Q. What were the conditions of the barracks at Lueckenwalde?
A. This was so-called "transient barrack", and there were no beds and no straw mats and we just slept on the floor. And, of course, it was full of vermin because everybody passed there and stayed there for a few days, and also we didn't stay for more than a few days in that barrack.
Q. How did you eat?
A. The food was very bad and it was as bad as in the Stalag III A, where everybody complained about the food because it was really insufficient. The bread they distributed to us in this Stalag III A was very bad quality.
Q. How much did you get to eat each day?
A. For six of us, we always had a loaf of military bread, the typical German military bread.
Q. So-called "black-bread"?
A. That was of course the black bread, and besides that, it was very often rotten.
Q. What else did you get to eat?
A. Some sort of soup, which was nothing but clear water.
Q. And what else?
A. Perhaps some margarine to put on the bread, and that's all.
Q. And where did you go from Lueckenwalde?
A. We wore loaded into railroad carriages and I myself asked one of the transportation chiefs there, where we were going to go. We were told that we were being sent to work in a factory which produced children's carriages -- baby carriages.
Q. This was in September 1941?
A. I couldn't give you exact percision as to that subject because it might have been at the end of September, but it might have been, also in the first days of October.
Q. Who guarded you at Lueckenwalde?
A. Camp guards, which were German soldiers.
Q. And, on the transport taking you from Lueckenwalde, who guarded you?
A. German soldiers also.
Q. And where did you go from Lueckenwalde?
A. We arrived at this town of Brandenburg -- it's called Braunburg, or something like that.
Q. Can you spell it for us?
A. B-R-A-N-D-E-N-B-U-R-G. Brandenburg.
Q. What were the conditions on the train on which you went from lueckenwalde to Brandenburg?
A. They were cattle wagons, and we were pushed into these cattle wagons and pressed together there.
Q. How many men to a car?
A. 50 to 60.
Q. Where these the normal German railway cars that one sees around now?
A. Yes; they were normal carriages, for 40 men or for eight horses.
Q. What did you do when you go to Brandenburg?
A. We were led to a camp,-- the man's camp, which was at the other end of the town, and this camp was already occupied. There were Franch prisoners of war, and we were lodge there. We were there about 26 per room, in the barracks.
Q. How big were the rooms?
A. Well, they had the normal size of the rooms in the German barracks, which would mean that, at the highest, they would be six meters long and about three meters wide.
Q. How were they furnished?
A. Well there were double ranges of bods, one above the other, but I must say that, in the beginning, we had to sleep two in a bed, and there was no straw and no mattresses, and we had to sleep two with one blanket also. But that was only in the beginning.
Q. Did they then send you to work?
A. Well, right on the next day we were gathered around the camp and some of our comrades told us: "Well, we don't produce baby carriages here; we produce airplanes. That's Arado Factory here." And then the camp commander came and divided us up in groups; whoever had to work in this factory.
I personally was sent to workshop X. They always numbered the workshops by "A", "B", "C", "D", etc.
Q. Where there any other prisoners of war other than French there?
A. At that time we, the French prisoners of war, were the only prisoners of war employed down there. At least at that time there no other prisoners of war of other nationalities, in the region of Brandenburg.
Q. Were there any foreign laborers there from other countries?
A. Yes; I saw foreign workers there, and I saw Italians who had come from Italy and who were so-called "volunteers." Now they themselves claimed they were not volunteers, but it was none of my business, and I didn't think of looking it up, whether they really were or not.
Q. Were there any other foreign workers there?
A. Not that I know.
Q. At any time prior to April 1945, when you left Brandenburg, did any other foreign nationals come there, either prisoners of war or people who had not been in the service?
A Yes, I remember other foreign workers. First of all we had again Italians who later on came as prisoners of war after Italy had sided with the Allies. Second, we had French civilian workers who came. Third, there were the Russians and Russian female workers. Of these Russians the main part were the Ukrainians, and it was always very difficult to know anything about these Russians because it was very vague. Some of them were escapees from prisoner of war camps and we couldn't know whether their status was actually real civilian workers or whether they were prisoners of war. Anyhow then they had escaped from prisoner of war camps they would declare that they were civilian workers and would come in as such.
Then there were the Russian prisoners of war. Then there were Lithuanians and Lithuanian female workers also, but we could never know whether they were volunteers or not, and we the Frenchmen didn't want to have any contact with them for personal reasons which I will indicate later on.
