Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-02/tgmwc-02-19.03
Last-Modified: 1999/09/17

We say also that the defendant Speer is guilty of advocating
terror and brutality as a means of maximising production by
slave labourers. And again I refer to this Document R-124.
At Page 42 there is a discussion concerning the supply and
exploitation of labour. That excerpt has been read to the
Tribunal before, and I simply refer to it in passing. It is
the excerpt wherein Speer said it would be a good thing; the
effect of it was that nothing could be said against the S.
S. and the police taking a hand and making these men work
and produce more.

We say he is also guilty of compelling allied nationals and
prisoners of war to engage in the production of armaments
and munitions and in direct military operations against
their own country.

We say that, as Chief of the "Organisation Todt," he is
accountable for its policies, which were in direct conflict
with the laws of war, for the "Organisation Todt," in
violation of the laws of war, impressed allied nationals
into its service.

Document L-191, Exhibit USA 231, is an International Labour
Office study of the exploitation of foreign labour by
Germany. We have only one copy of this document, being this
International Labour Office study, printed at Montreal,
Canada, in 1945. We ask that the Tribunal take judicial
notice of it as an official publication of the International
Labour Office.

I might say to the Tribunal, with some apology, that this
arrived at a time when we were not able even to have the
excerpt mimeographed and printed, to place in your document
book, so this is the one document which is missing from the
document book which is in your hands. However, I should like
to quote from Page 73, Paragraph 2, of this study by the
International Labour Office. It is not long; it is very
brief. I am quoting directly. It says:-

                                                  [Page 357]

   "The methods used for the recruitment of foreign workers
   who were destined for employment in the Organisation did
   not greatly differ from the methods used for the
   recruitment of foreigners for deportation to Germany."

The Organisation, by the way, is the "Organisation Todt."

   "The main difference was that, since the principal
   activities of the Organisation lay outside the frontiers
   of Germany, foreigners were not transported to Germany
   but had either to work in their own country or in some
   other occupied territory.
   
   In the recruitment drives for foreign workers for the
   Organisation methods of compulsion as well as methods of
   persuasion were used, the latter usually with very
   little result."

Moreover, conscripted allied nationals were compelled by
this same Organisation to actually engage in operations of
war against their country.

Document 407-PS, VIII, discloses that the foreign workers
who were impressed into the "Organisation Todt," through the
efforts of the defendant Sauckel, did participate in the
building of the Atlantic Wall fortifications.

As Chief of German War Production this defendant Speer
sponsored and approved the use of these prisoners of war in
the production of armaments and munitions. This has been
made plain by the evidence already discussed.

To sum it up briefly, we say that it shows first that, after
Speer assumed the responsibility for the armament
production, his concern, in his discussions with his co-
conspirators, was to secure a larger allocation of prisoners
of war for his armament factories. That has been shown by
the quotations from the excerpts of Document R-124, the
minutes of the meeting of the Central Planning Board; and in
this same meeting the Tribunal will recall that Speer
complained because only 30 per cent. of the Russian
prisoners of war were engaged in the armaments industry.

We have referred to a speech of Speer, Document 1435-PS-we
quoted from it - in which he said that 10,000 prisoners of
war were put at the disposal of the armaments industry upon
his orders.

And, finally, Speer advocated the returning of escaped
prisoners of war to factories as convicts. That is shown
again by Document R-124, Page 13, Paragraph 5 of the English
text, where Speer says that he has come to an arrangement -

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd, do not you think that we really
have got this sufficiently now?

MR. DODD: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: We have Speer's own admission and any number
of documents which prove the way in which these prisoners of
war and other labourers were brought into Germany.

MR. DODD: Well I just wanted to refer briefly to that
passage in that Document R-124 as showing that this
defendant advocated having escaped prisoners of war returned
to the munitions factories. I do not want to enlarge on this
responsibility of the defendant Speer. I was anxious - or
perhaps I should say we are all over-anxious - to have the
documents in the record and before the Tribunal.

THE PRESIDENT: Which is the passage you want to refer to on
Page 13?

MR. DODD: I just referred in passing to the statement which
begins

                                                  [Page 358]

with the words "We have come to an arrangement with the
Reichsfuehrer S.S." And in the next to the last sentence
says: "The men should be put into the factories as
convicts."

