III. OPENING STATEMENTS

A. Opening Statement for the Prosecution [^[64]]

Mr. Denney: May it please your Honors, this defendant is Erhard Milch, Field Marshal in the Luftwaffe, Inspector General of the Luftwaffe, State Secretary in the Air Ministry, Generalluftzeugmeister, sole representative of the Wehrmacht on the Central Planning Board, Chief of the Jaegerstab,[^[65]] and member of the Nazi Party.

This man is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in that he took part in the program for the enslavement and ill-treatment of the civilian population of vast territories conquered by the armed forces of Germany and in the employment of prisoners of war in tasks forbidden by the laws and customs of war. He is also accused of the torture and murder of concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war who were made the unwilling subjects of savage and fatal medical experiments.

The life of Erhard Milch is a story of personal and professional betrayal. A man of high intelligence, of great executive ability, he misused these talents to dedicate them to a scheme for conquest and a plan for the enslavement of the world. The 10 years of military service of the defendant from the age of 18 to 28 which took him through the First World War were a perfect preparation for the tasks to come. From 1915 to 1919, Milch was a scout, observer, adjutant and squadron leader in the German Air Force. At the very infancy of military aviation, the defendant began an association which was to last through his entire public career. It was at this time that he learned the needs and the problems of flying men, a knowledge which was to stand him in such good stead in his work as the founder of the Luftwaffe.

The defendant never dissociated himself from the aims and ideals of German militarism. He became one of the silent army of men who remembered, hated, and hoped; but unlike many others, this man did not sit idly by. He did not wait passively for Germany to rise again, he devoted his best efforts towards that end. In 1921, only 1 year after his discharge from the army, we find him working as chief of air operations [flights] in the new business of commercial aviation.

There is no necessity to fill out in detail the successive steps in the defendant’s rise in civilian air transportation—a few broad strokes suffice. The next significant event in his career came in 1925 when he joined the state-sponsored Lufthansa which within 3 years he was to form into the nucleus of a new air force. It is no euphemism that he was called the Father of German Air Transportation.

When Hitler came into power in 1933, Milch acceded to the requests of both Goering and Hitler and assumed the additional duty of State Secretary in the Air Ministry. It was understood from the start, and it was confirmed in 1937, that Milch would succeed Goering as Chief of the German Air Force in the event of the latter’s death or withdrawal. By the time the new Luftwaffe had publicly emerged from such embryos as the Air Sport League, the Air Defense League, and the Flying [Flieger] Hitler Youth, the defendant had become a Generalleutnant (the equivalent of the American major general). The honors which followed: field marshal in the Luftwaffe in 1940, which was gained from 2 months’ participation in the invasion of Norway; Generalluft-Zeugmeister in 1941; member of the Central Planning Board in 1942; Chief of the Jaegerstab in 1944, were proof alike of the evil genius of Erhard Milch and of his complete compatibility with the Nazi ambitions and methods.

This defendant became a member of the Nazi Party in May 1933. His work in the Party was important. He was indeed one of the little group of specialists of whom Mr. Justice Jackson, in his closing address before the International Military Tribunal, aptly said:

“It is doubtful whether the Nazi master plan could have succeeded without their specialized intelligence which they so willingly put at its command. They (speaking of Goering, Keitel, Jodl, and the rest) did so with knowledge of its announced aims and methods and continued their services after practice had confirmed the direction in which they were tending. Their superiority to the average run of Nazi mediocrity is not their excuse. It is their condemnation.”[^[66]]

Various Germans allowed themselves to be absorbed into the Nazi Party for a variety of reasons. Depression, financial and business betterment, ambition, discouragement with the previous political situation, and human weakness in the face of terrorism, all played their part in the recruitment of the Nazi machine. There were few cases in which a man made as clear, as deliberate, and as discreditable a choice of Nazism as did Milch.

The high esteem in which the defendant was held by Hitler and his position within the inner circle of Nazi militarists can be seen from the fact that he was one of a party of fourteen of Hitler’s highest and most trusted officers who attended a conference in the new Reich Chancellory on 23 May 1939, at which Hitler made known to his military chiefs his plans and objectives. (L-79.)

All in all, two points stand out in even a quick survey of Milch’s career: First, he never accepted the defeat of Germany in the First World War; his life between the wars was devoted to the work of placing Germany in a position to challenge the world in the matter of air supremacy; and second, he was a man who was unlikely to allow either difficulty or honor to stand in the way of the accomplishment of his purpose—the objectives of the Nazi Party. If these characteristics are borne in mind, much of the defendant’s fanaticism and the unbelievable savagery with which he adhered to the Nazi plan for conquest at the expense of all values of human decency may be seen as the natural consequences of the acts of a man with his criminal philosophy.

We have then, at the outbreak of the war this man, already within the inner circle, already devoted to the Nazi scheme of things and quite essential to their fulfillment, with a record of organization and with the work of preparation behind him—poised with his companions for the kill. We see the air armadas, which were the labor of his love, helping to shatter Poland within 18 days, helping to reduce the Lowlands to smoking ruins within a few days’ time, assisting in the subjugation of the French military machine and in driving the British from the continent in a period of a few weeks. We see the hordes of the Fatherland racing on and on with the air arm always overhead, preparing the way, until Germany had overrun a territory from the Normandy Coast to Moscow, and from the North Sea to El Alamein.

Then began the occupation, the next step in the plan of the Third Reich—an empire which was to last a thousand years. Over an entire continent there spread the deadly rigor of a “Pax Germanica” in which there was to be one citizen class, one race of supermen, and the balance, one class of slaves. At first the occupation overlords maintained the appearance of legality. They gave receipts for the property they plundered, they offered inducements to the laborers they shanghaied, they went through the mockery of signing contracts which were both illusory and fraudulent. But even this sham disappeared as the war went on, and as early as 1942, the German occupation appeared in public as the ugly thing it was, complete with armed recruiters, military escorts on deportation trains and prison camps for the workers brought into Germany. Mr. Justice Jackson, in his opening address on behalf of the United States of America before the International Military Tribunal,[^[67]] vividly described the character and extent of the slave-labor program in the following words:

“Perhaps the deportation to slave labor was the most horrible and extensive slaving operation in history. On few other subjects is our evidence so abundant and so damaging. In a speech made on 25 January 1944 the defendant Frank, Governor General of Poland, boasted, ‘I have sent 1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich.’ (059-PS, p. 2.) The defendant Sauckel reported that ‘out of the 5 million foreign workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily.’ * * * Children of 10 to 14 years were impressed into service * * *.

“When enough labor was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were forced into war work in flagrant violation of international conventions (016-PS). Slave labor came from France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and the East. Methods of recruitment were violent (R-124, 018-PS, 204-PS). The treatment of these slave laborers was stated in general terms, not difficult to translate into concrete deprivations, in a letter to the defendant Rosenberg from the defendant Sauckel, which stated:

“ ‘All the men’ (prisoners of war and foreign civilian workers) ‘must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure * * *’ (016-PS)”.

Working as we do every day with crimes of unbelievable enormity, we are apt to become quite deadened to the hideous nature of specific crimes. It is, therefore, well to stop and consider the particular offenses with which this man stands charged.

Crimes are best evaluated in terms of the rights they violate. The evil, slavery, which is the deprivation of another’s liberty, is best judged through a consideration of its opposite good, freedom. Freedom is, to an extent, properly regarded as the symbol of human progress, the measure of civilization. Much of man’s history can be expressed in terms of his fight for freedom. Man’s personal freedom is his most precious prerogative, the exercise of his free will is his distinctive function. The building of a legal structure to protect the freedom of the individual is the basic purpose of good government. Men have lived for freedom, worked for it, fought for it, and died for it.

It is precisely because of their destructive effects on the freedom of the individual that governments such as the Nazi German State are so hatefully and essentially evil. The Nazi rise to power is a story of duress which ripened into slavery, first for the people within Germany and then for those in the lands she conquered. The enforced labor program was no expedient forced upon Germany by the exigencies of war. It was a basic concept of the Nazi scheme and the permanent destiny of those who would come under the German yoke.

It is most natural, therefore, that Control Council Law No. 10, which was enacted for the guidance of this and other tribunals which are set up for the trial of the principals in the crime of Nazi Germany, should deal in very severe terms with that most Nazi of all crimes—slavery. Article II, paragraph 1 (sec. b) specifically names among the enumerated war crimes the ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor of civilian populations from occupied territory and the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war. Paragraph 1 (sec. c) specifies as a crime against humanity, deportation of civilian populations. Article II, paragraphs 2 and 3 proclaim that anyone taking a principal or consenting part in these crimes, or belonging to a plan or enterprise for the commission of these crimes, is guilty of an offense for which the death penalty may be prescribed.

The prosecution will prove that Milch was a principal in the deportation into slave labor of civilian populations from occupied territories. It will show that he was involved in the murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war. Evidence will be presented which will prove that he was engaged in plans and enterprises which directly involved the use of slave labor. We will show that this man was as much concerned with the employment of slave labor as was any man in Germany. In his positions as a member of the Central Planning Board, as Generalluftzeugmeister, and as Chief of the Jaegerstab, he had full opportunity to hear all the grim details of the exploitation of slave labor. He participated in decisions and formulated basic policies with reference to its use, and over and above all this he showed his personal animosity and his gratuitous fanaticism in constantly urging the most repressive and cruel measures in the procurement and exploitation of foreign workers.

During the course of this trial, an attempt will be made to distinguish among that which this defendant did as Generalluftzeugmeister, as Chief of the Jaegerstab, as State Secretary for Air, and as a member of the Central Planning Board. At times it will be difficult, if not impossible, to state in just which capacity he was acting at a particular time. We must emphasize now that it is not essential to the proof of this case that we should be able always to specify the exact capacity in which the defendant acted. The multiplicity of his connection with the slave-labor program is his greatest condemnation, and it is because he knew so much and did so much that there can be no excuse for him.

Erhard Milch operated at a policy level high in the chain of command above the work boss and the concentration camp guard. We need not show him driving the workers to their tasks or crowding them into the hovels in which they lived. We are not primarily concerned with the minute details of the slave-labor program which were carried out by minions who obeyed men like the defendant. We were dealing with a planner of a great crime, and it has not been difficult for the law to seek out and punish those who plan as well as those who obey. The law would indeed be derelict if only those were punished who pulled the trigger to kill, or, comparably speaking, ran a slave camp in which people worked an 84-hour week and dragged out a miserable existence under conditions from which death was welcome relief.

This defendant cannot plead in truth that he did not know that the use of slave labor was wrong. He cannot use even the technical excuse, so common among the Nazis, that this was not illegal because the Nazi law authorized it. Official sanction of slavery would have been a law so evil that even the Nazi masters dared not proclaim it. A search through the mass of decrees and pronouncements which passed for law during the regime of Adolf Hitler fails to reveal sanction for slavery of foreign laborers. On the other hand, certain prohibitory laws survived from a more respectable day.

Paragraph 234 of the German Criminal Law (published in 1942 in Munich and Berlin, pp. 364-365) provides that “whoever seizes another by ruse, threat or force in order to expose him in a state of helplessness, or to deliver him into slavery, bondage, or a foreign military or naval service shall be punished for kidnapping by confinement in a penitentiary.” This law was in force during the Nazi regime and was published in the most recent edition of German Criminal Law which we have been able to find.

That maltreatment was commonplace in the course of the enforced labor program in Germany is well known; that starvation, murder, and all types of personal abuses took place is notorious. All of this was found as a fact in the decision of the International Military Tribunal. There can be no question of the responsibility of the defendant for the murders and privations which were the inevitable byproduct of the slave-labor program.

But we need not follow the crime of slave labor down to its last detail in order to show the defendant as the murderer he was. We can and will prove that he directly participated in crimes of which murder was often the intended and on numerous occasions the inevitable result.

The prosecution charges, and will prove, that he took an important, responsible, and essential part in the practice of experiments upon human beings carried out against their wills and in callous disregard of the lives of its victims.

Cut then to bare essentials the charges set forth in paragraphs 8 and 9 of count two of the indictment and in paragraph 11 of count three can be summarized by the statement that the defendant was officially connected with and took a consenting part in enterprises in which criminal medical experiments were performed upon involuntary subjects.

The nature and extent of these experiments and the fact that they were conducted for the specific benefit of the Luftwaffe will be shown in some detail. We will prove that the defendant was the responsible Luftwaffe officer with ultimate supervisory authority over the experiments. The Court will see that throughout the duration of these experiments, the defendant was constantly treated by all concerned as the ultimate authority within the Luftwaffe in control of the experimental equipment and in charge of certain personnel who were actively engaged in them.

