SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well now, if you agreed with its contents, what did you mean by saying that you would have to expel the intelligentsia, except that you were going to break down the Czechs as a national entity and expel the people who would keep going that history and tradition and language? Isn’t that why you wanted to expel the intelligentsia?
VON NEURATH: I never mentioned the word “destroy,” but said that the intelligentsia...
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I said “expel”...
VON NEURATH: I see.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: ...which is your own word.
VON NEURATH: The class of the intelligentsia was the greatest obstacle to co-operation between Germans and Czechs. For that reason, if we wanted to achieve this co-operation, and that was still the aim of our policy, then this intelligentsia had to be reduced in some way and principally their influence had to be diminished, and that was the meaning of my explanation.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Yes, you said to achieve your policy, but by achieving your policy you meant to destroy the Czech people as a national entity with their own language, history, and traditions, and assimilate them into the Greater German Reich. That was your policy, wasn’t it?
VON NEURATH: My policy was, first of all, to assimilate Czechoslovakia, as far as possible. But in the final analysis that could not have been achieved for generations. The first thing to do was to bring about co-operation so as to have peace and order.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, now before I put to you the memorandum of Frank with which you entirely agree, would you look at Paragraph VII of your own memorandum?
My Lord, it is Page 113 of Document Book 12a.