“1. Immediately after their entry into Yugoslavia, the Germans
looted all the bigger firms and storehouses. They generally
engaged in this form of looting at night, after the so-called
curfew hours.
“2. The order of Major General Kuebler”—which has already been
submitted to the Tribunal by the Soviet Prosecution as Document
Number USSR-132—“contains the following passage:
“‘Troops must treat these members of the population who maintain
an unfriendly attitude toward the occupation forces in a brutal
and ruthless manner, depriving the enemy of every means of
existence by the destruction of localities which have been
abandoned and by seizing all available stocks.’
“On the basis of this and similar orders, the Germans
ceaselessly looted the country under the pretext of so-called
‘control of existing stocks,’ using the opportunities afforded
by the ‘destruction of localities which had been abandoned.’
“3. Punitive expeditions, which became an everyday event during
the occupation, were, naturally, always accompanied by the
looting of the victims’ property. In the same way they robbed
their prisoners and the bodies of those who had fallen fighting
in the Free National Army, as well as all the internees in the
concentration camps.
“4. Not even churches were spared. Thus, for example, the German
unit ‘Konrad-Einheit,’ which operated in the vicinity of
Sibenik, looted the Church of St. John in Zablad.”
There are numerous examples of the same kind.
“During the 4 years the whole of Yugoslavia was systematically
looted. This was carried out either through numerous so-called
‘legal measures,’ or through mass looting on the part of the
Germans. The Nazi occupation forces showed great inventive
ability and applied to Yugoslavia the experience which they had
gained in other occupied countries.
“These criminal measures damaged the Yugoslav State and its
citizens to such an extent that one can consider it simply as
economic destruction of the country.”
From this Your Honors may see that the plunder of public and private
property in Yugoslavia was conducted by the Hitlerites according to a
preconceived plan, that it affected every class and every branch of the
country’s economy, and caused enormous material loss to the Yugoslav
State and to its citizens.
THE PRESIDENT (Lord Justice Sir Geoffrey Lawrence): I believe this would
be a convenient time to recess.
[_A recess was taken._]
MR. COUNSELLOR SHENIN: After the invasion of Greece, the Hitlerite
conspirators pursued their policy of merciless despoliation of the
occupied countries and immediately began to plunder her national
property. The official report of the Greek Government on the crimes
committed by the Hitlerites has already been submitted to the Tribunal.
The appropriate section of this report entitled, “Exploitation,” gives
the concrete facts of the plunder of public and private property in
Greece. I quote the following excerpts from the part, “Exploitation,”
from this report of the Greek Government, which will be found on Page 59
of the document book:
“Owing to her geographical position, Greece was used by the
Germans as a base of operations for the war in North Africa.
They also used Greece as a rest center for thousands of their
troops from the North African and Eastern fronts, thus
concentrating in Greece much larger forces than were actually
necessary for purpose of occupation.
“A large part of the local supplies of fruit, vegetables,
potatoes, olive oil, meat, and dairy products were confiscated
to supply these forces. As current production was not sufficient
for these needs, they resorted to the requisitioning of
livestock on a large scale, with the result that the country’s
livestock became seriously depleted.”
In addition to requisitioning supplies for their armies, the Hitlerite
conspirators exacted enormous sums of money from Greece to cover the
so-called cost of occupation. In the report of the Greek Government the
following remark is made on the subject—this is on Page 60 of the
document book—I read:
“Between August 1941 and December 1941 the sum of 26,206,085,000
drachmas was paid to the Germans, representing a sum of 60
percent more than the estimated national income during the same
period. In fact, according to the estimates of two Axis experts,
Dr. Barberin, from Germany, and Dr. Bartoni, an Italian, the
national income for that year amounted to only 23,000 million
drachmas. In the following year, as the national income
decreased, this money was taken from national funds.”
