Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: The Impoverishment of Europe 
Summary: The French case against the Nazis notes the vast pillage,
         leaving Western Europe incapable of feeding either itself
         or a defeated Germany.
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: 

Archive/File: holocaust/germany/nuremberg west.001
Last-Modified: 1994/12/04

   During their discussion of the French presentation of the case
   relating to Crimes Against Humanity in Western Europe, the Tusas
   included the following material. (In light of discussions about
   Bacque's "Other Losses," and conditions in Europe immediately
   following the surrender of Germany, I feel it is important to
   understand the situation clearly. knm)

   "More than any other case, theirs [the French] was based on
   documents. It was reckoned that of the 2,100 finally submitted to
   the court during the prosecution case, 800 had been introduced by
   the French. The onslaught of their documents was inexorable. Nearly
   all of them were German - unanswerable. Backing them, providing the
   statistics of Nazi crime, were the national reporters from each of
   the countries for whom France spoke.

   The facts and figures of the economic spoilation of Europe told of
   theft and destruction almost beyond imagining - the more so because
   each report warned that the scale of pillage and havoc had been so
   great that it was still not possible to estimate the final totals.
   Some of the figures were difficult to grasp and they certainly made
   little impact on many in court or in the Press. For instance, it
   needed a degree of financial knowledge and understanding of each
   country's economy to absorb such figures as those for financial
   seizures over and above what was legally permitted for occupation
   costs; in Denmark, the illegal seizures had been 8,000 million
   crowns, in Belgium 130,000 million Belgian francs. It helped when
   such figures were put into perspective: in France, the maximum sum
   which Germany could legally demand for the maintenance of her army
   of occupation was 74,000 million francs; yet the final French
   payment had come to 745,000 million, ten times larger. It was hard
   to picture information such as that the Germans had requisitioned
   without payment 70 million crowns worth of Danish agricultural
   produce each month or seized 1,100 million guilders worth of
   machinery and oil as they left Holland. The specific was easier to
   envisage: from Norway alone the Nazis had taken 30,000 tons of
   meat, 61,000 tons of dairy produce, 26,000 tons of fish, 68,000
   tons of fruit and vegatables, 112,000 tons of fats, 300,000 tons of
   hay and straw, 13,000 tons of soap; in Holland they seized 600,000
   hogs, 275,000 cows, 489 locomotives, 28,950 freight cars, and even
   1 million bicycles and 600,000 radio sets.

   As the torrent of statistics poured out, the mind tended to block
   off. Yet those who stopped to reflect realized what these figures
   had finally added up to. As J. Emlyn Williams, of the 'Christian
   Science Monitor' put it, this part of the French case explained why
   Europe was now in 'such a gigantic mess. It was not simply the
   result of the war but also the manner in which the Germans waged
   it, leaving those people they overran without means for their own
   recovery at the war's end and therefore of supplying help to the
   defeated Germans themselves.'<26> Bombing and fighting by both
   sides had done much to destroy Europe. But pillage by the Germans
   alone also wrought a terrible destruction and left a legacy of
   poverty and hunger."(Tusa, 190-1)

   <26> The Christian Science Monitor, 24 January.

                           Work Cited

   Tusa, Ann & John.  The Nuremberg Trial.  Birmingham, Alabama: The
   Notable Trials Library, Division of Gryphon Editions, Inc., 1990

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