Evidence will be presented which will prove that the defendant was thoroughly informed of the criminal activities of Dr. Rascher, the experimenter, and his associates. We will prove that a conference was held at the defendant’s office, that films were shown there, that communications were sent to him from highest Nazi sources which specifically referred to opposition on the part of “narrow-minded doctors” to the experiments. A web of evidence will be adduced to portray the defendant, as he really was, an active partner in crime. We will show that the defendant authorized the initiation of freezing experiments and that he ordered an extension of the high-altitude experiments for a period of 2 months, during which extended period a number of experimental subjects died.

At the conclusion of the evidence with respect to the medical experiments upon human beings there will remain no doubt that Erhard Milch was a knowing, willing, and active participant in murder.

Throughout the trial the prosecution will place before the Court a number of statements which will portray him as a man who believed no tears should be shed for the victims of total war when German soldiers every day were making the ultimate sacrifice for the Fatherland. This man was not a hard-headed, single-minded production chief whose only problem was to get things done and whose rash statements were the impetuous remarks of an over-worked executive. Milch will be shown as a man who boasted of his responsibility in the hanging of prisoners of war, who urged that any effort on the part of foreign workers to strike during enemy action should be met with rifle fire, who offered protection to slave supervisors who should mistreat their subjects. We will show that he was not too busy to inform himself fully of everything with which he was officially connected and that over and above this he went out of his way to learn the most minute details of matters with which he was very remotely connected.

And now a brief word about the type of evidence with which the prosecution will prove its case. It must be borne in mind that we are not concerned with a single localized incident or with a series of such incidents. The proof which we must show cannot be brought forth from the daily events of ordered society. It must be drawn from the cold ashes of a broken nation. The documents which will be brought into Court have been taken from all corners of a continent. They have one common feature which elevates them in the hierarchy of evidence to a place above the story of sincere but fallible eyewitnesses. These documents are official German records, some of them records of the defendant’s own organizations. In some cases they bear the defendant’s signature or his handwritten initials. In every case they are authentic records compiled by Germans, accurate because there was no reason for falsification or exaggeration, thorough because of a national fetish for attention to detail, reliable because they were made at times when the German fortunes of war were high and their scriveners had no reason to fear that one day they would be confronted with their hand-made records of criminality.

It would seem that at this point there should be some discussion of the various organizations with which the defendant was connected.

We are concerned principally with that part of the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht), Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, known as the OKL (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe), the High Command of the German Air Force. The Chief of the OKL was Reich Marshal Hermann Goering. His Inspector General and State Secretary in the Air Ministry was the defendant Erhard Milch. As such, from July 1940, he held the rank of field marshal (comparable to the American rank of general of the armies).[^[68]]

The other two branches of the OKW with which we are incidentally concerned were the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres), High Command of the Army, and the OKM (Oberkommando der Marine), High Command of the Navy. The army was commanded by Field Marshal von Brauchitsch until December 1941, at which time it was taken over by Hitler. The navy was commanded by Grand Admiral [Admiral of the Fleet] Raeder until 1943, thereafter by Grand Admiral Doenitz.

The Luftwaffe Medical Service came under this defendant in his capacity as Inspector General of the Luftwaffe. The Medical Service was headed by Dr. Erich Hippke until January 1944; thereafter it was headed by Dr. Oskar Schroeder.

There was an experimental institute in Berlin called the DVL which was a technical research institution for aero-research. This was subordinate to the defendant in his position as Generalluftzeugmeister.

We now turn to the Central Planning Board. This was established by a Goering decree, pursuant to a Hitler order of 22 April, 1942. The Board consisted of Albert Speer, Erhard Milch, and Paul Koerner. Later, by a supplementary Goering decree, in September 1943, Walter Funk was added to the Board. Speer and Milch were the dominant members, and Koerner and Funk played comparatively minor roles. The Central Planning Board was, in effect, a consolidation of all controls over German war production. The Board was found by the International Military Tribunal to have “had supreme authority for the scheduling of German production and the allocation and development of raw materials. * * *”[^[69]] Hand in hand with this goes the corollary of the procurement and allocation of labor. Reich Marshal Goering, in his decree of 22 April, 1942, stated in part——“It (the Central Planning Board) encompasses that which is fundamental and vital. It makes unequivocal decisions and supervises the execution of its directives”. The Central Planning Board requisitioned labor from Sauckel with full knowledge that the demands would be supplied by foreign forced labor, and the Board determined the basic allocation of this labor within the German war economy. Sauckel was the servant of the Central Planning Board in the procurement of slave labor. There are records of some 50-odd meetings of the Board between the time of its establishment in 1942, and 1945. The defendant was present at all but a few of these meetings and on occasion his was the dominant voice. The International Military Tribunal found that the Central Planning Board determined the total number of laborers needed for German industry, and required Sauckel to produce them, usually by deportation from occupied territories.

It is worthy of note that Speer was appointed Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions on 2 February 1942, Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation on 21 March 1942, and the Central Planning Board was created on 22 April 1942.

Turning now to the defendant’s position as Chief of the Jaegerstab. The Jaegerstab was formed pursuant to a Speer decree of 1 March 1944, for the purpose of increasing the production of German fighter aircraft, which, because of effective and heavy raids by strategic air forces of Great Britain and America, had suffered a production decrease to a figure below 1,000 planes a month.

Because of this reduced production of fighter planes, Milch had requested Speer to establish a commission to deal with this most vital problem. The commission was created and Speer and Milch were joint chiefs. The Jaegerstab was actually a group of experts, drawn from the various phases of German industry and supplemented by representatives of the various Ministries concerned, such as Labor, Supply, Transportation, Power and Energy, Raw Materials, Health, Repairs, and so forth.

Meetings were held almost daily, in the beginning at the Air Ministry in Berlin and later at Tempelhof airfield in the same city. The Jaegerstab functions were these: the quick repair of plants damaged in bombing or strafing operations, the dispersal of German aircraft plants, and the construction of underground factories for aircraft production.

As it was with the Central Planning Board, so it was with the Jaegerstab, a major problem was the procurement of slave labor. The workers for the Jaegerstab were procured from the Sauckel Ministry, from occupied countries, and from the SS, who supplied concentration camp inmates and Hungarian Jews.

So successful was the work of the Jaegerstab that Speer decided to enlarge its functions to include other phases of armament and munitions production. Accordingly, on 1 August 1944, he issued a decree expanding the functions of the Jaegerstab and changing its name to Ruestungsstab.

The position of Generalluftzeugmeister was taken over by the defendant in 1941, following the death of Colonel General Ernst Udet. In this post the defendant was in charge of all technical research in the Luftwaffe and his was the over-all responsibility for all aircraft production. As such he spoke for the Luftwaffe in the meetings of the Central Planning Board and in conferences with Hitler. It is obvious that here again the procurement of labor was a primary consideration for one who had the complete responsibility for keeping the Luftwaffe in the air.

In the trial before the International Military Tribunal, it was determined that 5,000,000 laborers were deported to Germany. Of these, 4,800,000 did not come voluntarily.

The evidence will show that the defendant’s responsibility was as great, if not greater, than was Sauckel’s. Erhard Milch raised his voice in demanding that foreign labor be procured by any methods and in advocating that cruel and repressive measures be taken by those in charge of these laborers. There is no record of any utterance by him, which can be offered as a mitigating circumstance to his complete complicity in the criminality of the slave-labor program.

The evidence on the altitude and freezing experiments will reveal him as a man completely without concern for the welfare and lives of the wretched, unwilling victims of the criminal tortures conducted for the benefit of the Luftwaffe.

The series of trials, of which this is one, if it is to serve its purpose in exposing and punishing the abuses of Nazidom, must strike hard at the cores of savage German militarism and its technical counterpart, industry for war. Erhard Milch is the foremost example of the union between German militarism and German heavy industry. What useful purpose is served by condemning these two and allowing their sponsors, men like Milch, to go unpunished?

We take it as a fundamental proposition that man is not the helpless product of his environment. Civilization is a lengthy chronicle of men who triumphed over difficulty. Its survival depends on the moral fibre of individuals who can use circumstance, not be determined by it. If society must answer for the actions of men, and not men for the course of society, then, indeed, governments are our masters and not our servants; then, indeed, law dictates but does not express justice. Erhard Milch lived during years of violence and in an evil environment but he was a man well able to overcome these factors and become a force for good. It was by his own free choice that he followed the line of least resistance and became one of the evil spirits who cast a dark shadow of war and crime over Germany and the world. He had a choice between the easy wrong and the hard right—he chose the former. Peace, order, and progress depend on men of sufficient courage to choose at times a hard, just path. Ours indeed is an exacting standard, but the rewards are great, and the alternative is chaos.

[64] Opening statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript.

[65] See section IV A3, p. 524 ff.

[66] Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. XIX, pp. 417-18, Nuremberg, 1947.

[67] Ibid., vol. II, pp. 139-140.

[68] See Table of comparative ranks, p. [331].

[69] Trial of Major War Criminals, vol. I, p. 331.

B. Opening Statement for the Defense [^[70]]

Dr. Bergold: May it please the Tribunal, I undertake now to present the evidence for the defense. The prosecution has painted the blackest possible picture of the man I am here to defend. It has pronounced a moral judgment on him, even for the period of his life, which, according to the indictment, is not to be judged by this Tribunal.

Because of the great difference between the American and the German people I have no knowledge of whether such a method of prosecution is customary in the United States of America. The good principles of law which were practiced in Germany before 1933 provided that even counsel for the prosecution should not reproach the defendant for anything that is not subject to examination by the Tribunal. The meaning of this is that defense counsel also should be in a position to express his views with regard to these charges. This, according to my opinion, seems to be a fair principle.

Therefore, if it please the Tribunal, it shall be my aim in the course of my submission of evidence to prove by witnesses who have been approved and by the defendant himself that the charges made by the prosecution are incorrect, and I shall aim to prove that also for the charges which are not contained in the indictment.

Erhard Milch has never in his life been a traitor, as a person or in his profession, not even at the end of the National Socialist rule when he himself was threatened as to his life and his honor. As a man of high intelligence and great talent for organization, he always tried to do his best for his people and for the world.

To say of him that he misused his talent and devoted his life to a plan for conquest and enslavement of the world is to have a completely wrong conception of reality. He was never a militarist in the bad sense of the word. Never did he arm secretly before 1933 nor make use of the peaceful instrument of the commercial air fleet for any sinister purposes. He, the man who wanted to devote himself only to the tasks of peace, the man who in his capacity as director of the German Lufthansa collaborated with many European air transport companies and who conceived this collaboration as almost a forerunner of a unified Europe; he, the man who in 1937 devoted all his efforts, together with a few wise and courageous statesmen, to the attempt to bring about a full understanding and a large scale collaboration between France, Belgium, and Germany (unfortunately, the high Tribunal has not given me permission to furnish complete proof for this fact); he, Erhard Milch, truly never tried to enslave the world. If he had succeeded in his plans in 1937, then there would have been no 1938. And, all the more, there would not have been the horrible period of 1939 to 1945, the period in which the battle against intolerance became so hard and so complicated that we might think today that, as in an Arabian tale, this spirit of intolerance freed itself from the bottle and spread itself over so wide an area that, even today, it causes actions which one day must also be condemned by the just and the wise.

I shall prove that from the moment when this man tried, in 1937, to achieve his plans for peace he lost the confidence of his superiors. He never belonged to the intimate circle in which his superiors confided, even less so after 1937. They employed him unwillingly and only because they believed that they could not spare him because of his ability. It is cheap and easy to say now that this man should have denied his superiors the benefit of his talents. We shall prove that he tried to do so. But who can dare to judge with certainty what went on in the heart of such a man who was terribly aware of what dangers threatened his people, once the fateful step of starting the war had been taken? Neither did he want this step nor could he prevent it.

Should he really have chosen the path of revolt, this man who was brought up in a world in which, for all ages, military obedience had been an inviolate law, this man who had a passionate love for his people? How many human beings in any country are capable of breaking the chains of their education, and turn against the laws which have been inviolate for them ever since their childhood?

There is no punishable guilt, perhaps even no moral guilt in the fact that a man cannot free himself from the world of his education. Because it is the very essence of all education to give the man unbreakable laws and to create around him what philosophers call “the environment proper to his own nature.” Therefore, he has not made himself guilty by doing what his education and the conceptions of his environment made him call his duty, in a war which he did not want, which he tried to prevent; and the stopping of which he advised again and again after it had started. This duty, he felt, was to do his work and to prevent the worst which he anticipated, namely, the terrible devastation of his fatherland and its complete and helpless collapse.

I shall prove that he always, even after the war had broken out, concerned himself with questions of defense only; that he wanted to strengthen the fighter force, a defensive weapon with which he wanted to prevent the doom of the German cities. Perhaps, one day, the necessity for this doom will be judged differently. I shall prove that he condemned the attack against Soviet Russia as folly, and that he tried to prevent it. I shall show that in the spring of 1943 he submitted to Hitler detailed proposals for an immediate termination of the war and that he told him without reserve that the war was lost.

