As to the transfer of capital, during the first period of the occupation it was particularly intense. It concerned the forced realization of Belgian capital in foreign countries, as well as the forced cession to German groups of Belgian assets blocked in Germany. No effective compensation was given in exchange. The transfers made for services were principally for payments for Belgian labor in foreign countries.
The credit balance of these services on 2 September 1944 is as follows, in Belgian francs: Total clearing operations dealing with services, 20,016 million—that is to say, for payment of labor 73 percent of the total. For Germany alone, 18,227 million—that is, 72 percent of the total amount. For France only 1,621 million Belgian francs—that is to say, a very small part.
Not content with requisitioning workers for forced labor in Germany or in the occupied territories, the Germans compelled Belgium to bear the financial burden and imposed it either through the liquidation of the transferred savings in clearing or by the remittance of Belgian notes to the Directorate of the Reich Bank in Berlin for payment of workers in national currency.
THE PRESIDENT: Do you think it is necessary to go into these clearing operations again? In each case of the various countries which have been dealt with, the same clearing operations have taken place, have they not? Then perhaps it is really unnecessary to do it over again for Belgium.
M. DELPECH: Very well, Your Honor. At all events, the Germans recognized the fact, and the figures taken from the report previously cited support the conclusions of our statement.
Before ending this chapter concerning German seizure of the means of payment, it is fitting that the attention of the Tribunal be brought to the order of 22 July 1940, by which the Germans fixed the rate of the Belgian franc at 8 Reichspfennig, that is to say 12.50 francs per mark; and in the forementioned report Wetter writes concerning this matter, on Pages 37 and 38, a passage which I ask the Tribunal’s permission to read and which is in the document book as Document Number RF-158.
“The de facto maintenance of the pre-war parity was moreover of considerable political importance because a large group of the population would have considered a sharp devaluation or a repeated change of parity as a maneuver of exploitation.”
The following observation in connection with this conception must be made: The occupiers had no need in Belgium to decree, with the view of promoting their economic exploitation, that the Belgian franc should have a lesser value when, as a matter of fact—contrary to what occurred in France—they had, at the moment they entered Belgium, instituted new currency over which they had the control.
Lastly, let us mention that Germany obliged the Vichy Government to deliver 221,730 kilos of gold amounting, at the 1939 value, to 9,500 million francs; but as France had returned this gold to the Bank of Belgium, this question will be treated under the economic exploitation of France.
Recapitulation.