Q How many, people were at this camp at Brandenburg where you were?
A In order to make it quite clear I have to say that this was not a camp, but rather a group of camps. There was the French camp, the French POW camp, and next to the French camp, right close to it, was the Russian camp which gain was subdivided into two camps, one for male workers and one for female workers.
The Russian camp for female workers included the camp for Lithuanian workers. Then, eight hundred yards from there we had the camp for French civilian workers and also eight hundred yards from our camp, but in another direction, we had the camp for the Italians. As far as the figure of the foreign workers is concerned, I can say that we had fifteen hundred French POW's, but I must say that when the first air raid started and the camp management -- the factory management decided to decentralize the factories, some of our camp comrades left us and were sent elsewhere, so then we had some less French POW's there. That's as far as we go with French POW's.
That, of course, is the figure which I can give with most precision, and I think that from four to five hundred French civilian workers, deportees and workers who came in under the labor assignment program were also employed at our Arado Factory.
Also, I could say that about a thousand Russian workers, male, female and also children had been brought -- deported into cur camp for the benefit of the Arado Factory. I think there were about forty Lithuanians, male and female, and finally there were about five to six hundred Italian POW's who were in their own camp down there.
Q Did these Russian children work?
A Yes, these Russian children worked, but I would like to give some details concerning this question and these details bring me also to a typical case of my captivity. If it please the Tribunal, I would like to give these details now.
In about 1942 another camp was constructed near our camp, next to our camp, and during the first half of 1942 we saw the first Russian deportees arrive. Now I made already a restriction, a reservation with regard to this title of deportee. We used to call there deportees, but as I said before, we never actually knew whether they were deportees or escaped prisoners of war, and at that time we saw the first Russian women to come down there too.
I want to make it a point to say that I am stating here only what I have seen myself. I have seen Russian women arriving at that camp, women who were pregnant and women who were carrying newly born children, babies, and I have seen that the children were in the camp and worked there, children of all ages, and I think that the Arado Factory employed them from seven or eight years of age. I have seen children of seven or eight years of age work in the factory. These children were used for cleaning work, certainly not difficult work, no hard work, but it took a lot of time.
I must add that after a certain time the Arado Factory had to give up using the services of these children because they caused too much disorder in the Factory and also I may say that within the camp the children were very hungry, and they used to creep through these barbed wire enclosures and come into our camp in order to get some of the biscuits we got from the American Red Cross.
Also, I may add that several times we had to give condensed milk from our own rations from the American Red Cross to these newly born children in spite of orders by the German authorities, according to which nothing could be given to Russians. We had to do so for pity's sake.
Q. What were the conditions with reference to food in the camp during the time that you were there?
A. I am going to talk only of the French camp because that is the only camp where I really can give some details. When we arrived in 1941 the food was practically as bad as it used to be in the Stalag III A. The food situation even deteriorated, and throughout all this winter, from 1941 to 1942, the food situation deteriorated constantly. If we hadn't had these parcels from the Red Cross at that time the situation would have been impossible, and whenever we went to the Germans to complain, they would always answer us, "Yes, after all you have your Red Cross parcels."
Q. What were the hours of work?
A. The working hours at the beginning were eight to nine hours, but when we came to 1944 and 1945 they had reached fourteen hours a day in certain of the workshops, and even you had to work on Sunday morning, and I remember one of my colleagues who had to work seven Sunday mornings in a row.
Q. And what kind of airplanes were they making there?
A. I personally was engaged in work on the repair of the wings of the plane. Some others would construct the forms in which the wings would be molded, and others again worked on the motors, but I must say that the organization of the factory was such that all the kinds of work for airplane construction could take place there.
Q. What kind of planes did you work on?
A. First of all we worked for bombing aircraft for Junkers. At a certain time they started to construct a special plane which was not called an Arado plane. The trademark given to the plane was a Hoinkel, and I know that it was Heinkel 177. This plane had double landing wheels and it was the plane of which the "Voelkischer Beobachter", the German news paper, said that they would go and bomb America with that plane.
