VON NEURATH: As I said just now, the introduction of the anti-Jewish laws came about on Hitler’s direct order, that is to say through the competent authorities in Berlin. The representation...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Von Lüdinghausen, why do you want to go over all this again? The defendant has given the evidence that he succeeded in putting off the laws until June 1939 and that then the Nuremberg Laws were introduced. He has given us the various qualifications which he said he made; and then you read him the Czech report and try to get him to go over it all again, it seems to me. It is now quarter past 11.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: All right, then, I shall consider the first question sufficiently answered and we shall not deal with the matter of confiscation either.
[Turning to the defendant.] The Czech report further accuses you of the dissolution of the organizations of the YMCA and YWCA, and the confiscation of their property in favor of German organizations.
VON NEURATH: I must admit that I do not recall these confiscations at all. If this dissolution and confiscation took place before I left, it must have been a police measure only.
DR. VON LÜDINGHAUSEN: The Czech report further mentions the destruction of Czech economic life and the systematic plundering of Czech stocks of raw materials and accuses you in that regard. What are the facts with regard to that?
VON NEURATH: With the establishment of the Protectorate, the Czech economy almost automatically was incorporated into the German economy. The export trade, for which Czech industries had worked to a considerable degree, was stopped for the duration of the war, that is to say, it had to trade with the Reich.
The Czech heavy industries, especially the Skoda Works and the arms industry, as direct war industries, were taken over to supplement German armaments production by the Delegate for the Four Year Plan.
At the beginning I tried especially to avoid selling out of the Protectorate, which would have been hard on the population. An effective means for that purpose was the maintenance of the customs boundaries which existed between Czechoslovakia and Germany. After heated conflicts with the Berlin economic departments, I succeeded in having the customs barrier maintained up to October 1940, for another year and a half, though it had already been rescinded on 16 March 1939.
I believe I am also accused of having been responsible for the removal of raw materials and the like. In that connection I should like to say that the office of the Delegate for the Four Year Plan was the only authority which could take such measures.