“An agreement permitted the purchase in the free zone of 5,000 trucks destined for the German G.B.K., whereby the Reich furnished five tons of steel per vehicle or a total of 25,000 tons of steel destined for French industry. In view of the usual destination of the products of our metal industry at that time, this was obviously a one-sided bargain, indeed if our information is exact, the deliveries of steel to be made in return were not even fulfilled, and they were partly used for the defense of the Mediterranean coast, rails, antitank defenses, et cetera.”
It is appropriate to call attention to the fact that a considerable part of the levies in kind were the object of no regulation whatever, either because the Germans remained debtors in these transactions, or that they considered without justification that these levies constituted war booty.
In regard to this there are no documents available; however, the United States Army has discovered a secret report of one called Kraney, the representative of Roges, an organization which was charged with collecting both war booty and purchases on the black market. It appears from this report that in September 1944, the Roges had resold to Germany for 10,858,499 marks, or 217,169,980 francs, objects seized in the southern zone as war booty. I submit this document as Exhibit Number RF-244.
As a result of the means of payment exacted by Germany and of requisitions regulated by her, or not, France was literally despoiled. Enormous quantities of articles of all kinds were removed by the occupiers. According to information given by the French statistical services, preliminary estimates of the minimum of these levies have been made. These estimates do not include damages resulting from military operations, but solely the German spoliations, computed in cases of doubt at a minimum figure. They will be summarized in the eight following sections.
1. Levies of agricultural produce.
I submit as Document Number RF-245, the report of the Ministry of Agriculture and a statistical table drawn up by the Institut de Conjoncture, summarizing the official German levies which included neither individual purchases nor black market purchases which were both considerable. It is not possible for me to read to the Tribunal a table as long as this; I shall confine myself to giving a brief résumé of this statistical table.
Here are some of the chief agricultural products which were seized and their estimate in thousands of francs (I am indicating the totals in round figures): Cereals, 8,900,000 tons, estimate 22 million francs; meat, 900,000 tons, estimate 30 million; fish, 51,000 tons, estimate 1 million; wines, liquors, 13,413,000 hectoliters, estimate 18,500,000; colonial products, 47,000 tons, estimate 805,900; horses and mules, 690,000 head; wood, 36 million cubic meters; sugar, 11,600,000 tons.
I shall pass over the details. The Germans settled through clearing and by means of occupation costs 113,620,376,000 francs; the balance, that is 13,000 million, was not settled in any way.
Naturally, these estimates do not include considerable damage caused to forests as a result of abnormal cutting and the reduction of areas under cultivation. There is no mention, either, of the reduction in livestock and damage caused by soil exhaustion. This is a brief summary of the percentage of official German levies on agriculture in relation to the total French production: Wheat, 13 percent; oats, 75 percent; hay and straw, 80 percent; meat, 21 percent; poultry, 35 percent; eggs, 60 percent; butter, 20 percent; preserved fish, 30 percent; champagne, 56 percent; wood for industrial uses, 50 percent; forest fuels, 50 percent; alcohol, 25 percent. These percentages, I repeat, do not include quantities of produce which the Germans bought up either by individual purchases or on the black market.
I have had the privilege of presenting to you the fact that these operations were of a considerable scope and amounted for France approximately to several hundred thousand millions of francs. The quantities of agricultural produce thus taken from French consumers are incalculable. I shall simply indicate that wines, champagne, liquors, meat, poultry, eggs, butter were the object of a very considerable clandestine traffic to the benefit of the Germans and that the French population, except for certain privileged persons, was almost entirely deprived of these products.
In Section 2 of this chapter I shall discuss the important question concerning levies of raw materials.
THE PRESIDENT: That would be a good time for us to adjourn for ten minutes.
[A recess was taken.]
M. GERTHOFFER: The summary of the levies in raw materials from the statistical point of view is contained in charts which I shall not take the time to read to the Tribunal. I shall submit them as Document Number RF-246 and point out that the total amount of these supplies reaches the sum of 83,804,145,000 francs.
On Pages 77 to 80 of my written statement I had thought it necessary to make a summary of these charts, but I consider it is not possible to read even the summary because the figures are too numerous.
According to information provided by the French administration, of that sum the Germans settled, by way of occupation costs and clearing, only 59,254,639,000 francs, leaving the difference of 19,506,109,000 francs charged to the French Treasury.
The percentage of the German levies in relation to the whole French production can be summarized in a chart which I have given in my brief and I ask the Tribunal for permission to read it:
“The percentage of levies of raw materials in relation to French production: Coal, 29 percent; electric power, 22 percent; petroleum and motor fuel, 80 percent; iron ore, 74 percent; steel products, crude and half finished, 51 percent; copper, 75 percent; lead, 43 percent; zinc, 38 percent; tin, 67 percent; nickel, 64 percent; mercury, 50 percent; platinum, 76 percent; bauxite, 40 percent; aluminum, 75 percent; magnesium, 100 percent; sulphur carbonate, 80 percent; industrial soap, 67 percent; vegetable oil, 40 percent; carbosol, 100 percent; rubber, 38 percent; paper and cardboard, 16 percent; wool, 59 percent; cotton, 53 percent; flax, 65 percent; leather, 67 percent; cement, 55 percent; lime, 20 percent; acetone, 21 percent.”
This enumeration permits us to consider that officially about three-quarters of the raw materials were seized by the occupying power, but these statistics must be qualified in two ways: A large part of the quota of raw materials theoretically left to the French economy was in fact reserved for priority industries, that is to say, those industries whose production was reserved for the occupying power. Secondly, these requisitions and percentages include only the figures of official deliveries; but we have seen that the Germans acquired considerable quantities of raw materials from the black market, especially precious metals: gold, platinum, silver, radium, or rare metals, such as mercury, nickel, tin and copper.
In fact, one can say in general that the raw materials which were left for the needs of the population were insignificant.
Now, I come to Section 3: Levies of manufactured goods and products of the mining industry.
As I had the honor to point out to you in my general remarks, the Germans, using divers means of pressure, succeeded in utilizing directly or indirectly the greater part of the French industrial production. I shall not go over these facts again and I shall immediately pass to a summary of the products which were delivered. I submit as Document Number RF-248 a chart which contains statistical data, according to industries, of levies by the occupying power of manufactured goods during the course of the occupation.
I do not want to tax the patience of the Tribunal by reading this; I shall simply cite the summary of this chart, which is as follows: Orders for products finished and invoiced from 25 June 1940 until the liberation—Mechanical and electrical industries, 59,455 million; chemical industry, 11,744 million; textiles and leather, 15,802 million; building and construction material, 56,256 million; mines (coal, aluminum, and phosphates), 4,160 million; iron industry, 4,474 million; motor fuel, 568 million; naval construction, 6,104 million; aeronautical construction, 23,620 million; miscellaneous industries, 2,457 million; making a total of 184,640 million.
These statistics should be commented upon as follows:
1) The information which is contained here does not include the production of the very industrialized departments of Nord and of Pas de Calais,