“1) By placing at its disposal your correspondence with your supply houses and with your subcontractors;
“2) By informing it now of the extent to which the capacities of your factories are being utilized and permitting it to check on the production;
“3) By letting it take part in your conferences and see your correspondence with the German authorities.
“It is your duty to inform the Paten-Firma or their Firmenbeauftragter immediately about any orders which you may receive.”
This is the end of the quotation.
Almost all the important enterprises in the occupied territories were thus placed under the control of German firms, with the double aim of favoring the Reich’s war effort and of achieving by progressive absorption an economic preponderance in Europe, even in case of a peace by compromise.
In the agricultural sphere the Germans used similar means of pressure. They made wholesale requisitions of products, leaving the population with quantities clearly insufficient to assure their subsistence.