In his tesitmony, Foerster stated:
"In August 1941, while I was in Berlin, through the help of my old acquaintance at the University of Berlin, Dr. Focke, who was working in the Press Division of the Ministre for Foreign Affairs, I was detached from the 87th Antitank Battalion and assigned to the Special Purposes Battalion of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This battalion was formed on the initiative of Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, and acted under his direction. The task of the Special Purpose Battalion consisted of seizing immediately, after the fall of large cities, cultural and historical treasures and the libraries of institutions of learning, and in selecting valuable editions of books and films and then sending all these to Germany. And further:
"We obtained righ trophies in the library of the Ukranian Acedemy of Science, where very rare manuscripts of Persian, Abyssinian, and Chinese literature, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles; and the first copies of books printed by the first Russian printer, Ivan Fedorov; and rare editions of works by Shevtchenko, Mitzkevitch, and Ivan Franko were kept."
Side by side with the barbarous destruction and looting of villages, towns, and national cultural monuments, the Hitlerites also mocked at the religious feelings of the believers amont the Soviet population.
They burnt, looted, destroyed, and desecrated on Soviet territory 1,670 Greek-Orthodox churches, 237 Romen Catholic churches, sixty-nine chapels, 532 synagogues, and 258 other buildings belonging to religious institutions.
They destroyed the Uspensky church of the famous Kievo-Petchersky Monastery, built in 1073, and with it eight monastery buildings.
At Tchernigov, the German Fascist armies destroyed the ancient Borisoglebski Cathedral, built at the beginning of the 12th Centruy; the Cathedral of the Efrosiniev Manastery of Polotzk, built in 1160, and the Church of Paraskeva-Piatnize-in-the-Market, a very valuable monument of 12th Century Russian achitecture.
At Novgorog, the Antoniev, Khutynski Zverin, Derevyanitzki, and other ancient monasteries, the famous church of Spas-Nereditza, and a series of other churches were destroyed by the Hitlerites.
The German soldiers *ooffed at the religious feelings of the people. They dressed up in church vestments, kept horses and dogs in the churches, and made bunks out of the ikons.
In the ancient Staritzki Monastery, units of the Red Army found the unclother corpses of tortured Red Army prisoners of war stacked up in piles.
The damage done to the Soviet Union as the result of the destructive and predatory activities of German army units is extremely great.
The German armies and occupation authorities, carrying out the orders of the criminal Hitlerite Government and of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, destroyed and looted Soviet towns and villages; industrial establishments and collective farms taken by them; destroyed works of art; demolished, stole, and removed to Germany machinery, stocks of raw and other materials and finished goods, art and historic treasures; and carried out the general plundering of the urban and rural population. In the territories of the Soviet Union, which suffered occupation, 88,000,000 persons lived before the war; gross industrial production amounted to forty-six billion roubles at the fixed Government prices of 1926-27; there were 109,000,000 head of livestock, including 31,000,000 head of cattle and 12,000,000 horses, 71,000,000 hectares of cultivated land, and 132,000 kilometres of railway lines.
The German Fascist invaders completely or partially destroyed or burnt 1,710 towns and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets; burnt or destroyed over 6,000,000 buildings; and rendered some 25,000,000 persons homeless. Among the damaged towns which suffered most were the biggest industrial and cultural centers of Stalingrad, Sebastopol, Leningrad, Keiv, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Oral, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, and many others.
The German Fascist invaders destroyed 31,850 industrial establishments employing some 4,000,000 workers; they destroyed or removed from the country 239,000 electric motors and 175,000 metal-cutting machines.
The Germans destroyed 65,000 kilometers of railway lines, 4,100 railway stations, 36,000 post and telegraph offices, telephone exchanges, and other communication installations.
The Germans destroyed or devastated 40,000 hospitals and other medical institutions, 84,000 technical and other schools, universitites and research institutes, and 43,000 public libraries.
