The Avalon Project : Indictment : Count ThreeThe Avalon Project at Yale Law School
Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 1
COUNT THREE - WAR CRIMES (Charter, Article 6, especially 6 (b))
VIII. Statement of the Offence
All the defendants committed War Crimes between 1 September 1939 and 8 May 1945, in Germany and in all those countries and territories
occupied by the German Armed Forces since 1 September 1939, and in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Italy, and on the High Seas.
All the defendants, acting in concert with others, formulated and executed a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit War Crimes as defined in Article 6 (b) of the Charter. This plan involved, among other things, the practice of "total war" including methods of combat and of military occupation in direct conflict with the laws and customs of war, and the commission of crimes perpetrated on the field of battle during encounters with enemy armies, and against prisoners of war, and in occupied territories against the civilian population of such territories.
The said War Crimes were committed by the defendants and by other persons for whose acts the defendants are responsible (under Article 6 of the Charter) as such other persons when committing the said War Crimes performed their acts in execution of a common plan and conspiracy to commit the said War Crimes, in the formulation and execution of which plan and conspiracy all the defendants participated as leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices.
These methods and crimes constituted violations of international conventions, of internal penal laws and of the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal law of all civilized nations, and were involved in and part of a systematic course of conduct.
(A) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF OR IN OCCUPIED TERRITORY AND ON THE HIGH SEAS
Throughout the period of their occupation of territories overrun by their armed forces the defendants, for the purpose of systematically terrorizing the inhabitants, murdered and tortured civilians, and ill-treated them, and
imprisoned them without legal process.
The murders and ill-treatment were carried out by divers means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposition of labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, including the use of hot irons and pulling out of fingernails and the performance of experiments by means of operations and otherwise on living human subjects. In some occupied territories the defendants interfered in religious matters, persecuted members of the clergy and monastic orders, and expropriated church property. They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.
Civilians were systematically subjected to tortures of all kinds, with the
object of obtaining information.
Civilians of occupied countries were subjected systematically to "protective arrests" whereby they were arrested and imprisoned without any trial and any of the ordinary protections of the law, and they were imprisoned under the most unhealthy and inhumane conditions.
In the concentration camps were many prisoners who were classified "Nacht und Nebel". These were entirely cut off from the world and were allowed neither to receive nor to send letters. They disappeared without trace and no announcement of their fate was ever made by the German authorities.
Such murders and ill-treatment were contrary to international conventions, in particular to Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
The following particulars and all the particulars appearing later in this count are set out herein by way of example only, are not exclusive of other particular cases, and are stated without prejudice to the right of the Prosecution to adduce evidence of other cases of murder and ill-treatment of civilians.
1. In France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Channel Islands (hereinafter called the "Western Countries") and in that part of Germany which lies west of a line drawn due north and south through the center of Berlin (hereinafter called "Western Germany").
Such murder and ill-treatment took place in concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the defendants, and particularly in the concentration camps set up at Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Breendonck, Grini, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Vught, and Amersfoort, and in numerous cities, towns, and villages, including Oradour-sur-Glane, Trondheim, and Oslo.
Crimes committed in France or against French citizens took the following forms:
Arbitrary arrests were carried out under political or racial pretexts: they were both individual and collective; notably in Paris (round-up of the 18th
Arrondissement by the Field Gendarmerie, round-up of the Jewish population of the 11th Arrondissement in August 1941, round-up of Jewish intellectuals in December 1941, round-up in July 1942); at Clermont-Ferrand (round-up of professors and students of the University of Strasbourg, who were taken to Clermont-Ferrand on 25 November 1943); at Lyons; at Marseilles (round-up of 40,000 persons in January 1943); at Grenoble (round-up on 24 December 1943); at Cluny (round-up on 24 December 1944); at Figeac (round-up in May 1944); at Saint
Pol de Leon (round-up in July 1944); at Locmine (round-up on 3 July1944); at Eysieux (round-up in May 1944) and at Moussey (round-up in September 1944).
These arrests were followed by brutal treatment and tortures carried out by the most diverse methods, such as immersion in icy water, asphyxiation, torture of the limbs, and the use of instruments of torture, such as the iron helmet and electric current, and practiced in all the prisons of France, notably in Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Rennes, Metz, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Nice, Grenoble, Annecy, Arras, Bethune, Lille, Loos, Valenciennes, Nancy, Troyes, and Caen. and in the torture chambers fitted up at the Gestapo centers.
In the concentration camps, the health regime and the labor regime were such that the rate of mortality (alleged to be from natural causes) attained enormous proportions, for instance:
1. Out of a convoy of 230 French women deported from Compiegne to Auschwitz in January 1943, 180 died of exhaustion by the end of four months.
2. 143 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 23 March and 6 May 1943, in Block 8 at Dachau.
3. 1,797 Frenchmen died of exhaustion between 21 November 1943, and 15 March 1945, in the Block at Dora.
4. 465 Frenchmen died of general debility in November 1944, at Dora.
5. 22,761 deportees died of exhaustion at Buchenwald between 1 January 1943, and 15 April 1945.
6. 11,560 detainees died of exhaustion at Dachau Camp (most of them in Block 30 reserved for the sick and the infirm) between 1 January and 15 April 1945.
7. 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen.
8. Out of 2,200 Frenchmen registered at Flossenburg Camp, 1,600 died from supposedly natural causes.
Methods used for the work of extermination in concentration camps were: Bad treatment, pseudo-scientific experiments (sterilization of women at Auschwitz and at Ravensbruck, study of the evolution of cancer of the womb at Auschwitz, of typhus at Buchenwald, anatomical research at Natzweiller, heart injections at Buchenwald, bone grafting and muscular excisions at Ravensbruck, etc.), gas chambers, gas wagons, and crematory ovens. Of 228,000 French political and racial deportees in concentration camps, only 28,000 survived.
In France systematic extermination was practiced also, notably at Asq on 1 April 1944, at Colpo on 22 July 1944, at Buzet-sur-Tarn on 6 July 1944 and on 17 August 1944, at Pluvignier on 8 July 1944, at Rennes on 8 June 1944, at Grenoble on 8 July 1944, at Saint Flour on 10 June 1944, at Ruisnes on 10 July 1944, at Nimes, at Tulle, and at Nice, where, in July 1944, the victims of torture were exposed to the population, and at Oradour-sur-Glane where the entire village population was shot or burned alive in the church.
The many charnel pits give proof of anonymous massacres. Most notable of these are the charnel pits of Paris (Cascade du Bois de Boulogne), Lyons, Saint-Genis-Laval, Besancon, Petit-Saint-Bernard, Aulnat, Caen, Port-Louis, Charleval, Fontainebleau, Bouconne, Gabaudet, Lhermitage Lorges, Morlaas, Bordelongue, Signe.
In the course of a premeditated campaign of terrorism, initiated in Denmark by the Germans in the latter part of 1943, 600 Danish subjects were murdered and, in addition, throughout the German occupation of Denmark, large numbers of Danish subjects were subjected to torture and ill-treatment of all sorts. In addition, approximately 500 Danish subjects were murdered, by torture and otherwise, in German prisons and concentration camps.
In Belgium between 1940 and 1944 tortures by various means, but identical in each place, were carried out at Brussels, Liege, Mons, Ghent, Namur, Antwerp, Tournai, Arlon, Charleroi, and Dinant.
At Vught, in Holland, when the camp was evacuated about 400 persons were murdered by shooting.
In Luxembourg, during the German occupation, 500 persons were murdered and, in addition, another 521 were illegally executed, by order of such special tribunals as the so-called "Sondergericht". Many more persons in Luxembourg were subjected to torture and mistreatment by the Gestapo. Not less than 4,000 Luxembourg nationals were imprisoned during the period of German occupation, and of these at least 400 were murdered.
Between March 1944 and April 1945, in Italy, at least 7,500 men, women, and children, ranging in years from infancy to extreme old age were murdered by the German soldiery at Civitella, in the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, and at other places.
2. In the U.S.S.R., i. e., in the Bielorussian, Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Karelo-Finnish, and Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republics, in 19
regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and in Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Balkans (hereinafter called "the Eastern Countries") and in that part of Germany which lies east of a line drawn north and south through the center of Berlin (herein-after called "Eastern Germany").
From 1 September 1939, when the German Armed Forces invaded Poland, and from 22 June 1941, when they invaded the U.S.S.R., the German Government and the German
High Command adopted a systematic policy of murder and ill-treatment of the civilian populations of and in the Eastern Countries as they were successively occupied by the German Armed Forces. These murders and ill-treatments were carried on continuously until the German Armed Forces were driven out of the said countries.
Such murders and ill-treatments included:
(a) Murders and ill-treatments at concentration camps and similar establishments set up by the Germans in the Eastern Countries and in Eastern Germany including those set up at Maidanek and Auschwitz.
The said murders and ill-treatments were carried out by divers means including all those set out above, as follows:
About 1,500,000 persons were exterminated in Maidanek and about 4,000,000 persons were exterminated in Auschwitz, among whom were citizens of Poland, the U.S.S.R., the United States of America, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, and other countries.
In the Lwow region and in the city of Lwow the Germans exterminated about 700,000 Soviet people, including 70 persons in the field of the arts, science, and technology, and also citizens of the United States of America, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Holland, brought to this region from other concentration camps.
In the Jewish ghetto from 7 September 1941 to 6 July 1943, over 133,000 persons were tortured and shot.
Mass shooting of the population occurred in the suburbs of the city and in the Livenitz forest.
In the Ganov camp 200,000 peaceful citizens were exterminated. The most refined methods of cruelty were employed in this extermination, such as disembowelling and the freezing of human beings in tubs of water. Mass shootings took place to the accompaniment of the music of an orchestra recruited from the persons interned.
Beginning with June 1943, the Germans carried out measures to hide the evidence of their crimes. They exhumed and burned corpses, and they crushed the bones with machines and used them for fertilizer.
