TRIAL OF NAZI LEADERS

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24743, 7 December 1945, Page 5

TRIAL OF NAZI LEADERS

NEGOTIATIONS WITH CZECH PRESIDENT

NUREMBERG, December 5. The minutes of the notorious conference in the Reich chancellery in March, 1939, when Hitler bullied the aged Czech president (Dr. Hacha) into asking Germany for "protection" as a pretext for the annexation of Bohemia and Moravia, were read to-day, when Mr Sidney Alderman concluded the American prosecution's case on Czechoslovakia before the Allied war crimes tribunal.

The Nazis, by pure and simple banditry, had forced the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, said the prosecutor. The minutes of Dr. Hacha's ordeal showed that Hitler • informed him that Britain and France were not in a position to stand up for Czechoslovakia. Hitler then cynically "invited" the President to seek German protection, adding that the German Army was prepared to move at 6 a.m. the next day, and to break Czech resistance by all the means of physical' force.

Hitler told Dr. Hacha, that if the Czech people gave in he was prepared to grant them "a generous" life with a certain national liberty." He then announced that his decision to march into Czechoslovakia was irrevocable, and this fact Goering, von Ribbentrop and Keitel successively confirmed. Dr. Hacha said that this was the hardest step in his life. Mr Alderman read a letter to Hitler from "that distinguished admiral without a navy," Admiral Horthy, disclosing that Hungary was ready on March 13, 1939, to seize the region bordering Czechoslovakia after a manufactured incident. The letter was signed, "Your devoted friend."

Goering sat impassively reading documents while Mr Alderman quoted his threat to Dr. Hacha that if he did not sign, Prague would lie in ruins within two hours. Mr Alderman then introduced a document giving the highest secret instructions for the German armament programme in-1938, in which Goering stated: "The Sudetenland must be exploited by all means. I count on the complete industrial assimilation of Slovakia. Everything possible must be taken out." Sir David Maxwell Fyfe then opened the British documentary evidence dealing with attempts to outlaw war from The Hague Convention to the Kellogg Pact. He asked the Court to consider 15 of 69 broken treaties listed on a large chart and displayed before the Court. Others would be dealt with by other prosecutors. PRESENT SPANISH REGIME

BRITISH "DETESTATION" CRec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 5. "We detest the regime," said the British Foreign Secretary (Mr Ernest Bevin), replying in the House of Commons to-day to a question whether he was aware that the arrival of a new Spanish Ambassador in London was being interpreted as implying that the British supported the present Fascist dictatorship in Spaing Mr Bevin added: "Our attitude towards General Franco was made clear in a speech which I made some time ago."