MR. ROBERTS: It is set down at the end of the document on Page 30 that either the Wehrmacht or the counterintelligence section would be charged with the manufacture of the incident in the last paragraph.
JODL: Yes, I therefore wrote: “In case the counterintelligence service is not charged with the organization of an incident aside from that”—“in case.” These are all theoretical deliberations of the General Staff in a situation, which I depicted quite accurately yesterday, where such incidents already occurred every day.
MR. ROBERTS: I know. Then, if this had taken place, the world would have been told that because of that incident Germany had been compelled to go to war?
JODL: I do not believe that this would have been reported to the world. Rather, I believe the true reason would have been told the world, which, furthermore, was made known constantly through the press, that 3½ million Germans cannot be used as slaves by another people permanently. That was the issue.
MR. ROBERTS: If the world is going to be told the truth, what is the earthly good of manufacturing an incident?
JODL: I testified as to that yesterday—I can only repeat what I said yesterday at length: I knew the history of war too well not to know that in every war things like that happen—the question as to who fired the first shot. And Czechoslovakia at that time had already fired thousands of shots which had fallen on this territory.
MR. ROBERTS: Now, I say, Witness, subject to correction, that you are not answering the question at all. The question was a very short one and you make a long speech about something quite different. The question is, if the truth was sufficient to justify your going to war, why should you want to manufacture an incident? If you can’t answer it, say so.
JODL: Well, it isn’t at all confirmed that I wanted to bring about an incident. I wrote, “in case ... not.” We never prepared one and that is surely the essential thing.
MR. ROBERTS: I won’t argue any further with you. I have put my point and will leave it. But now I want, on quite another point, to refer to the last paragraph on Page 29, the same document:
“Even a warning of the diplomatic representatives in Prague is impossible before the first air attack, although the consequence could be very grave in the event of their becoming victims of such an attack.”