Q. Did you at any time make any complaint?
A. We complained about work in these aircraft factories. Is that what you mean?
Q. Yes, Tell the Court about it.
A. Yes, there were complaints made. After all, there were a few of us when we arrived down there who had some idea about the Geneva Convention; and we pointed out to our commandos that it seemed to us that if Article 31 of the Geneva Convention was applied this kind of work could not be done by us. There was a sort of a trustee for the workers; but actually we had no way of conversing with the authorities because this trustee was not a trustee who was elected by us but had been appointed by the camp authorities. Therefore, the prisoners had no confidence in him.
We eventually agreed that the only thing to do was a general strike. The password was passed on, on the 20th of January 1942. The general strike of the French workers broke out on the 21st of January 1942 at 9:00 a.m. All the French prisoners and all the French workers obeyed this word and followed this strike with the exception of a few whom the password had not reached.
Q. What happened after that?
A. They gathered all tho French workers at the airfield and made us stand at attention there. It was snowing and the temperature was at about minus 18 to minus 20 degrees centigrade. They made us stand to attention until 5:30 p.m. We had to stand there; and we were threatened. Some of our comrades fell; and I have to add that we were allowed to bring them to the dispensary when they collapsed.
At 5:30 some officers came out and asked why we had stopped the work and wanted to know the reasons for this strike, which seemed to have surprised them very much. The officers asked for some people who had the confidence of the workers to come out and speak; so at once I and some of my comrades came forward. Then I told them that first of all there was the Geneva Convention which was being violated and second that there were the food conditions, which were very impossible.
They told us that as far as the food was concerned this was a hard winter for everybody. Germans included; and as far as the Geneva Convention was concerned, we would get an official answer within some period of time.
Sometime later we actually received the answer; and in this answer they asserted that the Geneva Convention had been bypassed by the developments and that there was no reason for the existence of this geneva Convention as Germany had entered a period of total warfare. They alleged that we ourselves had violated the Geneva Convention by stopping work without lodging our complaints through the regular channels; but they forgot that they themselves had previously violated the Convention by appointing a trustee who was not in our confidence.
Q. Who were the officers that came out and talked to you when you had this strike?
A. Those were officers of the Stalag III-A and others whom I didn't know.
Q. In what service did their uniforms indicate they were?
A. It was the regular uniform of the German officer of the OKW.
Q. Did you ever see any Luftwaffe officers around?
A. Not in the camp. When we did see officers of the Luftwaffe, there were inspections. At these inspections we saw officers of whom we were told that they belonged to the Luftwaffe and we saw civilians of whom we were told also that they were officials in the Air Ministry. I must say that we only were told so because all we know was by hearsay. These visits by officers became more and more frequent towards 1944 and 1945 because at that time we had started production of rocket-propelled airplanes. There were few of them; there were only a very few.
I want to stress the point that this general strike which we had on the 21st of January 1942 was not the only manifestation of our will not to work in the armament factory. We made various representations at the Mission Scapini, which was the French Ministry for the Deportees during the Vichy government; and we got the most incredible answers. For instance, they would assert that the Germans would say the Geneva Convention was signed by a German democrat and now that National Socialism had come all those things were changed and that they could not answer for any obligations undertaken by German democrats.
Q. What were the health conditions in the camp at Arado?
A. I must say, frankly, that in camp the general sanitation was acceptable. I must also say that what I had to reproach in those camps was that they were overcrowded. I should add, too, that many a tubercular man had to go away to the Stalag because whoever had tuberculosis was sent to the Stalag and to the dispensary from Lueckenwalde. Our working command, our camp at Arado, was what all our comrades in the Stalag dreaded most. They were afraid of coming into our camp because they saw other comrades come back there sick. They were also afraid of the working conditions in our camp.
Q. How much were you paid?
A. These salaries, of course, varied, I might say that they would start at 18 marks as a minimum and 60 marks as a maximum per month; but I want to specify that when I say 60 marks I do not include specialist workers, who would at times get more than that. But I want to draw the attention of the High Tribunal immediately to the fact that we Frenchmen never did complain about the pay we received from the Germans because it would have been in contradiction with our honor as Frenchmen and as prisoners of war to go and argue with the Germans for a mark or something like that.
THE PRESIDENT: The Court is in recess until 1:30
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1330 this afternoon.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 6 March 1947)
THE MARSHAL: Tribunal No. 2 is now in session.
MR. DENNEY: May it please Your Honors.
BY MR. DENNEY:
Q. Witness, just before lunch we had been discussing the conditions at the camp where you worked, and I neglected to ask you whether or not you ever saw any people working around the plants who were wearing the concentration camp uniform with black and white vertical stripes?