At the beginning of 1944 in the Ozarichi region of the Bielorussian S.S.R.,
before liberation by the Red Army, the Germans established three concentration camps without shelters, to which they committed tens of thousands of persons from the neighboring territories. They brought many people to these camps from typhus hospitals intentionally, for the purpose of infecting the other persons interned and for spreading the disease in territories from which the Germans were being driven by the Red Army. In these camps there were many murders and
crimes.
In the Estonian S.S.R. they shot tens of thousands of persons and in one day alone, 19 September 1944, in Camp Kloga, the Germans shot 2,000 peaceful citizens. They burned the bodies on bonfires.
In the Lithuanian S.S.R. there were mass killings of Soviet citizens, namely: in Panerai at least 100,000; in Kaunas more than 70,000; in Alitus about 60,000; at Prenai more than 3,000; in Villiampol about 8,000; in Mariampol about 7,000; in Trakai and neighboring towns 37,640.
In the Latvian S.S.R. 577,000 persons were murdered.
As a result of the whole system of internal order maintained in all camps, the interned persons were doomed to die.
In a secret instruction entitled "the internal regime in concentration camps", signed personally by Himmler in 1941 severe measures of punishment were set forth for the internees. Masses of prisoners of war were shot, or died from the cold and torture.
(b) Murders and ill-treatments at places in the Eastern Countries and in the Soviet Union, other than in the camps referred to in (a) above, included), on various dates during the occupation by the German Armed Forces:
The destruction in the Smolensk region of over 135,000 Soviet citizens.
Among these, near the village of Kholmetz of the Sychev region, when the military authorities were required to remove the mines from an area, on the order of the Commander of the 101st German Infantry Division, Major-General Fisler, the German soldiers gathered the inhabitants of the village of Kholmetz and forced them to remove mines from the road. All of these people lost their lives as a result of exploding mines.
In the Leningrad region there were shot and tortured over 172,000 persons, including over 20,000 persons who were killed in the city of Leningrad by the barbarous artillery barrage and the bombings.
In the Stavropol region in an anti-tank trench close to the station of Mineralny Vody, and in other cities, tens of thousands of persons were exterminated.
In Pyatigorsk many were subjected to torture and criminal treatment, including suspension from the ceiling and other methods. Many of the victims of these tortures were then shot.
In Krasnodar some 6,700 civilians were murdered by poison gas in gas vans, or were tortured and shot.
In the Stalingrad region more than 40,000 persons were tortured and killed.
After the Germans were expelled from Stalingrad, more than a thousand mutilated bodies of local inhabitants were found with marks of torture. One hundred and thirty-nine women had their arms painfully bent backward and held by wires. From some their breasts had been cut off and their ears, fingers, and toes had been amputated. The bodies bore the marks of burns. On the bodies of the men the five pointed star was burned with an iron or cut with a knife. Some were disembowelled.
In Orel over 5,000 persons were murdered.
In Novgorod and in the Novgorod region many thousands of Soviet citizens were killed by shooting, starvation, and torture. In Minsk tens of thousands of citizens were similarly killed.
In the Crimea peaceful citizens were gathered on barges, taken out to sea and drowned, over 144,000 persons being exterminated in this manner.
In the Soviet Ukraine there were monstrous criminal acts of the Nazi
conspirators. In Babi Yar, near Kiev, they shot over 100,000 men, women, children, and old people. In this city in January 1942, after the explosion in German Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street the Germans arrested as hostages 1,250 persons—old men, minors, women with nursing infants. In Kiev they killed over 195,000 persons.
In Rovno and the Rovno region they killed and tortured over 100,000 peaceful citizens.
In Dnepropetrovsk, near the Transport Institute, they shot or threw alive into a great ravine 11,000 women, old men, and children.
In Kamenetz-Podolsk Region 31,000 Jews were shot and exterminated, including 13,000 persons brought there from Hungary.
In the Odessa Region at least 200,000 Soviet citizens were killed.
In Kharkov about 195,000 persons were either tortured to death, shot, or gassed in gas vans.
In Gomel the Germans rounded up the population in prison, and tortured and tormented them, and then took them to the center of the city and shot them in public.
In the city of Lyda in the Grodnen region on 8 May 1942, 5,670 persons were completely undressed, driven into pens in groups of 100, and then shot by machine guns. Many were thrown in the graves while they were still alive.
Along with adults the Nazi conspirators mercilessly destroyed even children.
They killed them with their parents, in groups, and alone. They killed them in children's homes and hospitals, burying the living in the graves, throwing them into flames, stabbing them with bayonets, poisoning them, conducting experiments upon them, extracting their blood for the use of the German Army, throwing them into prison and Gestapo torture chambers and concentration camps, where the children died from hunger, torture, and epidemic diseases.
From 6 September to 24 November 1942, in the region of Brest, Pinsk, Kobren, Dyvina, Malority, and Berezy-Kartuzsky about 400 children were shot by German punitive units.
In the Yanov camp in the city of Lwow the Germans killed 8,000 children in two months.
In the resort of Tiberda the Germans annihilated 500 children suffering from tuberculosis of the bone, who were in the sanatorium for the cure.
On the territory of the Latvian S.S.R. the German usurpers killed thousands of children, whom they had brought there with their parents from the Bielorussian S.S.R., and from the Kalinin, Kaluga, and other regions of the R.S.F.S.R.
In Czechoslovakia as a result of torture, beating, hanging, and shootings, there were annihilated in Gestapo prisons in Brno, Seim, and other places over 20,000 persons. Moreover, many thousands of internees were subjected to criminal treatment, beatings, and torture.
Both before the war, as well as during the war, thousands of Czech patriots, in particular Catholics and Protestants, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc., were arrested as hostages and imprisoned. A large number of these hostages were killed by the Germans.
In Greece in October 1941, the male populations between 16 and 60 years of age of the Greek villages Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia Mesovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion and Kato-Kerzilion were shot—in all 416 persons.
In Yugoslavia many thousands of civilians were murdered. Other examples are given under paragraph (D), "Killing of Hostages", below.
(B) DEPORTATION FOR SLAVE LABOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATIONS OF AND IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
During the whole period of the occupation by Germany of both the Western and the Eastern Countries it was the policy of the German Government and of the German High Command to deport able-bodied citizens from such occupied countries to Germany and to other occupied countries for the purpose of slave labor upon defense works, in factories, and in other tasks connected with the German war effort.
In pursuance of such policy there were mass deportations from all the Western and Eastern Countries for such purposes during the whole period of the occupation.
Such deportations were contrary to international conventions, in particular to \Article 46 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed. and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars of deportations, by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows:
1. From the Western Countries:
From France the following deportations of persons for political and racial
reasons took place-each of which consisted of from 1,500 to 2,500 deportees:
19403 Transports
194114 Transports
1942104 Transports
1943257 Transports
1944326 Transports
Such deportees were subjected to the most barbarous conditions of overcrowding; they were provided with wholly insufficient clothing and were given little or no food for several days.
The conditions of transport were such that many deportees died in the course of the journey, for example:
In one of the wagons of the train which left Compiegne for Buchenwald, on 17 September 1943, 80 men died out of 130;
On 4 June 1944, 484 bodies were taken out of the train at Sarrebourg;
In a train which left Compiegne on 2 July 1944 for Dachau, more than 600 dead were found on arrival, i.e. one-third of the total number;
In a train which left Compiegne on 16 January 1944 for Buchenwald, more than 100 men were confined in each wagon, the dead and the wounded being heaped in the last wagon during the journey;
In April 1945, of 12,000 internees evacuated from Buchenwald, 4,000 only were still alive when the marching column arrived near Regensburg.
During the German occupation of Denmark, 5,200 Danish subjects were deported to Germany and there imprisoned in concentration camps and other places.
In 1942 and thereafter 6,000 nationals of Luxembourg were deported from their country under deplorable conditions as a result of which many of them perished.
From Belgium between 1940 and 1944 at least 190,000 civilians were deported to Germany and used as slave labor. Such deportees were subjected to ill-treatment and many of them were compelled to work in armament factories.
From Holland, between 1940 and 1944, nearly half a million civilians were
deported to Germany and to other occupied countries.
2. From the Eastern Countries:
The German occupying authorities deported from the Soviet Union to slavery about 4,978,000 Soviet citizens.
Seven hundred and fifty thousand Czechoslovakian citizens were taken away from Czechoslovakia and forced to work in the German war machine in the interior of Germany.
On 4 June 1941, in the city of Zagreb (Yugoslavia) a meeting of German
representatives was called with the Councillor Von Troll presiding. The purpose was to set up the means of deporting the Yugoslav population from Slovenia. Tens of thousands of persons were deported in carrying out this plan.
(C) MURDER AND ILL-TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR, AND OF OTHER MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE COUNTRIES WITH WHOM GERMANY WAS AT WAR, AND OF PERSONS ON THE HIGH SEAS
The defendants murdered and ill-treated prisoners of war by denying them adequate food, shelter, clothing and medical care and attention; by forcing them to labor in inhumane conditions; by torturing them and subjecting them to inhuman indignities and by killing them. The German Government and the German High Command imprisoned prisoners of war in various concentration camps, where they were killed and subjected to inhuman treatment by the various methods set forth in paragraph VIII
(A). Members of the armed forces of the countries with whom Germany was at war were frequently murdered while in the act of
surrendering. These murders and ill-treatment were contrary to International Conventions, particularly Articles 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, and to Articles 2, 3, 4, and 6 of the Prisoners of War Convention (Geneva 1929), the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars by way of example and without prejudice to the production of
evidence of other cases, are as follows:
1. In the Western Countries:
French officers who escaped from Stalag X C were handed over to the Gestapo and disappeared; others were murdered by their guards; others sent to concentration camps and exterminated. Among others, the men of Stalag VI C were sent to Buchenwald.
Frequently prisoners captured on the Western Front were obliged to march to the camps until they completely collapsed. Some of them walked more than 600 kilometers with hardly any food; they marched on for 4-8 hours running, without being fed; among them a certain number died of exhaustion or of hunger; stragglers were systematically murdered.
The same crimes have been committed in 1943, 1944, and 1945 when the occupants of the camps were withdrawn before the Allied advance; particularly during the withdrawal of the prisoners of Sagan on 8 February 1945.
