(I) Forcing Civilians of Occupied Territories to Swear Allegiance to a Hostile Power
Civilians who joined the Speer Legion, as set forth in paragraph (H) above, were required under threat of depriving them of food, money and identity papers, to swear a solemn oath acknowledging unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuehrer of Germany, which was to them a hostile power.
In Lorraine, Civil Servants were obliged, in order to retain their positions, to sign a declaration by which they acknowledged the “return of their Country to the Reich”, pledged themselves to obey without reservation the orders of their Chiefs and put themselves “at the active service of the Fuehrer and the Great National Socialist Germany”.
A similar pledge was imposed on Alsatian Civil Servants by threat of deportation or internment.
These acts violated Article 45 of the Hague Regulations, 1907, the laws and customs of war, the general principles of international law and Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
(J) Germanization of occupied territories
In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavoured to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially and economically into the German Reich. The defendants endeavoured to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of these plans and endeavours, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and introduced thousands of German colonists.
This plan included economic domination, physical conquest, installation of puppet Governments, purported de jure annexation and enforced conscription into the German Armed Forces.
This was carried out in most of the Occupied Countries including: Norway, France (particularly in the departments of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, Moselle, Ardennes, Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle), Luxembourg, the Soviet Union, Denmark, Belgium, Holland.
In France in the Departments of the Aisne, the Nord, the Meurthe and Moselle, and especially in that of the Ardennes, rural properties were seized by a German state organization which tried to have them exploited under German direction; the landowners of these exploitations were dispossessed and turned into agricultural labourers.