THE PRESIDENT: Then, the witness can leave.
[_The witness left the stand._]
M. FAURE: I shall ask the Tribunal to be kind enough to take the brief
and the document book, bearing the title “Denmark.”
The Tribunal knows that Denmark was invaded on 9 April 1940 in
violation, as in other cases, of treaties, and particularly, of a treaty
which was not very old, since it was the Non-Aggression Treaty which had
been concluded on 31 May 1939.
Inasmuch as Denmark was not in a position to offer armed resistance to
this invasion, the Germans sought to establish and maintain the fiction
according to which that country was not an occupied country. Therefore
they did not set up a civil administration with powers to issue
regulations as they were to do in the case of Belgium and Holland.
On the other hand, there was a military command, inasmuch as troops were
garrisoned there. But this military command, contrary to what happened
in the other occupied countries, did not exercise any official authority
by issuing ordinances or general regulations.
In spite of this fiction, the Germans did commit in this country which
they pretended they were not occupying, usurpations of sovereignty.
These usurpations were all the more blatant, inasmuch as they had no
juridical justification whatsoever, even from the Nazi point of view.
During the first period, which extended to the middle of 1943, German
usurpations were discreet and camouflaged. There were two reasons for
this. The first was that one had to take into account international
public opinion, inasmuch as Denmark was not officially occupied. The
second reason was that the Germans had conceived the plan to germanize
the country from within by developing National Socialist political
propaganda there.
I think it should be noted, very briefly, that this Germanization from
within had already begun before the war. It is set forth in detail and
in a most interesting manner in a part of the official report of the
Danish Government, which I place before the Tribunal as Document Number
RF-901.
This Document Number RF-901 comprises the whole of the green dossier
which the Tribunal has before it. There are several sections. The
subject of which I am now speaking is to be found in the first document
of this bundle. This first document starts with the heading
“Memorandum.”
This document shows that even before the war the Germans had organized
an information service which was supplemented by a clever espionage
service. In particular they had established a branch of the National
Socialist Party, into which Germans living in Denmark were recruited.
The idea was first of all to form a party made up of Germans and we
shall shortly see how this National Socialist Party was afterwards
called the Danish Party.
This branch of the German Party was called NSDAP, Ausland-Organisation,
Landeskreis Danemark (Foreign Section, Regional District Denmark). It
acted in co-ordination with other institutions; particularly, the
Deutsche Akademie, the Danish-German Chamber of Commerce, and the
Nordische Gesellschaft (Nordic Association).
A German organization in Hamburg called the Deutsche Fichtebund, which
was directly under the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda, undertook a systematic propaganda campaign in order to gain
favorable Danish public opinion.
In this connection I should like to quote a passage of the document
which is worthy of note from the point of view of German premeditation
and of the methods employed. This passage is in the first document which
I have just mentioned and which is called “Memorandum”—on Page 6 of
this first document. I shall skip the first sentence of this paragraph.
I would point out to the Tribunal, in case it should be more convenient
for them because of the length of the document, that these quotations
are to be found in the exposé:
“This information agency, which functioned in Hamburg with no
less than eight different addresses, gave in one of its
publications the following details about itself. It was
established in January 1914 in memory of the German philosopher,
Fichte, and was to be looked upon as a ‘union for world truth.’
The objects were: (1) The promotion of mutual understanding by
the free publication of information on the new Germany. (2) The
protection of culture and civilization by the propagation of
truth concerning the destructive forces in the world.”