Occupied territory

“ The extensive coastal fortifications which I have ordered to be erected in the area of Army Group West make it necessary that in the occupied territory all available workers should be committed and should give the fullest extent of their productive capacities. The previous allotment of domestic workers is insufficient. In order to increase it, I order the introduction of compulsory labor and the prohibition of changing the place of employment without permission of the authorities in the occupied territories. ”

“ But this rule has exceptions conditioned by the carrying out of certain military operations, the safety of the armed forces, and the order and tranquillity of occupied enemy territory. Thus, for instance, influential enemy citizens who try to incite their fellow-citizens to take up arms may be arrested and deported into captivity. And even the whole population of a province may be imprisoned in case a levy en masse is threatening. ”

“ ARTICLE XVII. The French Government obligates itself to prevent every transference of economic valuables and provisions from the territory to be occupied by German troops into unoccupied territory or abroad.
These valuables and provisions in occupied territory are to be disposed of only in agreement with the German Government. In that connection, the German Government will consider the necessities of life of the population in unoccupied territory. ”

“ Persons within an occupied territory, that rise in 16arms against the occupying or conquering army, or against the authorities established by the same, are war-rebels, and suffer death, whether they rise singly, in small or large bands, and whether called upon to do so by their own, but expelled, government or not. If captured, they are not prisoners of war ”

“ Distinguished from subjugation or conquest.—Military occupation in a foreign war, being based upon the fact of possession of enemy territory, necessarily implies that the sovereignty of the occupied territory is not vested in the occupying power. ”

“ German proclamation at Lille, April, 1916.
"In consequence of this the inhabitants will be deported by order and removed into the country. Persons deported will be sent to the interior of the occupied territory in France, far behind the front, where they will be employed in agricultural labor, and not on any military work whatever. By this measure they will be given the opportunity of providing better for their subsistence. ”

“ Nine—The right of requisition shall be exercised by the allies and the United States armies in all occupied territory. The upkeep of the troops of occupation in the Rhineland (excluding Alsace-Lorraine) shall be charged to the German government, subject to the regulation of accounts with those whom it may concern.
Ten—An immediate repatriation without reciprocity according to detailed conditions, which shall be fixed, of all allied and United States prisoners of war. The allied powers and the United States shall be able to dispose of these prisoners as they wish. ”

“ The evacuation of the occupied territory, or whatever it is that was to be achieved by the coercive exhaustion of another year or two of battle, might then be obtained by negotiation at once, and at the cost of a certain amount of paper and ink, instead of being forced on a revengeful and embittered opponent by the expensive process of killing young men, a process which has the disadvantage of working both ways. ”

“ Aside from the cases designated in Article 18, and aside from the case of a total or partial evacuation of a locality for military reasons, an inhabitant of occupied territory cannot be displaced from his home against his will, unless, because of his personal attitude, his presence endangers military security or public order. ”

“ For instance, when in the centre of a territory a large force is established from which flying columns are constantly sent round the territory, such territory is indeed effectively occupied, provided there are no enemy forces present, and, further, provided these columns can really keep the territory concerned under control. ”

“ Again, when an army is marching on through enemy territory, taking possession of the lines of communication and the open towns, surrounding the fortresses with besieging forces, and disarming the [Pg 209] inhabitants in open places of habitation, the whole territory left behind the army is effectively occupied, provided some kind of administration is established, and further provided that, as soon as it becomes necessary to assert the authority of the occupant, a sufficient force can within reasonable time be sent to the locality affected. ”

“ The government of the limited areas of land occupied by the four republics was fairly successful, but the surrounding territory became a practical no-man's-land, where roamed the worst criminals of the country and hundreds of detached bands of marauding natives. ”

“ Over a wide area from the White to the Black and the Aegean Seas, in the territory temporarily occupied by the German troops, the Hitlerites purposely and according to plan reduced to ruins densely populated and flourishing Russian, Bielorussian, Yugoslavian, Greek, and Czechoslovakian cities, towns, and villages. ”

“ The gradual establishment in the interior, by the powers to which the territories are subject, of strongly occupied stations, in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by slave hunting. ”

“ These comprehensive ways of waging war which hit all classes of the population permit, in my opinion, to a state which is at war, especially on account of the fact that its civilian population is brought into the strife, to use for its purposes labor from occupied countries so as to maintain its production and armament. ”

“ We now experience the grotesque picture of having to recruit millions of laborers from the occupied eastern territories, after prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies, in order to fill the gaps that are formed within Germany. ”

“ Vast stores of food were abandoned, destroyed or sold to the inhabitants of the occupied districts when the armies began the evacuation of France and Belgium, and millions of soldiers, returning to find empty larders at home, further swelled the ranks of the discontented. ”

“ The smoke of burning dwellings darkened the atmosphere. Women and children, driven from their habitations, wandered over the prairies and through the woodlands, or sought refuge and protection even among the Indian tribes. The highways were infested with numerous predatory bauds, and the towns were fortified and garrisoned by armies of conflicting partisans, each excited almost to frenzy, and determined upon mutual extermination. Such was, without exaggeration, the condition of the territory at the period of my arrival. ”

“ Places named as occupied by the forces of the Government in question are really occupied. To invent the occupation of a town or point not in one’s own hands would serve no purpose. It would not deceive the enemy and it would not long support opinion at home. ”