A. Yes, indeed. This is a detail I forgot to mention this morning. That near Brandenburg there was a little village, the village was called Goerden, G-O-E-R-D-E-N, and near this village there was a prison, and the kind of a prison that the Germans call Zuchthaus, which corresponds with an American penitentiary, and this penitentiary would dispatch working units inside our factory, and these working units were at one of our French factories which was at Neundorf, N-E-U-N-D-O-R-F, which was also a part of Brandenburg. It was a factory which was about eighthundred yards away from our main plant, and they wore engaged in some work of crushing sand there, and had to prepare this sand in order to make a road for the planes to come out of the hangers, out of the houses which were for the planes. These people wore uniforms of concentration camp inmates, that is, the black and white striped uniforms.
One day I passed there, and somebody talked to me in French, while I was passing, and this man told me that he was a prisoner of war, and that he was from my own part of France, that is, from Brittany. was, of course, quite interested because he was almost somebody from my own home place, and he told me that --- first of all I saw that he was not wearing the POW uniform, the POW uniform had been taken away from him, and he told me that he was obliged to work there, and that the worse punishment for him was the fact that in this penitentiary he had to live with criminal prisoners, and with prisoners of all nationalities.
I want to give one more detail. Of course, at the time I had no way of checking whether this man was really a POW other than that was what he told me, and he might not have been, but when I came back to my home place I checked up on it, and I found him again in Brittany.
Q. What happened at Brandenburg at the time of the bombing raids?
INTERPRETER TREIDEL: May it please the Court, my fellow interpreters have just drawn my attention to the fact that I forgot something in my interpretation that the witness said. That is that the French prisoner told him that he had been imprisoned and sentenced to three years of penitentiary for having had sexual intercourse with a German woman.
As to the present answer:
I must say that the German authorities tried to make us be protection guards for these factories during the air raids. They oven succeeded in doing so partially and for a certain length of time, but in the end they had to drop it because of the constant refusal by the French POW's and Dutchmen had to pull guard eventually. These Dutchmen who had to stand guard at the factory had, of course, German helmets, German coats, and German gas masks.
I wanted to add that at the Brennabor factory, B-R-E-N-N-A-B-O-R, a factory which makes spare parts for the planes, mainly screws and that kind of thing, the Germans also tried to employ POW's for protection purposes during the air raids, but they succeeded for a certain length of time. As a matter of fact, they succeeded for longer than they actually succeeded in our own factory, but eventually they had to drop the idea because the POW's refused, and they decided not to use POW workers any longer for these protection purposes. I must add, however, that the spokesman of these factory workers was relieved from his duties, from his position, on account of the very fact that he brought the complaints of the factory workers with regard to these guard duties to the authorities and that this dismissal of the spokesman in itself constitutes another violation of the Geneva Convention.
Q. What was the relative position of the various nationalities who were prisoners of war, as far as their treatment by the Germans was concerned?
A. If were to establish an exact classification of the kind of treatment that the Germans would deign to apply to the different categories of prisoners, I would, of course, say that it is a fact that Americans and Englishmen were the ones that were treated best because it is certain that the Germans would never have dared and did not dare to use them in their armament factories for work.
Next on the scale came the Frenchmen, but if they came next on the scale it was only for the reason that they actually opposed the Germans and resisted them. We always saw that the Germans had respect only for people who actually went against their will.
Then we night say that the Belgian workers would come, and, of course, the Italians and Russians were the lowest on the scale, and their treatment was the worst.
Q. Did you ever seen anyone in your factory who was beaten by someone?
A. Yes, I have seen persons beaten in the factory, but a distinction has to be made. On one side, French workers would, for instance, argue and discuss with their meisters, their foremen or their chief engineers there, the chief production managers in the work shops, and the discussion would often degenerate and would come to blows, and then they would be beaten, but I could not say that this was generally the case and that it happened as a general rule.
On the other hand, the Russians and Italians very often were the object of rows, and they wore the ones to suffer during the rows, and they were beaten during these rows. The French very often witnessed that.
I must say that whenever a German worker would give some provocation to a French worker or would beat him during an argument, the German worker would never be punished, and the French worker would always be punished. Unfortunately, I have had some of my comrades who were sent to prison for that very reason.