The Hitlerites destroyed and looted 98,000 collective farms, 1,876 state farms, and 2,890 machine and tractor stations, they slaughtered, took, or drove into Germany 7,000,000 horses, 17,000,000 head of cattle, 20,000,000 pigs, 27,000,000 sheep and goats, and 110,000,000 head of poultry.
The total damage caused to the Soviet Union by the criminal acts of the Hitlerite armies has been placed at a figure of 679 billion roubles at the Government prices of 1941.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY All the Defendants prepared, organized and perpetrated indescribable and blasphemous crimes, such as have never before been committed in history, against humanity and against the principles of human ethics and of international law.
In the statement of the offense in Count IV of the Indictment, it is rightly pointed out that the very plan or conspiracy was organized also for committing crimes against humanity.
The Fascist conspirators started committing crimes against humanity from the moment of the formation of the Hitler Party.
These crimes attained vast proportions after the coming to power of the Hitlerites.
The concentration camp of Buchenwald, set up in 1933, and that at Dachau, founded in 1934, turned out to be only the anaemic prototypes of Maidanek, Auschwitz, Slavuta, and numerous death camps set up by the Hitlerites in the territories of Latvia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine.
The very coming to power of the Hitlerites was marked by many provocations which served as an excuse for committing grave crimes against humanity.
Inflicting revengeful punishments without due process of law by the Hitlerites upon all who did not share the "ideology" of the Fascist clique became quite widespread.
"We deny the protection of law to the enemies of the people.
We National Socialists knowingly take a stand against false soft heartedness and false humaneness.
We do not recognize tricky lawyers sophistry and cunning juridical subtilities," wrote Goering as early as 1934 in an article published overseas in the Hearst Press.
In one of the articles dated 1933 Goering regarded it as his special merit that he had reorganized the entire management of the Gestapo, having placed the Secret Police under his immediate control and organized concentration camps to be used in fighting political opponents.
"Thus," spoke Goering, "arose the concentration camps in which we soon had to stick thousands of workers belonging to the Communist and Social-Democratic Party machines."
At the disposal of the Soviet Prosecution are the notes of Martin Bormann, found in the archives of the German Foreign Office, and captured by the Soviet troops in Berlin, on the conference held by Hitler on 2 October, 1940.
This document refers to occupied Poland.
It will be submitted to the Tribunal. At the moment I shall only quote from it a few points of the Hitlerite leadership program.
The conference started with the statement by Frank that his activities as Governor General could be considered very successful:
the Jews in Warsaw and other cities were locked up in ghettos.
"Very soon Cracow will be entirely cleared of Jews. There must be no Polish landlords," the document went on to state.
"Wherever they may be, they must be exterminated, no matter how brutal this may sound.
"All representatives of the Polish intelligentsia must be exterminated.
This sounds brutal, but such is the law of life.
Priests will be paid by us and, as a result, they will preach what we want.
If we find a priest acting otherwise we will make short work of him.
The task of the priest consists in keeping the Poles quiet, stupid and dull-witted.
This is entirely in our interests.
The lowest German workman and the lowest German peasant must always stand above any Pole economically."
A special place among the unheard of crimes of the Hitlerites is occupied by the bloody butchery of the Slavonic and Jewish peoples.
Hitler said to Rauschning:
"After all these centuries of whining about the protection of the poor and the lowly, it is about time we decided to protect the strong against the inferior.
It will be one of the chief tasks of German statesmanship for all times to prevent by every means in our power the further increase of the Slav races.
Natural instincts bid all living beings not merely to conquer their enemies but destroy them.
In former days it was the victor's prerogative to destroy entire tribes, entire peoples."
If your Honors please, you have already heard the testimony of the witness Erich von den Bach-Zelewsky about Himmler's aims, as given by him in his speech at the beginning of 1941.
In answer to a question by a representative of the Soviet Prosecution, the witness declared, "In Himmler's speech it was mentioned that it was necessary to cut down the number of Slavs by 30 million."
