(1) FORCING CIVILIANS OF OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
TO SWEAR ALLEGIANCE TO A HOSTILE POWER
Civilians who joined the Speer Legion, as set
forth in paragraph (H) above, were required, under threat of
depriving them of food, money, and identity papers, to swear a solemn
oath acknowledging unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the
Führer of Germany, which was to them a hostile power.
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 the
Great National Socialist 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
endeavored to assimilate those territories politically, culturally,
socially, and economically into the German Reich. The defendants
endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these
territories. In pursuance of these plans and endeavors, the
defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly
non-German and introduced thousands of German colonists.
This 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 including:
Norway, France (particularly in the Departments of Upper Rhine,
Lower, Rhine, Moselle, Ardennes, Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle),
Luxembourg, the Soviet Union, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland.
In France in the Departments of Aisne, Nord,
Meurthe and Moselle, and especially in that of Ardennes, rural
properties were seized by a German state organization which tried to
have them exploited under German direction; the landowners of these
exploitations were dispossessed and turned into agricultural
laborers.
In the Department of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and Moselle. the
methods of Germanization were those of annexation followed by
conscription.