Particulars by way of examples and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:

1. In the Western Countries:

French officers who escaped from Oflag 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 48 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The same crimes have been committed in 1943, 1944 and 1945 when the occupants of the camps were withdrawn before the Allied advance; particularly during the withdrawal of the prisoners of Sagan on 8th February 1945.

Bodily punishments were inflicted upon non-commissioned officers and cadets who refused to work. On 24th December, 1943 three French N.C.O's were murdered for that motive in Stalag IV A. Many ill:treatments were inflicted without motive on other ranks: stabbing with bayonets, striking with rifle-butts and whip-

[Page 42]

ping; 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 gaols 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, 1 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 Stalag 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.

[Transcription note: The above charge was included at the insistence of the Soviets, even though it was clear to American, British and French prosecutors that the Soviets themselves had been responsible. See

katynb-hearing

and

katyn-into-indictment. knm. 1996/05/04]

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 Kuebler 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,

[Page 43]

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 Chateabriant.

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

[Page 44]

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 loan 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 USSR 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:

[Page 45]

1. Western Countries:

There was plundered from the Western Countries from 1940 to 1944, works of art, artistic objects, pictures, plastics, furniture, tiles, 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

Removal of Agricultural Produce

Wheat................................................2,947,337 tons
Oats...................................................2,354,080 tons
Milk.......................................................790,000 hectolitres
Milk (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 francs.

[Page 46]

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 Luxemburg.

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, Voronezh, 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 completely secret order of the Chief of the Naval Staff (Staff Ia No. 1601/41, dated 29th September 1941), addressed only to Staff officers, it was said:

"The Fuehrer has decided to erase from the face of the earth St. Petersburgh. The existence of this large city will have no further interest after Soviet Russia is destroyed. Finland has

[Page 47]

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. Petersburgh 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 calibres 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, Mariupol, 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 Ravno 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 original plaintext version of this file is available via ftp.

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