You see by this what monstrous proportions the criminal ideas of the Hitlerite fanatics attained.
The Hitlerites vented their ferocity particularly on the Soviet intelligentsia.
Even before the attack on the USSR, directives were prepared regarding the merciless annihilation of Soviet people for political and racial reasons.
In Appendix 2 to Operational Order No. 8 of the Chief of the Security Police and SD, dated the 17th of June, 1941, it was stated, "It is above all essential to ascertain the identity of all prominent government and party officials, particularly professional activists and revolutionaries, persons working for the Comintern, all influential members of the Communist Party of the USSR and the affiliated organizations in the Central Committee and the district and regional committees, all people's commissars and their deputies, all former political commissars in the Red Army, leading personalities of the state institutions of the central and middle administrative levels, leading personalities in economic life, the Soviet Russian intelligentsia and all Jews."
In a directive of the 17th of June, 1941, for Security Police and SD detachments, it is pointed out that it is necessary to take such measures, not only against the Russian people, but also against the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Azerbaidzhianians, Armenians, Georgians, Turks and other nationalities.
The Soviet Prosecution will present to the Tribunal actual documents and facts in this connection.
The Fascist conspirators planned the extermination to the last man of the Jewish population of the world, and carried out this extermination throughout the whole of their conspiratorial activity from 1933 onwards.
My American colleague has already quoted Hitler's statement of the 24th of February, 1942, that "the Jews will be annihilated."
In a speech by the Defendant Frank, published in the "Cracow Gazette" on the 18th of August, 1942, it is stated:
"Anyone who passes through Cracow, Lvov , Warsaw, Radom, or Lublin today must in all fairness admit that the efforts of the German administration have been crowned with real success, as one now hardly sees any Jews."
The bestial annihilation of the Jewish population took place in the Ukraine, in Byelorussia, and in the Baltic States.
In the town of Riga some 80,000 Jews lived before the German occupation.
At the moment of the liberation of Riga by the Red Army there were 140 Jews left there.
It is impossible to enumerate in an opening statement the crimes committed by the Defendants against humanity.
The Soviet Prosecution has at its disposal considerable documentary material which will be presented to the Tribunal.
If your Honors please, I am appearing here as the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which bore the main weight of the attack of the Fascist invaders and which contributed on an enormous scale to the smashing of Hitlerite Germany and its satellites.
On behalf of the Soviet Union, I charge the Defendants on all the counts enumerated in Article VI of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal.
Together with the Chief Prosecutors of the United States of America, Great Britain and France, I charge the Defendants with having prepared and carried out a perfidious attack on the peoples of my country and on all freedom-loving nations.
I accuse them of the fact, that, having initiated a world war, they, in violation of the fundamental rules of international law and of the treaties to which they were signatories, turned war into an instrument of extermination of peaceful citizens; an instrument of plunder, violence and pillage.
I accuse the Defendants of the fact that, having proclaimed themselves to be the representatives of the "Master Race," a thing which they have invented, they set up, wherever their domination spread, an arbitrary regime of tyranny; a regime founded on the disregard for the elementary principles of humanity.
Now, when as a result of the heroic straggle of the Red Army and of the Allied Forces, Hitlerite Germany is broken and overwhelmed, we have no right to forget the victims who have suffered.
We have no right to leave unpunished these who organized and were guilty of monstrous crimes.
In the name of the sacred memory of millions of innocent victims of the Fascist terror, for the sake of the consolidation of peace throughout the world, for the sake of the future security of nations, we are presenting the Defendants a just and complete bill which must be paid.
This is a bill on behalf of all mankind, a bill backed by the will and the conscience of all freedom-loving nations.
May justice be done.
THE PRESIDENT:General Rudenko, your Delegation will be prepared to go on after the adjournment, will you not?
GENERAL RUDENKO:I would prefer that there should now be an adjournment.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you mean an adjournment altogether for the day or--what the Tribunal proposed now was to adjourn now for ten or fifteen minutes, then continue until five o'clock.
Would that not be convenient to you?
GENERAL RUDENKO:All right: yes, sir.
(A recess was taken.)
GENERAL RUDENKO:If it please your Honors, Colonel Kareyev will report on the order of submitting the documents to the Tribunal.
COLONEL S. D. KAREYEV:The Soviet Prosecution begins its presentation of evidence on all counts of the Indictment.
The Tribunal is already familiar with the large number of documents presented on behalf of the Prosecution by our honorable American, British and French colleagues.
On its part the Soviet Prosecution has at its disposal numerous documents relating to the criminal activities of the Fascist conspirators.
In connection with Count I, dealing with the Crimes against Peace, we will submit the following types of documents:
administrative regulations by the German authorities, orders and plans by the German Military Command, diaries and personal files of several of the leaders of the Fascist Party and German Government, as well as other documents.
These documents were found by units of the Red Army on German soldiers and officers, or were discovered in concentration camps and in the offices of German authorities.
In connection with Counts II and III, that is, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, we will offer in evidence, in the first place the communiques and the official reports of the Extraordinary Government Commission for the Determination and Investigation of Crimes Committed by the German Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices.
This Commission was set up by the decree of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet ox the USSR, dated 2 November 1942.
For field work there were set up Republican, Regional. District Municipal Commissions to assist the work of the Extraordinary Government Commission for the Dertimination and Investigation of the Crimes Committed by the German FascistInvaders. Both the central office, as well as the field offices of the Extraordinary State Commission, were composed of prominent statesmen and representatives of different public, research, and cultural organizations, as well as religious denominations.
The Extraordinary State Commission, through its representatives, for whose assistance representatives of local groups and local state authorities were called in, had collected and checked data and drew up protocols on the atrocities of the German invaders and the damage caused to the Soviet Union and its citizens.
Counting only the crimes committed by the German fascist monsters against peacful citizens, 54,784 protocols were drawn up. In accordance with Article 21 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, these protocols unquestionably represent admissible evidence. Of all these protocols of the Extraordinary State Commission, only a small number will at present be submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution.
In the possession of the Soviet Prosecution are also photographs showing the atrocities and destruction committed by the German invaders in the territorities of the USSR they had temporarily occupied. Part of these photographs will be submitted to the Tribunal. Several documentary films will be offered to the Tribunal in evidence by the Soviet Prosecution.
In submitting evidence relating to war crimes committed by the conspirators, the Soviet Prosecution mil also use several German documents photographs and films which were captured from the Germans. The Soviet Prosecution will also submit evidence relative to crimes committed by the defendants and their accomplices against Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia, Among this evidence special mention must be made of the official report be the Czechoslovakian Government entitled "German Crimes against Czechoslovakia." This report was prepared on the direction of the Czechoslovakian Government by the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Dr. Boguslav Echer, the representative of Czechoslovakia in the United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes.
There are documents appended to the official report regarding German crimes against Czechoslovakia. Among these documents there are laws, decrees and orders issued and officially published by the German fascist authorities; documents from the archives of the Czechoslovak Government; and affidavits by persons who held prominent positions in Czechoslovakia during the occupation.
There will be shown a special film concerning the destruction of Lidice. It was, in its time, prepared by official German agencies. The film was found by officials of the Czechoslovak!an Ministry of the Interior.
The official report on the German crimes against Czechoslovakia, as well as the documents appended thereto, on the strength of Article 21 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, represent unquestionably admissable evidence and will be presented to the Tribunal as USSR Exhibit No. 60.
The Soviet Prosecution shall likewise present evidence regarding the crimes perpetrated by the conspirators in Poland. The basic document to be presented on this subject by the Soviet Prosecution will be the report of the Polish Government dated January 22, 1946. The official documents of the Polish Government were the primary source of the report of the Polish Government on the German crimes committed in Poland. Both the official report of the Polish Government and the documents appended thereto, on the strength of Article 21 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, unquestionably represent admissable evidence.