“ To those who, like General Marshall, insist that we must have an enormous land army, or armies, to go in and occupy conquered territory so as to be able to control the people, I give this answer, or make this suggestion. Why not establish colonies of people of all nationalities, who would be charged with responsibilities of teaching people how to produce or earn a living and to study forms of government suitable for creating small civil communities that could be transplanted into any conquered territory after organized resistance had been broken by the military? ”

“ In reply, the governor informed his visitors that he was determined no armed bodies of men, with cannon and munitions of war, should enter the territory to the terror of peaceable citizens; that there was no further occasion for such demonstrations; that he would, on the other hand, welcome all immigrants who should come for peaceful and lawful purposes; that he would furnish them a safe escort, and guarantee them protection. ”

“ Later however, when the Germans set up their so-called civil administration and organized a number of special economic bodies in various occupied territories including the Ukraine, in particular, disputes arose among the numerous German military and civil bodies and organizations, all of whom were engaged in plundering the occupied territories. ”

“ The soldiers, for want of something better to do, are forever seeking advancement by making unnecessary expeditions into the hinterland for the purpose of “punishing” the natives, thus causing them to migrate by wholesale into British, Belgian, and even Portuguese territory, so that the German colonies are left without labour and the plantations are consequently being ruined. ”

“ The numbers handed down to us in good accounts of 50 fortresses taken, 985 villages occupied, 580,000 that fell, are not incredible, since the war was waged with inexorable cruelty, and the male population was probably everywhere put to death. ”

“ A group of belligerents representing only 5,921,000 square kilometres of territory and 150,199,000 inhabitants, or, say, 4 per cent. of dry land and 9·1 per cent. of human beings, would not have held its own for twenty-one months against a group disposing of 68,031,000 square kilometres of territory and a population of 770,060,000, or 46 per cent. of the land on the globe and 47 per cent. of the human race. [311] Providence has bestowed upon the Allies the wherewithal to attain their legitimate ends. The Allies’ leaders are frittering them away. ”

“ OUR prison colony constantly increased, as new political prisoners were brought in, some of them already sentenced and others held to await their trials. As there was nothing to curb the excesses of the revolutionary groups after the Union of Workers had been dissolved, acts of terror, agitation against the State and attempts against the depositaries of Government funds to secure money for revolutionary purposes became rather frequent occurrences in the territory of the Far East. ”

“ Measures of violence meant to me a loss of manpower in the occupied countries, because there was the danger that these people would in increasing numbers take to the woods so as not to have to go to Germany, and thus strengthen the lines of the resistance movements. ”

“ Thus, the people's sadness, concern and poverty had been increased, and they fell down under heavy additional burdens resulted from the military occupation and colonization. The West did not leave the territories which it occupied and colonized until the sons of those territories made great sacrifices, and when the concerned colonial states realized that there was no way to stay there according to the previous conditions and methods. ”

“ If looting, flogging, ruining, and train-wrecking can be dignified by such a name as war, they hold that in all matters of supply our fighting men, who, as well as fighting our battles, guard our women-folk or our sick men, injured by wounds or disease in our service, come first and foremost; after them come our own civilian population; and lastly come our prisoners, or those Boers who have surrendered or been brought in. ”

“ With the permission of the Tribunal, I shall make a few general remarks on the economic looting of Western European occupied territories. Economic looting is to be understood as the removal of wealth of every kind, as well as the enslavement of the production of the various occupied countries. ”

“ During the period of concentration, however, even if in movement, a modern army will necessarily be supplied in somewhat the same way as Napoleon’s. The billets will be allotted “without subsistence,” and the regimental reserve supplies will be called upon to ration their men, while all around the occupied towns and villages the supply officers and their mounted escorts will requisition food and vehicles to bring the food into the concentration area. ”

“ In the occupied provinces they were simply insurgents, and they led everywhere the life of insurgents, belonged to the same class or classes of society from which insurgents usually come, and, like insurgents, were adored by their own people and shot as felons if they fell into the hands of the enemy. ”

“ Already the colonists say, ‘We shall have another war ten years hence.’ The military hoping to leave the Colony, rejoice in the prospect of home; those lately come out wear rueful countenances,—visions of solitary outposts, of commandos, of no society, of continued discomfort, disgust the young soldiers just arrived, and promise no good will in the performance of their duties. ”

“ It is certainly a matter of gratifying reflection to the troops employed, not only that a colony of such importance should be placed under the British flag, but that the exertions of the army have, in two days, defeated all the preparations and force of the enemy; thus sheltering the peaceable inhabitants from a formidable and sanguinary system of revolutionary violence which had been practised against their persons and property, and which threatened the entire destruction of social order. ”

“ And although it is not considered expedient to force the population of the territory, yet it is desirable to connect its scattered settlements, and, in admitted political rights, to place it on an equal footing with the different states. From the interior situation of the territory, it is not believed that slaves could ever become so numerous as to endanger the internal peace or future prosperity of the country. ”

“ The people of the occupied lands are continually subjected to injuries. Almost all the food they have has been taken 39 from them. Wherever anything is left by the official requisitioning committees, the soldiers, especially the Slovenes, steal the rest. ”