The most various methods of constraint were utilized simultaneously or successively:
First: Requisition of services under conditions incompatible with Article 52 of the Hague Convention.
Second: So-called voluntary labor, which consisted of bringing a worker under pressure to sign a contract to work in Germany.
Third: Conscription for obligatory labor.
Fourth: The forcing of war prisoners to work for the German war production and their transformation in certain cases into so-called free workers.
Fifth: The enrolling of certain foreign workers, notably French (from Alsace or Lorraine) and Luxembourgers in the German Labor Front.
All these procedures constitute crimes contrary to international law and in violation of Article 52 of the Hague Convention.
These service requisitions were made under threat of death. Voluntary labor recruiting was accompanied by individual measures of constraint, obliging the workers of occupied territories to sign contracts. The duration of these pseudo-contracts was subsequently prolonged unilaterally and illegally by the German authorities.
The failure of these measures of requisition or the voluntary recruitment of labor led the German authorities everywhere to have recourse to conscription. Hitler declared on 19 August 1942 in a conference on the Four Year Plan, which was reported by the Defendant Speer, that Germany “had to proceed to forced recruiting if sufficient labor was not obtained on a voluntary basis.” On 7 November 1943 the Defendant Jodl declared in the course of a speech given in Munich before the Gauleiter:
“In my opinion the time has come to take vigorous, resolute, and hard measures in Denmark, in Holland, in France, and in Belgium in order to force thousands of idle men to carry out this most important work of fortification.”