VON NEURATH: My answer in this respect is a rather tedious matter. The fundamentals of policy and the administration of the departments were determined in Berlin as far as they applied to the Protectorate, that is, by Hitler himself or by department ministers. My field was the supervision of the execution and application of these principles as they applied to the Protectorate, always considering the special circumstances which arose from the ethical, cultural, and economic structure of the country. Obviously, above all in war, the Protectorate, which was situated in the center of the Reich, could not be treated as an independent unit but had to be incorporated into the general pattern. As I have already stated, the various branches of my authority had been established by the central offices in Berlin. The officials of these branches, therefore, from the beginning, had certain practical connections with their parent ministries, even though they were later subordinate to me. The individual heads of the branches received their directives in regard to specific problems direct from their department ministries in Berlin. Then those directives were submitted to Under State Secretary Von Burgsdorff, who was the head of the administration, or, if they were very fundamental matters, also to me. The carrying-out of these measures in the Protectorate was in that way discussed, and subsequently settled with the Czech Minister. Thus were established the decrees and basic directives which were signed by me or by my deputy. Frequently these dealt with the introduction of legal or administrative measures which already existed in the Reich, or which were newly issued in the Reich. Apart from that, a series of directives applying to the Protectorate were issued directly by the competent Berlin ministries. The Reich Minister of the Interior had been designated as the so-called central agency for the release of these Reich directives.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, in this connection I should like to refer to the following documents to be found in my Document Book 5: Documents Number 145, a decree from the Führer and Reich Chancellor dealing with the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, supplementing the decree of 22 March 1939; Number 146, extracts from basic regulations applying to the Protectorate, dealing with commercial transactions with the Protectorate, dated 28 March 1939; Number 147, a directive as to the administration of criminal justice in the Protectorate, dated 14 April 1939; Number 148, a directive dealing with statutory law in the Protectorate, dated 7 June 1939; and I should like to refer to a document which has already been submitted, Number 149, the regulation dealing with the structure of the administration and the German Security Police. In this connection I should like to remark that all these directives were signed, not by the Reich Protector, but rather by the competent Reich department minister, and sometimes also by Reich Marshal Göring as Chairman of the Reich Defense Council. The legal basis for the authority of the Protector is the decree by the Führer and Reich Chancellor in regard to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia dated 16 March 1939, signed by Hitler, Frick...
THE PRESIDENT: Will you ask the defendant to clear up what his concern was with these decrees of the Reichsführer and of the Defendant Göring.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: No, Mr. President, I wanted to show that he had nothing to do with these matters but that he was obliged to carry them out. According to the decree which put him in office it was his duty to supervise these measures, which were issued by agencies in the Reich. That was what I wanted to prove, that all these directives did not originate with him, but rather with the Reichsführer.
THE PRESIDENT: Is that right, Defendant?
VON NEURATH: Yes. I should like to remark that I was chiefly concerned with seeing that these matters were duly published in the Protectorate, and then having my agencies supervise their execution.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: How far did the autonomy of the Protectorate reach in all these decisions?
VON NEURATH: The extent of autonomy was not clearly defined. Basically the Protectorate was autonomous, and it was administered by its own Czech authorities and Czech officials. But in the course of time considerable restrictions were placed on this state of autonomy, as was provided for in the decree which you have just read. The introduction of these restrictions was regarded as practical by the Reich Government and resulted, in part, from general tendencies toward centralization in Berlin, but it was also necessitated to a large extent by the general political development in view of the war and of the so-called totalization of the war effort. I constantly objected to these restrictions insofar as in my opinion they did not correspond with the vital needs of the Protectorate and of its people.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: Mr. President, in this connection I should like to refer to Article 3 of the order which has already been quoted, a decree issued by the Führer and Reich Chancellor dealing with the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Number 144 of my Document Book 5. This reads:
“1.) The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is autonomous and administers itself.