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 Führer 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 endeavored to assimilate those territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. The defendants endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of these plans and endeavors, 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, and Holland.
In France in the Departments of Aisne, Nord, Meurthe and Moselle, and especially in that of 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 laborers.
In the Department of Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, and Moselle, the methods of Germanization were those of annexation followed by conscription.
1. From the month of August 1940, officials who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Reich were expelled. On 21 September expulsions and deportation of populations began and on 22 November 1940, more than 70,000 Lorrainers or Alsatians were driven into the south zone of France. From 31 July 1941 onwards, more than 100,000 persons were deported into the eastern regions of the Reich or to Poland. All the property of the deportees or expelled persons was confiscated. At the same time, 80,000 Germans coming from the Saar or from Westphalia were installed in Lorraine and 2,000 farms belonging to French people were transferred to Germans.