I want to add that intercourse with German women was strictly prohibited for us in the camp and in the factory, and I must say that, of course, the German women were not always in agreement with these prescriptions. When we came to the factory, to Stalag 3-B-- that is the campfirst they made us sign a form in which we had to sign that we knew that we could not have intercourse with German women.
The reason for this law was given by the Law for the Protection of the German Race.
I know that many of the comrades who have been condemned were brought before the court and the judgment, the sentence, was always three years imprisonment. That was the price, and that was what they always got. I know that in five years no extenuating circumstances were introduced, and they always got the same thing, whether the German had been consenting or not.
I have to add that near our camp there was the Camp Arado, and quite near to the camp was a women's camp. We French prisoners always considered it very cruel that so near to our camp there was a camp for women, and I am convinced that the High Tribunal will understand why we found that it was so very cruel.
Q. Did you ever sign a labor contract?
A. Oh, no.
Q. Did you wear the uniform of the French army all during the time that you worked there?
Yes, I were the uniform of the French army during the whole of my stay at the factory, but I must say that attempts were made to transform us into civilian workers. They tried, and, with the exception of 16 of my comrades, everybody refused. Because these 16 had some excuses; for instance, their brothers who were civilians or civilian workers, or their wives who had come to Germany because they believed the propaganda which was made in France to that effect, but most of us, with the exception of these 16, we all refused, and we did so because we were soldiers and we had the respect of our uniforms.
Q. Never at any time when you were being hold were you discharged from the French army?
A. No, I was only discharged when I came back to France after the liberation.
MR. DENNEY: I have no further questions.
THE WITNESS: I would like to add something.
MR. DENNEY: Go right ahead.
THE WITNESS: I would like to inform this high Tribunal of the exact location of our working unit if I may say so. I want to say that our working unit or camp was situated at the beginning of the outskirts of the town of Brandenburg, and it was situated right in the middle of several factories. That is to say more precisely in the center of a triangle that was formed by the Arado factory, by the Mitteldeutsche Stahwerke, which means the central German steel plants, and by the Opel factory. Besides that our camp was right at the edge of the air field which joined the two Arado factories, Arado Neunberg and Arado Brandenburg. Therefore, it was quite obvious that as soon as there was an air raid on one of these factories, we, in our camp, would be in for it, and besides that as soon as the first sirens rang, that was the so-called preliminary alert, the voralarm, how the Germans called it, the Germans would bring their planes to the very edge of our camp. We had two very strong air attacks on our plants. The first was on the 6th of August, 1944. The arado, factories were almost totally destroyed, and besides that we had at that time a very strong battery of what the Germans called flak meaning flieger abwehrkaone, anti-aircraft guns. We didn't suffer anything in our camp so we might well say at that day God was a Frenchman. Unfortunately, we were not always so lucky. In spring of the year 1945, that was the 31st of March, another heavy air attack was carried out against Brandenburg. The planes, the target of the planes was at that time the Mitteldeutsche Stahlwerke, central German steel works, and also the Arado airfield, but our camp had to suffer from this attack very heavily and fifty of my comrades, exactly fifty were killed during this attack. I am weighing the words I am speaking here. I am very careful about what I am saying. I do not held the Americans responsible for the death of my comrades but the Germans were responsible because they were warned again and again, and again and again we told them, "How can you bring airplanes so near to our camp?
It is impossible to move an antiaircraft battery so near to our camp." But they wouldn't listen to us so what happened had to happen. Not only we, the Frenchmen, had to suffer from this attack but also the Russians, and putting it mildly the Russians lost at least one hundred and fifty persons in their camp during the attack, and of these one hundred and fifty more than half were women and many children. I would like to bring the Court some more details concerning the treatment we received inside the camp. If I am to describe the conditions I may say that when we first came to the camp we were, of course, very miserable. Then the conditions improved, but towards 1944 we became more unhappy again. The Germans knew that we in our camp had no pro-German elements, no collaborators, and if I may say so today, this was an honor for us. So as they knew that, they sent into our camp French spies disguised as French soldiers. Oh, they were Frenchmen, of course, I don't know whether they were originally soldiers, but when they came into our camp they were wearing the French uniform. I have seen many of these persons, and I have seen even the notes one of these spies had in which he wrote, "I have seen Mr. So-and so at the Gestapo and I have discussed the case of Mr. X with him." So it was quite clear that these people were in connection with the Gestapo. The German soldiers who guarded our camp did not know that these men were spies and were quite surprised when they found out, but it was quite obvious to me that they were sent by civilian authorities, or at least civilian authorities had made them come to the camp. If I may add the following, I have knowledge also that the Arado factory, unfortunately, was not the only factory which employed prisoners of war for armament purposes. I know of at least one factory in our Army District 3, Wehrkreis 3, that was the Army district which included the four stalags, the four P.C.W. camps, A, B, C and D, I know there was a factory of the B.M.W. which means Bayrische Motoren Werke, Bavarian Motor works, and this factory was an aircraft factory, and I could not give the exact location, but I believe it was either at Lichterfelde or Ludwigfelde near Berlin, and besides that I heard from my comrades there was another factory, a Heinkel factory at which prisoners of war, at which the prisoners of the Stalag III-B worked, and this Heinkel factory was said to be at Oranienburg, and at all these factories the conditions were much the same as at our own factory.
