20 Nov. 45

Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 the defendants seized and stole large stocks of raw materials, copper, tin, iron, cotton, and food; caused to be taken to Germany large amounts of railway rolling stock, and many engines, carriages, steam vessels and trolley buses; robbed libraries, laboratories, and art museums of books, pictures, objects of art, scientific apparatus, and furniture; stole all gold reserves and foreign exchange of Czechoslovakia, including 23,000 kilograms of gold, of a nominal value of 5,265,000 Pounds; fraudulently acquired control and thereafter looted the Czech banks and many Czech industrial enterprises; and otherwise stole, looted, and misappropriated Czechoslovakia public and private property. The total sum of defendants' economic spoliation of Czechoslovakia from 1938 to 1945 is estimated at 200 billion Czechoslovak crowns.

(G) Wanton destruction of cities, towns, and villages, and devastation not justified by military necessity.

The defendants wantonly destroyed cities. . .

THE PRESIDENT: Will you go to Paragraph 2 of (G)? The French read the first paragraph. Do you want to go to Paragraph 2 of (G)?

CAPT. KUCHIN: I have begun . . .

THE PRESIDENT: I thought we had read Paragraph 1. We might take up at Paragraphed 2, beginning "In the Eastern Countries the defendants pursued . . ."

CAPT. KUCHIN: 2. Eastern Countries:

In the Eastern Countries the defendants pursued a policy of wanton destruction and devastation, some particulars of this, without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are set out above under the heading "Plunder of Public and Private Property".

In Greece in 1941 the villages of Amelofito, Kliston, Kizonia Messovunos, Selli, Ano-Kerzilion, and Kato-Kerzilion were utterly destroyed.

In Yugoslavia on 15 August 1941 the German military command officially announced that the village of Skela was burned to the ground and the inhabitants killed on the order of the command.

On the order of the Field Commander Hoersterberg a punitive expedition from the SS troops and the field police destroyed the villages of Machokovats and Kriva Reka in Serbia and all the inhabitants were killed.

General Fritz Neidhold (369 Infantry Division), on 11 September 1944, gave an order to destroy the villages of Zagniezde and Udora, hanging all the men and driving away all the women and children.