THE PRESIDENT: Let us break off now.
[A recess was taken.]
DR. EXNER: General, when did you first hear of the plans to occupy the Rhineland?
JODL: On 1 or 2 March 1936; that is to say about 6 days before the actual occupation. I could not have heard of them any earlier because before that the Führer had not yet made the decision himself.
DR. EXNER: Did you and the generals have military objections to that occupation?
JODL: I must confess that we had the uneasy feeling of a gambler whose entire fortune is at stake.
DR. EXNER: Did you have legal objections?
JODL: No; I was neither an expert on international law nor a politician. Politically speaking it had been stated that the agreement between Czechoslovakia, Russia, and France had made the Locarno Pact void, which I accepted as a fact at the time.
DR. EXNER: How strong were our forces in the Rhineland after the occupation?
JODL: We occupied the Rhineland with approximately one division, but only three battalions of that went into the territory west of the Rhine; one battalion went to Aachen, one to Trier, and one to Saarbrücken.