book has been submitted in evidence, and from this text appears what I said verbatim:
“Regarding the problem of German food and food supplies, it is especially important that import of foodstuffs has been decreased”—I beg your pardon—“that import will be decreased.”—I am sorry again. I cannot read this—“that the import of foodstuffs will be decreased and partially made up through home production. Therefore, we cannot let the fact be overlooked that important agricultural surplus territories in the eastern part of Germany have been lost by cession and that a large territory which was almost exclusively agrarian has been separated from the Reich. Therefore the economic welfare of this territory, East Prussia, is decreasing steadily and the Reich Government must support and subsidize it. Constantly, therefore, suitable measures should be taken to eliminate these injurious conditions, which are hindering considerably Germany’s ability to pay.”
DR. DIX: Your Lordship, this is from our document book, Document Schacht-16, German Page 38, English Page 44.
SCHACHT: This quotation absolutely does not agree with the statement submitted to me in the interrogation, and in no way can we draw the conclusion in consequence that I was in favor of a return of these areas. What I demanded was that the separation of these areas be taken into consideration when Germany’s ability to pay and the payments were determined. When the prosecutor in his speech added: “I would like to point out that this is the same area over which the war started in September 1939,” I believe it is an insinuation which characterizes the prosecutor, rather than me, against whom it was intended.
DR. DIX: As part of the circumstantial evidence, that is, the indirect evidence for the will to aggression, with which you are charged, the Prosecution includes your wish—your alleged wish—for the Anschluss of Austria. Will you please take your position as to this accusation?
SCHACHT: From 1919 I considered the Anschluss of Austria inevitable and, in the national sense, that is, spiritually and culturally, it was welcome. But that economically the Anschluss of Austria would not be for Germany so much an aggrandizement as a liability. I always knew. But the wish of the Austrian people to belong, to be incorporated into Germany—I took that wish as my own and said that if here there are six and a half million people who spontaneously in 1919 and later in innumerable demonstrations expressed their wish of being incorporated into the brotherhood of Greater Germany, that was an event to which no German could be opposed, but in the interest of Austria must hail with gladness. In that sense I always favored and respected the wish of Austria to belong to the Reich and wanted it carried through as soon as external political conditions permitted it.
DR. DIX: My attention has just been called to the fact that you are still speaking too fast and that the interpretation is lagging behind a little bit. Will you please speak a little more slowly.
What was your opinion as to the incorporation of the Sudetenland into Germany?