After my arrival in Berlin I tried to interest HITLER in the case. He was consistently "absent". Then I turned to GOERING. I deduced from his remarks that KETTELER had been murdered by the Gestapo. But GOERING claimed a large scale investigation was in progress, and the Gestapo had conclusive evidence that KETTELER had been preparing an attack on HITLER. I declared that was entirely impossible. He refused to show me. the documents. Then things took a discomfiting turn. advised that the Gestapo had ascertained Herr von KETTELER had taken the embassy's secret documents to Switzerland. I was asked for a statement.

I admitted that, in truth, it had been decided 4 February, after my surprising recall, to safeguard part of my reports to the Fuehrer between 1934 and 1938. I declared furthermore, that the papers included no "secret reports" in the sense of any kind of state secret; they consisted only of political reports which were to serve for the clarification of the policy which I had conducted, in case that should ever become necessary. Herr von KETTELER, I stated, had told me that he had deposited these reports with a friend in Switzerland. I did not know just where, I said. Since no one but my (female) secretary had known of this action, our suspicion immediately fell on KETTELER's intimate friend and confidant, who had followed us to Vienna from the Vice-Chancery as a Gestapo agent, but posing as a newspaper man. He had apparently told him of his trip to Switzerland and of the "documents". He had apparently talked to him often of his hate for HITLER and the Party. He might also have remarked in conversation that HITLER should be assassinated. Now it seemed quite obvious that this devil had Herr von BOSE on his conscience, and had also handed Herr von KETTELER over to the Gestapo.

I registered murder charges with the Vienna district attorney against a person or persons unknown. Of course nothing happened.

Four weeks later a body was fished out of the Danube at Fischamend; it was identified as Herr von KETTELER's remains. The district attorney ordered an autopsy in which the Gestapo participated, of course. It was determined that there was nothing to indicate that Herr von KETTELER had died an unnatural death. Thereupon the district attorney declared the case closed. We laid the friend to his last rest in the soil of our Westphalian home country. I had lost a fighting comrade, devoted to me for life, who had passionately supported my political work and just as passionately held the Party and its organs in contempt. For

he not only thought them corrupt, but also incapable of doing a statesmanlike job. Over his grave I thought bitterly that he, too, had sacrificed his life for the purity of service for the fatherland.

My second secretary, Count KAEGENECK, was filled with fear that the Gestapo intended a similar fate for him. He fled to friends in Sweden for several months. I withdrew to Wallerfangen myself, and awaited an accusation of illegal disposal of state documents abroad.

It never came. The Gestapo was probably disappointed that it could not find any conspiracy against HITLER therein, but only truthful reports on my work for the Reich.

The interested European powers accepted the Austrian "Anschluss" without much ado. They convinced themselves of two facts:

Austria's membership in the Reich for a thousand years made its desire for a union incontestable, and thus broke the fetters of an unnatural dictate. Its economic structure was doomed and union with the Reich was the only hope for recovery.

The act of 12 March 1938 was supplemented and confirmed by a plebiscite. It is my opinion that any plebiscite held under neutral control would have had approximately the same results. It was the following question which now pre-occupied the interested powers: What influence on the Reich's foreign policy will the "Anschluss" have, since it has increased the Reich's power? Wise statesmanship could have set an example here. It would have granted Austria far-reaching autonomy in its domestic affairs, leaving it its native character, pacifying the opposition and showing the world that a work of peace and not a suppression of spirit was under way.

The path of foreign policy was mapped out already: Continued elimination of the errors of Versailles through peaceful and conciliatory agreement. The most pressing of these mistakes was the Polish corridor. The problem of the Sudeten German minorities was neither very urgent nor of such immediate influence on the Reich as the separation of East Prussia and the continuous uneasiness of our relations with Poland.

None of these steps was taken by the Reich. There was no vestige of autonomy in Austria. The Party machine ruled. And it ruled by hatred and persecution of all who had disagreed. HITLER appointed the least fit man he could find as High Commissioner Gauleiter BUERCKEL of the Saar and Palatinate.

I knew this man from personal experience; in 1934 I had handed over to him my office of "Reich High Commissioner for

the Saar". He was a vaunted school teacher without administrative know-how and politically inept; furthermore his past was the subject of much disagreement.

HITLER was said to have chosen him because he had so successfully put over the Saar plebiscite of 1935. It must be stated that the Party had no merit whatsoever in this vote, which was prepared and put through by the League of Nations. On the contrary, the Party rather endangered the success of the vote, because its wild advocates antagonized all Socialists, Centrum people, and other political varieties who lived in the Saar. At that time I succeeded in persuading HITLER to promise that the introduction of the Party into the Saar would be prohibited until the plebiscite, that none of the existing institutions would be molested, and that the whole program would be contained in the slogan: "The Saar has a purely German population, therefore it remains German."

This man came to Vienna with a false reputation and experienced a fiasco which would better be described by its victims. It was a fiasco all along the line. And BUERCKEL would not have been true to his character if he had not also had poor Cardinal INNITZER insulted by Party rowdies and thrown out of his demolished palace.

My friends later told me what happened when HITLER could no longer keep BUERCKEL in the post and replaced him with Herr von SCHIRACH. The departing Gauleiter asked Austria for a farewell present in recognition of his civilizing and political achievements: a furnished villa.

And the Fuehrer? Instead of being liberal with his native country he incarcerated his opponents-right up to the end of the tragedy. How often I have pleaded with him and HIMMLER to let justice and mercy prevail. I was successful in very few

cases.

Now all those will make themselves heard who have suffered from the contempt of law and justice in Austria. They will seek to incriminate all who had taken interest and part in an active solution of the "Anschluss" problem.

But this must not prevent the statesman who has to shape Europe's tomorrow from viewing the problem independent of all sentimentality. For this problem remains a central point of European history and thinking; if, indeed, this old continent is to remain within the orbit of the occidental spirit.

The makers of the peace face a terribly difficult task.

It is patent to all that the technical progress alone, not to mention the pressure of economy, has made Europe much too small

for the traditional discord between races, peoples, and nations who were molded in borders formed by accident. We will cease to exist if we do not become reconciled, if we do not bury the old hatchets and learn to think as Europeans. With the Russian colossus, Asia has advanced as far as the Danish border, Thuringia-Saxony, and past Vienna to the Adriatic. Is the migration of peoples to repeat itself? Or do the old cultured nations still have the strength to defend their heritage?

Our hopes for an evolution inside Soviet Russia are considerable. The broad contact which has now been established with the Western World cannot fail to take effect. Russia has become the dominating power in the Baltic and a decisive factor in the Eastern Mediterranean, and has thus assumed new tasks, European ones, which largely necessitate a heretofore unknown solidarity of interests with Europe. It is now the strongest power in our hemisphere, and will attract the small nations of Eastern and Southeastern Europe like a magnet-particularly the Slav nations.

America will take no decisive part in this irrepressible evolution. America is still obsessed with the idea that Germany, demolished as she is to her very basis, can still prepare for a war of revenge. America does not realize that Russia's fabulous rise has swept away all basis for a return to Europe's territorial, political, and spiritual status quo ante.

Only one great power remains outside our continent which should and must have a passionate interest in Europe, because that power's own existence demands it: England.

Thus it is evident that a peaceful evolution of Europe can depend on only three factors: Russia, England, and Germany; the latter will, of course, be a completely passive partner at present. But we also have a few assets to show for the future. There is, as a first example, the revival of our historically proven friendship with the Russian people.

The central European nations have invariably derived good advantage, when we (Germany and Russia) lived in peace and friendship-when Germany was not hostile, but showed understanding of Russia's legitimate vital interests, in the Baltic as well as in the Mediterranean. Therefore our close collaboration is a decisive factor for the future.

But today, after the conclusion of the National Socialist tragedy, our people is weakened almost to the point of death. Unless the peacemakers of tomorrow allow it, our condition does not permit the rendering of service to the spiritual and material recuperation of the occidental heritage. Indeed, no weapons and

no armament industry are necessary for that. Moral factors are necessary.

We must be given the assurance that the new world security organization, unlike the League of Nations, will guarantee peace and progress for all, including the vanquished. We must, above all, be given a chance to demonstrate that we wish to think and act as Europeans. Once the criminals against human and divine law have been eliminated, we, as a nation, must be given a chance. It is above all necessary to maintain the biological substance of our nation, by drawing Germany's borders in a manner which takes account of this controlling viewpoint. As a second asset, we will then be able to help preserve Europe through the reconstruction of our almost destroyed nationality.

In this context, and from this viewpoint, must also Austria's future be decided.

Austria could not live in her former shape. If she is joined with her Successor State, it will have to follow the path of the Slav nations. Therefore she should be joined with Bavaria, and both should be left in a loose federal junction with the remainder of the German Reich, enjoying full autonomy.

The form is unimportant. After all, the long-term BritishAmerican occupation can at any time alter a statute if they find it necessary for their purpose to alter it, and if it does not meet European circumstances.

Such wise statesmanlike decisions would assure me that the "Anschluss" and the years through which Austria lived together with its German people, in spite of suffering and sacrifice, will not have been lived in vain.

As the German people's biological nucleus, Austria would have a new, greater, truly European mission!

COPY OF DOCUMENT 3309-PS

AFFIDAVIT OF OTTO MEISSNER

I, OTTO MEISSNER, being first duly sworn on oath, state: 1. I was Chief of the Presidential Chancellory from 1920 to 1924 under President Ebert; from 1924 to 1934 under President von Hindenburg; and from 1934 to 1945 under Hitler.

2. At the same time Chancellor BRUENING took office, the right wing parties, and in particular the National Socialists had been gaining votes in all recent local and regional elections. It was doubtful whether the Reichstag with its strong left wing representations corresponded with the feelings of the German