And the defendant has actually succeeded in carrying his point, as shown
by Ziemke’s report on his conversation with Hitler, submitted by the
Prosecution. As long as he was in Prague, no measures were taken to
germanize the Czech people; the defendant even prohibited the discussion
of this entire question, as shown by Document 3862-PS submitted by the
Prosecution. Especially by preventing any division of the Protectorate
territory and any more or less forcible Germanization of the Czech
nation according to plan, the defendant has proved, in the most striking
manner, the sincerity of his aims and endeavors to protect and preserve
the Czech people, their national traits, and their national unity and
character, in conformity with his principles and intentions as stated
publicly in his article on the New Order in Central Europe, reproduced
by the _Frankfurter Zeitung_ of 30 March 1939—Document Book 5,
Neurath-143—which set forth his line of conduct for the accomplishment
of his task.
In this article he himself describes his task as a fine one, but at the
same time a difficult one. How difficult it really was—how nearly
impossible—was to become obvious, unfortunately, only too soon.
Chief among the reasons for this was that from the beginning not only
were the full powers in the Protectorate not transferred to the Reich
Protector, not only was he not given the sole executive and controlling
position—quite apart from his subordination to Hitler—but also his
competency and powers were not sufficiently clearly defined. It is true
that Hitler’s decree of 16 March 1939, establishing the Protectorate,
and the supplementary decree of 22 March 1939—Document Book 5,
Documents Neurath-144 and 145—had specified that the Reich Protector
was subordinate to the Führer and Reich Chancellor, that he was to be
the sole representative of the Führer and the Reich Government, and was
to receive his directives from the Führer and Reich Chancellor. But, at
the same time, not only were certain administrative branches, such as
the Armed Forces, communications, the postal, telegraphic and telephone
services, removed from his control at the very beginning, but the Reich
Government—that is, the Reich—had also been given the right to take
under its own so-called “reichseigene” jurisdiction, in the
administration of the Reich proper and independent of the Reich
Protector, those administrative branches which actually were Reich
Protector offices, and to establish, if necessary, Reich offices which
did not fall within the Reich Protector’s competence. The Reich was also
given the right to take measures necessary for security and order in the
Protectorate over the head of the Reich Protector himself.
Furthermore—and this is the most important point of all—every one of
the many supreme Reich authorities—that is, not only the Reich
Ministries but, for instance, the Reichsbank, the Four Year Plan, the
Ministerial Council for Defense of the Reich, and others—was given the
right to decree laws and organizational measures on its own authority,
quite independently of the Reich Protector and, therefore, could
interfere in these administrative branches which actually were to come
within the jurisdiction of the Reich Protector without the Reich
Protector having either the right or the possibility to protest against
or prevent such decrees or measures should they be in opposition to his
own decrees, measures, and policy. On the contrary, he was bound not
only to publish them in the Protectorate if asked to do so but also to
supervise their execution.
Therefore, the position of the Reich Protector was, to use an example by
way of explanation, by no means the same as that of the British Viceroy
in India; it was more like the position—though to outward appearances
on a somewhat higher level—of a Reichsstatthalter or the Oberpräsident.
Therefore, it was different from what had hitherto been understood
constitutionally by a protectorate; nor could it be otherwise, because
this so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia belonged, according
to Article 1 of the above-mentioned decree of 16 March 1939,—and to
this I wish to draw particular attention here—to the territory of the
German Reich—that is to say, it was a part of the German Reich. And it
only had a certain amount of independent authority, a limited autonomy
within the Reich, so that the laws and regulations valid in the rest of
the Reich territory were introduced into the Protectorate as a matter of
course. It was quite obvious that this vague and loosely defined
limitation of the powers and competence of the Reich Protector was bound
to lead very soon to the greatest difficulties, difficulties not only in
the way of a uniform policy, uniformly conceived and directed, but
difficulties which prevented the defendant himself, as Reich Protector,
from governing in the way he wished and from keeping to the course
already taken, difficulties and reverses which became more and more
acute in the course of time.
In view of all this, it follows that the responsibility of the defendant
can only be judged against this background—that is, only by taking into
account the power exerted by these many other authorities. He can never
be held responsible for decrees, measures, and actions which he did not
decree or order himself, but which were decreed without his
co-operation, without his knowledge, even against his will, by
authorities or other offices outside his sphere of power and
influence—decrees, measures, and actions which he had neither the right
nor the power to prevent, and for which he was at most an intermediary,
a link in the chain.
This is especially relevant for the accusation of joint responsibility
brought against him by the Czech Prosecution—Document USSR-60(a)—for
all the actions of Hitler and of the Reich Government before and after
the setting up of the Protectorate. The Prosecution take as basis for
their assertion the fact that Herr Von Neurath, after having given up
his post as Reich Foreign Minister, remained a member of the Reich
Cabinet—whereas in fact this is incorrect. I have already proved
elsewhere beyond all doubt that he was not a member of the Reich
Cabinet, either as a Minister without Portfolio or as President of the
Secret Cabinet Council; nor was he a member of the Reich Cabinet as
Reich Protector. That, too, is certain, and has never been maintained by
the Prosecution before this Court. Therewith, any joint responsibility
of the defendant for any actions or measures which preceded or prepared
the way for the setting up of the Protectorate is disproved. Also I have
already proved elsewhere that his statement to the Czechoslovak
Ambassador on 12 March 1938, which has been used by the Prosecution in
support of their allegation that this prepared the way, was not false,
not deceitful, and therefore was not an action which prepared the way
for the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
If the Czech Prosecution further deduce from Article 5 of the
above-mentioned decree of 16 March 1939 that, as Reich Protector, he was
wholly responsible for everything that occurred in the Protectorate
during the time he was in office—that is, from 17 March 1939 to 27
September 1941—then this conclusion also is wrong and factually
incorrect, in view of the actual position with regard to the division of
powers in the Protectorate, as explained above. There is no system of
law in the world according to which one can charge a person with
criminal responsibility for occurrences and acts by third persons, acts
in which he did not participate or co-operate, or which even occurred
against his will.
Thus he cannot be made responsible for the fixing of the rate of
exchange between the Reichsmark and the Czech crown, because this rate
had already been fixed when he took over office; neither had he any hand
in fixing it, nor had he the power or right to change the rate of
exchange—quite apart from the question, which we need not discuss here,
of whether, as the Prosecution maintain without producing proofs, the
rate of exchange really was detrimental to the Czech people or not.
Incidentally, I need hardly say that even if this had been the case, it
would not be a crime according to the Charter, and only as such would it
be punishable.
Nor can he be made responsible for the setting up of the customs union
and putting it into practice. This had already been laid down in Article
9 of the decree of 16 March 1939, which reads, “The Protectorate belongs
to the customs area of the German Reich and is subject to its customs
sovereignty.” This regulation was a natural consequence of the fact,
which I have already stressed, that the Protectorate was a part of the
territory of the German Reich. However, I would like to draw special
attention here to the fact that the defendant, because he regarded the
inclusion of the Protectorate into the customs area—the customs
sovereignty of the Reich—as detrimental and harmful to Czech economy,
managed to prevent this inclusion for a year and a half, until October
1940, in spite of all the pressure exerted by the Reich Finance
Minister, which is clear proof that the defendant put the interests of
the Czech people, who had been entrusted to him, above the interests of
the German Reich. He had absolutely nothing to do with the economic
measures for the alleged transfer of Czech banks and industrial
undertakings nor with filling the key positions with Germans. Those
measures were taken by other offices—especially by the Reichsbank and
the Delegate for the Four Year Plan—behind his back and without his
collaboration. These were merely the natural consequences of the fact
that already in earlier days a very large amount of German capital had
been invested in these banks and undertakings, and this capital
increased after the occupation because the credits given by the other
countries were withdrawn by them and were now granted by German firms.
Lastly, he had nothing whatever to do with the judiciary. This was
exclusively under the control of the Reich Ministry of Justice. This
alone set up the German courts, including summary courts-martial, and
the prosecuting authority; it alone appointed judges and prosecutors.
Herr Von Neurath himself had nothing to do with these appointments and
still less with the jurisdiction of the courts, as is clearly shown by
the ordinances and decrees by which they were set up, especially the
decree concerning the practice of criminal jurisdiction, of 14 April
1939,—Document Book 5, Document Neurath-147.
Here again I must draw attention to the fact that neither the economic
measures nor the setting up of German courts in the Protectorate, which
was a part of the German Reich, can even remotely fall under the
category of crimes enumerated by this Charter. And this applies equally
to the alleged intrusions into the Czech educational system, the
appointment of German school inspectors, measures with which the
defendant has been charged in the Czech indictment. These measures also
were not taken by him, but by the German Reich Ministry for Education.
And the closing of a larger number of Czech secondary schools was not
ordered by the defendant, nor by order of the German Reich Ministry, but
by the Czech Government itself even if it did so at the suggestion of
the defendant. This measure turned out to be a useful one, and was in
the interests of the Czech youth and, therefore, of the Czech
intelligentsia and people because it obviated the danger of the
formation and growth of a large well-educated proletariat. After the
incorporation of the Sudeten German territory into the German Reich in
the autumn of 1938 this danger had become acute, for a very large number
of Czech officials and members of the free professions had streamed into
the territory of the Protectorate, with the result that because of the
overcrowding of all professions and the diminution of the Protectorate
territory owing to the separation of the Sudeten territory and Slovakia,
the chances of finding employment for the pupils leaving the secondary
schools were still further diminished.
