dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. EXNER: You have been accused of having used your personal influence and your close relations with the Fuehrer to attack a whole series of neutral countries. Tell me, is that true?
JODL: No, it is untrue. I remember that a witness here spoke of a sinister influence, of a key position of a sinister kind-at any rate, something sinister. But my influence on the Fuehrer was unfortunately not in the least as great as it might, or perhaps even ought to have been in view of the position I held. The reason lay in the powerful personality of this despot who never suffered advisers gladly.
DR. EXNER: When did you first hear of a plan for a possible occupation of Norway? .
JODL: The Fuehrer first spoke to me-I think it was in mid November 1939-at any rate, a fairly long time after Grossadmiral Raeder had first spoken to him. At that first conference, which I believe took place on 10 October, I had not yet heard of anything nor did the Fuehrer give me any information. But in the middle of November he spoke to me about it. I first learned the details during the oral report made by the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, which took place on 12 November and at which I was present.
DR. EXNER: In this connection I would draw your attention to Document C-64, Exhibit GB-86, Page 46 of the document book. But I do not need to read it aloud. Volume I, Page 46. What was the Fuehrer's point of view?
JODL: The general attitude of the Fuehrer at that time was-it is also established in writing: "I am not at all interested in extending the theaters of war, but if the danger of an occupation of Norway by England really exists and if that is true, then the situation would be quite different."
DR. EXNER: Was anything ordered at that time?
JODL: Nothing was ordered at that time, but he merely instructed me to think this problem over generally. The preliminary work, as has been proved by documents, began on 27 January 1940.
DR. EXNER: That may be seen from Document C-63, Exhibit GB-87. Were you at that time of the opinion that the assurance given by Hitler in December and October 1939 that Norwegian neutrality would be respected-were you of the opinion that this assurance was given for the purpose of lulling Norway into a state of security, as has been alleged by the Prosecution?
JODL: That allegation can be definitely refuted, and by means of a few dates which I shall now enumerate. These assurances, these political assurances, were given by the Fuehrer-or by the Reich Government, I do not know which-on 2 September and 6 October. On 9 October the Fuehrer read and signed the famous memorandum known as Document L-52. I do not know whether the Tribunal is aware of the fact that it is a personal memorandum by the Fuehrer.
DR. EXNER: That is Document L-52, Exhibit USA-540. It is printed on Page 48, Volume I, of my document book. In this memorandum-for whom was the memorandum prepared?
JODL: This memorandum, as I think is obvious from the document, went out to the three Commanders-in-Chief and to the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces. It was dictated word for word by the Fuehrer himself and was completed in 2 nights.
DR. EXNER: I shall read Paragraph 2, printed on Page 48 of my document book: "The Nordic States. "Their neutrality, provided no completely unforeseen circumstances arise, may be assumed also for the future. The continuation of German trade with these countries appears possible, even if the war is of long duration."
JODL: It is quite out of the question that the Fuehrer, in this extremely secret memorandum, could have mentioned anything but his true purpose at that particular time. That, however, is all the more comprehensible since it was not until 1 day later, namely 10 October, that Grossadmiral Raeder first mentioned these fears to the Fuehrer.
DR. EXNER: Was the occupation of Norway a very weighty decision for the leadership?
JODL: It was a terribly weighty decision. To put it shortly-it meant gambling with the entire German fleet. The result of it was that we had to defend a coastline of over 3,000 kilometers, and that meant that nearly 300,000 men were lying idle there. The decision, therefore, depended on really reliable information that Norway was threatened by actual danger. That is the reason why no definite date was fixed for this operation "Weserubung," and the reason why I at a later date suggested that the forces for the Norway operation, in case it became necessary, and for an attack in the West, should be completely separate from each other.
DR. EXNER: What were the reasons why the occupation had to be prepared in every detail?
JODL: The reasons are quite openly and definitely stated in the order of 1 March 1940 which is Document C-174...
DR. EXNER: That is Exhibit GB-89.