Bodily punishments were inflicted upon non-commissioned officers and cadets who refused to work. On 24 December 1943, three French non-commissioned officers were murdered for that motive in Stalag IV A.
Many ill-treatments were inflicted without motive on other ranks: stabbing with bayonets, striking with riflebutts, and whipping; in Stalag XX B the sick themselves were beaten many times by sentries; in Stalag III B and Stalag III C, worn-out prisoners were murdered or grievously wounded.
In military jails in Graudenz for instance, in reprisal camps as in Rava-Ruska, the food was so insufficient that the men lost more than 15 kilograms in a few weeks. In May 1942, one loaf of bread only was distributed in Rava-Ruska to each group of 35 men.
Orders were given to transfer French officers in chains to the camp of
Mauthausen after they had tried to escape. At their arrival in camp they were murdered, either by shooting or by gas, and their bodies destroyed in the crematorium.
American prisoners, officers and men, were murdered in Normandy during the summer of 1944 and in the Ardennes in December 1944. American prisoners were starved, beaten, and otherwise mistreated in numerous Stalags in Germany and in the occupied countries, particularly in 1943, 1944, and 1945.
2. In the Eastern Countries:
At Orel prisoners of war were exterminated by starvation, shooting, exposure, and poisoning.
Soviet prisoners of war were murdered en masse on orders from the High Command and the Headquarters of the SIPO and SD. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were tortured and murdered at the "Gross Lazaret" at Slavuta.
In addition, many thousands of the persons referred to in paragraph VIII (A) 2, above, were Soviet prisoners of war.
Prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured were handed over to SIPO and SD for shooting.
Frenchmen fighting with the Soviet Army who were captured were handed over to the Vichy Government for "proceedings".
In March 1944, 50 R.A.F. officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III at Sagan, when recaptured, were murdered.
In September 1941, 11,000 Polish officers who were prisoners of war were killed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.
In Yugoslavia the German Command and the occupying authorities in the person of the chief officials of the Police, the SS troops (Police Lieutenant General Rosener) and the Divisional Group Command (General Kubler and others) in the period 1941-43 ordered the shooting of prisoners of war.
(D) KILLING OF HOSTAGES
Throughout the territories occupied by the German Armed Forces in the course of waging aggressive wars, the defendants adopted and put into effect on a wide scale the practice of taking, and of killing, hostages from the civilian population. These acts were contrary to international conventions, particularly Article 50 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars by way of example and without prejudice to the production of
evidence of other cases, are as follows:
1. In the Western Countries:
In France hostages were executed either individually or collectively; these executions took place in all the big cities of France, among others in Paris, Bordeaux, and Nantes, as well as at Chateaubriant.
In Holland many hundreds of hostages were shot at the following among other places-Rotterdam, Apeldoorn, Amsterdam, Benschop, and Haarlem.
In Belgium many hundreds of hostages were shot during the period 1940 to 1944.
2. In the Eastern Countries:
At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot in October 1941.
At Kralevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.
(E) PLUNDER OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROPERTY
The defendants ruthlessly exploited the people and the material resources of the countries they occupied, in order to strengthen the Nazi war machine, to depopulate and impoverish the rest of Europe, to enrich themselves and their
adherents, and to promote German economic supremacy over Europe.
The defendants engaged in the following acts and practices, among others:
1. They degraded the standard of life of the people of occupied countries and caused starvation, by stripping occupied countries of foodstuffs for removal to Germany.
2. They seized raw materials and industrial machinery in all of the occupied countries, removed them to Germany and used them in the interest of the German war effort and the German economy.
3. In all the occupied countries, in varying degrees, they confiscated
businesses, plants, and other property.
4. In an attempt to give color of legality to illegal acquisitions of property,
they forced owners of property to go through the forms of "voluntary" and "legal" transfers.
5. They established comprehensive controls over the economies of all of the occupied countries and directed their resources, their production and their labor in the interests of the German war economy, depriving the local populations of the products of essential industries.
6. By a variety of financial mechanisms, they despoiled all of the occupied countries of essential commodities and accumulated wealth, debased the local currency systems and disrupted the local economies.
They financed extensive purchases in occupied countries through clearing arrangements by which they exacted loans from the occupied countries.
They imposed occupation levies, exacted financial contributions, and issued occupation currency, far in excess of occupation costs. They used these excess funds to finance the purchase of business properties and supplies in the occupied countries.
7. They abrogated the rights of the local populations in the occupied portions of the U.S.S.R. and in Poland and in other countries to develop or manage agricultural and industrial properties, and reserved this area for exclusive settlement, development, and ownership by Germans and their so-called racial brethren.
8. In further development of their plan of criminal exploitation, they destroyed industrial cities, cultural monuments, scientific institutions, and property of all types in the occupied territories to eliminate the possibility of competition with Germany.
9. From their program of terror, slavery, spoliation, and organized outrage, the Nazi conspirators created an instrument for the personal profit and aggrandizement of themselves and their adherents. They secured for themselves and their adherents:
(a) Positions in administration of business involving power, influence, and
lucrative perquisites.
