I have felt that this text was of interest because, on the one hand, it clarifies the fact that the African Continent is itself included in the space reserved to the German claimants, and on the other, it states that the government of such an immense space by Germany constitutes international law. This pretense of acting juridically is one of the characteristics of the undertaking to germanize the world from 1940 to 1945. It is undoubtedly one of the reasons which inspired Nazi Germany to proceed only on rare occasions by the annexation of territories.
Annexation is not indispensable for the domination of a great area. It can be replaced by other methods which correspond rather accurately to the usual term of “vassalization.”
THE PRESIDENT: Do you not think this will be a convenient time to break off?
[A recess was taken.]
M. FAURE: Mr. President, before resuming my brief, I should like to ask the Tribunal if they could agree to hear, during the afternoon session, a witness who is M. Reuter, President of the Chamber of Luxembourg.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, M. Faure, if that is convenient to you, the Tribunal is quite willing to hear the witness you name.
M. FAURE: I propose on those conditions to have him heard at the beginning of the second part of the afternoon session.
I pointed out a moment ago that the different methods of disguised annexation can correspond to the term “vassalization.” From a German author I shall borrow a formula which is eloquent. It is Dr. Sperl, in an article in the Krakauer Zeitung, who used this expression: “A differentiation in methods of German domination.” In using, thus, indirect and differentiated methods of domination, the Germans acted in political matters, as we have seen before, in the same way as they acted in economic matters. I had the opportunity to point out to the Tribunal, in my first brief, that the Germans immediately seized the keys of economic life. If you will permit me to use this Latin expression, I shall say as far as sovereignty in the occupied countries is concerned, they insured for themselves the power of the keys, “potestas clavium.” They seized the keys of sovereignty in each country. In that fashion, without being obliged to abolish officially national sovereignty as in the case of annexation, they were able to control and direct the exercise of this sovereignty.
Beginning with these principle ideas, the plan of my brief was conceived as follows:
In the first chapter I shall examine the regime in annexed territories where national sovereignty was abolished. In a second chapter I shall examine the mechanism of the seizure of sovereignty for the benefit of the occupying power in the regions which were not annexed. Then it will be suitable to examine the results of these usurpations of sovereignty and the violation of the rights of the population which resulted from them. I thought it necessary that I should group these results by dealing with the principal ones in a third and fourth chapter. The third chapter will be devoted to spiritual Germanization, that is, to the propaganda in the very extensive sense that the German concept gives to this term. Chapter four, and the last, will bear the heading, “The Administrative Organization of Criminal Action.”