THE PRESIDENT: Yes, well then are you confining yourself to the last document, and to certain passages in the last document?
M. GERTHOFFER: I shall limit myself to this.
THE PRESIDENT: And then, as these are not documents of which we can take judicial notice, only the parts which you read will be regarded as part of the Record, and be treated as in evidence.
M. GERTHOFFER: This enormous sum imposed was much greater than Germany was entitled to demand. In spite of the enormous sums which the Germans may have spent in France during the first two years, they were not able to use a sum less than half of that for which they were credited.
This is shown in the Hemmen report, where on Page 27 (Page 59 of the French translation) he gives a summary of the French payments made as occupational indemnity, and the German expenses in millions of marks corresponding to these expenses. This summary is very short. I shall read it to the Tribunal. It will constitute a German proof in support of my presentation.
| French payment | German expenditure | ||
| in millions of marks | in millions of marks | ||
| 1940 | 4,000 | 1,569 | |
| 1941 | 6,075 | 5,205 | |
| 1942 | 5,475 | 8,271 | |
| 1943 | 9,698.3 | 9,524 | |
| 1944 | 6,345 | 6,748 | |
This makes from 1940 to 1944 a total amount of 31,593,300,000 marks paid by the French and 31,317 million marks of German expenditure.
The figures contained in this table unquestionably constitute the German admission of the exorbitance of the indemnity for the maintenance of occupation troops, for Germany was not able to utilize the credit at its disposal. Most of it served to finance expenses relative to armament, operation troops, and feeding of Germany. This is shown by Document Number EC-232, which I submit as Exhibit Number RF-230.
According to the calculation of the “Institut de Conjoncture,” the maximum sum of the indemnity which could be exacted was 74,531,800,000 francs, taking as a basis the average daily costs of upkeep per troop unit during the Allied occupation of the Rhineland in 1919, namely the sum of seventeen francs or twenty-one francs with billeting, which was at that time provided by the German Government. According to the report on the average cost of living (coefficient -3.14) the sum of 21 francs should correspond to 66 francs at the 1939 value when applying the coefficient of depreciation of the franc during the occupation, that is 2.10 percent, or a daily average cost of 139 francs per day.
Granting that the real costs of the occupation army were half of those calculated by Hemmen, that is to say, 27,032,279,120 marks, this sum is still lower than the 74,531,800,000 calculated by the Institut de Conjoncture.