JODL: Yes; we had to be prepared in any case.
THE PRESIDENT: Is that Document 174-PS, or what?
DR. EXNER: It is not printed in my document book. It refers to a document which the British Prosecution has submitted under Exhibit GB-89.
THE PRESIDENT: But 174 must mean something, must it not? The document said Document 174.
DR. EXNER: Document C-174.
MR. ROBERTS: My Lord, it is C-174.
THE PRESIDENT: C-174. Very well.
MR. ROBERTS: And it was put in by Mr. Elwyn Jones, In Document Book 3.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
DR. EXNER: Now, you say in your diary that the Fuehrer was searching for a justification. The meaning has already been explained here; but you yourself should know best what the meaning is, since you wrote it yourself. What does it mean?
JODL: The Fuehrer said in those days, when I wrote it-not in a diary, but in my notebook, my memorandum book-he said: "To carry out a decision of this kind I need absolutely reliable information with which I can really justify this decision before the world and prove that it was necessary. I cannot tell, I only heard the following from Herr Quisling..." And for this reason he kept the Intelligence Service in particular very busy at this time, in order to get even more precise information for the Fuehrer about these many reports which we received...
DR. EXNER: Now, Grossadmiral Raeder has explained the facts from which England's plans could be deduced. Have you anything to add to that, or is the question settled?
JODL: On the whole, Grossadmiral Raeder has already submitted all the information. There is one thing which remains in my memory and which is also written in my notebook. That is the special insistence, quite openly advocated in the French press, that under all circumstances Germany must be cut off from the Swedish ore supplies. Then came the mine-laying in Norwegian territorial waters; and then came the Altmark case which, according to my study of international law, was a flagrant breach of the agreement ruling the rights and duties of neutral states in naval warfare, and Articles 1 and 2...
DR. EXNER: Regarding the first two points which the witness has mentioned, I should like to draw attention to Document 1809-PS-that is, his diary, Exhibit GB-88, Page 53 of Volume I of my collection. There is an entry on 10 March: "The news about the Finnish-Russian negotiations is very gratifying from a political point of view. The French press is furious about it, because it considers it necessary to cut Germany off from Swedish ore." And then the entry of 25 March: "The English have begun to molest or to fire on our merchantmen in Danish and Norwegian territorial waters." Now, please tell us what gave rise to the decision to attack?
JODL: The Fuehrer's final decision was made on 2 April and was made on the basis of two pieces of information. First, the reports from the Navy regarding repeated firing on German merchant ships both in Norwegian and Danish territorial waters. Second, a report from Canaris that British troops and transports were lying in a state of readiness in the northern part of the English east coast.
DR. EXNER: What would have been the consequences for us if England had got there first?
JODL: As to that I can refer to Grossadmiral Raeder's testimony, and can only say that once Norway was in British hands the war would have been half lost for us. We would have been strategically encircled on the northern flank and because of the weakness of our fleet we would have been incapable of ever rectifying this again.
DR. EXNER: Was indisputable proof found later that the British plan really existed?
JODL: We captured the entire records of the British brigade which landed in Namsos and in other places. We surprised and captured the British war correspondent Romilly in Narvik, where he expected anything rather than the arrival of German ships, otherwise he could have escaped capture. To the question what he wanted to report about the war in peaceful Narvik he could not give us any information at all. Later on we captured all the records of the French General Staff, a part of which have already been presented by Admiral Raeder's counsel. Particularly instructive, and of great interest to me, were the diaries carried by the English officers and some of the noncommissioned officers whom we captured in Norway. At least they proved one thing, namely, that all these troops had already been embarked and had been put ashore again the moment our German fleet advanced towards Norway.