And finally, the Soviet Delegation shall present to the Tribunal documents concerning the crimes of German aggressors committed on Yugoslav territory.
The investigation of the criminal activity of the German Command and of the German Occupation authorities in Yugoslavia was carried out by the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Committed by German occupants. The Commission was created on November 29, 1943, by a decision of the Yugoslav Anti-fascist Council for People's Liberation. This Commission, which, from the beginning, has always been presided over by Dr. Douchan Nedelkovitch, professor of the Belgrade University, started its work when half of Yugoslavia was still under the domination of the German, Italian, Hungarian, and other occupants.
The investigation of the crimes committed by the German fascist aggressors, besides the Yugoslav State Commission, was also carried out by the special eight Federal Commissions.
The Commission has issued 36 communications.
This report represents unquestionable evidence, and is submitted by us as Exhibit USSR 36.
It is my duty to mention that documentary evidence which was already presented by our honorable American, British and French colleague's will, to some extent, be used by the representatives of the Soviet Prosecution.
May it please your Honors, in conclusion I would like to make known to the Tribunal the order in which the prosecutors from the USSR will present their case.
The Count dealing with "The Crimes Against Peace (aggression against Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia)", will be presented by the Deputy USSR Chief of Counsel, Colonel Pokrovsky.
The Count dealing with "The Aggression Against the USSR" will be presented by the State Councillor of Justice, Third Class, Zorya.
Thereupon, Colonel Pokrovsky will present to the Tribunal the crimes committed in violation of the laws and customs of war relating to the treatment of prisoners of war.
TheCount "The Crimes Against the Peaceful Population of the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia" will be presented by the Senior Councillor of Justice Smirnov.
Report on the subject of the "Plunder of Private, Public, and State Property" will be made by Mr. Sheinin, State Councillor of Justice of the Second Class.
Report on the "Plunder and Destruction of Cultural Treasures" and "Wanton Destruction and Annihilation of Towns and Villages" will be presented by Mr. Raginsky, State Councillor of Justice of the Second Class.
Mr. Zoria, State Councillor of Justice of the Third Class, will speak on the subject of "Forced Labor and Deportation into German Slavery."
Finally, the Senior Councillor of Justice, Mr. Smirnoff, will present the report on the last subject, "Crimes Against Humanity."
COLONEL Y. V. POKROVSKY:May it please Your Honors, the opening statements of the Chief Prosecutors have enlightened us as to how fascist Germany pursued the ideological preparation of aggressive war.
The connection between Hitlerite propaganda and acts of aggression against peace was revealed in the statement of the USSR Chief of Counsel also. There fore, may I be allowed, to quote just one short extract from Horst von Metsch's book entitled "Krieg als Saat"--"War as Seed"--which was published in Breslau in 1934?
"It is impossible to conceive National Socialism without war. German martial glory is its father; army's finest musketeer is its leader; and war's hardy spirit is its soul."
That is not just a phrase dropped by a garrulous fascist penman; that is a program which is blurted out. War, and only war, was considered by the Hitlerite conspirators as the most effective means of attaining the objectives of their foreign policy. It is, therefore, only natural that Germany was turned into an armed camp and became a constant threat to her neighbors after the fascist had seized power in the country.
The East was the first objective of the fascist conspirators.
In his book "Mein Kampf", which is already at the disposal of the Tribunal, Hitler wrote, as early as 1930; "The movement eastwards is continuing, notwithstanding everything."
You will find that in Volume I, page 1.
I consider it necessary to tell the Court that the places which I will cite are marked by red pencil. I am quoting:
"The movement eastwards is continuing, notwithstanding everything. Russia must be erased from the list of European powers." (Page 732, 1930 edition).
