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

that the Representatives of the Great Powers, especially of Great
Britain and France, who put their signatures to the Agreement,
made statements emphasizing the. fact that the Agreement not only
settled the minority question, but also protected the Czechoslovak
Republic which, within its new frontiers guaranteed by Great Britain
and France, would not be troubled by the disturbing effects of the
minority problem, but would be able to exist and develop under
more favourable conditions than before.
In spite of this assurance, the economic viability of the Czecho-
slovak Republic has been seriously impaired. The reason for this
is that the preponderantly Czech regions and communes were occu-
pied only for motives of military and economic strategy or, in some
cases, actually to serve the economic interests of an individual.
Thus, for example, the occupation was extended to BIeclav
because it is a railway junction, to Hodslavice, because it is an
important railway station, to Stramberk because it contains a large
cement works, to KMivnice because it contains a large railway-
carriage works and also one of the largest motor-car factories, to
PoliEka, because it contains a munition factory, and to Moravsk?
Krumlov, because it contains the estates owned by Count Kinskf,
a person with strong Nazi smpathies.
(6) In an economic respect the result is (see map No. 1) that 'the
communications between the various regions of the Czechoslovak
Republic have been rendered useless. A further result is that the
food supplies for the towns have been seriously curtailed. For
example, Brno, which has 300,000 inhabitants, loses 35OI0 of its
supplies of cattle and meat, 40°/o of its supplies of milk (40,000
litres daily) and 50-70% of the supplies of other foodstuffs. It will
take a long time before these
encl.to pt.111.
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shortages can be made good.
There are two economic effects of the new frontiers which are
so outrageous as to call for special mention: The Germans have
occupied the electrical power station of the Municipality of Prague
at Ervgnice, and the reservoir at BEezovA which supplies Brno with
its water. The Munich Agreement took hto account the possibility
of such effects as these which inflict serious damage upon the eco-
nomic life of the State, and allowed for deviations from the ethno-
graphical frontier where such a course was urgent from an economic