In addition to this came the closing of universities in the middle of
November 1939 upon personal order of Hitler. The Czech Government could
not shut its eyes to the truth of these considerations of the defendant,
and itself decreed the closing of quite a number of schools. The
defendant did not exercise any pressure on the Czech Government. This
has been proved by the evidence. The dissolution of Czech gymnastic and
sport clubs and similar organizations, however, as well as the
confiscation and the use of their assets, was ordered, without knowledge
or participation of the defendant, by the Police, which was not under
his jurisdiction. It is not even certain, by the way, whether this
dissolution took place while the defendant was holding office or only
after his departure. The dissolution of the Sokol, it must be said, was
a real necessity for the protection of German interests, and moreover it
was a measure which was taken to appease and reconcile the Czech nation,
too; for the Sokol was, beyond doubt, the focus of all anti-German
efforts and of the incitement of the Czech people toward an active
resistance against everything which was German.
The preceding arguments show how manifold were the encroachments of
other administrations and offices on the administration of the
Protectorate, and, accordingly, the difficulties and resistance which
arose against a uniform policy of the defendant. They were, however, by
no means removed, but, on the contrary, aggravated by the decree of 1
September 1939 concerning the organization of administration and the
German Security Police—Document Book 5, Document Neurath-149. This
decree was issued, without previous consultation with the defendant, by
the Ministerial Council for the Reich Defense. Its first part especially
is obscure and misleading. True, it placed all German administration
offices and their officials in the Protectorate under the control of the
Reich Protector, but this subordination was a formal one only, that is,
simply on paper and not an actual one in view of the administrative
duties which were actually performed.
In this respect, things remained unchanged, as had already been
indicated from the authority of the supreme Reich offices, according to
Article 11 of the decree of 16 March 1939 and of the ordinance of 22
March 1939. The difference was only that from now on all administrations
and offices, established or to be established by other offices, were
formally attached to the Reich Protector’s office and took up their
functions under the official designation of “The Reich Protector of
Bohemia and Moravia.” However, this by no means insured that such
attached departments were put, in fact, under control of the Reich
Protector himself—that is, the defendant—and that they had to receive
from him their factual directives and orders to work according to his
views and his directives. On the contrary, they received their
instructions, just as before, from their original Reich offices, and had
to observe and obey them. For instance, the so-called transportation
department under the Reich Protector which had to deal with the
transportation system—already taken out of the Reich Protector’s
jurisdiction by ordinance of 16 March 1939—was controlled just as
before by the Reich Ministry of Transportation and not by the Reich
Protector, and received instructions not from him but from the Ministry
in Berlin. And the same applied to other sectors, also including the
purely internal administration.
According to this ordinance of 1 September 1939 of the Ministerial
Council for the Reich Defense—and not, as the Czech prosecutor
erroneously contends, by a decree of the defendant—a new plan was
undertaken for the Protectorate territory with Oberlandratsbezirke and
the Oberlandrat at their head, which official is, according to Paragraph
6 of the ordinance, the competent administrator for all administration
branches of the internal administration and subordinate to the Reich
Protector in an administrative sense. As such, he was invested with
far-reaching authority, and also supervised the Czech authorities in the
Protectorate, and this, to be sure, not by the order of the Reich
Protector, but of the pertinent Reich Ministry in Berlin. This, too, was
bound to result in very serious differences between the measures taken
by those Oberlandräte on the basis of the directives issued to them by
the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin and the policy pursued by
the defendant. To what extent the latter affected and influenced the
Czech administrative offices does not have to be taken into
consideration, since this decree, too, and its result, the control of
the activities of the Czech administrative authorities by Reich German
officials, is not a crime punishable according to the Charter of this
Tribunal. This decree, too, is only a result of the fact that the
Protectorate belonged to the German Reich.
On the other hand, this decree clarified the question of the position of
the Police within the Protectorate territory, the political as well as
the Security Police. This question was quite unsettled until the decree
came into force and from the very first day of his activity had led to
differences and difficulties between Herr Von Neurath and his State
Secretary Frank.
At the time when Hitler charged the defendant with the office of the
Reich Protector he had, according to the defendant’s testimony, assured
him of far-reaching power, especially for protecting and fully
supporting the defendant’s intended policy of conciliation and
compromise in opposition to radical aims of the Party and other
chauvinistic circles. The defendant deduced from this that as the
representative of the Führer in the Protectorate he must and would have
a decisive influence on the activity of the Police also. According to
his own testimony he could not visualize at that time that a large part
of the sphere of activity accepted by him became illusory from the
start, since the Police had not been from the outset expressly
subordinated to him. However, due to the fact that Frank—who had been
made Higher SS and Police Führer in the Protectorate—was at the same
time appointed to the position of State Secretary, and as such was
subordinated to him, the defendant felt entitled to assume that Hitler’s
intention was to centralize the police authority, if not in his own
hands, at least under his jurisdiction—that is, in the hands of his
State Secretary. In practice, however, this relation worked out entirely
differently, since State Secretary Frank had not the slightest intention
of letting his official chief, the defendant, have any authority
whatsoever over the Police, and recognized only the jurisdiction and
authority of Himmler, his superior, as SS and Police Leader, or of his
Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt).