If it is true that from that moment onward he made efforts again and again to strengthen the fighter force, and that he took part in the creation of the Jaegerstab, who can reproach him with the intention to prolong the war if it will be proved that he knew that the enemy air forces would make a desert of Germany? Was it inhuman that he tried to prevent this total destruction even if the war was lost? He alone could not end the war. But he could try to prevent the inferno in Germany from becoming full reality. What true lover of his own country in any part of the world would not make the same attempt? Never can he be considered guilty on account of that, and even less so because of the fact that in other countries also voices have arisen and still arise which say that during the destruction of Germany many a thing happened which was not always compatible with military necessity.

Despite the pains he took, his superiors mistrusted him so much that both Goering and Hitler contemplated to have him put out of the way.

I shall show that he never endorsed the theory of the superman and of the master race; that he always remained humane and that he intervened on behalf of friends with disregard for his own security. He never was cruel. It may be that some of the minutes carry wild speeches about him which must strike your Honors who come from a different world and are used to different customs as terrible and incomprehensible. I shall prove to you that in the barracks yards, which made the first impress on the sensitive mind of young Milch, wild expressions were quite common and that in German barracks yards bombastic expressions were considered normal and truly militaristic style. Nobody in Germany did at any time take these expressions at face value. For this human element in particular, the old saying holds true that dogs which bark do not bite.

This man, however, was all the more inclined to use these shocking expressions due to the fact that in a number of accidents he had suffered severe concussions of the brain as a result of which he was more susceptible to fits of anger than other people; all the more so since he was overburdened with work and always frantic because time was too short. But witnesses will appear before this Tribunal who will confirm that no one in his surroundings took these fits of wrath, these crazy words, seriously; that these expressions never went further than the circle of his intimates, and that they in no way had any effect. His raving and yelling would make so little impression that when people around him noticed he was about to have another fit of rage, one would hear the familiar quotation: “In a moment somebody will be hanged again and then nothing happens.”

I shall show that this man knew nothing at all of the many abominable happenings which occurred out in the country, sometimes committed by persons who were under his command, and that, for example, the connection with the experiments at Dachau were so remote and incidental that he could not even surmise what the men there undertook to do. The sphere of his duties was so terrific, the burden of his work so great that he truly would have needed to be a superman if he were expected to have known all that the prosecution finds out today from records and from the examination of the offenders. It is appropriate to use a Latin quotation here with a little change: “Quod est in actis, non semper est in munde.” Not everything that the investigating mind uncovers at a later date and interconnects was so in actual fact. The poet says “Easy for him to speak who speaks last.” This man is charged with letting prisoners be abused and killed. I shall prove that this was not so. I shall even prove that, for example, he did everything possible to protect so-called terror fliers from being lynched. He was a man who tried to attenuate verdicts pronounced by competent courts of justice and who never favored death sentences.

The prosecution charges him with the enslavement of the peoples of Europe. I shall prove that he never aspired to enslavement; that information on deportations and shanghaiing never reached him; and that, on the contrary, information reached him which was bound to confuse his judgment and which permitted him to engage in deeds which now are considered as wrong. Up to this day the opinion still prevails that everybody in Germany knew everything about all the cruelties. Slowly, however, the recognition comes through that this is not correct. In the “Neue Zeitung”, the official organ of the military government, a German anti-Fascist by the name of Arnold Weiss Reuthel, whose book on the concentration camps is considered noteworthy by the newspapers, published an article “On the Psychological Causes.” There he states literally:

“One would have termed anybody who informed the public of such happenings a scoundrel or a lunatic. This also explains why people who did not see these things with their own eyes and did not suffer from them day after day, even today still refuse to believe that they actually happened. Yes, to me too it seems today often a dream and impossible when I think back and try to persuade myself that they really happened, the fearful excesses to which I was a witness during my 5 years in the concentration camp.”

Thus writes, be it noted, a man who suffered for years in a concentration camp himself. It has been proved again and again that the most painstaking secrecy was maintained regarding the atrocities. This is no hollow talk. This is the truth. The actual perpetrators dissembled, denied, lied, in a way that could not have been surpassed in cunning. The documents show you, Honorable Judges, that it was forbidden for Rascher to make reports without Himmler’s authorization. Himmler wanted to draw the veil of secrecy over everything. But even with a Hitler, Sauckel, for example, soft-pedalled all his doings in the procuring of the foreign workers. Regarding this, I will submit evidence.

I shall also show that the assignment of these workers was not a point in any program existing from the outset; that it was exclusively an emergency device which the exigencies of the war forced upon Germany. So at least all this had to appear to him, the man who did not belong to the innermost circle. That he could not think otherwise will be demonstrated to the Court, to the Tribunal.

It is misleading when the honorable representative of the prosecution in his opening speech points out that this man had more to do with the use of forced labor than any other man in Germany. The International Military Tribunal, in its judgment on Speer, whose position, as no one in this courtroom can doubt, was far more powerful and significant than that of this man here, has stated:[^[71]] “Speer’s position was such that he did not have to deal directly with the atrocities and the carrying out of the forced labor program.” On Sauckel, the International Military Tribunal says:[^[72]] “It is nevertheless established beyond all doubt that Sauckel had the over-all responsibility for the slave-labor program.” I shall offer evidence that Sauckel actually also had the sole power over the manner in which the people were recruited and brought to Germany, and over the urgent work for which they were required.

The prosecution submitted much evidence in Document Books No. IA and IB which contain the speeches and decrees of all kinds of persons and offices in Germany and in the territories formerly occupied. In my opinion, however, it never proved that the defendant knew of all these things, much less that he had anything to do with them. I shall prove that he knew nothing of all this and that it was all so far remote from his sphere of action that, logically speaking and considering his numerous tasks, he could know nothing about it.

I ask permission to remark here that in cases of this kind it is perhaps after all not in keeping with the rules of true justice to charge one person with everything that happened somewhere and was committed by someone among a people of eighty million. In my opinion the concept of conspiracy is in such a case inflated to the point of monstrosity. It was created for conditions of a narrower and smaller scope where it was within the framework of a man’s possibilities to keep an over-all view of his associates and their deeds. But to extend the concept of conspiracy over an entire nation and, simultaneously, over numerous organizations with millions of members, that no longer can be commensurate with true justice. This would result in the creation of a conspirator to whom would be ascribed a Godlike stature. That, however, would be a distortion of an intelligent legal thought.

It must, therefore, be demanded that in the case of each document, of each act, with due consideration of the extent of the defendant’s working sphere and, consequently, with due consideration for his working capacity, one should examine whether he could obtain knowledge thereof, whether he could humanly anticipate, examine any of them, and by reason of his authority, could somehow prevent them.

Finally, I shall prove to you that the documents submitted to you as official documents are not exact, not reliable; that they never were examined by the defendant and his associates, and that they contain inaccuracies, distortions, and wilful deceptions.

Regarding the powers and position held by the defendant, a number of witnesses and the defendant himself will attest that his powers were not so great nor so permanent as the prosecution assumes.

We will show that while the Medical Inspector of the Luftwaffe was subordinate to him in his capacity of Inspector General of the Luftwaffe, this subordination was more a formal than a practical one, that the staff of the Medical Service was not at all subordinate to him and that especially he did not have under his direction the DVL (German Experimental Institute for Aviation).

We shall further prove that even the Central Planning Board did not have the significance that the prosecution assumes, that this agency was much more an advisory and information agency, that it was chiefly occupied with the allocation of raw materials and that only those decisions of the meetings were binding which were summarized in the so-called “Results.”

Finally, we shall show that although, it is true, the defendant was one of the founders of the Jaegerstab, he was not its chief and that his importance in this connection was far less than it would appear on first consideration. The work of the Jaegerstab and of the defendant was aimed solely at the protection of Germany against bombing attacks, and Milch very soon lost all influence in this Jaegerstab.

In the presentation of all this evidence, I would ask the high Tribunal to have in mind one difficulty which, particularly in this case, is nearly insurmountable.

The documents submitted by the prosecution are only parts of a body of material the extent of which can be termed gigantic. When one considers that the Jaegerstab, for instance, from the time of its establishment held daily meetings and that from those meetings only these few stenographic records of a few sessions have been submitted that appear in the document books of the prosecution, then one realizes that not even five percent of the material pertaining to the Jaegerstab has been submitted.

Similar, although perhaps not equally striking, is the situation with reference to the minutes of the Central Planning Board. All these documents which were not submitted are not accessible to me at all. Does not, however, justice demand that the material in its entirety should be available to the defense counsel for examination? Already it has been possible for me to discover in the incriminating documents numerous passages which throw a different light on the indictment. Is it not highly probable, then, that numerous other passages may be found in all of the other material likely to extenuate to a high degree the guilt of the defendant, or which, in any case, might show many things in a better light?

In an ordinary trial with a considerably narrower scope it is much easier for a defendant to conduct his defense than here where material of such volume is at hand that even if he had the best of memories, it would be impossible for him to point out to me, his counsel, where and what kind of exonerating material can be found. That simply surpasses the capacity of the human memory, of the human ability to think.

In passing, I would say that probably in all of the armies which fought in this war the responsible men used strong language during meetings and discussions which, had they all gone down in records, would today cause the milder ones to shake their heads. Wrath, impatience, worry, and anguish because of damages sustained frequently lead responsible persons to wild utterances. What counts is not whether such words are uttered but the deeds which come after such excitement dies away.

The prosecution had many long months to prepare its case. We, the defendant and I, received the real documents on the indictment only in January. It is beyond human capacity to examine everything within such a short period of time with the thoroughness which is necessary to assemble the required counter-evidence. The presentation of argument on the part of the defendant must therefore, be full of gaps. It is particularly difficult in this case because within the short time available for preparation it is impossible to study all the problems which are brought to light as a result of the Dachau experiments. This calls for special technical knowledge which a man such as the defendant, who never studied medicine, simply cannot possess. However, as this trial is held simultaneously with the trial on the Dachau experiments,[^[73]] the danger exists that the important and exonerating facts brought to light there, through the defendant experts and their well informed counsel, cannot be properly appraised in the present case, and in this way the cause of justice is endangered.

All of this I merely say in order to ask your Honors not to lose sight of these angles in judging this present case. Honorable Judges, please bear that in mind also when examining the documents which I shall submit and, giving ear to that extent to the voice of humanity and of justice, lend your assistance to a man who, cut off for so long and bitter a time from all his information and other aids to support his memory, has been called upon to defend himself before you. If at any time the fundamental principle of penal justice, which exists since the days of the wise Romans, should find application, “In dubio pro reo” (In case of doubt favor the accused), it should find strict application in this case. That is what I wanted to tell you as an introduction.

[70] Opening statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript 27 January 1947. Tr. pp. 494-504.

[71] IMT mimeographed German transcript p. 16614. See also Trial of Major War Criminals, vol. I, p. 332, Nuremberg, 1947.

[72] Ibid., p. 16598. See also Trial of Major War Criminals, vol I, p. 321.

[73] United States vs. Karl Brandt, et al. See vol. I.

IV. SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCUMENTS AND
TESTIMONY OF WITNESSES OF PROSECUTION
AND DEFENSE

A. Slave Labor

I. GENERAL SLAVE LABOR PROGRAM IN GERMANY

Prosecution Documents

Doc. No.	Pros. Ex. No.	Description of Document	Page
L-79	3	Extract from minutes of Fuehrer conference, 23 May 1939.	[387]
EC-68	6	Letter from the Ministry of Finance and Economics of Baden, 6 March 1941, containing directives regarding the treatment of Polish farm workers.	[389]
3005-PS	7	Extracts from letter from the Reich Labor Ministry to presidents of regional labor offices, 26 August 1941, concerning the use of French and Russian PW’s.	[392]
EC-194	8	Memorandum of Keitel, 31 October 1941, concerning the use of PW’s in the armament industry.	[393]
1206-PS	9	Outlines of directives of Goering regarding the employment of PW’s in the armament industry, 7 November 1941.	[395]
3040-PS	10	Extracts from secret order of Himmler, 20 February 1942, concerning the commitment and treatment of manpower from the East.	[399]
016-PS	13	Letter from Sauckel to Rosenberg, 24 April 1942, and extracts from report on Sauckel’s labor mobilization program, 20 April 1942.	[405]
084-PS	16-A	Extracts from interdepartmental report of the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories, 30 September 1942, concerning the status of eastern laborers.	[408]
294-PS	19-A	Extracts from top secret memorandum, signed by Braeutigam, 25 October 1942, concerning effects of slave labor program.	[411]
L-61	20	Letter from Sauckel to the presidents of labor offices, 26 November 1942, concerning deportation and employment of Poles and Jews.	[413]
1063-D-PS	21	Extract from order of Mueller, 17 December 1942, concerning prisoners qualified for work to be sent to concentration camps.	[415]

