Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

assurances to me and I was authorised to convey them to His
Majesty's Government." The assurances were given to the Czech
Minister in Berlin by NEURATH and GOERING, by the latter on
behalf of HITLER. NEURATH especially told the Czech Minister
that Germany will respect the Czechoslovak-German Arbitration
Treaty concluded at Locarno onSOctober 16, 1925. Article 1 of this
Treaty reads as follows: "All conflicts of any nature whatsoever
between Czechoslovakia and Germany in which the parties would
disagree about a legal claim and which could not be settled in a
friendly manner by usual diplomatic procedure will be presented for
finding either to the Court of Arbitration or to the Permanent Court
of International Justice, regulated as below. It is understood that
conflicts as described above include especially those to which 5 13
of the Covenant of the League of Nations refers.
These regulations do not concern conflicts arising out of facts
previous to this treaty and belonging to the past.
Conflicts for whose solution a special procedure is prescribed by
other agreements valid between the high contracting powers will be
settled in accordance with the regulations of these agreements."
Article 17 of this Treaty reads as follows: "All matters in which
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the Czechoslovak Government and the German Government would
disagree and which they could not settle in a friendly manner by
usual diplomitic procedure and whose settlement could not be
achieved by findings as prescribed in Article 1 of this Treaty and
for which a special kind of solution is not prescribed already by
other agreements valid between the parties will be submitted to the
Permanent Commission of Arbitration which will be entrusted to
suggest to the parties acceptable solutions and to report in every
single case."
(c) M a y 19 3 8. Having achieved his aim in March 1938 HITLER
decided to take a further step: to prepare an armed aggression
against Czechoslovakia. He admitted this in his speech held in the
Reichstag on January 30, 1939. In this speech he referred to the
usual lie that the German minority was oppressed in Czechoslovakia
and stated: "In view of this intolerable provocation which was
further intensified by a truly infamous persecution and terrorism
of our fellow countrymen living in those territories I am, therefore,
resolved to solve once and for all, and this time radically, this
Sudeten German question. On May 28 I ordered: