Part I, Page 558. I submitted this to the Tribunal at the beginning of

my presentation as Exhibit Number RF-18.

This agreement shows that the treatment of foreign workers was subject to control by the inspection department of the Allocation of Labor (Arbeitseinsatz). The Defendant Sauckel could therefore not ignore the mistreatment to which foreigners were subjected. If not prescribed it was tolerated by him.

The working conditions of workers deported to Germany provided the first evidence of the determination of the defendants to exploit the human potential of the occupied territories to the extreme limit of its strength.

First I call the attention of the Tribunal to the working hours imposed on foreign workers. The working hours were legally set at 54 hours per week by Sauckel’s decree of 22 August 1942. Actually, most foreign workers were subjected to still longer working hours. Rush work, which necessitated overtime, was mostly assigned to foreigners. It was not unusual for the latter to be forced to work 11 hours a day, that is, 66 hours a week, provided they had one day off per week.

For this purpose I quote the report of the Minister for Prisoners, Deportees, and Refugees, Document UK-78(3), which I submit as Exhibit Number RF-87. I quote Paragraph 2:

“Working Hours: The average number of working hours was 11 and sometimes 13 a day in certain factories, for example, Maschinenfabrik, Berlin (31). In Berlin-Spandau, the Alkett factory imposed 10¼ hours work on day shift and 12 hours on night shift. At Königsberg the caterpillar-tread factory, Krupp, imposed 12 hours a day.”

The work of foreign workers was remunerated by wages identical with those of the German workers.

I call the attention of the Tribunal to the illusory character of this equality. The policy of freezing wages was a permanent element of the wage and price policy pursued by the National Socialist Government; consequently, the wages of the workers employed in Germany remained limited. They were, moreover, heavily burdened with impositions and taxes. Finally and above all, they were encroached upon by fines which the German employers had the right to impose upon their workers. These fines could reach the amount of the weekly wage for slight breaches of discipline.

I submit in evidence Document D-182. These are two drafts of speeches to foreign civilian workers. One of them is intended for Russian and Polish workers. I leave this to be dealt with by my Soviet colleagues. I submit the other to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-88, and I quote:

“Draft of an address to foreign civilian workers, ‘Maintenance of Labor Discipline,’ January 1944.

“I must inform you of the following:

“The increasing lack of punctuality and absenteeism have caused the competent authorities to issue stricter regulations to ensure labor discipline whereby the competence of the employers to impose penalties has been extended. Violations of labor discipline, such as repeated tardiness, being absent without cause or excuse, leaving a job without authorization, will in the future be punished by fines up to the average daily wage. In more serious cases, for example, for repeated absences without cause or excuse, or insubordination, fines up to the average weekly salary will be imposed. In such cases, moreover, the additional ration cards may be taken away for a period up to 4 weeks. . . .”

The precariousness of wages which, after these various cuts, were actually received by the foreign workers did not allow them to raise their standard of living in the places to which they had been deported. I maintain that this standard was insufficient and that the attitude of the Arbeitseinsatz in this matter constitutes a characteristic violation of the elementary principles of the rights of man. I will confirm this by submitting to the Tribunal proof of the inadequacy of food, lodging, and medical care to which the foreign workers were entitled.

The German propaganda services issued, in France, illustrated pamphlets in which the accommodations for foreign workers were represented as being comfortable. It was quite different in reality.

I will not dwell on this point. Mr. Dodd, my American colleague, has already submitted and commented upon Document D-288, an affidavit by Dr. Jäger, chief medical officer in charge of the work camps in the Krupp factories. I will not reread this document to the Tribunal, but I would like to repeat that in this document Dr. Jäger stated that French workers—prisoners of war working in the Krupp factories—had been billeted for more than half a year in kennels, urinals, unused ovens. The kennels were 3 feet high, 9 feet long, and 6 feet wide, and the men had to sleep there five in a kennel. I submit this document, which is to support my argument, as Exhibit Number RF-89.

To this unsanitary accommodation often inadequate food was added. In this respect I wish to explain the following to the Tribunal:

I do not claim that the foreign workers deported to Germany were systematically exposed to starvation, but I do maintain that the leading principle of National Socialism finds its expression in the food regulations for foreign workers. They were decently fed only insofar as the Allocation of Labor wished to maintain or to increase their capacity for work. They were put on a starvation diet the moment when, for any reason whatsoever, their industrial output diminished. They then entered that category of unproductive forces, which National Socialism sought to destroy.

On 10 September 1942 the Defendant Sauckel declared to the First Congress of the Labor Administration of Greater Germany:

“Food and remuneration of foreign workers should be in proportion to their output and their good will.”

He developed this point of view in documents which I am offering in evidence to the Tribunal.

I refer, in the first place, to the letter from Sauckel to Rosenberg, which is Document 016-PS and which I shall not read since it has already been read to the Tribunal by my American colleagues. I wish, however, to draw the Tribunal’s attention to the second paragraph, Page 20, of this document, which concerns the food supply of prisoners of war and foreign workers:

“All these people must be fed, lodged, and treated in such a way that they may be exploited to the maximum with a minimum of expense.”

I ask the Tribunal to remember this formula—the aim to exploit the foreign labor to the maximum at a minimum of expense. It is the same concept which I find in a letter of Sauckel of 14 March 1943 addressed to all Gauleiter. It is Document 633-PS, which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-90:

“Subject: Treatment and care of foreign labor.

“Not only our honor and prestige and, still more than that, our National Socialist ideology which is opposed to the methods of plutocrats and Bolshevists, but also cool common sense in the first place demand proper treatment of foreign labor, including even Soviet-Russians. Slaves who are underfed, diseased, resentful, despairing, and filled with hate, will never yield that maximum of output which they might achieve under normal conditions.”

I skip now to the next to the last paragraph:

“But since we will need foreign labor for many years and the possibility of replacing them is very limited I cannot exploit them on a short-term policy nor can I allow wasting of their working capacity.”

The criminal concept revealed by these documents is particularly manifest in the establishment of the food sanctions which were inflicted on the deported workers. I refer to Document D-182, which I have just submitted as Exhibit Number RF-88, and I remind the Tribunal that it provides the possibility of inflicting on recalcitrant workers the penalty of a partial suppression of food rations. Moreover, the foreign workers, who were all the more exposed to diseases and epidemics since they were poorly lodged and fed, did not enjoy proper medical care.

I submit in evidence a report made on 15 June 1944 by Dr. Février, head of the health service of the French Delegation with the German Labor Front. It is Document F-536. I submit it as Exhibit Number RF-91, and I quote from the last paragraph at Page 15 of the French original, Page 13 of the German translation:

“At Auschwitz, in a very fine camp of 2,000 workers, we find tubercular people who were recognized as such by the local German doctor of the Arbeitsamt going about freely; but this doctor neglects to repatriate them out of hostile indifference. I am now taking steps to obtain their repatriation.

“In Berlin, in a clean hospital, well lighted and ventilated, where the chief doctor, a German, makes the rounds only once in 3 weeks, and a female Russian doctor every morning distributes uniformly the same calming drops to every patient, I have seen a dozen consumptives, three of them released prisoners. All of them except one have gone beyond the extreme limit at which treatment might still have had some chance of proving effective.”

No statistics have been made of foreign workers who died during their deportation. Professor Henri Dessaille, Medical Inspector General of the Labor Ministry, estimates that 25,000 French workers died in Germany during their deportation. But not all of them died of diseases. To slow extermination was added swift extermination in concentration camps.

The disciplinary regime over the foreign workers was, in fact, of a severity contrary to the rights of man. I have already given some example of penalties to which the deported workers were exposed. There were still more. The workers who were deemed recalcitrant by their supervisors were sent to special reprisal camps, the ‘Straflager’; some disappeared in political concentration camps.

I remind the Tribunal that I have already, indirectly, proved this fact. In the course of my presentation I submitted under Exhibit Number RF-44, the ordinance of Sauckel of 29 March 1943 which extends the term of the labor contracts by the length of time which the workers spent in prison or in internment camps.

I will not dwell on this point. Mr. Dodd, my American colleague, has submitted to the Tribunal the documents which prove the shipment of labor deportees to concentration camps. For the rest, I take the liberty of referring the Tribunal to the presentation which M. Dubost will deliver to the Tribunal within a few days.

I emphasize, however, the significance of this persecution of foreign workers. It constitutes the completion of the crime of their deportation and the proof of the coherence of the German policy of extermination.

I have already reported to the Tribunal the events which marked the civilian mobilization of foreign workers for the service of National Socialist Germany. I have shown how the device of compulsory labor was inserted into the general framework of the policy of German domination. I have denounced the methods employed by the defendants to enforce the recruitment of foreign labor. I have emphasized the importance of the deportations undertaken by the Arbeitseinsatz, and I have recalled how the deported workers were treated and ill-treated.

The policy of compulsory labor includes all the infractions under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal: Violation of international conventions, violation of the rights of man, and crimes against common law.

All the defendants bear functional responsibility for these infractions. It was the Reich Cabinet which set up the principles of the policy of enforced recruitment; the High Command of the German Armed Forces carried them out in the workshops of the Wehrmacht, the Navy, and the Air Force; the civilian administrations made use of it to support the German war economy.

I retain more particularly the guilt of certain of the defendants: Göring, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, co-ordinated the planning and the execution of the plans for the recruitment of foreign workers. Keitel, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, counter-signatory of Hitler’s decrees, integrated compulsory labor with his manpower policy. Funk, Reich Minister of Economics, and Speer, Minister for Armament and War Production, based their program of war production on compulsory labor. Sauckel, finally, Plenipotentiary General for Allocation of Labor, proved to be the resolute and fanatical agent—to use his own words—of the policy of compulsory enrollment which, in Holland, was promoted and carried out by Seyss-Inquart.

The Tribunal will appreciate their respective responsibility. I request the Tribunal to condemn the crime of mobilization of foreign workers. I ask the Tribunal to restore the dignity of human labor which the defendants have attempted to degrade.

M. CHARLES GERTHOFFER (Assistant Prosecutor for the French Republic): Mr. President, Your Honors, the French Prosecution is in charge of the part of the Indictment concerning the deeds charged to the defendants which were perpetrated in the countries of Western Europe, as provided for by Article VI of the Charter of 8 August 1945. This text provides for violations of the laws and customs of war which concern persons on the one hand and private and public property on the other hand.

The part of the Indictment concerning persons, that is, ill-treatment inflicted on prisoners of war and on civilians, torture, murder, deportation, as well as devastations not justified by military exigencies, were presented to you and will be presented to you by my colleagues. M. Delpech and I will have the honor to present to you the pillage of private and public property.

The Tribunal will have to be informed of the most arid part of the presentation of the French prosecution. We shall strive to present it as briefly as possible, to shorten the quotation of the numerous documents submitted to the Tribunal, and to avoid, whenever possible, statistical material in order to bring only the principal facts to light. Nevertheless, sometimes we will go into detail in order that the Tribunal may appreciate certain characteristic facts now charged to the defendants, facts which are customarily designated as “economic looting.”

Before approaching this subject, I should like to ask the Tribunal’s permission to express the gratitude of the Prosecutors of the Economic Section of the French Delegation to their colleagues of the other Allied delegations, and particularly to those of the American section of the economic case who have been kind enough to put at our disposal a great number of German documents discovered by the United States Army, and important material means for their reproduction in a sufficient number of copies.

I shall have the honor of presenting in succession to the Tribunal: 1) General remarks on the economic looting of the occupied countries of Western Europe, 2) the special case of Denmark, 3) that of Norway, 4) that of Holland. My colleague, M. Delpech, will present 5), the part covering Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. I shall have the honor of presenting to you 6), the part relating to France, and also the conclusion. Finally, a special statement, 7), will be devoted to the works of art.

In the course of the presentation, we shall submit a certain number of documents. We shall quote only the passages which seem to us the most important, when the same document relates to several different questions; we shall quote those excerpts concerning each question when it is presented, indicating each time the reference in the document book, since it is impossible to make known to you all the excerpts at the same time because of the complexity of facts.

In his speeches and in his writings, Hitler never concealed the economic aims of the aggression of which Germany was to become guilty. The theories of race and living space increased the envy of the Germans at the same time as they stimulated their bellicose instincts.

After having conquered Austria and Czechoslovakia without bloodshed, they turned against Poland and prepared to attack the countries of Western Europe, where they hoped to find what was lacking to assure their domination.

This fact is revealed in particular by Document EC-606, discovered by the United States Army, which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-92. This is the minutes of a conference held by the Defendant Göring on 30 January 1940, with Lieutenant Colonel Conrath and Director Lange of the machine-constructing group attending. The following is the principal passage of the minutes:

“Field Marshal Göring told me at the beginning that he had to inform me of the intentions of the Führer and of the economic measures resulting therefrom.

“He stated: The Führer is firmly convinced that he shall succeed in bringing about a decisive conclusion of the war in 1940 by making a great attack in the West. He assumes that Belgium, Holland, and northern France will fall into our possession; he, the Führer, forms his opinion on the calculation that the industrial areas of Douai and Lens, of Luxembourg, of Longwy and Briey might, as far as raw materials are concerned, replace the deliveries from Sweden.

“Therefore, the Führer has decided, in disregard for the future, to stake fully our reserves of raw materials, at the expense of possible later years of war. The soundness of this resolution is supported with the Führer by the view that the best stocks are not stocks of raw materials but stocks of finished war materials. Moreover, when the aerial war begins, it must be taken into account that our finishing factories may be destroyed. The Führer is furthermore of the opinion that the maximum output must be achieved in 1940 and consequently that long-range production programs should be put aside in order to accelerate those which can be terminated in 1940.”

When the invasion began the countries of Western Europe were glutted with products of every kind; but after 4 years of methodical looting and enslavement of production, these countries are ruined, and their entire population is physically weakened as the result of rigorous restrictions.

To achieve such results, the Germans used every method, particularly violence, trickery, and blackmail.

The purpose of the present statement will be to specify the main spoliations ordered by the German leaders in the countries of Western Europe and to show that they constitute, as far as they are concerned, War Crimes which come under the jurisdiction of the International Military Tribunal for major war criminals.

It is not possible to draw an exact balance sheet of the German looting and of the profit derived by them as the result of the enslavement of production in the occupied countries. On one hand, we do not have enough time; on the other hand, we find ourselves faced with actual impotence resulting from the secret nature of certain operations and the destruction of archives through acts of war or deliberate destruction at the time of the German rout.

Nevertheless, the documents now collected and the information gathered make it possible to give a minimum estimate of the extent of spoliation. However, I shall ask the Tribunal’s permission to make three preliminary remarks:

1) The numerous acts of individual looting committed by the Germans will not be referred to by this presentation since they come under the competence of a different jurisdiction.

2) We shall only mention for the Record the incalculable, economic results of German atrocities, for instance, the financial loss experienced by the immediate relatives of breadwinners murdered, or the loss suffered by certain victims of ill-treatment, who are totally or partially, temporarily or permanently, incapacitated for work, or the damage resulting from the destruction of localities or buildings for the purpose of vengeance or intimidation.

3) Finally, gentlemen, we shall not discuss the damage resulting from purely military operations, which cannot be considered as economic results of War Crimes. When damage caused by military operations is referred to, some separate valuation will be necessary.

With the permission of the Tribunal, I shall make a few general remarks on the economic looting of Western European occupied territories. Economic looting is to be understood as the removal of wealth of every kind, as well as the enslavement of the production of the various occupied countries.

To reach such results in countries which were generally highly industrialized and where numerous stocks of manufactured goods and abundant reserves of agricultural products existed, the German venture was faced with real difficulties.

At first, although the Germans had used this procedure to its maximum extent, requisitions were not adequate. In fact, they had to find the opportunities for ferreting out all sorts of things, which were sometimes hidden by the inhabitants, and on the other hand, they had to maintain for their own profit the economic activity of these countries.

The simplest way of becoming masters of the distribution of existing products and of production was to take possession of almost all means of payment and, if necessary, to impose by force their distribution in exchange for products or services, at the same time combating the rise of prices.

Faced with starvation the populations were thus naturally forced to work directly or indirectly for the benefit of Germany.

The first part of this presentation will be divided into five chapters: 1) Seizure of currency by the Germans; 2) sequestering of the production of the occupied territories; 3) individual purchases, which should not be confused with individual acts of looting; 4) the black market, organized by and for the profit of Germany; 5) examination of the question of economic looting from the viewpoint of international law and in particular of the Hague Convention.

First chapter—seizure of currency by the Germans:

To have at their disposal all means of payment, the Germans used almost the same methods in the various occupied countries. First, they took two principal measures. One was the issue of paper money, by ordinance of 9 May 1940, published on Page 69 of the _Verordnungsblatt für die besetzten französischen Gebiete_, official German gazette, which will subsequently be referred to by its official abbreviation VOBIF, which I submit to the Tribunal as Document Number RF-93. This ordinance concerned Denmark and Norway; and on 19 May 1940 was rendered applicable to the occupied territories of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France. The Germans proceeded to issue bank notes of the Reichskreditkasse which were legal tender only in the respective occupied countries.

The Germans then took a second measure: The blocking of existing currency within the occupied countries as a result of the ordinance of 10 May 1940, published in VOBIF, Page 58, which I submit as Document Number RF-94. In regard to Holland these ordinances are those of 24 June, 14 August, 16 August, and 18 September 1940, which are submitted as Document Numbers RF-95, 96, 97, and 98. In regard to Belgium these ordinances are those of 17 June and 22 July 1940, submitted as Document Numbers RF-99 and 100.

These measures, notably the issuing of paper money, left exclusively to the whim of the Germans without any possible control on the part of the financial administrations of the occupied countries, were to serve, as we shall see, as powerful means of pressure to impose the payment of enormous war tributes under the pretext of maintaining occupation troops as well as alleged payment agreements known as “clearing,” which functioned almost exclusively to the benefit of the occupying power.

The Germans thus procured for themselves, under false pretenses, means of payment from which they profited by realizing considerable sums for their sole benefit.

All agricultural and industrial products, raw materials, goods of every kind, or services, for which Germany apparently made regular payment by means of either notes of the Reichskreditkasse or by so-called clearing agreements or by war tributes known as indemnities for the maintenance of occupation troops, were exacted with full knowledge that no redemption would be forthcoming. Thus, we can be sure that, as a rule, such regulations were purely fictitious and were the most regularly used fraudulent procedure to effect the economic looting of the occupied countries of Western Europe.

These questions will be examined in a more exact manner later on. I shall limit myself for the moment to pointing out to the Tribunal that to effect the economic looting of the occupied countries with their own money, it was necessary that this money should preserve an appreciable purchasing power. Therefore, the efforts of the Germans were directed toward stabilization of prices. A severe regulation prohibiting rises in prices was subsequently promulgated by several decrees—VOBIF, Pages 8, 60, and 535, submitted as Document Number RF-101. Nevertheless, the application of such measures could not prevent economic laws from playing their part. The payment of excessive tributes, considering the resources of the invaded countries, could not but have as their primary result a continuous rise of prices. The leaders of the Reich were perfectly aware of the situation and watched very attentively the rise in prices, which they were attempting to moderate.

This we know principally from the secret reports of Hemmen, President of the Armistice Commission for German Economic Questions, which we will discuss when we examine the particular case of France.