1526-PS	25	Extracts from letter from German-appointed Ukrainian main committee to Frank, February 1943.	[416]
407-V-PS	30	Extracts from letter from Sauckel to Hitler, 14 April 1943, concerning labor questions.	[418]
407-IX-PS	33	Letter from Sauckel to Hitler, 3 June 1943, concerning foreign labor situation.	[420]
3000-PS	34	Extracts from report rendered to Riecke, Ministerialdirektor in the Ministry of Agriculture, 28 June 1943, on experiences in political and economic problems in the East.	[422]
265-PS	35	Extracts from report by Leyser to Rosenberg, 30 June 1943, on conditions in the district Zhitomir.	[423]
204-PS	39	Extracts from memorandum of a conference, 18 February 1944, concerning the release of indigenous labor for purposes of the Reich.	[424]
R-103	40	Extracts from a letter from the (German-appointed) Polish main committee to the General Government of Poland on the conditions of Polish workers in Germany, 17 May 1944.	[426]
208-PS	55	Report by Sauckel, 7 July 1944, on the accomplishments of labor mobilization in the first half of 1944.	[428]
3819-PS	56	Minutes of a conference on 11 July 1944 attended by Milch, concerning the labor problem.	[430]

Defense Documents

Doc. No.	Pros. Ex. No.	Description of Document	Page
R-124	1	Extract from report on Fuehrer conference attended by Milch on 19 February 1942.	[438]
R-124	32	Extract from the Fuehrer conference minutes, 21 and 22 April 1942.	[438]
R-124	2	Extract from the Fuehrer conference minutes of 3, 4, 5 January 1943.	[439]
407-II-PS	3	Report from Sauckel to Hitler, 10 March 1943, concerning difficulties originating from the draft of manpower in former Soviet territories.	[439]
R-124	33	Extract from report on Fuehrer conference of 30 May 1943.	[441]
R-124	4	Extract from report of Fuehrer conference of 11-12 September 1943.	[442]
R-124	34	Extract from Fuehrer conference of 1-4 January 1944, concerning Speer’s report on the French labor situation.	[443]

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT L-79 [^[74]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 3

EXTRACT FROM MINUTES OF FUEHRER CONFERENCE, 23 MAY 1939

Top Secret

To be transmitted by officer only

Minutes of a Conference on 23 May 39

Place: The Fuehrer’s Study, New Reich Chancellery.
Adjutant on duty: Lt.-Col. (GSC) Schmundt.
Present:	The Fuehrer, Field Marshal Goering, Grand Admiral [Admiral of the Fleet] Raeder. Col. Gen. [General] von Brauchitsch, Col. Gen. Keitel, Col. Gen. Milch, Gen. (of Artillery) [Lt. General] Halder, Gen. Bodenschatz, Rear Admiral Schniewind, Col. (GSC) Jeschonnek, Col. (GSC) Warlimont, Lt.-Col. (GSC) Schmundt, Capt. [Army] Engel, Lt. Comdr. Albrecht, Capt. [Army] v. Below.

Subject:	Indoctrination on the political situation and future aims.

The Fuehrer defined as the purpose of the conference:

1.	Analysis of the situation.
2.	Definition of the tasks for the armed forces arising from the situation.
3.	Exposition of the consequences of those tasks.
4.	Ensuring the secrecy of all decisions and work resulting from these consequences.

Secrecy is the first essential for success. The Fuehrer’s observations are given in systematized form below.

Our present situation must be considered from two points of view: (1) the actual development of events between 1933 and 1939; (2) the permanent and unchanging situation in which Germany lies.

In the period 1933-1939, progress was made in all fields. Our military situation improved enormously.

Our situation with regard to the rest of the world has remained the same.

Germany had dropped from the circle of Great Powers. The balance of power had been effected without the participation of Germany.

This equilibrium is disturbed when Germany’s demands for the necessities of life make themselves felt, and Germany reemerges as a Great Power. All demands are regarded as “Encroachments”. The English are more afraid of dangers in the economic sphere than of the simple threat of force.

A mass of 80 million people has solved the ideological problems. So, too, must the economic problems be solved. No German can evade the creation of the necessary economic conditions for this. The solution of the problems demands courage. The principle by which one evades solving the problems by adapting oneself to circumstances is inadmissible. Circumstances must rather be adapted to aims. This is impossible without invasion of foreign states or attacks upon foreign property.

Living space, in proportion to the magnitude of the state, is the basis of all power. One may refuse for a time to face the problem, but finally it is solved one way or the other. The choice is between advancement or decline. In 15 or 20 years’ time we shall be compelled to find a solution. No German statesman can evade the question longer than that.

We are at present in a state of patriotic fervor, which is shared by two other nations—Italy and Japan.

The period which lies behind us has indeed been put to good use. All measures have been taken in the correct sequence and in harmony with our aims.

After 6 years the situation is today as follows:

The national-political unity of the Germans has been achieved, apart from minor exceptions. Further successes cannot be attained without the shedding of blood.

The demarcation of frontiers is of military importance.

The Pole is no supplementary enemy. Poland will always be on the side of our adversaries. In spite of treaties of friendship, Poland has always had the secret intention of exploiting every opportunity to do us harm.

Danzig is not the subject of the dispute at all. It is a question of expanding our living space in the East and of securing our food supplies, of the settlement of the Baltic problem. Food supplies can be expected only from thinly populated areas. Over and above the natural fertility, thorough German exploitation will enormously increase the surplus.

There is no other possibility for Europe.

Colonies: Beware of gifts of colonial territory. This does not solve the food problem. [Remember]—blockade!

If fate brings us into conflict with the West, the possession of extensive areas in the East will be advantageous. Upon record harvest we shall be able to rely even less in time of war than in peace.

The population of non-German areas will perform no military service, and will be available as a source of labor.

The problem “Polish” is inseparable from conflict with the West.

Poland’s internal power of resistance to Bolshevism is doubtful. Thus Poland is of doubtful value as a barrier against Russia.

It is questionable whether military success in the West can be achieved by a quick decision; questionable too is the attitude of Poland.

The Polish government will not resist pressure from Russia. Poland sees danger in a German victory in the West, and will attempt to rob us of the victory.

There is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and we are left with the decision:

To attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity.

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT EC-68

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 6 [^[75]]

LETTER FROM THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS OF
BADEN, 6 MARCH 1941, CONTAINING DIRECTIVES REGARDING
THE TREATMENT OF POLISH FARM WORKERS

49-7

Copy

III B 5 C (in pencil)

Karlsruhe, 6 March 1941

Minister of Finance and Economics of Baden

Provincial [Land] Food Office Dept. A.

(Provincial Farmers Association)

Confidential Only for Official Business

To all District Farmers Associations [Kreis]

Subject:

Directives regarding the treatment of foreign farm workers of Polish nationality.

The agencies of the Reich Food Estate, Provincial Farmers Association of Baden, have received the results of the negotiations with the Higher SS and Police Leader in Stuttgart on 14 February 1941, with great satisfaction. Appropriate memoranda have already been turned over to the District Farmers Associations. Below, I promulgate the individual regulations, as they have been laid down during the conference and how they are not to be applied accordingly:

1. Fundamentally, farm workers of Polish nationality no longer have the right to complain, and thus no complaints may be accepted any more by any official agency.

2. The farm workers of Polish nationality may not leave the localities in which they are employed, and have a curfew from 1 October to 31 March from 2000 hours to 0600 hours, and from 1 April to 30 September from 2100 hours to 0500 hours.

3. The use of bicycles is strictly prohibited. Exceptions are possible, for riding to the place of work in the field, if a relative of the employer or the employer himself is present.

4. The visit of churches, regardless of faith, is strictly prohibited, even when there is no service in progress. Individual spiritual care by clergymen outside of the church is permitted.

5. Visits to theaters, motion pictures or other cultural entertainment are strictly prohibited for farm workers of Polish nationality.

6. The visit of restaurants is strictly prohibited to farm workers of Polish nationality except for one restaurant in the village, which will be selected by the Rural Councillor’s Office, and then only one day per week. The day, which is determined as the day to visit the restaurant, will also be determined by the Rural Councillor’s Office. This regulation does not change the curfew regulation, mentioned above under No. 2.

7. Sexual intercourse with women and girls is strictly prohibited, and wherever it is established, it must be reported.

8. Gatherings of farm workers of Polish nationality after work is prohibited, whether it is on other farms, in the stables, or in the living quarters of the Poles.

9. The use of railroads, buses, or other public conveyances by farm workers of Polish nationality is prohibited.

10. Permits to leave the village may only be granted in very exceptional cases, by the local police authority (mayor’s office). However, in no case may it be granted if he wants to visit a public agency on his own, whether it is a labor office or the District Farmers Association, or whether he wants to change his place of employment.

11. Arbitrary change of employment is strictly prohibited. The farm workers of Polish nationality have to work daily so long as the interests of the enterprise demand it, and as it is demanded by the employer. There are no time limits to the working time.

12. Every employer has the right to give corporal punishment to farm workers of Polish nationality, if instructions and good words fail. The employer may not be held accountable in any such case by an official agency.

13. Farm workers of Polish nationality should if possible be removed from the community of the home, and they can be quartered in stables, etc. No remorse whatever should restrict such action.

14. Report to the authorities is compulsory in all cases when crimes have been committed by farm workers of Polish nationality which are to sabotage the enterprise or slow down work, for instance, unwillingness to work, impertinent behavior; it is compulsory even in minor cases. An employer who loses his Pole who must serve a longer prison sentence because of such a compulsory report will receive another Pole from the competent labor office on request with preference.

15. In all other cases, only the state police is still competent.

For the employer himself, severe punishment is contemplated if it is established that the necessary distance from farm workers of Polish nationality has not been kept. The same applies to women and girls. Extra rations are strictly prohibited. Noncompliance of the Reich tariffs for farm workers of Polish nationality will be punished by the competent labor office by the taking away of the worker.

In any case of doubt, the Provincial Farmers Association—IB—will give information.

Forwarding in writing of the above agreement to the farm workers of Polish nationality is strictly prohibited.

These regulations do not apply to Poles who are still prisoners of war and are thus subordinated to the armed forces. In this case, the regulations published by the armed forces apply.

Heil Hitler!

By Order:

[Signed] Dr. Klotz

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 3005-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 7

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM THE REICH LABOR MINISTRY TO
PRESIDENTS OF REGIONAL LABOR OFFICES, 26 AUGUST 1941,
CONCERNING THE USE OF FRENCH AND RUSSIAN PW’S

Vol. 78-L

Annex 1 to the Decree of the Reich Minister of Armament
and Munitions

THE REICH MINISTER OF LABOR
Va 5135/1277
	Nr. 371-4770/41 secret 216/985

	Berlin, SW 11, 26 August 1941

Special Delivery

To the Presidents of Regional Labor Offices
(including Nuernberg Branch Office)

Subject: Use of Russian PW’s.
Reference: Circular of 14 August 1941—Va 5135/1189—.

Upon personal order of the Reich Marshal [Goering], 100,000 men are to be taken from among the French PW’s not yet employed in armament industry, and are to be assigned to the armament industry (airplane industry). Gaps in manpower supply resulting therefrom will be filled by Soviet PW’s. The transfer of the above-named French PW’s is to be accomplished by 1 October. Russian PW’s can be utilized only in larger concentrated groups under the well-known, tougher employment conditions. In the civilian field the regional labor offices will have to determine immediately those work projects where French prisoners of war can be withdrawn and replaced by Soviet groups. For the time being, no additional assignment of Soviet prisoners of war can be considered. Initially all replacement possibilities must be completely exhausted. Similarly, all French PW’s no longer needed are not to be channeled into agriculture and forestry any more, but exclusively into armament industry (aircraft industry).

All branches of economic life employing French PW’s, with the exception of armament industry and mining, are to be encompassed in determining those work projects where exchanges are feasible. The absolute necessity that Soviet PW replacements be employed in larger concentrated groups, requires, among other things, special checking of all larger construction projects of any kind (including construction of the Reich railroads, navigational and cultivation projects). Reich Minister Dr. Todt has already consented to the exchange of French PW’s employed by the Reich super highways. In agriculture the exchange can naturally be effected only in the case of large estates (especially estates with outlying farms).

Exchange of PW’s will frequently encounter resistance. The factories concerned will be reluctant to exchange the trained and proven French PW’s for Soviet PW’s. In such cases the labor offices have to draw the factories’ attention to the necessities of state, and to the directive of the Reich Marshal.

As soon as the regional labor offices have determined the work projects affected by the exchange, they will inform the Service Commands Headquarters, indicating how many French PW’s are being made available and how many Soviet PW’s will be needed to replace the French PW’s. Without my express consent not more than 120 Soviet PW’s may be requested for each 100 French PW’s made available. Since the determining factors in the allocation of Soviet PW’s are military and counter-intelligence considerations, final decision about the exchange rests with the Service Commands [Military Districts] Headquarters.

The first 100,000 French prisoners of war shall be channeled into the aircraft industry. * * *

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT EC-194

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 8

MEMORANDUM OF KEITEL, 31 OCTOBER 1941, CONCERNING THE
USE OF PW’S IN THE ARMAMENT INDUSTRY

Copy
	Fuehrer Headquarters, 31 October 1941
The Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces
Secret
WFSt/Abt. L (II Org/IV Qu [sic]
No. 0 2588/41 Secret
Subject: Use of prisoners of war in the war industry.

The lack of workers is becoming an increasingly dangerous hindrance for the future German war and armament industry. The expected relief through discharges from the armed forces is uncertain as to extent and date. Its possible extent will by no means correspond to expectations and requirements in view of the great demand.

The Fuehrer has now ordered that also the working power of the Russian prisoners of war should be utilized to a great extent by large scale assignment for the requirements of the war industry. The prerequisite for production is adequate nourishment. Also very small wages are to be planned for the most modest supply with a few consumers’ goods for every day life, and perhaps rewards for production.

For labor utilization [Arbeitseinsatz], the following may be considered as examples:

I. Armed Forces.

a. Clearing and construction units of all kinds in the occupied eastern territories.

b. Work and construction battalions in the other occupied territories and in Germany.

c. Large scale employment in units to relieve soldiers in labor service.

II. Construction and Armament Industry.

a. Work units for construction of all kind, particularly for the fortification of coastal defenses (concrete workers, unloading units for essential war plants).

b. Suitable armament factories which have to be selected in such a way that their personnel should consist in the majority of prisoners of war under guidance and supervision (perhaps after withdrawal and transfer to other employment of the German workers).

III. Other War Industries.

a. Mining as under II b.

b. Railroad construction units for building tracks, etc.

c. Agriculture and forestry in closed units.

The utilization of Russian prisoners of war is to be regulated on the basis of above examples by:

To I. The armed forces.

To II. The Reich Minister of Armament and Munitions and the Inspector General for the German road system, in agreement with the Reich Minister of Labor and the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Economic Armament Office).

Commissioners of the Reich Minister of Armament and Munitions are to be admitted to the prisoner of war camps to assist in the selection of skilled workers.

To III. The Reich Minister of Labor. Limitations are—

1. The securing of guards to protect the German people from dangers.

2. Housing in closed camps.

3. Securing adequate nourishment.

The observance of the counter-intelligence regulations which apply for the use of prisoners of war will be supervised by military counter-intelligence agencies as until now.

OKW (AWA)[^[76]] will furnish the Reich Minister of Labor with blueprints based on professional selection for the appropriate use of labor and will also permanently provide workers for assignment to the labor utilization [Arbeitseinsatz].

Furthermore, the Commander in Chief of the Army is asked to take the necessary measures for the recruiting of voluntary labor in the eastern operational zone in cooperation with the Reich Minister of Labor.

[Signed] Keitel

Distribution:

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 1206-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 9

OUTLINES OF DIRECTIVES OF GOERING REGARDING THE
EMPLOYMENT OF PW’S IN THE ARMAMENT INDUSTRY,
7 NOVEMBER 1941

Draft
Rue(IV)
	Berlin, 11 November 1941
Top Secret
	6 Copies—6th Copy

NOTES ON OUTLINES LAID DOWN BY THE REICH MARSHAL
[GOERING] AT THE MEETING OF 7 NOVEMBER
1941 IN THE REICH AIR MINISTRY [RLM]

Subject: Employment of laborers in war industries

The Fuehrer’s point of view as to employment of prisoners of war in war industries has changed basically. So far, a total of 5 million prisoners of war—employed so far 2 million.

Directives for employment:

Frenchmen:	Individual employment, transposition into the armament industry. [Rue-Wirtschaft.]
Belgians:	Individual employment, transposition into the armament industry. [Rue-Wirtschaft.]
Serbs:	Preferably agriculture.
Poles:	If feasible, no individual employment.

Output of Russian armament industry surpasses the German one. Assembly line work, a great many mechanical devices with relatively few skilled workers.

Readiness of Russians to work in the operational area is strong. In the Ukraine and other areas discharged prisoners of war already work as free labor. In Krivoi Rog, large numbers of workers are available due to the destruction of the factories.

Employment of Russian PW’s

As a rule, employment in groups [geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz]; no individual employment, not even in agriculture. Guard personnel, not only soldiers but also foremen, at least during the working time proper. As a rule soldiers in the camp.

One has to distinguish between employment in:

1.	Operational area,
2.	Reich Commissariats (occupied territories in the East),
3.	General Government, and
4.	Interior and Protectorate.

To 1: In the operational area take preferably into consideration:

a.	Railroads.
b.	Highway construction.
	Very important that in the Ukraine some roads be built with increased speed, not by German skilled labor but by Russian PW’s.
c.	Clearing work.
d.	Agriculture.
	The Ukraine being conquered, we now finally have to secure the feeding of the German people. If necessary Frenchmen and Belgians are to be used for directing the work of the Russian farm workers in the eastern area. If farm machinery is lacking, employ masses of workers. Transfer of German farmers only where actual success can be expected.
e.	Railroad-repair-factories, etc.

Best supervision: “Field kitchen”. Quick evacuation from operational area necessary. Losses during transport very heavy (escaping and joining with partisan and robber bands).

Barbed wire hard to get. (Discarding of barbed wire fences in East Prussia desirable.)

Leave Asiatic people in operational area if possible.

From construction battalions 69,000 workers have been transferred to the armament industry: replacement by prisoner-of-war battalions.

Again and again skilled workers are being found in the construction battalions (machine [wood or metal] operators). Investigation by army desirable. Express will of the Fuehrer, that every skilled worker is used in the proper place. If necessary, repeated checking should be instituted.

To 2: The same applies to employment in Reich Commissariats.

To 3: The above is also applicable to the General Government.

Attention is to be paid to avoiding of unnecessary transport of machinery, as thereby often the available manpower in the General Government is not fully utilized and, on the other hand, the machinery cannot be made use of for a long time in other places.

To 4: In the Interior and the Protectorate it would be ideal if entire factories could be manned by Russian PW’s except the employees necessary for direction. For employment in the Interior and the Protectorate the following are to have priority:

a. At the top, coal mining industry.

Order by the Fuehrer to investigate all mines as to suitability for employment of Russians. At times manning the entire plant with Russian laborers.

b. Transportation (construction of locomotives and cars, repair shops).

Railroad repair and industry workers are to be sought out from the PW’s. Railroad is most important means of transportation in the East.

c. Armament industries.

Above all factories producing tanks and guns. Possibly also construction of parts for airplane engines. Suitable complete sections of factories to be manned exclusively by Russians. For the remainder, employment in columns. Use in factories of tool machinery, production of farm tractors, generators, etc. In emergency, erect in individual places barracks for occasional workers which are used as unloading details and similar purposes. (Reich Minister of the Interior through communal authorities.)

The General Armed Forces Office of the Supreme Command Armed Forces [OKW/AWA] is competent for transporting Russian PW’s, employment through “Planning Board for Employment of all PW’s.” If necessary, offices of Reich Commissariats.

No employment where danger to people [fuer Menschen] or their supply exists, i.e., factories sensitive to explosions, waterworks, powerworks, etc. No contact with German population, especially no “solidarity”. German worker as a rule is foreman of Russians.

Food is a matter of the Four Year Plan. Supply their own food (cats, horses, etc.).

Clothing, billeting, messing somewhat better than at home where part of the people live in caverns.

Supply of shoes for Russians, as a rule wooden shoes; if necessary install Russian shoe repair shops.

Examination of physical fitness, in order to avoid importation of diseases.

Clearing of mines as a rule by Russians, if possible by selected Russian engineers.

Employment offices for civilian workers to be kept separate from those for PW’s. In this respect the wage problem is to be considered. Furthermore, families in Russia have to share the support. As a rule employment in groups [geschlossener Einsatz].

Some aspects for labor utilization [Arbeitseinsatz] in general.

Rather employ PW’s than unsuitable foreign workers. Draft Poles, Dutchmen, etc., if necessary as PW’s, and employ them as such, if work through free contract cannot be obtained. Strong action.

General employment of all German women repudiated by the Fuehrer.

Where Russians can be employed, labor service is not to be used. Labor service to be used where greatest effect is produced, even if the principle of education through labor service is curtailed thereby. War situation to be taken into consideration.

As a matter of principle, central interests precede local interests, therefore no resistance from Reich Commissioners and other local authorities against labor utilization [Arbeitseinsatz] in the homeland.

Savings in wages are to be offset by compensatory contributions [to the Reich] by the respective management.

Express order by the Fuehrer. Under no circumstances may the wage level in the East be raised or assimilated to the wages in western Germany. Strong action is imperative against recruiting agents who offer high wages.

It is intended to issue a basically new regulation of wages for foreign workers.

Foreigners not to be treated like German workers, on the other hand do not provoke inferiority complex in foreigners by posters.

The welfare installations of the German Labor Front [DAF] are under no circumstances to be used by PW’s or eastern workers.

All agencies are to promote maximum utilization of Russian manpower.

Employment of Russians not to be improvised, but first to be thoroughly organized in the operational area. Speed is necessary, as the mass of manpower is decreasing daily by losses (lack of food and billets).

Make provisions to decrease the excessive number of escaping prisoners. Especially in and around Berlin, strictest guarding is essential.

[illegible initials]

Distribution:

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 3040-PS [^[77]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 10

EXTRACTS FROM SECRET ORDER OF HIMMLER, 20 FEBRUARY 1942,
CONCERNING THE COMMITMENT AND TREATMENT OF
MANPOWER FROM THE EAST

GENERAL COLLECTION OF DECREES [ALLGEMEINE

ERLASSAMMLUNG (AES)]

Part 2

Secret

Printed by RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) I Org

Section 2 A III f

Commitment of Manpower from the East. Circular Decree of the Reich Fuehrer SS and Chief of German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior dated 20 February 1942—S IV No. 208/42 (foreign workers).

Enclosed I am sending you general regulations concerning the recruiting and the committing of manpower from the East for your information and careful attention.

I have the following additional directives for the Security Police and the SD [Security Service]:

A. MANPOWER FROM THE ORIGINAL SOVIET RUSSIAN
TERRITORY

I. General security measures.

1. The commitment of manpower in the Reich from the original Soviet Russian territory results in greater dangers than any other employment of foreigners in spite of the special standards of their way of living, since a complete separation from the German and other foreign laborers and a strict supervision will frequently, in practice and especially at the place of work, scarcely be effected. The Security Police is charged with the responsibility for preventing the danger and it must do everything to accomplish its tasks; that is, to diminish the possibilities of danger to a minimum. Since enforcements cannot be counted on, it is the special task of the inspectors and state police administrative offices to urge the other administrative offices, charged with the commitment of the manpower, to take over the affairs of the Security Police within the sphere of their jurisdiction.

III. Combatting violations against discipline.

1. According to the equal status of the manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory with prisoners of war, a strict discipline must be exercised in the quarters and at the working place. Violations against discipline, including work refusal and loafing at work, will be fought exclusively by the Secret State Police [Gestapo]. The smaller cases will be settled by the leader of the guard according to instruction of the state police administration offices with measures as provided for in the enclosure. To break acute resistance, the guards shall be permitted to use also physical power against the manpower. But this may be done only for a cogent cause. The manpower should always be informed about the fact that they will be treated decently when conducting themselves with discipline and accomplishing good work.

2. In severe cases, that is in such cases where the measures at the disposal of the leader of the guard do not suffice, the state police office has to act with its means. Accordingly, they will be treated, as a rule only with strict measures, that is, with transfer to a concentration camp or with special treatment.

3. The transfer to a concentration camp is done in the usual manner.

4. In especially severe cases special treatment is to be requested at the Reich Security Main Office, stating personal data and the exact history of the act.

5. Special treatment consists of hanging. It should not take place in the immediate vicinity of the camp. A certain number of the manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory should attend the special treatment; at that time they are warned about the circumstances which led to this special treatment.

6. Should special treatment be required within the camp for exceptional reasons of camp discipline, this is also to be requested.

IV. Subversive activities against the Reich.

Anti-Reich activities, especially dissemination of communist ideology, propaganda of disunity, sabotage acts, are to be fought against with the strictest measures. The care in obtaining information shall not suffer through quick arrests, in order to catch the whole group of perpetrators. Anti-Reich conduct is, as a rule, to be punished by special treatment, in slighter cases a transfer to a concentration camp may be considered.

V. Criminal violations [Kriminelle Verfehlungen].

1. As a matter of principle, criminal violations—regardless of whether committed inside or outside the camp—shall be punished by state police measures. * * *

2. Criminal offenses [Kriminelle Delikte] are generally to be punished as violations against discipline, that is, the state police measures provided for, shall take place in cases of smaller violations, and special treatment shall take place in cases of crimes—such as, murder, homicide, and robbery.

3. Concerning capital crimes against German persons, punishment by criminal court procedure may, however, in an individual case appear suitable. If the (superior) state police agency considers this opportune, it can transfer the case to the prosecuting attorney, under the provision that pursuant to the criminal laws, one can safely count on the death penalty for the perpetrator.

VI. Sexual Intercourse.

Sexual intercourse is forbidden to the manpower of the original Soviet Russian territory. Because of their closely confined quarters they have no opportunity for it. Should sexual intercourse occur nevertheless—especially by the individually employed manpower on the farms—the following is directed:

1. For every case of sexual intercourse with our German countrymen or women [deutschen Volksgenossen oder Volksgenossinnen] special treatment is to be requested for male manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory, transfer to a concentration camp for female manpower.

2. When exercising sexual intercourse with other foreign workers, the conduct of the manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory is to be punished as severe violation of discipline with transfer to a concentration camp.

VII. Measures against fraternization with manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory.

1. Special attention is to be paid to the fundamental segregation of manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory from the German population. It is important to prevent a penetration of communistic ideology into the German population by cutting off every contact not directly pertaining to the work and, if possible, to avoid every solidarity between German people and the manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory. Against Germans who act to the contrary, steps are to be taken by the state police according to the situation of the individual case.

2. If German countrymen or women should exercise sexual intercourse or commit indecent acts with manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory, transfer to a concentration camp is to be requested.

3. The intercourse between other foreign workers employed in the Reich and the manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory also brings great dangers to be dealt with by the Security Police; therefore, it should also be fought with measures against the foreign workers. As a rule, the transfer to a correction camp (deportation for Italians) will be proper; this also applies to cases of sexual intercourse.

VIII. Search.

2. When caught, the fugitive must receive special treatment.

B. MANPOWER FROM THE BALTIC COUNTRIES AND
FOREIGN MANPOWER, NOT OF POLISH ORIGIN,
FROM THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND FROM
THE ANNEXED EASTERN TERRITORIES

I. General.

1. This manpower is to be treated uniformly in the Reich by the state police. In view of the political attitude of these nations, or ethnic groups [Volksstaemme] toward the Reich on the one hand and their position in the East on the other hand, they are to be governed by the regulations valid for foreign manpower in general, but are subject to special limitations in their way of living.

2. These limitations consist essentially in a conspicuous separation of this manpower from the German people. Since the employment and housing of this manpower is not closely confined and guarded, it is the task of the Secret State Police to be especially watchful about the observation of the mentioned principle. The Secret State Police has to inform the offices charged with the employment of foreigners through constant communication, that this principle will be considered in all measures of work employment. Settlement of these persons in the Reich, individual billeting in spite of existing collective quarters, position superior to that of a German worker, etc., must not be tolerated. As far as these people themselves violate the established principle, and act unlawfully against Germans by insubordination and acts of violence, such a conduct will be met with state police measures.

3. This manpower must, however, by no means be put on the same level as the Poles or the manpower from the original Soviet Russian territory, on account of their nations’ fundamental antagonism toward the Polish people and Bolshevism. Nevertheless, special attention should be paid to them—especially by the establishment of an active intelligence service among this manpower—since their rather receptive attitude toward the German nation might change into the opposite, but at least could stiffen, because too high political expectations are not fulfilled.

III. Fighting against breach of labor contract.

1. The fight against breach of labor contract of this manpower is principally the duty of the Secret State Police.

2. This does not mean, of course, an interference with the activity of the Reich trustee of labor, with the means at his disposal in the regulation and settlement of industrial difficulties as long as no active intervention is necessary. If more stringent measures are necessary, the Reich trustee of labor will transfer the proceedings to the Secret State Police.

3. In every case, however, it is the task of the (superior) state police agency to check whether the violation of the working duty by this manpower is not caused by the plant through breach of contract as well as general bad treatment. If the conduct of the concerned manpower appears justified through the fault on the part of this plant, the state police is not to interfere, since this is free manpower.

4. In any other case, however, immediate action is necessary and, in case of a breach of contract on part of this manpower, the transfer to a correction camp is to be ordered, as a rule. In cases of severe repetition the transfer to a concentration camp can also be requested. In the cases of breach of contracts handled by the state police, the Reich trustee of labor has to be informed each time about the decision.

IV. Criminal violations.

3. * * *. Crimes against decency, acts of violence, and acts of sabotage are to be punished, as a matter of principle, by state police measures (special treatment); however, I have no objection against a transfer of the inquiry proceedings to the competent public prosecutor if, pursuant to the criminal laws, one can safely count on the death penalty for the perpetrator. In these cases it is to be ascertained what the outcome of the trial is; should, against expectations, a death sentence not be passed, a report has to be made to me, attaching copy of the judgment.

Inquiry proceedings concerning other offenses are, as a rule, to be transferred to the competent public prosecutor. If a strong increase of crimes is noted in certain spheres, then there are no objections at all against punishing purely criminal acts, as a deterrent example, by state police measures.

VI. Sexual intercourse with Germans.

1. The sexual intercourse of the manpower from the Baltic states as well as of the foreign manpower of non-Polish origin from the General Government and from the annexed eastern territories with Germans is punishable by severest penalties. (Changed by Circular Decree dated 23 October 1943.) The workers will be thoroughly instructed through the attached orientation sheet (enclo. 3) [not reproduced] in the foreign languages when they report upon their arrival at the local police offices. An instruction of the German population will be effected through the Party administration offices.

2. The district [Kreis] police offices have received instructions to arrest without delay workers who violate this regulation and to report them to the competent (superior) state police agency.

3. For male manpower who had sexual intercourse with Germans, special treatment is to be requested, for female manpower, transfer into a concentration camp. The directives issued for the special treatment of Polish civil workers are valid correspondingly; this is also applicable for the treatment of the involved German persons.

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 016-PS [^[78]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 13

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO ROSENBERG, 24 APRIL 1942, AND
EXTRACTS FROM REPORT ON SAUCKEL’S LABOR
MOBILIZATION PROGRAM, 20 APRIL 1942

The Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

The Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation

GBA

Berlin W. 8, 24 April 1942

Mohrenstrasse 65

(Thuringia House)

Phone: 126571

[Stamp]

Bureau of Ministry [Ministerbuero]

received 27 April 1942, No. 0887 Min. 28/v

Dr. K.P. has been informed

Very esteemed and dear Party Member Rosenberg:

Enclosed please find my program for the mobilization of labor. Please excuse the fact that this copy still contains a few corrections.

Heil Hitler!

Yours,

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

5 copies

copy for Mr. Wittenbacher.

[Signed] Wachs

Chancellory 1 May 1942

[Kanzlei]

[Stamp] Mischke

read: ILFL/KS 4.5.42

filed: 1-5, 5/5 42 Pg

To The Reich Minister for the

Occupied Eastern Territories,

Party Member Rosenberg

Berlin

The Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

The Plenipotentiary for Labor Allocation

20 April 1942

Sckl./We.

The Labor Mobilization Program

The aim of this new, gigantic labor mobilization is to use all the rich and tremendous sources, conquered and secured for us by our fighting armed forces under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, for the armament of the armed forces and also for the nutrition of the homeland. The raw material as well as the fertility of the conquered territories and their human labor power are to be used completely and conscientiously to the profit of Germany and their allies.

VII. * * * Should we succeed with the help of the Party to convince all the German intellectual and manual workers of the great importance of the labor mobilization for the outcome of the war, and succeed to take good care of and keep up the morale of all the men, women, and the German youths who work within the labor mobilization program under extraordinarily strenuous circumstances, as far as their physical and mental capabilities of endurance are concerned and should we furthermore be able, also with the help of the Party, to use the prisoners of war as well as civilian workmen and women of foreign blood not only without harm to our own people but to the greatest advantage to our war and nutrition industries, then we will have accomplished the most difficult part of the labor mobilization program.

The Task and its Solution

(No figures are mentioned because of security reasons. I can assure you, nevertheless, that we are concerned with the greatest labor problem of all times, especially with regard to figures.)

B. The Solution:

3. The armament and nutrition tasks make it vitally necessary, not only to include the entire German labor power but also to call on foreign labor.

Consequently, I immediately tripled the transport program which I found when I took charge of my mission.

The main effort of that transport has been advanced into the months of May-June in order to assure in time and under any circumstances the availability of foreign labor power from the occupied territories for an increased production, in view of coming operations of the army, as well as of agricultural labor in the sector of the German food economy.

All prisoners of war, from the territories of the West as well as of the East, actually in Germany, must be completely incorporated into the German armament and nutrition industries. Their production must be brought to the highest possible level.

It must be emphasized, however, that an additional tremendous number of foreign labor has to be found for the Reich. The greatest pool for that purpose is the occupied territories of the East.

Consequently, it is an immediate necessity to use the human reserves of the conquered Soviet territory to the fullest extent. Should we not succeed in obtaining the necessary amount of labor on a voluntary basis, we must immediately institute conscription or forced labor.

Prisoners of War and Foreign Workers

The complete employment of all prisoners of war as well as the use of a gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men and women, has become an indisputable necessity for the solution of the mobilization of labor program in this war.

All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.

It has always been natural for us Germans to refrain from cruelty and mean chicaneries towards the beaten enemy, even if he has proved himself the most bestial and most implacable adversary, and to treat him correctly and humanely, even when we expect useful work of him.

As long as the German armaments industry did not make it absolutely necessary, we refrained under any circumstances from the use of Soviet prisoners of war as well as of civilian workers, men or women, from the Soviet territories. This has now become impossible and the working capacity of these people must now be exploited to the greatest extent.

Therefore, I want to impress most cordially but also most emphatically upon all the men and women who participate decisively in this war in the labor mobilization program, the necessity to comply with all these necessities, decisions and measures, according to the old National Socialist principle:

Nothing for us, everything for the Fuehrer and his work,

that is, for the future of our Nation!

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

[Stamp]

(The Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

The Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation)

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 084-PS [^[79]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 16-A

EXTRACTS FROM INTERDEPARTMENTAL REPORT OF THE MINISTRY
FOR OCCUPIED EASTERN TERRITORIES, 30 SEPTEMBER 1942,
CONCERNING THE STATUS OF EASTERN LABORERS

Berlin NW 7, Hegelplatz 2, 30 September 1942

Central Office for Members of Eastern Nations

Ih (ZO)

Subject: Present situation of the Eastern Labor Problem

* * * The manner and method by which the problems created through the importation of millions of members of the eastern peoples into the Reich are being solved is relevant with respect to two big tasks:

1. the development of the war situation,

2. the enforcement of the German claim for leadership in the East after the end of the war.

* * * The facts which, by the fall of 1942, have been changed only partially or incompletely, are, among other, as follows:

1. The definition of workers from the occupied territories of the USSR was narrowed down to the legal labor and social labor concept of “Eastern workers”; thereby, a particular “employment relationship of a special type” was created among “foreigners”—something which had to be looked upon, by those affected, as degrading.

2. The drafting of eastern male and female workers often occurred without the necessary examination of the capabilities of those concerned, so that 5 to 10 percent sick and children were transported along. On the other hand, in those places where no volunteers were obtained, instead of recruiting them pursuant to labor conscription law, coercive measures were used by the police (imprisonment, penal expeditions, and the like).

3. The allocation to enterprises was not undertaken by considering the occupation and previous training but according to the chance assignment of the individual to the respective transports or transient camps.

4. The billeting did not follow the policies for other foreigners, but was done like for civilian prisoners, in camps which were fenced in with barbed wire and were heavily guarded and which they were not permitted to leave.

5. The treatment by the guards was, on the average, without intelligence and cruel so that the Russian and Ukrainian workers, in enterprises with foreign laborers of different nationalities, were exposed to the ridicule of the Poles and Czechs, among other things.

6. The food was so bad and insufficient in the camps for the eastern laborers employed in industry and mining that, on the average, the good capability of the camp members dropped quickly and many sicknesses and deaths occurred.

7. Payment was carried out in the form of a ruling in which the industrial worker would be left on the average with 2 or 3 RM each week, and the farm laborers with even less, so that the wage transfer to their homes became illusory, not to mention the fact that no procedure was as yet developed for such transfer.

8. The postal service with their families was not feasible for months because of the lack of preparatory measures, so that instead of factual reports, wild rumors arrived in their countries—among others, by way of emigrants.

9. The promises which had been made time and time again in the areas of enlistment were in gross contradiction with the facts mentioned under 3 to 8.

Apart from the natural impairment of morale and working capacity resulting from these measures and conditions, the result was that the Soviet propaganda seized upon this matter and exploited it carefully; for this, an ample basis was provided not only by the actual conditions and the letters which reached the home country [of the workers] in spite of the initial blockade, as well as by stories of fugitives and such, but also by the clumsy publications in the German press about the respective legal regulations. As early as April 1942, Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Molotov, in his note to the enemy powers referred to this, especially in section III of that note in which among other things it is stated:

“The German administration is stamping under its feet the long recognized laws and customs of warfare by ordering its troops to take into captivity the male civilian population, in many places even the women, and to apply to them the kind of regime, which the Hitlerites have introduced for the prisoners of war. This does not only mean slave labor for the captured peaceful inhabitants but in most cases also inescapable death by starvation or death through sickness, corporal punishment, and organized mass murders.