(b) The use of cheap forced labor.
(c) The acquisition on advantageous terms of foreign properties, business
interests, and raw materials.
(d) The basis for the industrial supremacy of Germany.
These acts were contrary to international conventions, particularly Articles 46 to 56 inclusive of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars (by way of example and without prejudice to the production of
evidence of other cases) are as follows:
1. Western Countries:
There was plundered from the Western Countries, from 1940 to 1944, works of art, artistic objects, pictures, plastics, furniture, textiles, antique pieces, and similar articles of enormous value to the number of 21,903.
In France statistics show the following:
Removal of Raw Materials.
Coal 63,000,000 tons
Electric energy 20,976 Mkwh
Petrol and fuel 1,943,750 tons
Iron ore 74,848,000 tons
Siderurgical products 3,822,000 tons
Bauxite 1,211,800 tons
Cement 5,984,000 tons
Lime 1,888,000 tons
Quarry products 25,872,000 tons
and various other products to a total value of 79,961,423,000 francs.
Removal of Industrial Equipment.
Total: 9,759,861,000 francs, of which 2,626,479,000 francs of machine tools.
Removal of Agricultural Produce.
Total: 126,655,852,000 francs, i. e., for the principal products.
Wheat 2,947,337 tons
Oats 2,354,080 tons
Milk 790,000 hectolitres
(concentrated and in powder)460,000 hectolitres
Butter 76,000 tons
Cheese 49,000 tons
Potatoes 725,975 tons
Various vegetables 575,000 tons
Wine 7,647,000 hectolitres
Champagne 87,000,000 bottles
Beer 3,821,520 hectolitres
Various kinds of alcohol 1,830,000 hectolitres
Removal of Manufactured Products.
To a total of 184,640,000,000 francs.
Plundering.
Francs: 257,020,024,000 from private enterprise.
Francs: 55,000,100,000 from the State.
Financial Exploitation.
From June 1940 to September 1944 the French Treasury was compelled to pay to Germany 631,866,000,000 francs.
Looting and Destruction of Works of Art.
The museums of Nantes, Nancy, Old-Marseilles were looted.
Private collections of great value were stolen. In this way Raphaels, Vermeers, Van Dycks, and works of Rubens, Holbein, Rembrandt, Watteau, Boucher disappeared. Germany compelled France to deliver up "The Mystic Lamb" by Van Eyck, which Belgium had entrusted to her.
In Norway and other occupied countries decrees were made by which the property of many civilians, societies, etc., was confiscated. An immense amount of property of every kind was plundered from France, Belgium, Norway, Holland, and Luxembourg.
As a result of the economic plundering of Belgium between 1940 and 1944 the damage suffered amounted to 175 billions of Belgian francs.
2. Eastern Countries:
During the occupation of the Eastern Countries the German Government and the German High Command carried out, as a systematic policy, a continuous course of plunder and destruction including:
On the territory of the Soviet Union the Nazi conspirators destroyed or severely damaged 1,710 cities and more than 70,000 villages and hamlets, more than 6,000,000 buildings and made homeless about 25,000,000 persons.
Among the cities which suffered most destruction are Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronexh, Rostov-on-Don, Stalino, and Leningrad.
As is evident from an official memorandum of the German command, the Nazi conspirators planned the complete annihilation of entire Soviet cities.
In a completely secret order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff Ia No; 1501/41, dated 29. IX. 1941) addressed only to Staff officers, it was said:
"The Fuehrer has decided to erase from the face of the earth St Petersburg. The existence of this large city will have no further interest after Soviet Russia is destroyed. Finland has also said that the existence of this city on her new border is not desirable from her point of view. The original request of the Navy \that docks, harbor, etc. necessary for the fleet be preserved—is known to the Supreme Commander of the Military Forces, but the basic principles of carrying out operations against St. Petersburg do not make it possible to satisfy this request.
"It is proposed to approach near to the city and to destroy it with the aid of an artillery barrage from weapons of different calibers and with long air attacks....
"The problem of the life of the population and the provisioning of them is a problem which cannot and must not be decided by us.
"In this war . . . we are not interested in preserving even a part of the
population of this large city."
The Germans destroyed 427 museums, among them the wealthy museums of Leningrad, Smolensk, Stalingrad, Novgorod, Poltava, and others.
In Pyatigorsk the art objects brought there from the Rostov museum were seized.,
The losses suffered by the coal mining industry alone in the Stalin region
amount to 2,000,000,000 rubles. There was colossal destruction of industrial establishments in Makerevka, Carlovka, Yenakievo, Konstantinovka, Marinpol, from which most of the machinery and factories were removed.
Stealing of huge dimensions and the destruction of industrial, cultural, and other property was typified in Kiev. More than 4,000,000 books, magazines, and manuscripts (many of which were very valuable and even unique) and a large number of artistic productions and valuables of different kinds were stolen and carried away.
Many valuable art productions were taken away from Riga.
The extent of the plunder of cultural valuables is evidenced by the fact that 100,000 valuable volumes and 70 cases of ancient periodicals and precious monographs were carried away by ROSENBERG'S staff alone.
