B.) Clearing.
In 1931 Germany, faced with economic and financial difficulties, declared a general moratorium on her previous commitments. Nevertheless, in order to be able to continue her foreign commercial operations, she had concluded with most of the other countries, notably with the Netherlands, agreements making possible the settling of commercial debts and, to a certain extent, of financial debts, on the basis of the exchange system called “clearing.”
Before the war there existed on the Netherlands “clearing” an excess of imports from Germany. But after the first months of occupation there was, on the contrary, a considerable excess of exports to Germany, whereas the receipts coming from that country dropped perceptibly.
From the month of June 1940 onward the Germans exacted from the Dutch declarations of foreign currency, gold, precious metals, securities, and foreign credits, as can be seen from the Ordinance of 24 June 1940, submitted as Document Number RF-95. Moreover, the Dutch could, by virtue of the same ordinance, be obliged to sell their stocks to the Bank of The Netherlands.
The German Reich Commissioner, Seyss-Inquart, forced the Bank of The Netherlands to make advances in guilders to maintain equilibrium in clearing, since Germany could furnish no equivalent in merchandise. On the other hand, it was decided that the clearing system should be utilized for the delivery of merchandise as well as for the payment of any debts.
In fact the Germans could buy merchandise and transferable securities in Holland without furnishing any equivalent. The credits in marks of the Dutch sellers were blocked in the Bank of The Netherlands which, on its part, had been obliged to make an equivalent advance on the clearing exchange.
To attempt to limit the fall of the Dutch account on the clearing exchange, and to avoid the transfer by this means of guilders or of transferable stock into Germany, on 8 October 1940, the Secretary General of Netherlands Finance imposed a large tax on the marks that were blocked on the clearing exchange.
However, under date of 31 March 1941, the credit of the Netherlands exceeded 400 million guilders, which in fact had been advanced by the Netherlands Government. At this point the occupiers demanded:
1) That a sum of 300 million guilders be withdrawn from the balance of 400 million and deposited in the German Treasury under the heading of “Military Occupation Costs Incurred ‘Outside’ The Netherlands,” and this was independent of payments already made by that country for the occupation costs.
2) By a decision of the Reich Commissioner, under date of 31 March 1941, reported in the Verordnungsblatt in France, Number 14, which I submit to the Tribunal as Document Number RF-124, payment operations with the Reich were no longer to pass through the clearing exchange but to be operated directly from bank to bank, which would create direct credits of the Netherlands banks on the German banks at the imposed exchange of 100 Reichsmark for 75.36 guilders.