DR. EXNER: Here attention might be drawn to our document, Volume I, Pages 48 and 49. It is a memorandum of the Führer on the conduct of the war in the West, from which Jodl has already quoted Document L-52, Exhibit USA-540. A detailed justification of this is on Page 49 of my document book.
Why then was France not attacked without violating the neutrality of Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium?
JODL: It was no trifle for the Führer to create new enemies possessing a strength of 500,000 men, which the Dutch and Belgian forces represented. It resulted in our having to make the attack in the West with actually inferior forces, namely, with 110 divisions against approximately 135 of the enemy. No military commander would do that except in an emergency.
DR. EXNER: Now, what were the reasons?
JODL: We were not in a position to break through the Maginot Line at its strongest points, which would then have remained uncaptured—namely, between the Rhine and the Luxembourg border, or the Upper Rhine where the Vosges mountains were an additional obstacle in breaking through this West Wall at these points, this Maginot Line. For this purpose heavy artillery was lacking. But that was not a moral reason; it was, in fact, rather an unmoral one.
The great danger lay in the fact that so protracted an attack on the fortifications exposed us to an attack in the rear by the combined English and French mobile forces thrusting through Belgium and Holland; and they were north of Lille with their engines already running, one might say, for this very task. And the decisive factor was that owing to the many reports which reached us, the Führer and we ourselves, the soldiers, were definitely under the impression that the neutrality of Belgium and Holland was really only pretended and deceptive.
DR. EXNER: How did you arrive at that conclusion?
JODL: Individually the reports are not of great interest. There was, however, an endless number of reports from Canaris. They were supplemented and confirmed by letters from the Duce, Mussolini. But what was absolutely proved and completely certain, which I could see for myself on the maps every day, were the nightly flights to and fro of the Royal Air Force, completely unconcerned about neutral Dutch and Belgian territory. This necessarily strengthened the conviction in us that even if the two countries wished to—and perhaps in the beginning they did so wish—they could not possibly remain neutral in the long run.
DR. EXNER: What danger would the occupation of Belgium and Holland by the English and French have meant to us?
JODL: Those dangers were quite clearly indicated by the Führer, first, in his memorandum, Document L-52, which has been repeatedly quoted. There, on Page 48 of the document book, in the last paragraph of the page, is a reference to the enormous importance of the Ruhr—of which, incidentally, there seems to be quite sufficient evidence even today.