This is all I have to say.
Q. (By Mr. Denney) One further question. I have handed you a document which you gave to me this morning in my office. This document is the text of a letter addressed to the confidential agents on the subject of Article I of the Geneva Convention, and it is signed by George Scapini who at that time was in the French Diplomatic Service. Do you knew what position Scapini held in early 1942?
A. I'm sorry if, in order to give the position held by Mr. Scapini, --I'm sorry if I have to go into some detail. According to the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war depend on three different nations. The first nation, of course, is the nation -- their own nation -- the second is the nation which has captured them, and the third is the protector nation, the nation which has to protect the interests of the POW's. When in 1940 the Vichy Government appointed Scapini the French Ambassador in Berlin, Scapini created in Berlin the so-called "DFB", which is the French Delegation in Berlin, and I'm sorry to say, the French Delegation consisted of rather a bunch of bad Frenchmen, who, in complicity with the German authorities, claimed the right of being the protectors of the French POW's in Germany. And those Frenchmen literally sold us to the Germans.
And I must say that, in this particular instance, the responsibility of the Germans is particularly heavy because they used these phoney channels they had in order to impose on us conditions which were unacceptable for us, and, if I know today the Geneva Convention - because I have to admit that at that time, before the war, I didn't know the Geneva Convention, in spite of the fact that I actually know such a convention existed but I didn't know its clauses -- if I knew the convention today, it is because the Germans taught us every single clause of the convention by their violations, in the same manner, as they taught us geography by making war everywhere.
MR. DENNEY: If Your Honors please, I'd like at this time to offer in evidence a copy of this document. It doesn't have a document number because we've just been able to get it documented this morning, so it's Document No. Blank, but we offer it as Exhibit 132, and it is the text of a letter addressed to confidential agents on the subject of Article of War 31, which has to do with Prohibited Labors, and it is signed by Georges Scapini.
It states:
"You requested the "D.F.B." (German French Plenipotentiary) to give you information on the present state of the conditions of the application of Article 31 of the Geneva Convention.
"I think that, in order to give you a precise idea on the subject it is a good thing to give you a brief historical outline.
"Up to the month of February 1942, my Services protested to the high authorities of the OKW against the employment of French Prisoners of War in the industries dubbed specifically armament industries. My interventions were followed by only partial success, when in February 1942, a certain number of the Kommando of Military Districts III, V, and XVII without paying attention to the prescriptions of Articles 42 and 31 (paragraph 2) of the Geneva Convention, suddenly, simultaneously and with one accord stopped work.
In informing me of the situation, the OKW told me that according to the terms of the German Code of Military Justice, the attitude of the French Prisoners of War came under the headings of insurrection and mutiny, a state which necessitated suppressive measures, into the nature of which it is useless to go.
"At the same time, OKW set forth:
"1) That in the general way of things, and on many points, events had overruled the jurisdiction of the Geneva Convention.
"2) That literal application of the text could give rise to a situation which would be infinitely harder for the French Prisoners of War than that created by a wider interpretation. Thus, in practice, the employment of Prisoners of War in salt mines, as high temperature furnace stokers, in the chem ical industries and in synthetic gasoline factories, was in keeping with the terms of article 31, and moreover, the principle laid down in Article 31 aimed at avoiding, the necessity of the Prisoners of Wars making, by his effort a contribution to the direct war being waged by the Detaining Power, against his own country; but these conceptions, valid perhaps in 1929 had no longer any validity at a moment when a new principle, that of total Warfare was making its appearance.