Finally, with reference to this defendant, I should like to
say to the Tribunal that he visited the concentration camp
at Mauthausen and he also visited factories such as those
conducted by the Krupp industries, where concentration camp
labour was exploited under degrading conditions. Despite
this first-hand knowledge of these conditions in Mauthausen
and places where these forced labourers were at work in
factories, he continued to direct the use of this type of
labour in factories under his own jurisdiction.

THE PRESIDENT: How do you intend to prove it as to these
concentration camps?

MR. DODD: I was going to refer the Tribunal to Page 9 of the
interrogation of 18th October, 1945, and I refer to Page 11,
Paragraph 5 of the German text and Page 9, beginning with
Paragraph 9, of the English text:-

   "Q. But, in general, the use of concentration camp
   labour was known to you and approved by you as a source
   of labour?
   
   A. Yes.
   
   Q. And you knew also, I take it, that among the inmates
   of the concentration camps there were both Germans and
   foreigners?
   
   A. I did not think about it at that time.
   
   Q. As a matter of fact, you visited the Austrian
   concentration camp personally, did you not?
   
   A. I did not - well, I was in Mauthausen once, but at
   that time I was not told just to what categories the
   inmates of the concentration camps belonged.
   
   Q. But in general everybody knew, did they not, that
   foreigners who were taken away by the Gestapo or
   arrested by the Gestapo, as well as Germans, found their
   way into the concentration camps?
   
   A. Of course, yes. I did not mean to imply anything like
   that."

And on Page 15 of this same interrogation, beginning with
the 13th paragraph of the
English text, and Page 20 in the German text, we find these
questions:

   "Q. Did you ever discuss, by the way, the requirements
   of Krupp for foreign labour?
   
   A. It is certain that it was reported to me what
   shortage Krupp had in foreign workers.
   
   Q. Did you ever discuss it with any of the members of
   the Krupp firm?
   
   A. I cannot say that exactly, but during the time of my
   activities I visited the Krupp factory more than once
   and it is certain that this was discussed, that is, the
   lack of manpower."

Before closing, I should like to take two minutes of the
time of the Tribunal to refer to what we consider to be some
of the applicable laws of the case for the assistance of the
Tribunal in considering these documents which we have
offered.

We refer, of course, first of all, to Sections 6 (b) and 6
(c) of the Charter of this Tribunal. We also say that the
acts of the conspirators constituted a flagrant violation of
Articles 46 and 52 of the Regulations annexed to the Hague
Convention No. IV of 1907.

                                                  [Page 359]

Article 46 seeks to safeguard the family honour, the rights
and the lives of persons in areas under belligerent
occupation.

Article 52 provides in part that: "Requisitions in kind and
services shall not be demanded from municipalities or
inhabitants except for the needs of the army of occupation.
They shall be in proportion to the resources of the
country".

We say that these conspirators violated this Article because
the labour which they conscripted was not used to satisfy
the needs of the army of occupation, but, on the contrary,
was forcibly removed from the occupied areas and exploited
in the interest of the German war effort.

Finally, we say that these conspirators, and particularly
the defendants Sauckel and Speer, by virtue of their
planning, of their execution, and of their approval of this
programme which we have been describing yesterday and today,
the enslavement and the misuse of the forced labour of
prisoners of war - that for this they bear a special
responsibility for their Crimes Against Humanity and their
War Crimes.

THE PRESIDENT: Are you finishing, Mr. Dodd?

MR. DODD: Yes, I have finished.

THE PRESIDENT: I should like to ask you why you have not
read Document 3057-PS, which is Sauckel's statement.

MR. DODD: Yes. We had intended to offer that document.
Counsel for the defendant Sauckel informed me a day or two
ago that his client maintained that he had been coerced into
making the statement. Because we had not ample time to
ascertain the facts of the matter, we preferred to withhold
it, rather than to offer it to the Tribunal under any
question of doubt.

THE PRESIDENT: He objects to it, and therefore you have not
put it in?

MR. DODD: No, we did not offer it while there was any
question about it.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

MR. DODD: Might I suggest to the Tribunal that a recess be
taken at this time? I am sorry to have to say that I am due
to be before the Tribunal for some little time - that is, I
am sorry for the Tribunal - with the matters on the
concentration camps.

THE PRESIDENT: You mean a recess now?

MR. DODD: If your Honour pleases.

THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, yes; ten minutes.

(A recess was taken.)

