GERMAN ATTACK ON RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24799, 13 February 1946, Page 7

GERMAN ATTACK ON RUSSIA

EVIDENCE ON NAZI PLANS

SOVIET PROSECUTION AT NUREMBERG LONDON, Feb'fl. Nazi plans ,for the attack on Russia were revealed at the war crimes trial at Nuremberg to-day. The Soviet prosecutor, Mr Zorya, said that when the Fascist hordes which were unable to force the English Channel stopped at the shores of it and had to find new ways of aggression, the conspirators immediately began to prepare for an attack against the Soviet Union because this was the basic part of all their plans of aggression. Mr Zorya presented documents showing that the Germans were planning the attack as early as July, 1940. Field-Marshal von Paulus, who sponsored the anti-Hitler propaganda from Moscow during the climacteric stage of the war, told the Russians how Hitler had entrusted him with technical preparations for the combined German and Hungarian attack against Jugoslavia, which was designed to secure the German right flank for the operations against Russia. Hitler, in attacking Russia, planned: (1) the capture of Moscow, Leningrad, and the Ukraine; (2) the capture of the Northern Caucasus and the oilfields; (3) the attainment as the final goal of a line running from Archangel to Astrakhan. Mr Zorya then called von Paulus as a witness. Von Paulus said in evidence that he first learned of the German plan to attack the Soviet Union in September, 1940. Keitel fixed an iron stare on von Paulus, w’ho led the German 6th Army to disaster on the west bank of *-xe Volga. Jodi took notes in furious fashion, and Goering listened intently. Estimate of 140 Divisions Von Paulus said that the German High Command estimated that 140 envisions would be enough to crush Russia. The first troops for the attacx against Russia were deployed in February, 1941. “We went in on June 22. 1941. he said. Von Paulus named Goering, Keitel, and Jodi to theifr faces as the archplanners of the ‘‘criminal attack” against the Soviet Union. Goering who had been .shaking his head negatively

at some of von Paulus’s evidence, suddenly nodded in agreement when von Paulus named him responsible “as head of the Luftwaffe, as Reichsmarshal, and head of the armament industry.” Von Paulus added that Hitler repeatedly emphasised his economic aims, saying on one occasion: “If I don’t get that Russian oil, then I must quit this war.”

Lord Justice Lawrence said that von Paulus would be recalled later for cross-examination by the defence. The Soviet prosecutor presented a document showing that von Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner in 1943 devised a scheme to send bribe monev to Persia in order to swing the Parliamentary elections in Germany’s favour. He pointed out that routes passed through Persia for the delivery of Allied war material to Russia.

Betrayal of Jugoslavia The Germans brbke seven pledges of friendship and respect for Jugoslavia’s frontiers by their invasion in the spring of 1941, said another Soviet prosecutor (Mr Pokrovsky). He added that the fifth column helped the Nazis to prepare for the country’s destruction. Von Ribbentrop, only 10 days before the invasion, said: “I solemnly say that Germany has neither territorial nor political interests in that region.” Mr Pokrovsky proceeded to tell the detailed story of the occupation, dismemberment, and planned extermination of the Jugoslav people which, he said, in four years caused the deaths of 1,650,000 Jugoslav men, women, and children.

Quoting from a Jugoslav document on the German preliminary fifth column work, Mr Pokrovsky said that, acting through their agents. Prince Paul, the former Premier, Stoyadinovitch, also Cvetcovic, who was Prime Minister at the time of the German invasion, and Markovic, a Minister in Cvetcovic’s Cabinet, the Nazis secretly organised 1,500,000 Germans in Jugoslavia’s former German Cultural Union.

Mr Pokrovsky introduced documents stating that General Mikhailovic, in September, 1941, arranged with the former Serbian Quisling leader. Nedic (who recently committed suicide by jumping from a window in a Belgrade prison), for a common front against Marshal Broz’s partisans. Nedic had said, under interrogation, that he accepted all the conditions for collaboration laid down by General Mikhailovic. Nedic added that General Mikhailovic had received money and the Germans had approved of this. “Mikhailovic told me in July. 1944, that he had direct connexions with the Government in London and with King Peter. He also told me that he approved the work of my Government,” said I Nedic.