Among further examples of these crimes-are:
Wanton devastation of the city of Novgorod and of many historical and artistic monuments there. Wanton devastation and plunder of the city of Rovno and of its province. The destruction of the industrial, cultural, and other property in Odessa. The destruction of cities and villages in Soviet Karelia. The destruction in Estonia of cultural, industrial, and other buildings. The destruction of medical and prophylactic institutes, the destruction of agriculture and industry in Lithuania, the destruction of cities in Latvia.
The Germans approached monuments of culture, dear to the Soviet people, with special hatred. They broke up the estate of the poet Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, desecrating his grave, and destroying the neighboring villages and the Svyatogor monastery.
They destroyed the estate and museum of Leo Tolstoy, "Yasnaya Polyana," and desecrated the grave of the great writer. They destroyed in Klin the museum of Tchaikovsky and in Penaty, the museum of the painter Repin and many others.
The Nazi conspirators destroyed 1,670 Greek Orthodox churches, 237 Roman Catholic churches, 67 chapels, 532 synagogues, etc. They broke up, desecrated, and senselessly destroyed also the most valuable monuments of the Christian Church, such as Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, Novy Jerusalem in the Istrin region, and the most ancient monasteries and churches.
Destruction in Estonia of cultural, industrial, and other premises: burning down of many thousands of residential buildings; removal of 10,000 works of art; destruction of medical and prophylactic institutions; plunder and removal to Germany of immense quantities of agricultural stock including horses, cows, pigs, poultry, beehives, and agricultural machines of all kinds.
Destruction of agriculture, enslavement of peasants, and looting of stock and produce in Lithuania.
In the Latvian Republic destruction of the agriculture by the looting of all
stock, machinery, and produce.
The result of this policy of plunder and destruction was to lay waste the land and cause utter desolation.
The overall value of the material loss which the U.S.S.R. has borne, is computed to be 679,000,000,000 rubles, in state prices of 1941.
Following the occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 the defendants seized and stole large stocks of raw materials, copper, tin, iron, cotton, and food; caused to be taken to Germany large amounts of railway rolling stock, and many engines, carriages, steam vessels, and trolley buses; plundered libraries, laboratories, and art museums of books, pictures, objects of art, scientific apparatus, and furniture; stole all gold reserves and foreign exchange of Czechoslovakia, including 23,000 kilograms of gold of nominal value of 5,265,000; fraudulently acquired control and thereafter looted the Czech banks and many Czech industrial enterprises; and otherwise stole, looted, and misappropriated Czechoslovak public and private property. The total sum of
defendants' economic spoliation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945 is estimated at 2,000,000,003,000 Czechoslovak crowns.
(F) THE EXACTION OF COLLECTIVE PENALTIES
The Germans pursued a systematic policy of inflicting, in all the occupied
countries, collective penalties, pecuniary and otherwise, upon the population for acts of individuals for which it could not be regarded as collectively responsible; this was done at many places, including Oslo, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Rogaland.
Similar instances occurred in France, among others in Dijon, Nantes, and as regards the Jewish population in the occupied territories. The total amount of fines imposed on French communities add up to 1,157,179,484 francs made up as follows:
A fine on the Jewish population 1,000,000,000
Various fines 157,179,484
These acts violated Article 50, Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed. and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
(G) WANTON DESTRUCTION OF CITIES, TOWNS, AND VILLAGES AND DEVASTATION NOT JUSTIFIED BY MILITARY NECESSITY
The defendants wantonly destroyed cities, towns, and villages and committed other acts of devastation without military justification or necessity. These acts violated Articles 46 and 50 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases are as follows
1. Western Countries:
In March 1941, part of Lofoten in Norway was destroyed.
In April 1942, the town of Telerag in Norway was destroyed.
Entire villages were destroyed in France, among others Oradour-sur-Glane, Saint-Nizier and, in the Vercors, La Mure, Vassieux, La Chapelle en Vercors. The town of Saint Die was burnt down and destroyed. The Old Port District of Marseilles was dynamited in the beginning of 1943 and resorts along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts, particularly the town of Sanary, were demolished
In Holland there was most widespread and extensive destruction, not justified by military necessity, including the destruction of harbors, locks, dikes, and bridges: immense devastation was also caused by inundations which equally were not justified by military necessity.
2. Eastern Countries:
In the Eastern Countries the defendants' pursued a policy of wanton destruction and devastation: some particulars of this (without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are set out above under the heading "Plunder of Public and Private Property
In Greece in 1941, the villages of Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia, Messovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion, and Kato-Kerzilion were utterly destroyed.
In Yugoslavia on 15 August 1941, the German military command officially
announced that the village of Skela was burned to the ground and the inhabitants killed on the order of the command.
On the order of the Field Commander Hoersterberg a punitive expedition from the SS troops and the field police destroyed the villages of Machkovats, and Kriva Reka in Serbia and all the inhabitants were killed.
General Fritz Neidhold (369 Infantry Division) on 11 September 1944, gave an order to destroy the villages of Zagniezde and Udora, hanging all the men and driving away all the women and children.