“The deportation of peaceful inhabitants to the rear which has been very widely practiced by the German-Fascist Army at the time of its advance is taking on a mass character; it is carried out at direct orders of the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces (OKW) and its effects are especially cruel in the immediate rear areas during the retreat of the German Army. In a series of documents which have been found by units of the Red Army at the staffs of destroyed German units, there is a reference to the Order of the High Command under No. 2974/41 of 6 December 1941 which orders the deportation of all grown men from the occupied places to prisoner of war camps. * * *

“Sometimes, all the inhabitants were deported, sometimes the men were torn away from their families, or mothers were separated from their children. Only the smallest number of these deported people have been able to return to their homes. These returnees report about unheard-of degradations, heaviest forced labor, enormous numbers of deaths among inhabitants because of starvation and tortures, about the murder by the Fascists of all the weak, wounded, and sick.”

The effects of this large-scale radio, press, and leaflet propaganda which is based on documentary evidence, a propaganda operating even into German-administered territories, must be considered as one of the main reasons for this year’s stiffening of the Soviet resistance as well as the threatening increase of guerilla bands up to the borders of the General Government.

In the meantime, after a betterment of the condition of the eastern laborers had been insisted upon, not only by the Main Office for Politics in the Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern territories, which has been able to find support in the repeated requests by the High Command of the Armed Forces, but also by the gentleman charged with the responsibility for all labor employment as well as the Department of Labor Employment in the German Labor Movement, which has the supervision of the eastern laborers—those previously existing legal and police rulings have been mitigated and the conditions in the 8-10,000 camps in the Reich have, on the whole, been improved. * * *

In spite of the improvements mentioned as well as others, which in many cases can be traced back to the personal intervention of the Plenipotentiary General of Labor Allocation, the total situation of the eastern laborers (sampling date: 1 October 1942) must still be considered unsatisfactory, * * *.

There remains such a quantity of grievances and problems that it would be impossible to relate now.

[Signed] Gutkelch

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 294-PS [^[80]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 19-A

EXTRACTS FROM TOP SECRET MEMORANDUM, SIGNED BY
BRAEUTIGAM,[^[81]] 25 OCTOBER 1942, CONCERNING
EFFECTS OF SLAVE LABOR PROGRAM

Copy

Top Secret Matter of State [Geheime Reichssache]

[handwritten:] II 1 1161/44 g Rs.

Memorandum

In the East, Germany is carrying on a threefold war: a war for the destruction of Bolshevism, a war for the destruction of the Greater Russian Empire, and finally a war for the acquisition of colonial territory for colonizing purposes and economic exploitation.

* * * With the instinct characteristic of the eastern peoples, even the primitive person has soon found out that for Germany, the slogan “liberation from Bolshevism” was merely a pretext, in order to enslave the Slavic peoples of the East in her own manner. But lest any doubts at all exist as to this German war aim, the German public is, to an ever increasing extent, unabashedly pointing at this intention. Not only for Germany is the conquered territory publicly being claimed as colonization area, but even for Germany’s bitter enemies, the Dutch and Norwegians. * * *

Of primary importance, the treatment of prisoners of war should be named. It is no longer a secret from friend or foe that hundreds of thousands of them literally have died of hunger or cold in our camps. Allegedly there were not enough food supplies on hand for them. It is especially peculiar that the food supplies are deficient only for prisoners of war from the Soviet Union, while complaints about the treatment of other prisoners of war, Polish, Serbian, French and English, have not been heard of. It is obvious that nothing was so suitable for strengthening the resistance of the Red Army as the knowledge that in German captivity a slow miserable death is to be met. To be sure, the Main Department for Politics has succeeded here by unceasing efforts in bringing about a material improvement of the fate of the prisoners of war. However, this improvement is not to be ascribed to political insight, but to the sudden realization that our labor market must be supplied with laborers at once. We now experienced 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 have formed within Germany. Now the food question suddenly no longer existed. With the usual unlimited abuse of the Slavic humanity, “recruiting” methods were used which probably have their model only in the blackest periods of the slave trade.

A regular manhunt was inaugurated. Without consideration of health or age, the people were shipped to Germany, where it turned out immediately that many more than 100,000 had to be sent back because of serious illnesses and other incapabilities for work. It need not be emphasized that these methods would of necessity have their effect on the resistance of the Red Army; of course, these methods were used only in the Soviet Union, and in no way remotely resembled this form in enemy countries like Holland or Norway. Actually we have made it quite easy for Soviet propaganda to augment the hate for Germany and the National Socialist system. The Soviet soldier fights more and more bravely in spite of the efforts of our politicians to find another name for this bravery. Valuable German blood must flow more and more, in order to break the resistance of the Red Army. Obviously, the Main Department for Politics has struggled unceasingly to place the methods of acquiring workers and their treatment within Germany on a rational foundation. Originally it was thought in all earnestness to demand the utmost efforts with a minimum of food. Here, as well, not political insight, but merely the most primitive biological knowledge has led to an improvement. Now 400,000 female household workers from the Ukraine are to come to Germany, and already the German press announces publicly that these people have no right to free time and may not visit theaters, movies, restaurants, etc., and may leave the house at the most three hours a week, except for duty purposes.

In addition, there is the treatment of the Ukrainians in the Reich Commissariat itself. With an unequalled arrogance, we put aside all political knowledge and, to the happy surprise of all the colored world, treat the peoples of the Occupied Eastern Territories as whites of class 2, who apparently have only the task of serving as slaves for Germany and Europe. Only the most limited education is suitable for them, no social services must be given them. Their sustenance interests us only insofar as they are still capable of labor, and, in every respect, they are given to understand that we regard them as of minute value.

Berlin, 25 October 1942

[Signed] Braeutigam

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT L-61

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 20

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO THE PRESIDENTS OF LABOR OFFICES,
26 NOVEMBER 1942, CONCERNING DEPORTATION AND
EMPLOYMENT OF POLES AND JEWS

Copy

The Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

The Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation

Berlin S.W. 11, Saarlandstr. 96

26 November 1942

Va 5431/7468/42 g

To the Presidents of the Landes

Labor Offices (excl. Labor

Office Brandenburg)

Special-delivery letter

Secret

Subject:

Employment of Jews. Specif: Replacement of Jews in war-essential jobs by Polish labor.

In agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, Jews still employed will now be evacuated from the territory of the Reich and replaced by Poles, who are being deported from the General Government.

The Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service has informed me on 26 October 1942, that it is anticipated that during the month of November the evacuation of Poles in the Lublin district will begin, in order to make room there for the resettlement of Germans.

Poles slated for evacuation, as a result of this measure, will be committed to concentration camps and put to work insofar as they are criminal or asocial elements. The remaining Poles, if fit for labor, will be transported without their families to the Reich, particularly to Berlin; there they will be put at the disposal of the labor allocation offices to serve as replacements for Jews to be eliminated from armament factories.

The Jews who will become available as a result of the employment of Polish labor will be deported at once. This will apply first to Jews engaged in unskilled labor since they can be exchanged most easily. The remaining so-called “qualified” Jewish laborers will be left in the industries until their Polish replacements have been made sufficiently familiar with the work processes by a period of apprenticeship to be determined for each case individually. Loss of production in individual industries will thus be reduced to the absolute minimum.

I reserve the right to issue further instructions. Please inform the labor offices concerned accordingly.

To the President of the Landes Labor Office Brandenburg, Berlin W. 62

I transmit the foregoing copy for your information. Insofar as the removal of Jews allocated for work concerns your district, too, I request that you take the necessary measures in cooperation with the competent offices of the Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service.

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 1063-D-PS [^[82]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 21

EXTRACT FROM ORDER OF MUELLER, 17 DECEMBER 1942,
CONCERNING PRISONERS QUALIFIED FOR WORK
TO BE SENT TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Berlin, 17 December 1942

The Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service

B. Nr. IV 656/42 Secret

Secret

Distribution—Secret:

All Commanders of the Security Police and the Security Service

All Inspectors of the Security Police and the Security Service

All Commandants of the Security Police and the Security Service

All Chiefs of State Police Headquarters

For information:

The Chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office,

SS Obergruppenfuehrer [Lt. Gen.] Pohl

All Higher SS and Police Chiefs

The Inspector of Concentration Camps

For reasons of war necessity, which need not be specified here, the Reich Leader SS and Chief of the German Police has ordered on 14 December 1942 that at least 35,000 prisoners fit for work are to be committed to the concentration camps before the end of January 1943.

In order to reach this number, the following measures are required:

1. As of now (and for the time being, until 1 February 1943) eastern workers or such foreign workers, who have been fugitives, or who have broken contracts, insofar as they do not belong to allied, friendly, or neutral states, are to be brought by the quickest means to the nearest concentration camps under observance of the simplest formalities listed under No. 3. In order to eliminate or forestall complaints by outside public offices, explanations will be furnished, if required, stating that the measures are essential for reasons of public security on the basis of the facts in the individual cases.

2. The commanders and the commandants of the Security Police and the Security Service, and the Chiefs of the State Police Headquarters will make immediate checks, applying especially rigorous and strict standards, on (a) prisons, and (b) labor correction camps. All prisoners fit for work, if at all possible physically and from a humanitarian aspect, will be committed at once to the nearest concentration camp, according to the following instructions, even if criminal procedures have already been or will be instituted in the near future. Only such prisoners who are to remain in solitary confinement, for investigation purposes, may be left.

By order:

[Signed] Mueller

Certified correct.

[Signed] Hellmuth

[Seal of Secret State Police]

Chief Secretary of Police

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 1526-PS [^[83]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 25

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM GERMAN-APPOINTED UKRAINIAN
MAIN COMMITTEE TO FRANK, FEBRUARY 1943

Copy

Prof. Dr. Wolodymyr Kubijowytch,

Chairman of the Ukrainian Main Committee

Krakow, February 1943

To the Governor General,

Reich Minister Dr. Frank.

Your Excellency:

Complying with your request I am sending you this letter, in which I should like to state briefly the critical conditions and the distressing incidents which are creating an especially grave situation for the Ukrainian population in the General Government. * * *

II. Measures of labor procurement.

The general nervousness is enhanced yet by the wrong methods to obtain labor, which have been used increasingly in recent months.

The wild and ruthless manhunt carried on everywhere in towns and country, in streets, public squares, railway stations, even in churches, as well as in homes at night, has badly shaken the sense of security of the population. Everybody is exposed to the danger of being seized anywhere and at any time by the police, suddenly and unexpectedly, and being taken into an assembly camp. The family does not know what has happened to him, until weeks or months later one or the other gives news of his fate by a postcard.

I beg to mention some instances with their respective proofs:

a. During such a drive a schoolboy in Sokal lost his life and another was wounded (App. 2).

b. 19 Ukrainian workers from Galicia, all provided with identity cards, were assigned in Krakow to a transport of “Russian prisoners of war” and delivered into a punishment camp in Graz (App. 3).

c. 95 Ukrainians from Galicia, recruited for work in Germany by the labor office in the middle of January, were sent via East Prussia to Pskov in Russia, where most of them died as a result of the very severe conditions (App. 4).

d. Seizure of workers under pretext of military recruitment (Zalesczyki); kidnapping schoolboys from classes (Biala Podlaska, Wlodawa, Hrubieszow) (App. 5).

III. Question of Personal Security.

Of a much worse character are the mass executions of absolutely innocent persons * * *.

Appendix 12

As this holiday is celebrated by the Ukrainians with great piety, the shootings of these innocent people on this holy day caused great indignance and embitterment. These events depress the Ukrainian population. The view is current that now the shootings of the Jews are coming to an end those of the Ukrainians begin. The case of Ustrzyki is commented upon as follows: The Germans do not care about any non-German sanctity and holidays, they even shoot Ukrainians on the Ukrainian “Schtschedryj Wetschir” (the case in Ustrzyki).

The Ukrainian population is suspicious of all orders given by the German authorities and even keep away from the communal kitchens, for fear that those in need may be considered as beggars and shot.

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 407-V-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 30

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 14 APRIL 1943, CONCERNING LABOR QUESTIONS

G.B.A.

April 14th, [1943]

Sckl./We.

Forwarded We.

[in ink] April 15th

To the Fuehrer

Obersalzberg

My Fuehrer,

As Gruppenfuehrer Bormann has already informed you, I am going to the eastern areas on the 15th April in order to secure 1 million workers from the east for the German war economy in the coming months.

The result of my last trip to France is that, after exact fulfilment of the last program, another 450,000 workers from the western areas, too, will come into the Reich by the beginning of the summer.

With the addition of about 150,000 workers who furthermore may be obtained from Poland and from the other territories, it will then be possible by summer again to put 5-600,000 workers at the disposal of German agriculture and 1,000,000 workers at the disposal of the armament and other war industries.

