DR. EXNER: I draw your attention to Document C-62, Exhibit GB-106,
Volume I of my document book, Page 56. I need not, however, read it
aloud. It is a directive for the conduct of the war, and contains the
basic ideas which we have already heard expressed.
JODL: One thing more is perhaps important. The Führer took such a
serious view of this danger, that we might not maintain our superiority
in the long run, that he actually wanted to attack in the winter,
although all soldiers without exception advised him against it.
DR. EXNER: Here attention might be drawn to our document, Volume I,
Pages 48 and 49. It is a memorandum of the Führer on the conduct of the
war in the West, from which Jodl has already quoted Document L-52,
Exhibit USA-540. A detailed justification of this is on Page 49 of my
document book.
Why then was France not attacked without violating the neutrality of
Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium?
JODL: It was no trifle for the Führer to create new enemies possessing a
strength of 500,000 men, which the Dutch and Belgian forces represented.
It resulted in our having to make the attack in the West with actually
inferior forces, namely, with 110 divisions against approximately 135 of
the enemy. No military commander would do that except in an emergency.
DR. EXNER: Now, what were the reasons?
JODL: We were not in a position to break through the Maginot Line at its
strongest points, which would then have remained uncaptured—namely,
between the Rhine and the Luxembourg border, or the Upper Rhine where
the Vosges mountains were an additional obstacle in breaking through
this West Wall at these points, this Maginot Line. For this purpose
heavy artillery was lacking. But that was not a moral reason; it was, in
fact, rather an unmoral one.
The great danger lay in the fact that so protracted an attack on the
fortifications exposed us to an attack in the rear by the combined
English and French mobile forces thrusting through Belgium and Holland;
and they were north of Lille with their engines already running, one
might say, for this very task. And the decisive factor was that owing to
the many reports which reached us, the Führer and we ourselves, the
soldiers, were definitely under the impression that the neutrality of
Belgium and Holland was really only pretended and deceptive.
DR. EXNER: How did you arrive at that conclusion?
JODL: Individually the reports are not of great interest. There was,
however, an endless number of reports from Canaris. They were
supplemented and confirmed by letters from the Duce, Mussolini. But what
was absolutely proved and completely certain, which I could see for
myself on the maps every day, were the nightly flights to and fro of the
Royal Air Force, completely unconcerned about neutral Dutch and Belgian
territory. This necessarily strengthened the conviction in us that even
if the two countries wished to—and perhaps in the beginning they did so
wish—they could not possibly remain neutral in the long run.
DR. EXNER: What danger would the occupation of Belgium and Holland by
the English and French have meant to us?
JODL: Those dangers were quite clearly indicated by the Führer, first,
in his memorandum, Document L-52, which has been repeatedly quoted.
There, on Page 48 of the document book, in the last paragraph of the
page, is a reference to the enormous importance of the Ruhr—of which,
incidentally, there seems to be quite sufficient evidence even today.
In his address of 23 November 1939 to the Commanders-in-Chief—Document
789-PS, or Exhibit USA-23—he describes once more, on Page 59, Volume I
of the document book, precisely how that danger would be for the Ruhr
district if one day British and French forces were to appear by surprise
in that region. He referred to it there as the “Achilles’ heel,” and
that is just what it was for German war strategy.
DR. EXNER: And he said there, on Page 59 of our document book:
“We have an Achilles’ heel: the Ruhr district. The strategy of
the war depends on the possession of the Ruhr district. If
England and France thrust through Belgium and Holland into the
Ruhr, we shall be in the very greatest danger.”
JODL: I cannot, of course, or could not at the time, swear to the
absolute accuracy of the numerous reports from Canaris, but the material
we captured afterwards—and in this connection I would draw your
attention to the conference of the Supreme War Council in London of 17
November 1939—confirmed on the whole the accuracy of the intelligence
reports.
DR. EXNER: Presumably you had no reason at that time to doubt Canaris’
honesty, had you?
JODL: No. At that time there was not the slightest reason for doubt.
DR. EXNER: Yes. But now some doubt has arisen as to his honesty.
Now, the German attack was originally planned for November 1939. Why did
the Führer postpone it over and over again? We have before us no less
than 17 orders postponing the attack time and again.
JODL: It is not quite correct to say that the Führer had ordered the
attack for mid-November, but rather he wanted to order the attack for a
time when the meteorologists could predict about 6 or 7 days of clear,
frosty weather. But the meteorologists failed completely in this. At
times they thought they could predict such a state of the weather, and
then all preparations would be made for the attack. Then they would
cancel their weather forecasts again, and the final preparations for
attack would be discontinued once more. That is why we so often prepared
for the attack and then refrained from carrying it out.
On such an occasion I received a report from Canaris to the effect that
one unit of the French Army had already crossed one part of the Belgian
frontier. I do not know if that is true.
DR. EXNER: You have been accused by the Prosecution of first deceiving
these countries and then invading them. Please tell us what you have to
say on that subject.
JODL: The same applies here as I said before. I was neither a
politician, nor was I the military Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht.
I was under the impression—and, indeed, an impression which could be
proved—that in actual fact the neutrality of these two countries was no
longer being respected. And as for the ethical code of my action, I must
say that it was obedience—for obedience is really the ethical basis of
the military profession. That I was far from extending this code of
obedience to the blind code of obedience imposed on the slave has, I
consider, been proved beyond all manner of doubt by my previous
testimony. Nevertheless, you cannot get around the fact that, especially
in operational matters of this particular kind, there can be no other
course for the soldier but obedience.