Another method of plundering Greece which the Hitlerites applied on a
vast scale was the so-called requisitions and confiscations. In order to
save time, I shall, with the permission of the Tribunal, merely read
into the record a brief excerpt from the Greek report dealing with this
question. I quote:
“One of the enemy’s first measures on occupying Greece was to
seize all the existing stocks in the country by requisition or
open confiscation. Among other goods, they requisitioned from
the wholesale and retail trade 71,000 tons of currants and
10,000 tons of olive oil; they confiscated 1,435 tons of coffee,
1,143 tons of sugar, 2,520 tons of rice, and a whole shipload of
wheat valued at 530,000 dollars.”
As the country was divided among three occupying powers, the Hitlerites
blockaded that part of Greece which was occupied by their own troops and
forbade the export of food supplies from that zone. The Hitlerites began
to confiscate all existing stocks of food and other goods, a measure
which reduced the population to a state of extreme misery and
starvation. This plundering had such catastrophic consequences for the
Greek nation that, finally, even the Germans themselves were forced to
realize that they had gone too far. The practical result of this was
that towards the end of 1942 the German authorities promised the
International Commission of the Red Cross that they would return to the
population all the local products confiscated and exported by the armies
of occupation. The Germans also undertook to replace them by the
importation of products of the same caloric value. This pledge was not
fulfilled.
As in all the occupied countries, the Germans issued and put into
circulation an unlimited amount of currency. It should be noted that
this currency represented the so-called occupation marks without any
security. I quote an excerpt from this report, which the members of the
Tribunal will find on Page 63 in the document book. I read:
“From the very first they”—the Germans—“put into circulation
10,000 million occupation marks, a sum equal to half the money
in circulation at that date. By April 1944 the monetary
circulation had reached 14,000 million drachmas, that is, it had
increased 700 percent since the start of the occupation.”
The Germans, after causing great inflation in that way, purchased all
goods at prices fixed before the occupation. All goods purchased, as
well as valuables, articles of gold, furniture, and so forth, were
shipped by the Germans to Germany.
Finally, as in every country they occupied, the Hitlerites put into
operation in Greece also the so-called “clearing system.” Under this
system, all goods earmarked for export were first confiscated or put
under embargo by the military authorities. Then they were bought up by
German firms at arbitrarily fixed prices. The price of the goods
established in this one-sided way was then credited to Greece. The
prices for merchandise imported from Germany were fixed at from 200 to
500 percent higher than their normal value. Finally, Greece was also
debited with the price of merchandise imported from Germany for the
needs of the occupation forces. The Germans called this cynical method
of plundering “clearing.”
I quote a short excerpt from the report of the Greek Government which
the members of the Tribunal will find on Page 64 of the document book. I
read:
“In consequence, notwithstanding the fact that Greece exported
the whole of her available resources to Germany, the clearing
account showed a credit balance of 264,157,574.03 marks in favor
of Germany when the Germans left. At the time of their arrival
the credit balance in favor of Greece was 4,353,428.82 marks.”
In this way, Your Honors, the Hitlerites plundered the Greek people.
May it please Your Honors, I pass on to the statement of the facts of
the monstrous plunder and pillage to which private, public, and state
property was subjected by the Hitlerite usurpers in the temporarily
occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The irrefutable original
documents which I shall have the honor to present for your
consideration, Your Honors, will prove that long before their attack on
the U.S.S.R., the fascist conspirators had conceived and prepared their
criminal plans for the plunder and spoliation of its riches and of its
national wealth.
Like all other military crimes committed by the Hitlerites in countries
occupied by them, the plunder and pillage of these territories was
planned and organized beforehand by the major war criminals whom the
determination and valor of the Allied nations have brought to justice.
