Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-12-22
Nazis Administered
Injections 10 Hacha,
French Reveal
Czech President Kept
Conscious at Signing
Of Pact, Envoy Says
BY the Associated Press.

BY the Associated Press.
PARIS, Dec. 22-Germans kept
President Emil Hacha of Czecho-
Slovakia conscious with injections
so he could sign away the indie
pendence of his country, the French
government reported in a Yellow
Book published yesterday.
The story, as related by Robert
Coulondre, former French Ambassa-
dor to Berlin, was one of more than
$50 documents dealing with inter-
national events since the Munich
agreement on Czecho-S lovakia In
September, 1898.
M. Coulondre's report to the then
French foreign minister, Georges
Bonnet, said President Hacha faint
ed from excitement when he was
called to Berlin the night of March
IA, 1889, and heard Adolf Hitler's
plans for reducing the Czech state
to protectorate.
President Hacha was revived, only
to swoon again and again as more
severe clauses Of the program were
read before the Nazi chieftains, M.
Coulondre declared.
Convinced Attack Near.
Finally, at 4:3O am" on March
Is, Coulondre telegraphed Bonnet
in code, "Hacha resigned himself,
with death in his soul, to give his
signature" after being convinced
that hundreds of German bombers
were ready to take off on a raid
against Czecho-Slovakia at 6 am.
President Hacha, he said. was
worn out and kept conscious only
by injections"
M. Coulondre added that the
Czech foreign minister, DR.. Franti-
SEX Chvalkovsky, who accompanied
Hacha, exclaimed on leaving the
German chancellery, "Our people
will condemn us. but all we did was
to save their lives! We have pre-
served them from a horrible mas
sacre!"
| French efforts to spare Poland
the same fate as Cecho-Slovakia
also were recounted in the Yellow
Book One document indicated that
Germany was warned two months
in advance of the Polish invasion
that France would fight.
This document was a warning M.
Bonnet was reported to have sent
to German Foreign Minister Joachim
Won Ribbentrop after comforting at
the French foreign Office with the
German Ambassador.
Describes Visit to Hitler.
A visit to Hitlers Eagle Nest
also was described by Andre Fran
-Poncet, French Ambassador to
Rome, who said Hitler's retreat
definitely gave him the creeps.
II felt suspended in space" M
rancois-Poncet wrote to the for
eign Office October 20, 1898, during
the confused post-Munich era.
go The effect was grandiose,
savage, almost like hallucination. u
M. Francois-Poncet was invited to
the retreat, which he said was sur
rounded by machine gun nests,
when he took leave of Germany to
assume his new post in Rome.
The nest at Berchtesgaden, he
wrote. is over a mile high, reached
by 10 miles of winding roadway
carved from the rocky ridge and
which leads to tunnel at the end
of which an elevator ascends to the
glass-inclosed turret of rooms over
looking the Bavarian Alps.
There Mr.. Francois-Pon found
himself with Hitler and Foreign
Minister Joachim Won Ribbentrop
amid teacups and Hitler's "irri-
tated" talk of England's "menacing
words and call to arms"
The Ambassador said he asked
himself whether he was in a "Victor
Hugo fantasy" or "a den of thieves
where they rested and counted their
treasures"