I would now like to point out, as far as the documentation of my brief is concerned, I have forced myself to limit the number of texts which will be presented to the Tribunal; and I shall attempt to make my quotations as short as possible. For the fourth chapter, for example, I might point out that the French Delegation examined more than 2,000 documents, counting only the original German documents, of which I have kept only about fifty.
I should like also to point out to the Tribunal how the documents will be presented in the document books which you have before you. The documents are numbered at the top of the page to the right; they are numbered in pencil and correspond to the order in which I shall quote them. Each dossier has a pagination which begins with the number 100.
I would ask the Tribunal now to take up the document book entitled: “The Annexed Territories of Eupen, Malmédy, and Moresnet.”
In carrying out, without any attempt or cloak of legality, the annexation of occupied territories, Germany did something much more serious than violating the rules of law. It is the negation of the very idea of international law. The lawyer, Bustamante y Sirven, in his treatise on international law expresses himself in the following terms regarding this subject:
“It can be observed that never have we alluded at any moment to the hypothesis that an occupation terminates because the occupying power takes possession of the occupied territory through his military forces and without any convention. The motive for this mission is very simple and very clear. Since conquest cannot be considered as a legitimate mode of acquisition, these results are uniquely the result of force and can be neither determined nor measured by the rules of law.”
On the other hand, I have said just now that Germanization did not necessarily imply annexation. Inversely, we might conceive that annexation did not necessarily mean Germanization. We shall prove to the Tribunal that annexation was only a means, the most brutal one of Germanization, that is to say, nazification.
The annexation of the Belgian cantons of Eupen, Malmédy, and Moresnet was made possible by a German law of 18 May 1940 and was the subject of an executive decree of 23 May 1940. These are public regulations, which were published in the Reichsgesetzblatt, Pages 777 and 804. I should like to ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of this.
As a result of this decree the three Belgian districts were attached to the province of the Rhineland, district of Aachen.
A decree dated 24 September 1940 installed local German government and German municipal laws. A decree of 28 July 1940 introduced the German judicial system in these territories. Local courts were established in Malmédy, in Eupen and St. Vith, and district courts at Aachen, which could judge cases on equality with the local courts.
The Court of Appeal of Cologne replaced the Belgian Court of Cassation for cases where the latter would have been competent. German law was introduced in these territories by the decree of 23 May 1940, signed by Hitler, Göring, Frick, and Lammers and was effective as from September 1940.