MR. DODD: May it please the Tribunal, we propose to offer
additional evidence at this time concerning the use of Nazi
concentration camps against the people of Germany and allied
nationals. We propose to examine the purposes and the role
of the concentration camp in the larger Nazi scheme of
things. We propose to show that the concentration camp was
one of the fundamental institutions of the Nazi regime, that
it was a pillar of the system of terror by which the Nazis
consolidated their power over Germany and imposed their
ideology upon the German people, that it was really a
primary weapon in the battle against the Jews, against the
Christian Church, against Labour, against those who wanted
peace, against opposition or non-conformity of any kind. We
say it involved the systematic use of terror to achieve the
cohesion within Germany which was necessary for the
execution of the conspirators' plans for aggression.

                                                  [Page 360]

We propose to show that a concentration camp was one of the
principal instruments used by the conspirators for the
commission on an enormous scale of Crimes Against Humanity
and War Crimes; that it was the final link in a chain of
terror and repression which involved the S.S. and the
Gestapo, and which resulted in the apprehension of victims
and their confinement, without trial, often without charges,
generally with no indication of the length of their
detention.

My colleagues will present full evidence concerning the
criminal role of the S.S. and Gestapo in this phase of Nazi
terrorism, the concentration camp, but at this point, I wish
simply to point out that the S.S., through its espionage
system, tracked down the victims, that the criminal police
and the Gestapo seized them and brought them to the camps,
and that the concentration camps were administered by the
S.S.

This Tribunal, we feel, is already aware of the sickening
evidence of the brutality of the concentration camp from the
showing of the moving picture. More than that, individual
prosecutions are going on, going forward before other
courts, which will record these outrages in detail.
Therefore, we do not propose to present a catalogue of
individual brutalities, but, rather, to submit evidence
showing the fundamental purposes for which the camps were
used, the techniques of terror which were employed, the
large number of victims and the death and the anguish which
they caused.

The evidence relating to concentration camps has been
assembled in a document book bearing the letter "S". I might
say that the documents in this book have been arranged in
the order of presentation, rather than, as we have been
doing, numerically. In this book we have put them in as they
occur in the presentation. One document in this book, 2309-
PS, is cited several times, so we have marked it with a tab
with a view to facilitating reference back to it. It will be
referred to more than once.

The Nazis realised early that, without the most drastic
repression of actual and potential opposition, they could
not consolidate their power over the German people. We have
seen that, immediately after Hitler became Chancellor, the
conspirators promptly destroyed civil liberty by issuing the
Presidential Emergency Decree of 28th February, 1933. It is
Document 1390-PS, and it sets forth that decree, which has
already been introduced in evidence before the Tribunal and
is included in Exhibit USA B. It was this decree which was
the basis for the so-called "Schutshaft ", that is,
protective custody - the terrible power to imprison people
without judicial proceedings. This is made clear by Document
2499-PS, which is a typical order for protective custody. We
offer it for that purpose, as a typical order for protective
custody which has come into the possession of the
prosecution. It is Exhibit USA 232. I should like to quote
from the body of that order:-

   "Order of Protective Custody.
   
   Based on Article 1 of the Decree of the Reich President
   for the Protection of People and State of 28th February,
   1933 (Reichsgesetzblatt, Page 83), you are taken into
   protective custody in the interest of public security
   and order.
   
   Reason: Suspicion of activities inimical toward the
   State."

Defendant Goering in a book entitled Aufbau einer Nation,
published in 1934, sought to give the impression, it
appears, that the camps were originally directed at those
whom the Nazis considered Communists and Social Democrats.
We refer to Document 2324-PS, Exhibit USA 233. This

                                                  [Page 361]

document is an excerpt from Page 89 of the German book. We
refer to the third and fourth paragraphs of the document,
which I read as follows:

   "We had to deal ruthlessly with these enemies of the
   State. It must not be forgotten that at the moment of
   our seizure of power over 6,000,000 people officially
   voted for Communism and about 8,000,000 for Marxism in
   the Reichstag elections in March.
   
   Thus the Concentration Camps were created, to which we
   had to send first, thousands of functionaries of the
   Communist and Social Democratic parties."

In practical operations, the power to order confinement in
these camps was almost without limit. The defendant Frick,
in an order which he issued on 25th January, 1938, as
Minister of the Interior, made this quite clear. An extract
from this order is set forth in Document 1723-PS, to which
we make reference. It is Exhibit USA 206. I wish to read
Article 1, beginning at the bottom of Page 5 of the English
translation of this order:-

   "Protective custody can be decreed as a coercive measure
   of the Secret State Police against persons who endanger
   the security of the people and the State through their
   attitude, in order to counter all aspirations of enemies
   of the people and State."

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