[Turning to the defendant.] You will remember your letter was the 31st of August. It says:
“Regarding the reception of the Reich Protector and State Secretary Frank by the Führer, I have learned the following from authentic sources:
“To begin with, the Minister of Justice, Gürtner, gave a report on the Czech resistance movement, during the course of which he maintained that the first trial of the four chief ringleaders would shortly take place before the Peoples’ Court.
“The Führer objected to this procedure and declared that execution squads were good enough for Czech insurgents and rebels. It was a mistake to create martyrs through legal sentences, as was proved in the case of Andreas Hofer and Schlageter. The Czechs would regard any sentence as an injustice. As this matter had already entered the path of legal procedure it was to be continued with in this form. The trials were to be postponed until after the war, and then amidst the din of the victory celebrations, the proceedings would pass unnoticed. Only death sentences could be pronounced, but would be commuted later on to life imprisonment or deportation.
“Regarding the question of the future of the Protectorate, the Führer touched on the following three possibilities:
“1. Continuation of Czech autonomy in which the Germans would live in the Protectorate as co-citizens with equal rights. This possibility was, however, out of the question as one had always to reckon with Czech intrigues.
“2. The deportation of the Czechs and the Germanization of the Bohemian and Moravian area by German settlers. This possibility was out of the question too, as it would take 100 years.
“3. The Germanization of the Bohemian and Moravian area by Germanizing the Czechs, that is, by their assimilation. The latter would be possible with the greater part of the Czech people. Those Czechs against whom there were racial objections or who were anti-German were to be excepted from this assimilation. This category was to be weeded out.
“The Führer decided in favor of the third possibility; he gave orders via Reich Minister Lammers, to put a stop to the multitude of plans regarding partition of the Protectorate. The Führer further decided that, in the interests of a uniform policy with regard to the Czechs, a central Reich authority for the whole of the Bohemian and Moravian area should remain at Prague.
“The present status of the Protectorate thus continues.”