The same crimes have been committed in 1943, 1944, and 1945 when the occupants of the camps were withdrawn before the Allied advance; particularly during the withdrawal of the prisoners of Sagan on 8 February 1945.
Bodily punishments were inflicted upon non-commissioned officers and cadets who refused to work. On 24 December 1943, three French non-commissioned officers were murdered for that motive in Stalag IV A. Many ill-treatments were inflicted without motive on other ranks: stabbing with bayonets, striking with riflebutts, and whipping; in Stalag XX B the sick themselves were beaten many times by sentries; in Stalag III B and Stalag III C, worn-out prisoners were murdered or grievously wounded. In military jails in Graudenz for instance, in reprisal camps as in Rava-Ruska, the food was so insufficient that the men lost more than 15 kilograms in a few weeks. In May 1942, one loaf of bread only was distributed in Rava-Ruska to each group of 35 men.
Orders were given to transfer French officers in chains to the camp of Mauthausen after they had tried to escape. At their arrival in camp they were murdered, either by shooting or by gas, and their bodies destroyed in the crematorium.
American prisoners, officers and men, were murdered in Normandy during the summer of 1944 and in the Ardennes in December 1944. American prisoners were starved, beaten, and otherwise mistreated in numerous Stalags in Germany and in the occupied countries, particularly in 1943, 1944, and 1945.
2. In the Eastern Countries:
At Orel prisoners of war were exterminated by starvation, shooting, exposure, and poisoning.
Soviet prisoners of war were murdered en masse on orders from the High Command and the Headquarters of the SIPO and SD. Tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were tortured and murdered at the “Gross Lazaret” at Slavuta.
In addition, many thousands of the persons referred to in paragraph VIII (A) 2, above, were Soviet prisoners of war.
Prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured were handed over to SIPO and SD for shooting.
Frenchmen fighting with the Soviet Army who were captured were handed over to the Vichy Government for “proceedings”.
In March 1944, 50 R.A.F. officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III at Sagan, when recaptured, were murdered.
In September 1941, 11,000 Polish officers who were prisoners of war were killed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.
In Yugoslavia the German Command and the occupying authorities in the person of the chief officials of the Police, the SS troops (Police Lieutenant General Rosener) and the Divisional Group Command (General Kübler and others) in the period 1941-43 ordered the shooting of prisoners of war.
(D) KILLING OF HOSTAGES
Throughout the territories occupied by the German Armed Forces in the course of waging aggressive wars, the defendants adopted and put into effect on a wide scale the practice of taking, and of killing, hostages from the civilian population. These acts were contrary to international conventions, particularly Article 50 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed, and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases, are as follows:
1. In the Western Countries:
In France hostages were executed either individually or collectively; these executions took place in all the big cities of France, among others in Paris, Bordeaux, and Nantes, as well as at Châteaubriant.
In Holland many hundreds of hostages were shot at the following among other places—Rotterdam, Apeldoorn, Amsterdam, Benschop, and Haarlem.
In Belgium many hundreds of hostages were shot during the period 1940 to 1944.
2. In the Eastern Countries:
At Kragnevatz in Yugoslavia 2,300 hostages were shot in October 1941.
At Kralevo in Yugoslavia 5,000 hostages were shot.
(E) PLUNDER OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROPERTY
The defendants ruthlessly exploited the people and the material resources of the countries they occupied, in order to strengthen the Nazi war machine, to depopulate and impoverish the rest of Europe, to enrich themselves and their adherents, and to promote German economic supremacy over Europe.
The defendants engaged in the following acts and practices, among others:
| 1. | They degraded the standard of life of the people of occupied countries and caused starvation, by stripping occupied countries of foodstuffs for removal to Germany. |
| 2. | They seized raw materials and industrial machinery in all of the occupied countries, removed them to Germany and used them in the interest of the German war effort and the German economy. |
| 3. | In all the occupied countries, in varying degrees, they confiscated businesses, plants, and other property. |
| 4. | In an attempt to give color of legality to illegal acquisitions of property, they forced owners of property to go through the forms of “voluntary” and “legal” transfers. |
| 5. | They established comprehensive controls over the economies of all of the occupied countries and directed their resources, their production and their labor in the interests of the German war economy, depriving the local populations of the products of essential industries. |
| 6. | By a variety of financial mechanisms, they despoiled all of the occupied countries of essential commodities and accumulated wealth, debased the local currency systems and disrupted the local economies. They financed extensive purchases in occupied countries through clearing arrangements by which they exacted loans from the occupied countries. They imposed occupation levies, exacted financial contributions, and issued occupation currency, far in excess of occupation costs. They used these excess funds to finance the purchase of business properties and supplies in the occupied countries. |
| 7. | They abrogated the rights of the local populations in the occupied portions of the U.S.S.R. and in Poland and in other countries to develop or manage agricultural and industrial properties, and reserved this area for exclusive settlement, development, and ownership by Germans and their so-called racial brethren. |
| 8. | In further development of their plan of criminal exploitation, they destroyed industrial cities, cultural monuments, scientific institutions, and property of all types in the occupied territories to eliminate the possibility of competition with Germany. |
| 9. | From their program of terror, slavery, spoliation, and organized outrage, the Nazi conspirators created an instrument for the personal profit and aggrandizement of themselves and their adherents. They secured for themselves and their adherents: |
| (a) | Positions in administration of business involving power, influence, and lucrative perquisites. |
| (b) | The use of cheap forced labor. |
| (c) | The acquisition on advantageous terms of foreign properties, business interests, and raw materials. |
| (d) | The basis for the industrial supremacy of Germany. |
These acts were contrary to international conventions, particularly Articles 46 to 56 inclusive of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of criminal law as derived from the criminal laws of all civilized nations, the internal penal laws of the countries in which such crimes were committed and to Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
Particulars (by way of example and without prejudice to the production of evidence of other cases) are as follows:
1. Western Countries:
There was plundered from the Western Countries, from 1940 to 1944, works of art, artistic objects, pictures, plastics, furniture, textiles, antique pieces, and similar articles of enormous value to the number of 21,903.
In France statistics show the following: