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THE PRESIDENT: Will the Chief Prosecutor for the French Republic continue the reading of the Indictment.

M. MOUNIER: 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 Führer and of National Socialist greater 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 endeavoured to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. They endeavoured to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of these plans, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and replaced them by thousands of German colonists.

Their 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 especially in Norway, France (particularly in the Departments of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, Moselle, Ardennes, Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle), in Luxembourg, the Soviet Union, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland.

In France in the Departments of Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle, and especially in that of the Ardennes, rural properties were confiscated by a German state organization which tried to work them under German management.

The landowners of these holdings were dispossessed and turned into agricultural laborers. In the Departments 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 September 21st the expulsion and deportation of population began, and on November 22d, 1940 more than 70,000 Lorrainers or Alsatians were driven into the south zone of France. From July 31, 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 measures were taken in the 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 28th of September 1940 an order applicable to the Department of the Moselle ordained the Germanization of all the surnames and Christian names which were French in form. The same measure was taken on the 15th January 1943 in the Departments of Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine.

4. Two orders of the 23rd and 24th August 1942 imposed by force German nationality on French citizens.

5. On the 8th May 1941 for Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, and on the 23rd April 1941 for the Moselle, orders were promulgated enforcing compulsory labor service on all French citizens of either sex aged from 17 to 25 years. From the 1st January 1942 for young men, and from the 26th January 1942 for young women, national labor service was effectively organized in the Moselle. This measure came into force on the 27th August 1942 in Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine, but for young men only. The classes of 1940, 1941, 1942 were called up.

6. These contingents were drafted into the Wehrmacht on the expiration of their time in the labor service.

On the 19th August 1942 an order instituted compulsory military service in the Moselle, and on the 25th August 1942 the contingents of 1940 to 1944 were called up in the three Departments.

Conscription was enforced by the German authorities in conformity with the provisions of German legislation. The first induction board took place on the 3rd September 1942. Later, in the Upper Rhine and Lower Rhine new levies were effected everywhere of the contingents from 1928 to 1939 inclusive. The French men 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 Crimes 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 charge set forth in 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 crime set forth in this part three of the Indictment.

THE PRESIDENT: I will now call upon the Chief Prosecutor for the Soviet Union.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL J. A. OZOL (Assistant Prosecutor for the U.S.S.R.): COUNT THREE—WAR CRIMES.

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, 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 undernutrition, 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 with religious services, 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.

[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”).

From the 1st September 1939, when the German Armed Forces invaded Poland, and from the 22nd 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 1½ million persons were, exterminated in Maidanek and about 4 million 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.