And if the Prosecution today is in a position to indict German officers
here at all, it owes this only to the ethical concept of obedience of
its own brave soldiers.
DR. EXNER: We now come to the Balkans. In your diary, Document 1809-PS,
on 19 March you made the following entry: “The Balkans should and must
remain quiet.” That is on Page 61 of Volume I of my book, Exhibit GB-88,
Document 1809-PS, the entry of 19 March. It says first:
“The Führer has returned beaming with joy and highly satisfied
from the conference with the Duce. Complete agreement. ... The
Balkans should and must remain quiet.”
What does that mean?
JODL: Herr Professor, I must correct you. This is not my diary.
DR. EXNER: Yes. Well then I must put in another question here. Your
diary and your diaries are always being talked about. Explain just what
this is—what we are dealing with here. Is one a real diary and the
other not?
JODL: There is only one diary, and that is Document 1780-PS, which is
from the year 1937 to 1938, and I used to make entries in it every
evening.
DR. EXNER: And now this diary, Document 1809-PS, what was that?
JODL: I kept no diary at all during the war, but, of course, I filled up
dozens of small notebooks. When one of these notebooks was full I marked
important passages in red on the margin, and my secretary copied them
out later, as they might be important for writing the history of the war
and for the official diary of the Armed Forces Operations Staff. An
example would be Document 1809-PS.
DR. EXNER: Did you check what your secretary had compiled?
JODL: No, I did not check it, and never saw it again. It fell then into
the hands of the Prosecution.
DR. EXNER: Now, there is still a third one which is always quoted here
as a diary. That is the Diary of the Armed Forces Operations Staff.
THE PRESIDENT: You said it fell into the hands of the Prosecution. Do
you mean it was not one of the documents that you handed over to the
Prosecution?
JODL: No. I did not know at all where those extracts from my notebook
had gone. The Prosecution captured it somewhere or other. The remainder
are extracts, and partial extracts, from the official Diary of the Armed
Forces Operations Staff.
DR. EXNER: And who kept this, the official Diary of the Armed Forces
Operations Staff? Not you?
JODL: No. It was always kept by a highly qualified expert of my own
selection.
DR. EXNER: Did you check it?
JODL: The final check was made by Dr. Schramm, a professor at the
Göttingen University.
DR. EXNER: We shall hear him as a witness.
Did you check the entries made in that official diary, or did you not?
JODL: I usually did not have the time; but if General Scherff read
through it and discovered anything in particular he would draw my
attention to it.
DR. EXNER: Well, so much for clearing that up.
We now come back to the Balkan question again. It says in your so-called
diary, “The Balkans should and must remain quiet.” What was meant by
that?
JODL: That was a brief note on the statement by the Führer—namely, that
he was in perfect agreement with Mussolini that the Balkans must be kept
quiet.
DR. EXNER: And did we not actually try to keep the Balkan states as
quiet as possible?
JODL: Yes. We made unremitting endeavors for that. Our attitude toward
Yugoslavia was as considerate as if we were dealing with a prima donna.
Matters went so far that when we had to prepare the Greek campaign the
Führer even refused a proposal from the Quartermaster General of the
Army that sealed trains—the supply trains—should be sent through
Yugoslavia, which would have been permissible according to international
law. Moreover, we brought pressure to bear on Bulgaria so that she
should not participate in the impending campaign against Greece, above
all so as not to alarm Turkey. And even after the Greco-Italian
campaign, the Führer still hoped that a conflict, an actual war, between
Germany and Greece could be avoided.
DR. EXNER: I refer here to Directive Number 18, printed on Page 66 of
Volume I of our document book, which contains an extract from Document
444-PS, Exhibit GB-116, and here we find the following statement in the
paragraph before the last:
“The preparatory measures of the High Command for the conduct of
the war in the near future are to be made in accordance with the
following guiding principles...”
And it is then stated in the last but one paragraph of that page:
“The utilization of the railway through Yugoslavia may not be
counted on for the deployment of these forces...”
Well, what forced us to give up this program?
JODL: That program was completely wrecked by Italy’s arbitrary act,
about which the Reich Marshal and the Grossadmiral have already made
statements. I have only a brief addition to make. Italy was beaten, as
usual, and sent the Chief of the Operational Staff of the Supreme
Command to me crying for help. But in spite of this calamity the Führer
did not intervene in the war in Albania. He did not send a single German
soldier there, although the matter had been under consideration. He
ordered only an operation against Greece, starting from Bulgaria, to be
prepared for the following spring. Even that was for the primary purpose
of occupying the Salonika Basin, thereby giving direct relief to the
Italians and only in the event, which to be sure was feared, of English
divisions now landing in the Balkans as the result of Italy’s madness.
In that case it was decided to consider the whole of Greece as an
operational area, since we could not possibly tolerate a Royal Air Force
base in the immediate vicinity of the Romanian oil fields. And this
contingency is shown very clearly in the order which has been submitted
to the Tribunal as Document 1541-PS, Exhibit GB-117, Pages 63 and 64 of
the document book. I should like to quote two passages, two very brief
passages from it. In Paragraph 2, Subparagraph b of Page 63, it says:
“‘Operation Marita.’ My plan therefore is”—I am quoting—“...
to send these forces straight through Bulgaria, for the
occupation of the north Aegean coast and, if necessary, the
entire mainland of Greece.”