By hypocritically proclaiming her love of peace, by giving her neighbors assurances of her intention to live with them in peace, Hitlerite Germany only strove to conceal her real and always aggressive intentions.
The conspirators willingly concluded any agreement on arbitration, on nonaggression, etc. They did it, not because they were really striving for peace, but with the sole intention of waiting for a suitable moment to strike the next treacherous blow and of lulling the nations of the world into a sense of false security.
Having committed one of their scheduled aggressive acts, they strove, with still greater energy, to convince everybody that from now on they had no longer any aggressive plans.
A combination of hypocrisy and fraud, of treason and aggression, ruled the entire system of German foreign policy.
With incredible insolence, the fascist conspirators violated any of their international obligations or international agreements, including those which directly prohibited the application of war as a solution of international disputes. None of the wars provoked by the Hitlerites can be classified under the conception of "defensive wars." In every case the German fascists acted as aggressors. They admitted, themselves, that they did not hesitate to resort to provocation in order to have an excuse for attacking their next victim at the most propitious moment.
Count II of the Indictment contains a complete list of the wars which were provoked, prepared, initiated and waged by the fascist conspirators.
The insane imagination of the Hitlerites visualized the East as a paradise for the fascist aggressors; a paradise built on the bones and blood of the millions of people who inhabited these lands.
Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe has told the Tribunal that the Soviet Delegation would submit some new evidence regarding the criminal conspiracy against peace, and also suggested that certain repetitions could not be avoided. Whilst striving to reduce these repetitions to a minimum, I wish to draw the attention of the Tribunal to some of the documents relating to the criminal aggression of the fascist conspirators.
As documentary evidence I submit to the Tribunal USSR Exhibit No. 60, an official Czechoslovak report. It begins with the following significant phrase-- and this sentence will be found on page O of the book of documents, Volume I, page 21.
"Czechoslovakia in obstacle to the German Drang nach Osten-- drive to the east-- and to their domination of Europe."
That is followed by an analysis of the strategic and political aspects of the aggression against Czechoslovakia.
THE PRESIDENT:Colonel Pokrovsky, when you want to put in a document in evidence you will produce the original document, will you not, and hand it to the Secretary of the Tribunal?
COLONEL POKROVSKY: Yes, the reporter of the Court.
This is followed by an analysis of the strategic and political aspects of the aggression against Czechoslovakia. I quote, beginning with the second sentence of subparagraph(a), which is marked with a red pencil. I quote: "Czechoslovakia was, indeed, of the greatest strategic importance as a natural obstacle and a fortified barrier against a military drive towards the Danube basin, and from there Eastwards, across the Eastern Carpathians and along the valley of the Danube, towards the Balkans.
The gist of sub-paragraph b. is that Czechoslovakia was a democratic country, and finally sub-paragraph c. gives an analysis of Czechoslovakia from the national point of view.
I shall quote this sub-paragraph as it is formulated in the report.
You will find this in part 1, pages 11 and 12.
"c. From the national point of view, Czechoslovakia, as far as the vast majority of its population is concerned, was a Slav country, intensely conscious of the unity of all Slavs."
The Tribunal might have noticed, that the methods of execution of aggression by the Hitlerite conspirators nearly always followed the same pattern.
In all cases lightning speed and suddenness of military attack were considered indispensable.
They endeavored to attain the element of surprise by giving the prospective enemy treacherous and hypocritical assurances of their peaceful intentions.
Simultaneously wide use was made of the foul system of bribery, blackmail, provocation, financing of various kinds of pro-fascist organizations, and using as paid agents unprincipled politicians and downright traitors to their respective countries.
Mr. Aldermann began his presentation of documents by giving several examples of this kind.
He told the Tribunal in detail, and proved by documentary evidence, that in the person of Hans Karmazin, the representatives of the so-called Slovak autonomous movement were bought with German money.
The same also applies to the Deputy Prime Minister Dukanski, the notorious Tuka, and many other leaders of the Hlinka Party.
