VON NEURATH: The American prosecutor recently mentioned this gift. Only he forgot to add that I refused it. The events were as follows:
On the day of my seventieth birthday, in the morning, an envoy of Hitler called on me and brought me a congratulatory letter from Hitler and an oil painting by a young German painter, showing an Italian landscape. The letter contained a check for 250,000 marks. I was painfully surprised and immediately told the envoy that I considered this so-called donation an insult, that I was not a lackey whom one paid with a tip, and that he should take the check back with him. He said he was not authorized to do so. The next morning I went to the Reich Finance Minister to give him the check for the Reich treasury. He said that for formal reasons—I believe because the check was on a special account of Hitler’s—he could not accept it. At his advice I turned the check over to the Reich Credit Association to a special account and informed the competent finance office in writing. I never touched one penny of this sum. The painting, the value of which was not especially great, I did not refuse, because it was entirely within the limits of a normal birthday gift and sending it back would have been considered a deliberate insult.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, I ask permission in this connection, to submit two letters of the Reich Credit Association, which I received from them on Saturday upon my request. They contain confirmation that this sum of 250,000 marks in its full extent, plus the interest which has accumulated, is still today in a special account with the Reich Credit Association. This is proof that Herr Von Neurath did not, in fact, withdraw a penny of this so-called donation, or use it in any other way.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you give us the number of it?
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: 160 and 161. Mr. President, in my haste I have only been able to have the English translation made in my office. The French and Russian translations will be given to the French and the Russian Prosecution in the next few days. As I have said, I received it myself only on Saturday afternoon.
The further charge is made against you that in the conservative circles of Germany you worked as a sort of member of a Fifth Column to induce them to reconcile themselves with and agree to the National Socialist regime, because the fact that you remained in the Government would be considered an example by them. What have you to say about that?
VON NEURATH: That statement is nonsense, because it was known throughout Germany and abroad that I was no National Socialist, but rather that I combated National Socialist excesses against the Church and the Jews and that, in addition, I obstructed any policy which endangered peace. This was clearly shown by my dismissal in February 1938, and the fact that the general consternation about this was not publicly expressed in the German press was simply because there was no press available for this. It is therefore completely absurd that these conservative circles could have assumed that I was with all my heart with the Nazis, as the Indictment says. Other countries knew this just as well and saw in me an obstacle to Nazi policy. That I was not regarded as a blind adherent to Nazi theories, as is stated in the Indictment, is best known to the foreign diplomats in Berlin, since they could observe my constant struggle against the Party from close at hand.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: I should like to submit in this connection an excerpt from the magazine Archiv, of 1937, and an excerpt from an article in the Pester Lloyd, containing the speech which the doyen of the Berlin Diplomatic Corps made in the name of the whole Diplomatic Corps to Herr Von Neurath on his sixty-fifth birthday on 2 February 1938. Both documents are contained in my Document Book 4, Number 127, and in Document Book 1, Number 18.
With this I have finished the part dealing with foreign politics, and the personal points in the charge against Herr Von Neurath. Now I come to the second aspect of the charge, your activity as Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia.
After the settlement of the Sudeten crisis you had withdrawn completely from political life; is that true?