DR. EXNER: I should like to refer again to two entries in the diary, Page 54, Volume I of my document book, the entry of 24 April and the entry of 26 April. There it says: "Major Soltmann reports on the interrogation of the Englishmen and submits additional important documents, among them the secret Army list. At noon the first prisoners arrived in Berlin. They are being interrogated in the Alexander Barracks and confirm the authenticity of the orders. All the material is being handed over to the Foreign Of lice." In conclusion, I also draw your attention again to Soltmann's interrogatory It is Document AJ, Number 4, Exhibit Jodl-57, which I now present; Page 173 of Volume II. I need not read it aloud; I merely draw your attention to Soltmann's answers to questions 4 and 5. Now, one last question about this Norwegian affair. The English representative of the Prosecution has said that this shows how honorable the soldiers were who attacked Norway and then made use of lies and excuses. What do you say about this?
JODL: The Prosecution has thereby placed a purely operational problem on the level of soldierly or human honor. Until now that has never been the custom in this world. -I can only say that I neither attacked Norwegians, nor did I resort to lies or excuses. But I did use all my strength to contribute to the success of an operation which I considered absolutely necessary in order to forestall a similar action on the part of the English. If the seals of the archives are ever broken, the rightness of my attitude will then be clearly shown. But even if it were wrong, the honesty of my own subjective opinion at that time cannot for that reason be changed in any way.
DR. EXNER: We will now talk about the war in the West. After the end of the Polish campaign, was there already an operational plan for attacks in the West?
JODL: No. To begin with, there was no plan of attack in the West; but, on the contrary, there was, particularly in the Army, a widespread opinion that the war would die a natural death if only we kept quiet in the West. That went so far that the Commander-in-Chief of the Army transformed even mobile infantry divisions into fortress divisions, and took away all their mobile equipment from them.
DR. EXNER: Did you already know during the Polish campaign what the Fuehrer's intentions were concerning the West?
JODL: The Fuehrer himself had his doubts during the Polish campaign. He too could find no plausible explanation for the complete inactivity of the French and English forces in France, who only staged a kind of a sham war with the help of their war communiqués. In reality not a single shot was fired at the front. But by the end of September, if I remember rightly, the Fuehrer did realize that once England enters a war she fights it out to the bitter end.
DR. EXNER: As an officer of the General Staff you should be able to answer the following questions better than anybody else. Could we, from a purely strategical viewpoint, have remained purely on the defensive as far as the West was concerned?
JODL: I shall be very brief since such problems are not directly connected with the Trial. I will only say that it would have been the greatest possible error of strategy, because the superiority we possessed at that time would necessarily have diminished in proportion to our delay in making aggressive use of it; for England was continually bringing further divisions over to France, just as the French were from their colonial empire. I believe I need say no more about that.
DR. EXNER: I draw your attention to Document C-62, Exhibit GB-106, Volume I of my document book, Page 56. I need not, however, read it aloud. It is a directive for the conduct of the war, and contains the basic ideas which we have already heard expressed.
JODL: One thing more is perhaps important. The Fuehrer took such a serious view of this danger, that we might not maintain our superiority in the long run, that he actually wanted to attack in the winter, although all soldiers without exception advised him against it.
DR. EXNER: Here attention might be drawn to our document, Volume I, Pages 48 and 49. It is a memorandum of the Fuehrer on the conduct of the war in the West, from which Jodl has already quoted Document L-52, Exhibit USA-540. A detailed justification of this is on Page 49 of my document book. Why then was France not attacked without violating the neutrality of Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium?
JODL: It was no trifle for the Fuehrer to create new enemies possessing a strength of 500,000 men, which the Dutch and Belgian forces represented. It resulted in our having to make the attack in the West with actually inferior forces, namely, with 110 divisions against approximately 135 of the enemy. No military commander would do that except in an emergency.
DR. EXNER: Now, what were the reasons?