It was reported to you that at the beginning of March, 1939, e.g., immediately prior to the day planned for the final entry of Fascists into Czechoslovakia, the activity of the fifth column reached its climax.
I believe I should present to the Tribunal certain facts about the Hitlerite organizations, established for the purpose of subversive activity, and also about the part played by SS man Lorenz in the action against Czechoslovakia.
Himmler, holding several offices, combined in one person the position of the Reichsleiter of the security units of the SS and Reichs Commissar for consolidation of Germanism (Reichskommissar fuer die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums). As such, he was charged with the leadership of all State and Party organs within Germany, which in turn controlled the German settlements, the work amongst the German Fascist minorities in other countries and re-immigration of Germans into Germany.
In this field his executive apparatus was the so-called Volkdeutsche Mittelstelle.
The loader of this organization, and therefore the actual deputy of Himmler, in this special sphere, was Obergruppenfuehrer
SSLorenz, who will be discussed later.
There was another criminal organization I have in mind, the Foreign Organization of the NSDAP (Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP), abbreviated to AO.
It played an important part in creating the fifth column in countries which were eventually subjected to Hitlerite aggression.
AO united the Germans who were members of the Fascist Party living outside Germany.
Apart from the wide propaganda of Fascism, AO was engaged in political and other kinds of espionage.
Germans living outside Germany received material help through AO and maintained connections with various pro-German and espionage groups of the country in which they lived.
The branches of the Hitlerite party abroad were under the guidance of German diplomatic missions.
For this purpose the leader of AO, Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, was installed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the rank of a State Secretary.
There are several appendices to the Official Czechoslovak Report.
One of them is registered under number 3061-PS. It represents excerpts from the testimony of Karl Hermann Frank, former deputy of the Reich Protector.
I submit this document to the Tribunal and, without reading it in its entirety, I wish to refer briefly to the contents of those parts of the document which deal with the question concerning the fifth column.
At the interrogation on 9 October 1945--this is the second page of the Russian text, at page 135 of Vol.
1, number 3061-PS Frank declared that in his opinion the Henlein Party received money from Germany from 1936 onwards.
In 1938 funds were coming in from the so-called Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle in Berlin, through the German Ambassador in Prague.
Frank confirmed that, together with Henlein, he several times visited the German Ambassador in Prague, who handed him and Henlein money for the Party.
Frank admits that the acceptance of this money was incompatible with his duty as a Czechoslovak citizen.
Frank further admitted that he visited the German Embassy in Prague many times alone, informed the German Ambassador of the inner political situation of Czechoslovakia, and considering the character of the information communicated, committed high treason.
Frank testifies-what I am quoting at present will be found in Vol.
1, part 1, page 184:
"All negotiations in the summer of 1938 between Henlein and myself on the one hand and the Reich authorities, in particular Adolf Hitler, Hess and Ribbentrop on the other hand, were conducted for the purpose of providing the Reich authorities with information on the development of the political situation in Czechoslovakia.
These discussions took place on the initiative of the Reich authorities."
I have quoted this excerpt from page 5 of the Russian document.
On page 4 you will find another translation of the document. Frank stated that he was aware of "the treason committed by the Party and its entire leadership corps, by receiving money from abroad for putting into effect measures inimical to the State."
This excerpt is on page 5 of the Russian translation of document 3061-PS.
During the interrogation on the 15th August 1945 Frank testified that Henlein and his staff had their headquarters in Tandorf Castle near Reuch.
Henlein himself was the head of the Staff of the Corps, which bore the name Frei-Korps der Fuehrers.
According to Frank the Free Corps was established by Hitler's order.
Part of the Corps which was in the territory of the German Reich was equipped with small arms in small quantities, as stated by Frank.
According to him, the Free Corps consisted of about 15,000 people, chiefly Sudeten Germans.
This information we find on page 3 of the Russian translation of document number 3061-PS in your book.
It is page 185 of Vol.
1, part 1.