21 Nov. 45
Italy, and the East. Methods of recruitment were violent (R-124,
018-PS, 204-PS). The treatment of these slave laborers was stated in
general terms, not difficult to translate into concrete deprivations,
in a letter to the Defendant Rosenberg from the Defendant Sauckel,
which stated:
"All prisoners of war, from the
territories of the West as well as of the East, actually in Germany,
must be completely incorporated into the German armament and munition
industries. Their production must be brought to the highest possible
level....
"The complete employment of all prisoners of war as well as
the use of a gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men and
women, has become an indisputable necessity for the solution of the
mobilization of labor program in this war.
"All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a
way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest
conceivable degrees of expenditure...." (016-PS)
In pursuance of the Nazi plan permanently to
reduce the living standards of their neighbors and to weaken them
physically and economically, a long series of crimes were committed.
There was extensive destruction, serving no military purpose, of the
property of civilians. Dikes were thrown open in Holland almost at
the close of the war not to achieve military ends but to destroy the
resources and retard the economy of the thrifty Netherlanders.
There was carefully planned economic syphoning off of the assets
of occupied countries. An example of the planning is shown by a
report on France dated December 7, 1942 made by the Economic Research
Department of the Reichsbank. The question arose whether French
occupation costs should be increased from 15 million Reichsmarks per
day to 25 million Reichsmarks per day. The Reichsbank analyzed French
economy to determine whether it could bear the burden. It pointed out
that the armistice had burdened France to that date to the extent of
18 1/2 billion Reichsmarks, equalling 370 billion francs. It pointed
out that the burden of these payments within 2 1/2 years equalled the
aggregate French national income in the year 1940, and that the
amount of payments handed over to Germany in the first 6 months of
1942 corresponded to the estimate for the total French revenue for
that whole year. The report concluded:
"In any case, the conclusion is
inescapable that relatively heavier tributes have been imposed on
France since the armistice in June 1940 than upon Germany after the
World War. In this connection, it must be noted that the
economic