JODL: We were not in a position to break through the Maginot Line at its strongest points, which would then have remained uncaptured-namely, between the Rhine and the Luxembourg border, or the Upper Rhine where the Vosges mountains were an additional obstacle in breaking through this West Wall at these points, this Maginot Line. For this purpose heavy artillery was lacking. But that was not a moral reason; it was, in fact, rather an unmoral one. The great danger lay in the fact that so protracted an attack on the fortifications exposed us to an attack in the rear by the combined English and French mobile forces thrusting through Belgium and Holland; and they were north of Lille with their engines already running, one might say, for this very task. And the decisive factor was that owing to the many reports which reached us, the Fuehrer and we ourselves, the soldiers, were definitely under the impression that the neutrality of Belgium and Holland was really only pretended and deceptive.
DR. EXNER: How did you arrive at that conclusion?
JODL: Individually the reports are not of great interest. There was, however, an endless number of reports from Canaris. They were supplemented and confirmed by letters from the Duce, Mussolini. But what was absolutely proved and completely certain, which I could see for myself on the maps every day, were the nightly flights to and fro of the Royal Air Force, completely unconcerned about neutral Dutch and Belgian territory. This necessarily strengthened the conviction in us that even if the two countries wished to-and perhaps in the beginning they did so wish --they could not possibly remain neutral in the long run.
DR. EXNER: What. danger would the occupation of Belgium and Holland by the English and French have meant to us?
JODL: Those dangers were quite clearly indicated by the Fuehrer, first, in his memorandum, Document L-52, which has been repeatedly quoted. There, on Page 48 of the document book, in the last paragraph of the page, is a reference to the enormous importance of the Ruhr-of which, incidentally, there seems to be quite sufficient evidence even today. In his address of 23 November 1939 to the Commanders-in-Chief-Document 789-PS, or Exhibit USA-23-he describes once more, on Page 59, Volume I of the document book, precisely how that danger would be for the Ruhr district if one day British and French forces were to appear by surprise in that region. He referred to it there as the "Achilles' heel," and that is just what it was for German war strategy.
DR. EXNER: And he said there, on Page 59 of our document book: "We have an Achilles' heel: the Ruhr district. The strategy of the war depends on the possession of the Ruhr district. If England and France thrust through Belgium and Holland into the Ruhr, we shall be in the very greatest danger."
JODL: I cannot, of course, or could not at the time, swear to the absolute accuracy of the numerous reports from Canaris, but the material we captured afterwards-and in this connection I would draw your attention to the conference of the Supreme War Council in London of 17 November 1939-confirmed on the whole the accuracy of the intelligence reports.
DR. EXNER: Presumably you had no reason at that time to doubt Canaris' honesty, had you?
JODL: No. At that time there was not the slightest reason for doubt.
DR. EXNER: Yes. But now some doubt has arisen as to his honesty. Now, the German attack was originally planned for November 1939. Why did the Fuehrer postpone it over and over again? We have before us no less than 17 orders postponing the attack time and again.
JODL: It is not quite correct to say that the Fuehrer had ordered the attack for mid-November, but rather he wanted to order the attack for a time when the meteorologists could predict about 6 or 7 days of clear, frosty weather. But the meteorologists failed completely in this. At times they thought they could predict such a state of the weather, and then all preparations would be made for the attack. Then they would cancel their weather forecasts again, and the final preparations for attack would be discontinued once more. That is why we so often prepared for the attack and then refrained from carrying it out. On such an occasion I received a report from Canaris to the effect that one unit of the French Army had already crossed one part of the Belgian frontier. I do not know if that is true.
DR. EXNER: You have been accused by the Prosecution of first deceiving these countries and then invading them. Please tell us what you have to say on that subject.
JODL: The same applies here as I said before. I was neither a politician, nor was I the military Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht. I was under the impression-and, indeed, an impression which could be proved-that in actual fact the neutrality of these two countries was no longer being respected. And as for the ethical code of my action, I must say that it was obedience-for obedience is really the ethical basis of the military profession. That I was far from extending this code of obedience to the blind code of obedience imposed on the slave has, I consider, been proved beyond all manner of doubt by my previous testimony. Nevertheless, you cannot get around the fact that, especially in operational matters of this particular kind, there can be no other course for the soldier but obedience. And if the Prosecution today is in a position to indict German officers here at all, it owes this only to the ethical concept of obedience of its own brave soldiers.
