DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Therefore, by remaining in office you did not wish to indicate your approval of this war, which was brought about by Hitler?
VON NEURATH: Never. For it was an accomplished fact, to which I had not contributed; and I told Hitler my attitude and my opinion about the insanity of the war quite clearly. But I would have considered myself a traitor to the German and Czech peoples if, in this hour of need, I had abandoned the difficult task which I had undertaken for the benefit and welfare of both peoples, as long as I could even in a restricted measure live up to my task. I do not believe that any decent person would have acted differently, for, above all, and beyond personal wishes, there is one’s duty to one’s own people.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: On the day of the outbreak of the war, in the Protectorate as well as everywhere in the Reich, so-called preventive measures were taken in the form of numerous arrests, involving at any rate more than a thousand persons, especially representatives of the intelligentsia insofar as they were considered politically unreliable.
Were you advised of these arrests in advance, as should have been done according to Paragraph 11 of the order of 1 September 1939, which has been quoted earlier?
VON NEURATH: No, not even afterward. I learned of these arrests through President Hacha.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: What did you have done then?
VON NEURATH: First of all, I had Frank come to me and remonstrated with him. He said that he had not been informed either, and that this was a general police preventive measure.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Which came directly from Berlin?
VON NEURATH: Yes, which Himmler had ordered the Gestapo and SD to take.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Did you now try to have the people liberated who had been arrested, and who had for the most part been taken into the Reich?