. NMT06-T0854
Volume VI · Page 854
| noted that the steel
production of this department represents approximately one-third of the total
steel production of France. The Department of the Moselle with the adjacent German territories formed a "Gau" under the direction of Gauleiter Joseph Buerckel in Saarbruecken, who urged on the assimilation with all his might. The big industrial companies were dispossessed of all their movable and immovable property situated in the Moselle, without receiving any compensation. Their personnel suffered numerous forms of ill-treatment, e.g., expulsion, arrest, imprisonment, seizure and sale of their movable property, etc. The Société Lorraine des Aciéries de Rombas" was organized on 26 November 1919, at the liquidation of German property, to act as purchaser of the mines and factories of the German company Rombacher Huettenwerke [Rombach Steel Works]. The property of the latter, situated in the Department of the Moselle and liberated by the Allied victory in November 1918, had been sequestrated by the French Government in January 1919. By virtue of Articles 74 and 243 of the Treaty of Versailles, the proceeds of the liquidation of German property by the French Government were credited to Germany at the Office of Private Property and Interests. The German citizens who were dispossessed by this measure of liquidation were to receive an indemnity directly from their government. The capital of the new French company (150 million Francs) was subscribed almost entirely by the French metallurgical companies which had suffered losses as a result of the war 1914-18: Société Aciéries de la Marine, & d'Homécourt, Aciéries de Micheville, blast furnaces of Pont-à-Mousson, etc. The new company took possession of the plants on 1 January 1920 and exploited them until June 1940. The company exploited the mines of Rombach, Sainte-Marie and Rosselange whose areas cover 1,764, 645, and 252 hectares. respectively, and contain reserves of approximately 150 million tons of ore. It exploited the Rombach Steel Works comprising 8 blast furnaces with a daily production from 220 tons to 380 tons of cast iron. It exploited one Thomas oven, one open hearth oven, one electrical steel oven, and ten rolling mills. It also exploited a steel work at Mezières-les-Metz containing four blast furnaces. The total production of the plant was approximately 1 million tons of steel per year, that is to say, approximately 8 percent of the total French steel production. It employed normally from six to seven thousand workers and some six hundred [office] employees. Furthermore, the company had participations in several enterprises both in France and in other countries; it was thus enabled |
