As in all the occupied countries, the Germans issued and put into circulation an unlimited amount of currency. It should be noted that this currency represented the so-called occupation marks without any security. I quote an excerpt from this report, which the members of the Tribunal will find on Page 63 in the document book. I read:
“From the very first they”—the Germans—“put into circulation 10,000 million occupation marks, a sum equal to half the money in circulation at that date. By April 1944 the monetary circulation had reached 14,000 million drachmas, that is, it had increased 700 percent since the start of the occupation.”
The Germans, after causing great inflation in that way, purchased all goods at prices fixed before the occupation. All goods purchased, as well as valuables, articles of gold, furniture, and so forth, were shipped by the Germans to Germany.
Finally, as in every country they occupied, the Hitlerites put into operation in Greece also the so-called “clearing system.” Under this system, all goods earmarked for export were first confiscated or put under embargo by the military authorities. Then they were bought up by German firms at arbitrarily fixed prices. The price of the goods established in this one-sided way was then credited to Greece. The prices for merchandise imported from Germany were fixed at from 200 to 500 percent higher than their normal value. Finally, Greece was also debited with the price of merchandise imported from Germany for the needs of the occupation forces. The Germans called this cynical method of plundering “clearing.”
I quote a short excerpt from the report of the Greek Government which the members of the Tribunal will find on Page 64 of the document book. I read:
“In consequence, notwithstanding the fact that Greece exported the whole of her available resources to Germany, the clearing account showed a credit balance of 264,157,574.03 marks in favor of Germany when the Germans left. At the time of their arrival the credit balance in favor of Greece was 4,353,428.82 marks.”
In this way, Your Honors, the Hitlerites plundered the Greek people.
May it please Your Honors, I pass on to the statement of the facts of the monstrous plunder and pillage to which private, public, and state property was subjected by the Hitlerite usurpers in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union. The irrefutable original documents which I shall have the honor to present for your consideration, Your Honors, will prove that long before their attack on the U.S.S.R., the fascist conspirators had conceived and prepared their criminal plans for the plunder and spoliation of its riches and of its national wealth.
Like all other military crimes committed by the Hitlerites in countries occupied by them, the plunder and pillage of these territories was planned and organized beforehand by the major war criminals whom the determination and valor of the Allied nations have brought to justice.
The crimes committed by those who carried out the conspirators’ criminal plans over wide areas of the Soviet land, on the fertile steppes of the Ukraine, in the fields and forests of Bielorussia, in the rich cornfields of the Kuban and the Don, in the blossoming gardens of the Crimea, in the approaches to Leningrad and in the Soviet Baltic States—all these monstrous crimes, all this mass plunder and wholesale pillage of the sacred wealth created by the peaceable and honest work of the Soviet peoples, Russian, Ukrainian, Bielorussian, and others—all these crimes were directly planned, designed, prepared, and organized by the criminal Hitlerite Government and the Supreme Command of Armed Forces—the major war criminals, now occupying the dock.