VON NEURATH: I think they were submitted to me, but I cannot tell you for certain.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, will you agree with me, or perhaps you will be able to correct my knowledge, that this is the earliest suggestion—you said it was not put into effect—but the earliest suggestion of forced labor came from an officer of your department? Do you know of any other department of the Reich that had suggested forced labor as early as November 1939?
VON NEURATH: There is no connection, and, moreover, if you were to look through suggestions made by all your subordinates, then you, too, might find some proposal which you afterward rejected. Suggestions made by an adviser do not mean anything at all.
Apart from that, perhaps I can clear up this figure of 18,000. Here it says, “According to the data at my disposal, the number of students who will be affected by closing the Czech universities for 3 years will be 18,000.” It is, therefore, three times 6,000, is it not? Which is approximately 18,000.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I had already put forward that suggestion, Defendant, about 10 minutes ago, but I respectfully agree with you. That is one matter in which we are not in difference.
Well now, you understand what I am suggesting. It is that these proposals germinated in your office, because they were quite in keeping with the proposals in the memoranda which I have just read to the Tribunal, that you should not only get rid of Czech higher education, but you should have forced labor. Do you remember that was in the State Secretary’s memorandum? What I am suggesting is that it was in your department—the idea of forced labor—as early as 21 November 1939.
Now, Defendant, I have only one other matter, and I hope, as it is a question of fact, that perhaps you will be able to agree with me on reflection. You suggested this morning that the German university in Prague was closed down after the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1919. That is how it came to us. On reflection, do you not know that it continued and that many thousands of students graduated in the German university of Prague between 1919 and 1939?
VON NEURATH: As far as I know, it was a department of the Czech university, a German part of the Czech university, as far as I know.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But it continued—it continued as a university?
VON NEURATH: Yes, it continued, but as a Czech university.