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Wehrmacht through Belgium and evidently concluded from what they
heard that the situation in Holland had been so consolidated that there was a
possibility that outstanding members of the economy now would be able to go
there.
At the conclusion of the broadcast the four men talked excitedly
and with great intensity. They pointed their fingers to certain places on the
map indicating villages and factories. One said, “This one is yours, that
one is yours, that one we will have arrested, he has two factories.” They
resembled, as the witness Ruemann put it, “vultures gathered around their
booty.” One of the men (Lipps) telephoned his office to contact the
competent military authority to obtain passports to Holland for two of them for
the following day.
We are satisfied that this incident occurred as
portrayed by the witness Ruemann and that it clearly indicates the attitude of
the defendant Alfried Krupp during the period of Germany’s aggressions
here under contemplation, as judged by this incident and his subsequent actions
in the invaded territories which we shall hereinafter discuss at
length. |
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| THE AUSTIN PLANT AT LIANCOURT, FRANCE |
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The Austin factory located at Liancourt, France was founded in 1919.
In 1939 the firm was purchased by Robert Rothschild who was a citizen of
Yugoslavia and of Jewish extraction. The business of the firm was the
production of agricultural tractors. Only during the months of May and June
1940 upon special instructions from the French army headquarters during the
German offensive against France, Belgium, and Holland, did the Austin factory
devote about 90 percent of its production to war materials and 10 percent to
the production of agricultural tractors for civilian consumption. A department
was set up for the manufacture of war materials separate and apart from
Austin’s regular peacetime industry. The machines were loaned to Austin by
the French Government which also furnished the machine tools, raw materials,
and workmen.
The owner, Robert Rothschild, was forced to flee from
Liancourt with the general exodus upon the advance of the German Army. He went
to live south of Lyon in the Department of Dauphine and because of his Jewish
extraction he was unable to return to German occupied France so he sent his
non-Jewish brother-in-law, Milos Celap, to take charge of the plant. The
machines owned by the French Government were sequestered by |
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