Why did you prepare this “frontier protection” deployment? What was the cause of it?
JODL: The reason was that once the necessity for an operation against Czechoslovakia had become superfluous, through the problem being solved in some way, we would no longer have had any deployment plan at all. And as no other intention of the Führer was known to me, I on my own initiative drew up a plan for this operation which would be suitable for any eventuality.
DR. EXNER: Did you know anything about the intentions of the Führer, after the Munich Agreement, to go even further and occupy Bohemia and Moravia?
JODL: No, I had no idea of that. I knew of his speech of 26 September where he said: “Now we are facing the last problem to be solved.”
I believed in that assurance, and this is proved by the fact that during those days—it was about 10 or 11 September—I suggested to Field Marshal Keitel, than General Keitel, that he should ask the British Delegation, whose arrival had been announced, to come to Iglau in Moravia, because many Germans who were living there had been threatened by armed Czechoslovakian Communists. This of course was a suggestion which I would never have made if I had had any idea that the Führer nourished any further intentions concerning Bohemia and Moravia.
DR. EXNER: These further intentions of the Führer were recorded on 21 October 1938 in a directive. Did you know about that in the OKW, or what was the position?
JODL: No, I did not know about it. I did not see it. I only saw it here in this courtroom during my preliminary interrogation.
DR. EXNER: Then were you transferred to...
JODL: I was transferred to Vienna as Artillery Commander of the 44th Division stationed there.
DR. EXNER: That was the end of October, was it not?