The crimes committed by those who carried out the conspirators’ criminal
plans over wide areas of the Soviet land, on the fertile steppes of the
Ukraine, in the fields and forests of Bielorussia, in the rich
cornfields of the Kuban and the Don, in the blossoming gardens of the
Crimea, in the approaches to Leningrad and in the Soviet Baltic
States—all these monstrous crimes, all this mass plunder and wholesale
pillage of the sacred wealth created by the peaceable and honest work of
the Soviet peoples, Russian, Ukrainian, Bielorussian, and others—all
these crimes were directly planned, designed, prepared, and organized by
the criminal Hitlerite Government and the Supreme Command of Armed
Forces—the major war criminals, now occupying the dock.
I shall begin with evidence as to the premeditated nature of the crimes
committed on U.S.S.R. territory. I shall prove that the wholesale
indiscriminate pillage of private, public, and state property committed
by the German fascist usurpers was not an isolated occurrence, not a
local phenomenon. It was not the result of the disintegration or the
thefts of individual army units but was, on the contrary, an essential
and indissoluble part of the general plan of attack on the U.S.S.R. and
represented, moreover, the fundamental purpose, the chief motive
underlying this criminal aggression.
May I beg the indulgence of the Tribunal if, in stating the facts
connected with the preparations for this type of crimes, I am obliged to
refer very briefly also to several of the documents already submitted to
the Tribunal by my American colleagues. I shall endeavor, however, to
avoid repetitions and shall mainly quote such extracts from these
documents as have not been previously read into the record.
It is known that simultaneously with the elaboration of “Plan
Barbarossa,” which provided for all strategic questions connected with
the attack on the U.S.S.R., purely economic problems arising from the
plan were elaborated.
In the document known under the title, “Conference of 29 April 1941 with
Branches of the Armed Forces,” and presented to the Tribunal by the
American prosecution on 10 December as Document Number 1157-PS, we read:
“Purpose of the conference: Explanation of the administrative
organization of the economic section of undertaking
‘Barbarossa-Oldenburg’. . . .”
Further on in this document it is indicated that the Führer, contrary to
previous practice in the preparation measures envisaged, ordered that
all economic questions were to be worked out by one center and that this
center is to be “the special-purpose economic staff Oldenburg under the
direction of Lieutenant General Schubert” and that it is to be under the
Reich Marshal, that is, Göring. Thus, as early as April 1941, the
Defendant Göring was in charge of all preparations for plundering the
U.S.S.R.
To finish with this document, I should like to recall that provision is
made in it, even at that early date, for the organization of special
economic inspectorates and commands at Leningrad, Murmansk, Riga, Minsk,
Moscow, Tula, Gorki, Kiev, Baku, Yaroslavl, and many other Soviet
industrial towns. The document points out that the tasks of these
inspectorates and commands included “the economic utilization of
suitable territory” that is, as is explained below, “all questions of
food supply and rural economy, industrial economy, including raw
materials and manufactured articles; forestry, finance and banking,
museums, commerce, trade, and manpower.” As you see, Your Honors, the
tasks were extremely wide and extraordinarily concrete.
The Plan Barbarossa-Oldenburg was further developed in the so-called
“directives for economic management of the newly occupied eastern
territories” which were also elaborated and issued secretly before the
attack on the U.S.S.R.
Before passing on to the “Green File” I should like to present to the
Tribunal and read but in part another document—the so-called “File of
the District Agricultural Leader,” which was submitted to the Tribunal
by my colleague Colonel Smirnov as Document Number USSR-89. These very
detailed instructions for future district agricultural leaders which
were also worked out and published in advance, bore the title of
“District Agricultural Leaders File,” and were dated 1 June 1941.
Naturally this document, too, is also marked “top secret.”
This instruction begins, “12 Commandments for the Behavior of Germans in
the East and Their Attitude towards Russians.” My colleague, Colonel
Smirnov, read into the record only one of those commandments: and I,
with the Tribunal’s permission, shall read into the record the other
commandments. The first commandment states—the members of the Tribunal
will find it on Page 69 of the document book. I read:
“Those of you who are sent to work in the East must adopt as
your guiding principle the rule that output alone is decisive. I
must ask you to devote your hardest and most unsparing efforts
to this end.”