This actual state of affairs was established by law in the decree of 1
September 1939. For this, decree unequivocally states that the German
Security Police, and thereby also the Gestapo, was not subordinated to
the Reich Protector. This is already evident, in itself, from the fact
that the decree completely separates the two departmental
spheres—administration and Police—by dealing in Part 1 with the
building up of a German administration in the Protectorate subordinated
to the Reich Protector, and then dealing separately in Part II with the
German Security Police. This Security Police is not under the
jurisdiction of the Reich Protector, but, as was already reserved in
Article V, Paragraph 5, of the decree of 16 March 1939, is taken over by
the administration of the Reich itself—that is to say, it receives its
orders directly from the Chief of Police in Berlin—that is,
Himmler—and in part also from the Higher SS and Police Leader in
Prague.
The second sentence of Paragraph 2 describes the relationship of the
Police toward the Reich Protector. Its wording is as follows:
“The organs of the German Security Police are to collect and
make use of the results of their investigations, in order to
notify the Reich Protector and his subordinated offices about
important events, and to keep him informed and offer
suggestions.”
This signifies that the Reich Protector legally could not actually
influence the activities of the Police in any form whatsoever. He could
not oppose their orders, emanating from Berlin, prior to their
execution; quite apart from the fact that he never got to see them, he
had no authority whatsoever to oppose them. He had but one claim and
that was to be subsequently informed by the Police about measures
already taken by them and even that happened—as was proved by the
evidence—only in the rarest cases. He himself did not have any right or
any possibility whatsoever of issuing orders to the Police.
In consequence of this separation of powers, and in view of the totally
different attitude of Frank toward the Czech people in contrast with
Herr Von Neurath, the sharpest differences and contradictions were
inevitably bound to crop up from the very beginning. For Frank, as a
Sudeten German and one of the leaders of the Sudeten Germans, was filled
with hatred and revenge against anything that was Czech. He did not want
to hear of a reconciliation or an understanding between the German and
the Czech peoples, and gave free rein to this anti-Czech attitude from
the first day of his activity.
At first—that is to say, up to the time of the outbreak of the war—the
activity of the Police was actually slight, so that these opposing
viewpoints did not become so apparent. Herr Von Neurath could
consequently assume that this opposition would gradually diminish, and
that Frank would conform to his wishes and aims, and would show himself
to be accommodating; and he, the defendant, did not yet recognize the
necessity of exerting influence upon the Police. When, however, he
finally realized from the gradually increasing activity of the Police
and their excesses—that his expectations were not being fulfilled, he
protested to Hitler orally and by letter, time and time again—as
confirmed by the testimony of the witnesses Dr. Völckers and Von
Holleben—and implored him to alter this ominous state of affairs, and
to subordinate the Police to him, and to him only. However, all of
Hitler’s promises and assurances proved to be false, and the
subordination of the Police to Herr Von Neurath did not take place.
Yet, he did not want to relinquish the fight so soon, nor despair of the
task he had undertaken. Now, more than ever, he wanted to try to impose
his ideas and policy and, should he not be successful in major as well
as in minor issues, at least try to soften the measures taken by the
Police. For this purpose he had the most detailed accounts given to him
personally in all cases of measures and action taken by the Police, such
as arrests and other excesses, insofar as he received information about
them mostly from Czech sources. Wherever he could, he exerted his
influence for the release of arrested persons. This is evident from the
testimony of all witnesses produced by me, above all, from the testimony
of Dr. Völckers who, as head of the defendant’s office, was continually
engaged in receiving such complaints. This is moreover evident from
documents submitted by the Prosecution themselves, such as the notes of
the defendant about his conference with President Hacha of 26 March
1940—Appendix 5 to Supplement Number 1, USSR-60—and even from the
testimony of Bienert—who himself was arrested by the Police but
released in a very short time upon the intervention of the defendant.
With the one exception of the testimony of Frank of 7 March 1946,
submitted during the hearing of evidence, the testimony of all witnesses
corresponds on the question of responsibility of the defendant for the
measures taken by the Police. Frank’s testimony, however, is in direct
contradiction to his own earlier testimony. At his interrogation on 30
May 1945—Document Book 5, Document Neurath-153—Frank said the
following, and I quote:
“The Police, however, was not under the control of the offices
of the Reich Protector.... Both Gestapo and Security Police
received their directions and orders directly from the Reich
Main Security Office in Berlin.”
Frank’s statement of 5 May 1945 concerning the student riots—Document