Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-15/tgmwc-15-142.08
Last-Modified: 2000/03/26

Q. I ask you to answer my question "yes" or "no." Do you
admit that you set up this special police service?

A. I admit that I suggested this Protective Corps and that
it was set up, but only on a small scale.

Q. Is it true that you issued instructions or imposed
measures of constraint against those who evaded the forced
labour services?

A. I did not issue them myself, but rather the French
Government did. That is correct; for in every occupied
territory, and that is so the whole world over, the
authority of the occupying power must be respected.

Q. Is it true that you demanded that the death penalty
should be applied to Civil Servants, who, for instance,
hindered your action?

A. It is true that, at a conference with the French Premier
Laval, I suggested the death penalty in cases of very
serious obstruction. I suggested it at a conference.

Q. Then you admit that you demanded the application of the
death penalty in the case of these Civil Servants?

A. Yes, if a serious case of sabotage was being dealt with,
according to martial law.

Q. Is it true that your task was to procure for the German
war industry the labour it required?

A. That was one of my tasks.

Q. In this respect, were you responsible to the defendant
Speer, Minister for Armament and Munitions, for the carrying
out of your task?

A. I was responsible to the Four-Year Plan and to the
Fuehrer, and I had instructions from the Fuehrer to meet the
requirements of Minister Speer as far as it was possible for
me to do so.

Q. Did the defendant Speer approve of all the steps which
you took in recruiting foreign labour?

A. In any event, he agreed, or he demanded, that workers be
put at his disposal; but sometimes we did not entirely agree
about how it should be done. For instance, we did not agree
about the blocked factories in France.

Q. We will come to that later. I ask you to tell me whether
you always succeeded in satisfying the demands for workers
which were made to you by the different sections of the
German economy?

A. No. I was not always successful.

Q. And when you failed, did the demands that were made to
you by defendant Speer have to be satisfied by you by taking
priority over all others?

A. Yes, they had to have priority.

Q. Were there not incidents in this respect? For instance,
did it not happen that some transports of workers were
diverted from their original destination on instructions
from Speer?

A. It did happen that, contrary to my instructions, labour
transports were stopped or transferred to other regions, or
other factories. But whether the order always emanated from
Herr Speer or from an armament commission or from another
office, I do not know. It was not always from the same
quarter.

Q. In your interrogatory you declared, however, that the
original destination of these transports was sometimes
changed in order to satisfy the demands of Speer's offices.
Do you confirm this?

A. Yes; but I mean by that something different. In that case
I was informed about it. There were two kinds of changes, or
deviations, those which I did not know about and those which
were agreed upon.

Q. Will you tell the Tribunal what was understood by the
system of the "red ticket"?

                                                  [Page 164]

A. The "red ticket" system was applied when there was a
demand for workers, mostly specialized or skilled workers,
which had to take priority over all other demands, because
the work was necessary.

Q. The system of the "red ticket" was applied to the
armament industry, was it not?

A. The "red ticket" applied to armament, yes.

Q. And it was established by agreement between the defendant
Speer and yourself?

A. That was a system which, in my opinion, was always
intended to meet emergencies; there were changes and
deviations, such as lists or red tickets. Originally, there
were only lists, and the red ticket was added by decree.

Q. You, therefore, admit that by these various systems, you
share with the defendant Speer the responsibility of having
compelled workers to work in German factories for the needs
of the war which Germany was fighting against their own
country?

A. I should like to emphasize, particularly, that this red
ticket system did not apply only to foreign workers; it
applied especially to German workers, skilled German
workers.

Q. But it was applied also to foreign workers?

A. It applied to foreign workers as well, if they were
specialists and declared their willingness.

Q. Will you tell the Tribunal, what the method of blocking
of industries ("Betriebe") means?

A. An industry was blocked if it was manufacturing
non-essential articles or so-called luxury articles.

Q. I do not think you understood my question. What were the
"S" industries in France, for instance, the factories
blocked by Speer?

A. Sperrbetriebe known as "S" enterprises - is that what you
mean?

Q. Yes.

A. Sperrbetriebe were industries which produced for Speer in
France and which had been agreed upon with the French
Minister Bichelonne, and they were blocked as regards labour
recruitment.

Q. Did you not exert strong pressure on the defendant Speer
to get him to abandon the practice of blocking industries?

A. I asked him and I urged him, but I could not get him to
give up these blocked industries.

Q. Did you ever bring up the matter with Hitler and insist
in Hitler's presence that Speer give up his position?

A. Yes, I insisted on this with Hitler but I had no success.

Q. In this connection did you not ask the Fuehrer that he
should increase your powers at the expense of the defendant
Speer's?

A. I did not ask for a general extension of my powers, but I
asked that conditions should be allowed to remain as they
were previously and I ask to be permitted to explain this -
my task was to bring workers from France to Germany - the
departments under Speer demanded skilled workers from me.
There were skilled workers in the industries which Speer had
blocked and these same industries in Germany would, of
course, be worse off if instead of having skilled French
workers they were supplied with unskilled French workers, or
men without experience in the trade. I had to procure
workers by all means but I considered it more reasonable for
the German economy to procure for it the right kind of
workers and not workers who were unskilled.

M. HERZOG: I beg the Tribunal to turn back to Document 3819,
the second part of 3819. It consists of two letters, both
addressed to the Fuehrer by the defendant Sauckel and by the
defendant Speer on this subject of the blocking of
industries.