What sort of “work” is meant is clearly shown by the following
commandments. I quote extracts from this document:
“5th commandment: It is essential that you should always bear in
mind the end to be attained. You must pursue this aim with the
utmost stubbornness; but the methods used may be elastic to a
degree. The methods employed are left to the discretion of the
individual. . . .
“6th commandment: Since the newly incorporated territories must
be secured permanently to Germany and Europe, much will depend
on how you establish yourself there. . . . Lack of character in
individuals will constitute a definite ground for removing them
from their work. Anyone recalled for this reason can never again
occupy a responsible position in the Reich proper.”
In this way the future “agricultural leaders” were not only ordered to
be implacable, merciless, and cruel in their plundering activities, but
were also warned of what would happen to them if they were not
implacable enough or if they showed “lack of character.”
The following commandments develop the same idea:
“7th commandment: Do not ask, ‘How will this benefit the
peasants?’ but ‘How will it benefit Germany?’
“8th commandment: Do not talk—act! You can never talk a Russian
around or persuade him with words. He can talk better than you
can, for he is a born ‘dialectic’. . . .
“Only your will must decide, but this will must be directed to
the execution of great tasks. Only in this case will it be
ethical even in its cruelty. Keep away from the Russians—they
are not Germans, they are Slavs.
“9th commandment: We do not wish to convert the Russians to
National Socialism; we wish only to make them a tool in our
hands. You must win the youth of Russia by assigning their task
to them—by taking them firmly in hand and administering
ruthless punishment to those who practice sabotage or fail to
accomplish the work expected of them.
“The investigation of personal records and pleas takes up time
which is needed for your German task. You are neither
investigating magistrates nor yet the Wailing Wall.
“11th commandment: . . . his (Russian) stomach is elastic,
therefore—no false pity for him!”
Such were these commandments for agricultural leaders, which one
should—to be more exact—call “commandments for cannibals.” The file
begins with these “commandments,” which are followed by a perfectly
clear-cut program for the plundering of U.S.S.R. agriculture. At the
beginning of this program we read:
“Fundamental economical directives for the Organization of
Economic Policy in the East, Agricultural Group.
“As regards food policy, the aim of this campaign is:
“1. To guarantee food supplies for many years ahead for the
German Armed Forces and the German civilian population.”
As you see, Your Honors, a perfectly clear and candid formulation of the
aims of the attack on the U.S.S.R. is given. Of course, it does not
exhaust these aims. This aim was not confined to the stealing of
provisions, and provisions were far from being the only thing stolen.
This is only an extract from the agricultural leaders’ file, and they
were not the only people to be entrusted with tasks of pillage and to
perform these tasks.
The file as a whole contains the following sections of a carefully
thought out and extremely concrete program for the plunder of the Soviet
Union’s agriculture. I read the table of contents. Your Honors will find
this document on Page 67 of the document book:
“1. 12 commandments. 2. General economic directives. 3.
Organization chart. 4. Instructions for the regional
agricultural leader. 5. Instructions for securing personnel. 6.
State farms: Directives on the taking over and management of
State farms. 7. Directives for taking over and managing
collective farms. 8. Agriculture machine depots, directives
regarding administration. 9. Directives for registration. 10.
Furnishing food supplies for the cities. 11. Schedules for
agricultural work. 12. Price lists.”
I am not, Your Honor, going to take up your time by reading the whole of
this document, which consists of 98 typewritten pages. I am presenting
it to the Tribunal in its entirety, to be included in the files of the
Trial.