In Czechoslovakia the Nazi conspirators also practiced the senseless destruction of populated places. Lezaky and Lidice were burned to the ground and the inhabitants killed.
(H) CONSCRIPTION OF CIVILIAN LABOR
Throughout the occupied territories the defendants conscripted and forced the inhabitants to labor and requisitioned their services for purposes other than meeting the needs of the armies of occupation and to an extent far out of proportion to the resources of the countries involved. All the civilians so conscripted were forced to work for the German war effort. Civilians were required to register and many of those who registered were forced to join the Todt Organization and the Speer Legion, both of which were semi-military organizations involving some military training. These acts violated Articles 46 and 52 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general
principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized
nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars, by way of example only and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:
1. Western Countries:
In France, from 1942 to 1944, 963,813 persons were compelled to work in Germany and 737,000 to work in France for the German Army.
In Luxembourg in l944 alone, 2,500 men and 500 girls were conscripted for forced labor.
2. Eastern Countries:
Of the large number of citizens of the Soviet Union and of Czechoslovakia
referred to under Count Three VIII (B) 2 above many were so conscripted for forced labor.
(I) FORCING CIVILIANS OF OCCUPIED TERRITORIES TO SWEAR ALLEGIANCE TO A HOSTILE POWER
Civilians who joined the Speer Legion, as set forth in paragraph (H) above, were required, under threat of depriving them of food, money, and identity papers, to swear a solemn oath acknowledging unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer of Germany, which was to them a hostile power.
In Lorraine, civil servants were obliged, in order to retain their positions, to sign a declaration by which they acknowledged the "return of their country to the Reich", pledged themselves to obey without reservation the orders of their chiefs and put themselves "at the active service of the Fuehrer and the Great National Socialist Germany".
A similar pledge was imposed on Alsatian civil servants by threat of deportation or internment.
These acts violated Article 45 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of international law, and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
(J) GERMANIZATION OF OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. The defendants endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of these plans and endeavors, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and introduced thousands
of German colonists.
This Plan included economic domination, physical conquest, installation of
puppet governments, purported de jure annexation and enforced conscription into the German Armed Forces.
This was carried out in most of the occupied countries including: Norway, France (particularly in the Departments of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, Moselle, Ardennes, Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle), Luxembourg, the Soviet Union; Denmark, Belgium, and Holland.
In France in the Departments of Aisne, The Nord, Meurthe and Moselle, and especially in that of Ardertnes, rural properties were seized by a German state organization which tried to have them exploited under German direction; the landowners of these exploitations were dispossessed and turned into agricultural laborers.
In the Department of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and Moselle, the methods of Germanization were those of annexation followed by conscription.
1. From the month of August 1940, officials who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Reich were expelled. On 21 September expulsions and deportation of populations began and on 22 November 1940, more than 70,000 Lorrainers or Alsatians were driven into the south zone of France. From 31 July 1941 onwards, more than 100,000 persons were deported into the eastern regions of the Reich or to Poland. All the property of the deportees or expelled persons was confiscated. At the same time, 80,000 Germans coming from the Saar or from Westphalia were installed in Lorraine and 2,000 farms belonging to French people
were transferred to Germans.
2. From 2 January 1942, all the young people of the Departments of Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, aged from 10 to 18 years, were incorporated in the Hitler Youth. The same thing was done in Moselle from 4 August 1942. From 1940 all the French schools were closed, their staffs expelled, and the German school system was introduced in the three Departments.
3. On the 28 September 1940, an order applicable to the Department of Moselle ordained the Germanization of all the surnames and Christian names which were French in form. The same thing was done from 15 January 1943, in the Departments of Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine.
4. Two orders from 23 to 24 August 1942 imposed by force German nationality on French citizens.
5. On 8 May 1941, for Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, 23 April 1941, for Moselle, orders were promulgated enforcing compulsory labor service on all French citizens of either sex aged from 17 to 25 years. From 1 January 1942 for young men and from 26 January 1942 for young girls, national labor service was effectively organized in Moselle. It was from 27 August 1942 in Upper Rhine and in Lower Rhine for young men only. The classes 1940, 1941, 1942 were called up.
6. These classes were retained in the Wehrmacht on the expiration of their time and labor service. On 19 August I942, an order instituted compulsory military service in Moselle. On 25 August 1942, the classes 1940-44 were called up in three departments. Conscription was enforced by the German authorities in conformity with the provisions of German legislation. The first revision boards took place from 3 September 1942.
Later in Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine new levies were effected everywhere on classes 1928 to 1939 inclusive. The French people who refused to obey these laws were considered as deserters and their
families were deported, while their property was confiscated.
These acts violated Articles 43, 46, 55, and 56 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
IX. Individual, group and organization responsibility for the offense stated in Count Three
Reference is hereby made to Appendix A of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the individual defendants for the offense set forth in this Count Three of the Indictment. Reference is hereby made to Appendix B of this Indictment for a statement of the responsibility of the groups and organizations named herein as criminal groups and organizations for the offense set forth in this Count Three of the Indictment.