First of all I will read to the Tribunal some extracts from
Sauckel's letter, which happens to be the second.

                                                  [Page 165]

THE PRESIDENT: Have not both of these been read already?

M. HERZOG: I think they have already been read, Mr.
President. I cannot affirm it but I believe so.

Document 3819-PS has already been submitted to the Tribunal
as Exhibit GB-306. If the Tribunal wishes, I can limit
myself to very short extracts.

THE PRESIDENT: You need not read them for the purposes of
your question to the defendant.

BY M. HERZOG:

In this letter, on Page 27, you asked whether you could
obtain in a general manner a free hand for the rational
utilization of labour.

Do you admit that you asked the Fuehrer for this free hand?

A. I have not found the place. I could never ask for a free
hand, but I did ask to be permitted to recruit as
previously. I cannot find the place that you are quoting.

Q. You will find it on Page 27.

A. In this German text it says: "In this situation, it is
absolutely necessary that I should again have a free hand."
That means, as I had before the blocked industries were
instituted. That is correct because I was interested in a
rational use of labour.

Q. That is what I asked you to confirm to me. Did you ask
that your powers should be increased at the expense of those
of your co-defendant Speer? Will you answer "yes" or "no,"
if you can?

A. I do not understand the question - that I received powers
or demanded them?

Q. Did you ask for them?

A. Yes, I demanded them, for it was to Speer's advantage.

Q. And do you not remember that on other occasions, the
defendant Speer likewise asked that his powers should be
increased at the expense of yours?

A. Yes, that may have happened, too.

Q. You declared in your interrogatory that "the very close
relations between Speer and Goebbels after the fall of
Stalingrad made Speer want very much to have me under his
authority." Can you confirm this?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it true that your general programme for recruiting
labour included the employment of prisoners of war?

A. The employment of prisoners of war, as far as they should
and could be put to work under the care of the Wehrmacht.

Q. Do you remember the order which we mentioned this
morning, your Order No. 10, which provided for the order of
priority of work and gave priority to armament needs. Was
this order applicable to prisoners of war?

A. As I explained yesterday, this order was applicable to
prisoners of war only by way of analogy and to the extent
set forth in the rules of work issued by the OKW and by me,
and contained in a schedule of work.

Q. But in Article 8 this order simply decreed that it was
applicable to prisoners of war.

A. Yes, in accordance with the other orders which existed;
that was a matter of course.

Q. You spoke to us yesterday about the inspection service.
Is it true that in September 1943 you came to an agreement
with Dr. Ley for setting up a central inspection office for
foreign workers?

A. Yes, in order to take care of these workers.

Q. In consequence, you admit that you are responsible for
the measures concerning the treatment of foreign workers?

A. I am responsible for the directives which I issued; they
are all known.

Q. Do you consider yourself responsible for the feeding of
foreign workers?

                                                  [Page 166]

A. I consider myself responsible for the directives which I
issued with regard to the feeding of foreign workers. The
actual feeding of these people was not the task and
responsibility of the labour authorities. That was the
responsibility of the factories, or the camp commandants who
had been charged by the factories to look after this.

Q. I am going to have submitted to you Document 025-PS. This
document was submitted to the Tribunal as Exhibit USA-698.
You had it yesterday. It consists of the report of a meeting
in the office of the General Plenipotentiary for the
Employment of Labour, that is to say, you yourself, on 3rd
September, 1942. The document is dated 4th September.

(This document, Mr. President, is at the end of my Document
Book, after Document 827, the last page of the French
translation.) I read -

THE PRESIDENT: The last page is 857, is it not, the document
called 857, the last page I have got. It is just in front of
2200-PS. Did you come across that? It is just after 1913-PS.

M. HERZOG: Mr. President, after 1913-PS.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

M. HERZOG: I read:

  "The Fuehrer cannot understand that in the struggle for
  the future of Europe, it should be the country which has
  to bear the brunt of this struggle which suffers most
  from hunger - whereas, in France - "

THE PRESIDENT: It is on Page 1 of it -P age 4?

M. HERZOG: No, Mr. President, on Page 4 of the French text,
that is to say, on the last page.

BY M. HERZOG:

  Q. "The Fuehrer cannot understand that in the struggle
  for the future of Europe, it should be the country which
  has to bear the brunt of this struggle which suffers most
  from hunger, whereas, in France, in Holland, in Hungary,
  in the Ukraine or anywhere else, one cannot yet speak of
  hunger. He desires that it should be the reverse in the
  future. As regards the foreign workers living in the
  Reich (with the exclusion of workers from the East)
  little by little their rations must be reduced to
  correspond to their output. It is not admissible that
  lazy Dutchmen or Italians should receive better rations
  than a good worker from the East. The guiding rule of
  output must apply equally to feeding."

I ask you what you meant when you stated that "the guiding
rule of output must apply equally to their feeding"?

A. There was a standard ration in the Reich which was
increased by additional rations based on output or
performance. I fought for the principle that these
additional rations which the workers from the West were
already receiving should be granted to the workers from the
East as well, and that where Western workers, that is, Dutch
and Belgian workers, did not keep up their output in the
same way as the Eastern workers, these additional rations
should be cut down as the case demanded, but not the
standard ration which applied to the German people as well.

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