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Volume VI · Page 933
| [prop…] erty. Here at any rate it happened. Here the Germans
lost their property. That's true, isn't it? A. Yes. Q. In fact, that is how things looked in 1918, 1919, 1920 and so on up to 1940. And now, would you please tell the Court what happened Lorraine after France surrendered in 1940 — I mean, what happened to the steel industry of course — A. After the armistice in July 1940, the German Government started from the standpoint? — and with it no doubt by far the largest part of the German people? — they started from the standpoint that the frontier of 1918 in the West would be restored. A document has been submitted here according to which the government June, in the summer of 1940, expected a peace treaty soon*. Through the Economic Group Iron Producing Industry the request was put to the steel industry asking them to make suggestions for the imminent peace treaty. One must start out from this attitude which was current at the time. Q. You mean the peace treaty with France? A. Yes, the peace treaty with France, and in this connection naturally the question of the Lorraine steel industry was discussed. The aim was to get the plants working again as soon as possible The plants at that time were not working. The French officials had fled and there was nobody available in Lorraine to manage the works. In addition, there was a shortage of fuel, of gasoline. The first step of the German Government was that Roechling was appointed Commissioner General for Lorraine. Roechling was to be responsible for preparing the starting up of the works in Lorraine and in part also carried this out as in the case of Rombach, for instance. When we took over Rombach later for the trusteeship it was already working, but as I said it was the aim of the government that all plants should start operating again as soon as possible, and this task was far beyond the powers of the individual first appointed, that is, Roechling. Because it would have been too much for him, the idea arose that all the German concerns of the steel industry should be used in Lorraine, each concern being given a plant to supervise and to get operating again as soon as possible — in fact a general use of German industry to this end in Lorraine. In this way six Lorraine trusteeships were given because in Lorraine there were six large steel works. Two trusteeships were issued in Luxembourg, one in the Saar, one for the coal mining industry so that on the whole about ten trusteeships in Lorraine passed to leading German concerns. Ore mining, which was the basis of the industry of Lorraine, |
* Document NI-3516, Prosecution Exhibit 517, letter of 11 June 1940, reproduced in C above.
