The letter which I quote is in answer to this French protest, and I wish to mention only the last paragraph which is the second paragraph on page 2 of this Document Number 1051.
“In case the French Government should create difficulties concerning requests for passes presented with the German approval, it will no longer be possible to exercise that same generosity as shown hitherto when granting passes to French nationals.”
But what I have just said is only a first point concerning the division of the country. This first division had as basis an instrument which was the Armistice Convention, although this basis was exceeded and was contestable. On the other hand, the other divisions which I am going to mention were simply imposed by the Germans without warning of any kind, and without the enunciation of any plausible pretext.
I must recall that a first supplementary division was that which separated the annexed Departments of the Haut-Rhin, the Bas-Rhin, and the Moselle from the rest of France; and in this connection I have already proved that they had been really annexed.
A second division affected the Departments of Nord and the Pas-de-Calais. These departments were in fact attached to the German Military Administration of Belgium. This fact is shown by the headings of the German Military Command decrees, which are submitted to the Tribunal in the Belgian Official Gazette. Not only did this separation exist from the point of view of the German Military Command Administration, but it also existed from the point of view of the French Administration. This last mentioned administration was not excluded in the departments under consideration, but its communications with the central services were extremely difficult.
As I do not wish to develop this point at length, I should like simply to quote a document which will serve as an example, and which I submit as Document Number RF-1052. This is a letter from the military commander under the date of 17 September 1941, which communicates his refusal to re-establish telegraphic and telephonic communications with the rest of France. I quote the single sentence of this letter:
“Upon decision of the High Command of the Army it is so far not yet possible to concede the application for granting direct telegraphic service between the Vichy Government and the two departments of the North.”
A third division consisted in the creation within the unoccupied zone of a so-called forbidden zone. The conception of this forbidden zone certainly corresponded to the future projects of the Germans as to the annexation of larger portions of France. In this connection I produced documents at the beginning of my presentation. This forbidden zone did not have any special rules of administration, but special authorization was required to enter or to leave it. The return to this zone of persons who had left it in order to seek refuge in other regions was possible only in stages, and with great difficulty. Administrative relations, the same as economic relations between the forbidden zone and the other zones were constantly hampered. This fact is well known. Nevertheless, I wish to quote a document also as an example, and I submit this document, Number RF-1053. It is a letter from the military commander, dated 22 November 1941, addressed to the French Delegation. I shall simply summarize this document by saying that the German Command agreed to allow a minister of the de facto government to go into the occupied zone, but refused to allow him to go into the forbidden zone.
In order that the Tribunal may realize the situation of these five zones which I have just mentioned, I have attached to the document book a map of France indicating these separations. This map of France was numbered RF-1054, but I think it is not necessary for me to produce it as a document properly speaking. It is intended to enable the Tribunal to follow this extreme partitioning by looking, first at the annexed departments, and then at Nord and the Pas-de-Calais, the boundaries of these departments being indicated on the map, then at the forbidden unoccupied zone, which is indicated by a first line; and, finally, the line of demarcation with the unoccupied zone. This is, by the way, a reproduction of the map which was published and sold in Paris during the occupation by Publishers Girard and Barère.
To conclude this question of the division I should like to remind the Tribunal that on 11 November 1942 the German Army forces invaded the so-called unoccupied zone. The German authorities declared at that time that they did not intend to establish a military occupation of this zone, and that there would simply be what was called a zone of operations.