“The National Committee, defender of the integrity and of the unity of France and trustee of the principle of the rights of peoples, protests, in the face of the civilized world, against these new crimes committed in contempt of international conventions against the will of populations ardently attached to France. It proclaims inviolable the right of Alsatians and of Lorrainers to remain members of the French family.”
This protest could not have been unknown to the Germans, for it was read and commented on over the radio by the French National Commissioner of Justice, Professor René Cassin, on a number of occasions.
In regard to this solemn protest on the part of France, I shall allow myself to quote the justifications, if one may use this term, which were furnished in a speech by Gauleiter Wagner delivered in Colmar on 20 June 1943. This quotation is drawn from the Mühlhäuser Tageblatt of 21 June 1943. In view of its importance I shall not deal with it simply as a quotation, but I produce it as a document and submit it as Document Number RF-740. The clerk has been given this paper. I read the explanations of Gauleiter Wagner, as they are reproduced in this newspaper under the title “Alsace will not Stand Aloof”:
“The decisive event for Alsace in 1942 was therefore the introduction of compulsory military service. It cannot be my intention to justify legally a measure which strikes so deeply at the life of Alsace. There is no reason for this either. Every decision which the Greater Reich is taking, here is motivated and cannot be attacked as to its juridical and its de facto form.”
Naturally, the Alsatians and Lorrainers refused to accept the criminal orders of the German authorities, and they undertook to avoid these by every means. The Nazis then decided to compel them by means of merciless measures. The frontiers were strictly guarded, and the guards had orders to fire on the numerous recalcitrants who attempted to escape across the border. I should like to quote in this connection a sentence from a newspaper article, which appeared in the Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg of 28 August 1942. This is Document Number RF-741. This article deals with the death of one of these men who refused to serve in the German Army, and it concludes with the following sentence: “We insist most particularly on the fact that it is suicidal to attempt to cross the frontier illegally.”
Naturally, judicial penalties were applied with great severity and in a large number of cases. I do not consider that I should bring to the Tribunal all the instances of these cases, which would take too long; but I should like simply to insist on the principle that governed this form of repression.
I shall quote first of all a document which is entirely characteristic of the conception which the German administration had of justice and of the independence of judicial power. This is Document Number RF-742. It is a part of a series of documents discovered in the files of the Gauleitung. It is a teletype message dated Strasbourg, 8 June 1944, addressed by Gauleiter Wagner to the Chief of the Court of Appeals in Karlsruhe. I shall read Paragraph 2 of this document, which is on Page 1 of the same document:
“Especially in Alsace it is required that the sentences for refusal of military service should be intimidating. But upon those trying to evade military service, for fear of personal danger, this intimidating effect can be produced only by the death penalty, the more so, as an Alsatian bent upon escaping military service by emigration counts generally on an early victory of the enemy and, therefore, in case of conviction with punishment other than death, with a near cancellation of the penalty. The death penalty is, therefore, to be applied in all cases in which after 6 June 1944 an evasion of military service is attempted by illegal emigration, irrespectively of any other legal practice used in Germany proper.”
But I wish to indicate that the consideration of personal risk, even that of being killed at the frontier or condemned to death, was not sufficient to make the people of Alsace and Lorraine acknowledge the obligation for military service. Thus the Nazis decided to have recourse to the only threat which could be effective, the threat of reprisals against families. After 4 September 1942, there appeared in the Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg a notice entitled “Severe Sanctions Against Those Who Fail to Appear Before the Revision Council.” An extract from this notice constitutes Document Number RF-743. I shall read from it:
“In the case mentioned above it has been shown that parents have not given proof of authority in this regard. They have thus proved that they do not yet understand the requirements of the present time, which can tolerate in Alsace only reliable persons. The parents of the above-named young men will therefore shortly be deported to the Aleichem in order to re-acquire, in a National Socialist atmosphere, an attitude in conformity with the German spirit.”