I shall read from this document, already presented to the Tribunal by my
American colleagues on 10 December of last year as Exhibit Number
USA-147 (Document 1058-PS), only a few short lines. It is a note of the
record of a speech made by Rosenberg at a secret conference on 20 June
1941, dealing with questions of the East. In his speech, Rosenberg
stated particularly:
“The problem of feeding German nationals undeniably heads the
German demands on the East just now, and here the southern
regions and the northern Caucasus must help to balance the
German food situation. We certainly do not consider ourselves
obliged to feed the Russian people as well from the produce of
these fertile regions. We know that this is a cruel necessity,
which has nothing to do with any humane feelings. It will
undoubtedly be necessary to carry out evacuation on a large
scale and the Russians are doomed to live through some very hard
years.”
Thus did the leaders of Hitlerite Germany formulate the tasks they set
themselves when preparing their attack on the Soviet Union.
Already in August 1942—that is, from 26 to 28 August—Gauleiter Koch,
who had just arrived from Hitler’s headquarters, spoke at the conference
in Rovno. The record of this conference was found in Rosenberg’s
archives. This document was kindly put at our disposal by our American
colleagues. It is registered as Document Number 264-PS, but it has not
been presented to the Tribunal.
I read into the record an excerpt from this record. The members of the
Tribunal will find it on Page 72 in the document book. I read:
“He”—Koch—“explained the political situation and his tasks as
Reich Commissioner”—in the following way—“‘There is no free
Ukraine. We must aim at making the Ukrainians work for Germany,
and not at making the people here happy. The Ukraine will have
to make good the German shortages. This task must be
accomplished without regard for losses. . . .
“‘The Führer has ordered 3 million tons of grain from the
Ukraine for the Reich, and they must be delivered. . . .’”
I shall show later how far this original figure—3 million tons of
grain—was exceeded by the Hitlerite plunderers, whose avid appetites
grew from month to month.
All these aims of plunder had been planned in advance by the criminal
Hitlerite Government, who worked out an organized scheme for carrying
out organized plunder and practical methods of pillaging the occupied
territories.
With the Tribunal’s permission I shall read extracts from a secret
document by Reich Marshal Göring which was captured by units of the Red
Army. This document bears the title, “Directives for Economic Management
in the Newly Occupied Areas in the East (Green File),” and extracts of
it have already been mentioned by my colleagues. This document is
presented by the Soviet Prosecution as Exhibit Number USSR-10 (Document
Number USSR-10).
The title page of the document reads—Page 76 of the document book:
“Eastern Staff for Economic Leadership; top secret.
“Note: The present directives are to be considered as top-secret
documents (documents of State importance) until X-Day; after
X-Day they will no longer be secret and will be treated as open
documents for official use only.
“Directives on the subject of economic management in the newly
occupied areas in the East (Green File).
“Part I. Economic tasks and organization, Berlin, June 1941;
printed by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces.”
As is clear from the text of the document, these directives were
published immediately before Germany’s attack on the U.S.S.R. “for the
information of military and economic authorities regarding economic
tasks in the eastern territories to be occupied.”
In setting forth the “main economic tasks” the directives state in the
first paragraph:
“I. According to the Führer’s order, it is essential in the
interests of Germany that every possible measure for the
immediate and complete exploitation of the occupied territories
be adopted. Any measure liable to hinder the achievement of this
purpose should be waived or cancelled.
“II. The exploitation of the regions to be occupied immediately
should be carried out primarily in the economic field
controlling food supplies and crude oil. The main economic
purpose of the campaign is to obtain the greatest possible
quantity of food and crude oil for Germany. In addition, other
raw materials from the occupied territories must be supplied to
the German war economy as far as is technically possible and as
far as the claims of the industries to be maintained outside the
Reich permit.”
I omit the next part of the excerpt, and I pass on to the following
excerpt, which the members of the Tribunal will find on Page 78:
“The idea that order should be restored in the occupied
territories and their economic life re-established as soon as
possible is entirely mistaken. On the contrary, the treatment of
the different parts of the country must be a very different one.
Order should only be restored and industry promoted in regions
where we can obtain considerable reserves of agricultural
products or crude oil.”