DR. EXNER: We now come to the Balkans. In your diary, Document 1809-PS, on 19 March you made the following entry: "The Balkans should and must remain quiet." That is on Page 61 of Volume I of my book, Exhibit GB-88, Document 1809-PS, the entry of 19 March. It says first: "The Fuehrer has returned beaming with joy and highly satisfied from the conference with the Duce. Complete agreement.... The Balkans should and must remain quiet." What does that mean?
JODL: Herr Professor, I must correct you. This is not my diary.
DR. EXNER: Yes. Well then I must put in another question here. Your diary and your diaries are always being talked about. Explain just what this is-what we are dealing with here. Is one a real diary and the other not?
JODL: There is only one diary, and that is Document 1780-PS, which is from the year 1937 to 1938, and I used to make entries in it every evening.
DR. EXNER: And now this diary, Document 1809-PS, what was that?
JODL: I kept no diary at all during the war, but, of course, I filled up dozens of small notebooks. When one of these notebooks was full I marked important passages in red on the margin, and my secretary copied them out later, as they might be important for writing the history of the war and for the official diary of the Armed Forces Operations Staff. An example would be Document 1809-PS.
DR. EXNER: Did you check what your secretary had compiled?
JODL: No, I did not check it, and never saw it again. It fell then into the hands of the Prosecution.
DR. EXNER: Now, there is still a third one which is always quoted here as a diary. That is the Diary of the Armed Forces Operations Staff.
THE PRESIDENT: You said it fell into the hands of the Prosecution. Do you mean it was not one of the documents that you handed over to the Prosecution?
JODL: No. I did not know at all where those extracts from my notebook had gone. The Prosecution captured it somewhere or other. The remainder are extracts, and partial extracts, from the official Diary of the Armed Forces Operations Staff.
DR. EXNER: And who kept this, the official Diary of the Armed Forces Operations Staff? Not you?
JODL: No. It was always kept by a highly qualified expert of my own selection.
DR. EXNER: Did you check it?
JODL: The final check was made by Dr. Schramm, a professor at the Gottingen University.
DR. EXNER: We shall hear him as a witness. Did you check the entries made in that official diary, or did you not?
JODL: I usually did not have the time; but if General Scherff read through it and discovered anything in particular he would draw my attention to it.
DR. EXNER: Well, so much for clearing that up. We now come back to the Balkan question again. It says in your so-called diary, "The Balkans should and must remain quiet." What was meant by that?
JODL: That was a brief note on the statement by the Fuehrer- namely, that he was in perfect agreement with Mussolini that the Balkans must be kept quiet.
DR. EXNER: And did we not actually try to keep the Balkan states as quiet as possible?
JODL: Yes. We made unremitting endeavors for that. Our attitude toward Yugoslavia was as considerate as if we were dealing with a prima donna. Matters went so far that when we had to prepare the Greek campaign the Fuehrer even refused a proposal from the Quartermaster General of the Army that sealed trains -the supply trains-should be sent through Yugoslavia, which would have been permissible according to international law. Moreover, we brought pressure to bear on Bulgaria so that she should not participate in the impending campaign against Greece, above all so as not to alarm Turkey. And even after the Greco-Italian campaign, the Fuehrer still hoped that a conflict, an actual war, between Germany and Greece could be avoided.
DR. EXNER: I refer here to Directive Number 18, printed on Page 66 of Volume I of our document book, which contains an extract from Document 444-PS, Exhibit GB-116, and here we find the following statement in the paragraph before the last: "The preparatory measures of the High Command for the conduct of the war in the near future are to be made in accordance with the following guiding principles..." And it is then stated in the last but one paragraph of that page: "The utilization of the railway through Yugoslavia may not be counted on for the deployment of these forces..." Well, what forced us to give up this program?