I ask for your approval to have the new French workers come into the Reich under conditions similar to those of the last group. I have taken contact with the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW).

Since the largest part of the Belgian civilian workers and prisoners of war perform very satisfactorily, I ask you to agree that a similar statute to that which was granted to the French be made for some 20,000 Belgian prisoners of war. This very great concession by you has made a very deep impression upon Laval and the French Ministers. Laval has repeatedly asked me to transmit his sincerest thanks for this to you, my Fuehrer.

1. After one year’s activity as Plenipotentiary for the Allocation of Labor, I can report that 3,638,056 new foreign workers have been added to the German war economy from 1 April of last year to 31 March this year.

As a whole, these forces have produced satisfactory performances. Their feeding and housing is secured, their treatment so indisputably regulated that, in this respect too, our National Socialist Reich presents a shining example compared to the methods of the capitalist and bolshevist world. However, it is naturally inevitable that mistakes and blunders still occur here and there. I will continue to endeavor with the greatest energy to reduce them to a minimum.

In addition to the foreign civilian workers, 1,622,829 prisoners of war are also employed in the German economy.

2. The 3,638,056 workers are distributed amongst the following branches of the German war economy:

	Armament	1,568,801
	Mining industry	163,632
	Building	218,707
	Transportation	199,074
	Agriculture and forestry	1,007,544
	Other branches of the economy	480,298

In addition to the foreign workers, 5 million male and female German workers were channelled into the German war economy proper through transfer from enterprises unimportant to the war effort, to war-essential industries, etc.

Yours faithfully and obediently,

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

The following persons received a copy of the above version:

Reich Marshal Goering

Reichsleiter Bormann

Reich Minister Dr. Lammers

Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels

Additional text on the original letter to the Fuehrer.

Since I will be in the eastern territories on April 20th, I ask you, my Fuehrer, to accept in advance my most sincere congratulations along with those of my district [Gau] and my family.

Let me assure you that the district [Gau] of Thuringia and I will serve you and our dear people with all our strength.

It is the most fervent wish that you, my Fuehrer, may always enjoy the best of health and that we ourselves can serve you to your complete satisfaction.

Faithfully and obediently yours

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 407-IX-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 33

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 3 JUNE 1943, CONCERNING
FOREIGN LABOR SITUATION

The Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan

The Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation

1751/43 [pencilled]

forwarded on 6 June 1943

Berlin W 8, 3 June 1943

To the Fuehrer of Greater Germany

The Fuehrer’s Headquarters.

My Fuehrer,

I beg to be permitted to read to you

The following number of new foreigners and prisoners of war was for the first time put at the disposal of the German war industry:

January 1943	120,085
February 1943	138,354
March 1943	257,382
April 1943	160,535
May 1943	170,155
	————
TOTAL	846,511

I may remark that it was possible to reach this figure of 850,000 only under great difficulties which had not existed during the previous year and only because all labor allocation agencies, particularly also in the occupied territories, approached their task with the greatest devotion.

Unfortunately, quite a number of our officials and employees became victims of assassination, attack, and the like, by partisans.

In addition to the labor forces put at the disposal of the economy within the Reich, several hundred thousand laborers were made available within the occupied territories by the agencies of the Labor Allocation Administration to the Organization Todt as well as to the enterprises working for the German war economy in the East and the West. Furthermore, it was possible to assign to the Wehrmacht, in addition to a large number of laborers, some considerable numbers of labor volunteers.

Moreover, by virtue of the order concerning compulsory registration, dated 27 January 1943, the following number of men and women are made available.

	Men	Women	Total
February	14,594	163,012	177,606
March	45,606	494,931	540,537
April	19,315	269,374	288,689
May	11,485	186,683	198,168
	————	————	————
TOTAL	91,000	1,114,000	1,205,000

However, approximately 600,000 of these persons are available only for less than 48 hours of work per week.

Altogether German war industry recruited 2,000,000 laborers during 5 months of 1943.

Furthermore, as regards wage control and increase of the output of the laborers in the various European territories, especially in France, negotiations were conducted as well as arrangements made and regulations issued, which enabled us to keep the wage system in the occupied European territories in order to secure, as far as possible, the living conditions of laborers working for German interests, in spite of the difficult conditions created by the war, and to increase production by means of wage regulations also in these territories. The coordination of these measures was achieved through agreements with the respective armament and agricultural agencies, as well as with the Reich Commissioner for Price Control.

Heil!

Yours faithfully and obediently,

[Signed] Sauckel

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 3000-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 34

EXTRACTS FROM REPORT RENDERED TO RIECKE,
MINISTERIALDIREKTOR IN THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE,
28 JUNE 1943, ON EXPERIENCES IN POLITICAL
AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN THE EAST

Freitag, Chief of Main Office III

with the Commissariat General in Minsk

Minsk, 28 June 1943

Secret!

[stamp]

Main Group Food and Agriculture

Rec’d. 14 July 1943; no encl.

III E 733/43 Secret

To Ministerialdirektor Riecke

in Berlin

Subject:

Report on experiences in political and economic problems in the East, particularly the Commissariat General White Ruthenia.

* * * The task of the military agencies and, subsequently, of the German administration, is: “Exploitation of the region for the German war economy,” and the motto: “Everything you do for Germany is right, everything else is wrong!”

* * * The recruitment of labor for the Reich, however necessary, had disastrous effects. The recruitment measures in the last months and weeks were absolute manhunts, which have an irreparable political and economic effect * * * From * * * White Ruthenia, approximately 50,000 people have been obtained for the Reich so far. Another 130,000 are to be obtained. Considering the total population of 2.4 million, these figures are impossible * * *.

* * * Due to the sweeping drives [Grossaktionen] of the SS and police in November 1942, about 250,000 acres of farmland are left unused, as the population has gone and the villages have been razed.

[Signed] Freitag

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 265-PS [^[84]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 35

EXTRACTS FROM REPORT BY LEYSER TO ROSENBERG, 30 JUNE 1943, ON CONDITIONS IN THE DISTRICT ZHITOMIR

The Commissioner General

Zhitomir, 30 June 1943

Secret

Oral report on the situation in the general district [Generalbezirk] Zhitomir, by Commissioner General Leyser, delivered at a conference with Reich Minister Rosenberg, in Vinnitsa, on 17 June 1943.

Mr. Reich Minister,

The symptoms created by the recruiting of workers are, no doubt, well known to the Reich Minister through reports and his own observations. Therefore, I shall not report them. It is certain that a recruitment of labor, in the sense of the word, can hardly be spoken of. In most cases, it is nowadays a matter of actual conscription by force. The population has been stirred up to a large extent and views the transports to the Reich as a measure which does in no way differ from the former exile to Siberia, during the Czarist and Bolshevist systems.

To date, almost 170,000 male and female workers have been sent to the Reich from the general district Zhitomir. It can be taken for granted that, during the month of June, this number is going to rise to approximately 200,000.

The struggle which has to be carried on is hard and full of sacrifices. But it will and must be carried through. Enormous moral forces have been mobilized in the personnel of the civil administration in their daily efforts. The successes which they were able to achieve so far are impressive, particularly with regard to the resistance encountered. May I, therefore, be permitted at the conclusion of this report to thank all my co-workers for their excellent work. They know that they are practically on the front. I can promise your Excellency, that we all shall do our duty now, and in the future, as our Fuehrer has ordered.

[Signed] Leyser

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 204-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 39

EXTRACTS FROM MEMORANDUM OF A CONFERENCE, 18 FEBRUARY 1944, CONCERNING THE RELEASE OF INDIGENOUS LABOR FOR PURPOSES OF THE REICH

The City Commissioner in Kaunas.

Kaunas, 18 February 1944.

PROCUREMENT OF INDIGENOUS WORKERS FOR
PURPOSES OF THE REICH

Numerous drives for the purpose of recruiting indigenous workers for the Reich have taken place since the entry of German armed forces into the general district [Generalbezirk] Lithuania in June 1941. A few weeks after the entry of the German troops, thousands of Lithuanian male and female farm workers were recruited at the instigation of the military administration, to work for 6 months on large estates in the Gau East Prussia. Unfortunately, the promises made then were not kept. These farm workers were not released after 6 months nor after 12 months; their families remaining behind were left without any support for months; they were for a long time refused a short vacation in Lithuania, and now it is even considered to transfer these farm workers, recruited in 1941 for 6 months, to the armament industry in the Reich.

The second major drive was started by the armed forces in the spring of 1942 and concerned the collecting of approximately 7,000 male workers as so-called transport helpers. The action, which was rushed into without sufficient propaganda preparation, was greatly handicapped by unwise measures on the part of the nervous armed forces command. Thus for instance, the Lithuanians, ordered to the official agencies “only for registration”, were not allowed to return home and were taken away under military escort to the local barracks, leaving them no way of either saying good-by to their families or putting in order their most important personal affairs. No wonder that the enemy propaganda exploited this “blemish” with avidity comparing the procedure with the deportation methods used barely a year ago by the Soviets.

Until most recent times, numerous additional drives have been undertaken for the purpose of obtaining volunteers for the armed forces, the police and the Reich Labor Service, or for obtaining workers for the armament industry in the Reich. * * *

Finally it must be recalled that the indigenous administration in its present form and since its inception has completely failed in the question of procuring workers for the Reich. * * *

3. Gauleiter Sauckel requested that 30,000 indigenous workers for the Reich be recruited at short order and be shipped to Germany. At a conference between the Commissioner General and the First Councillor General [Ersten Generalrat] on 7 September 1943, the latter offered to assume the entire responsibility for the execution of this drive for the native administration and to recruit and ship the specified number of 30,000 workers by 7 November 1943.

4. In the meantime, Gauleiter Sauckel made an additional demand to the effect that the general district Lithuania had to furnish 100,000 native workers (instead of the 30,000 demanded up until now) for the Reich. At a conference with all the general councillors on 24 January 1944, the commissioner general did not leave any doubts as to the fact that this number would have to be furnished regardless of any consideration, even at the risk of leaving many work projects in the general district unfinished and permanently removing workers needed on jobs in the country. The responsibility for the execution of this new drive lies again in the hands of the local administration, and, with the consent of the commissioner general, indigenous conscription commissions have been formed with all district chiefs and all chiefs of judicial and local districts. The total number to be made available has been divided up into contingents, and the quota to be furnished by every mayor or district chief was exactly determined. This is the way the matter looks in the district of the City of Kaunas:

New quota, to be supplied		7,000 workers
20 percent addition		1,400 workers
		———————
	TOTAL	8,400 workers

In the district of the City of Kaunas, according to the records of my labor office on 1 February 1944, there were 7,000 unfilled jobs in industry and the agencies of the armed forces, police, etc., so that to all intents and purposes 15,400 workers would have to be found in the city of Kaunas alone, in order to comply fully with the demands of the Reich and the local economy. And all that with a total indigenous population of only a little over 130,000.

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-103 [^[85]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 40

EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER FROM THE (GERMAN-APPOINTED) POLISH MAIN COMMITTEE TO THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT OF POLAND ON THE CONDITIONS OF POLISH WORKERS IN GERMANY, 17 MAY 1944

Polish Main Committee

5 Vischer Street, Krakow

Krakow, 17 May 1944

To the Administration of the General Government,

Main Department Internal Administration,

Dept. Population and Welfare,

13 University Street, Krakow

No.	Pa 1/724
	————
	6699/44

Subject: Situation of the Polish Workers in the Reich.

The living conditions of about 2 million Polish male and female workers in the Reich have given rise to shortcomings which are largely lowering the will and the capacity to work of many workers, endanger their health and even their lives, and also have a strong influence on the situation of their families within the General Government, thus directly affecting the sphere of our own work.

These bad conditions are felt with particular intensity by those groups of workers who have been assigned for work in factories and have been lodged in large camps [Massenlagern]. With regard to workers on the land, they occur as individual cases and are more easily dealt with. * * *

Food relief allotments—We receive letters from the camps for eastern workers and their large families, beseeching us for food. The quantity and quality of camp rations mentioned therein—the so-called fourth category of rations—is absolutely insufficient to maintain the energies spent in heavy work. 3.5 kg. bread weekly and a thin soup at lunch time, cooked with swedes or other vegetables without any meat or fat, with a meager addition of potatoes now and then, is a hunger ration for a heavy worker.

Sometimes punishment consists of starvation, which is inflicted e.g., for refusal to wear the badge “East”. Such punishment has the result that workers faint at work (Klosterteich Camp, Gruenheim, Saxony). The consequence is complete exhaustion, an ailing state of health, and tuberculosis. The spread of tuberculosis among the Polish factory workers is a result of the deficient food rations meted out in the community camps, because energy spent in the heavy work assigned to them cannot be replaced.

The quantities of bread and [other] food fixed for Polish children in the camps is thoroughly insufficient for building up substance for growing and developing their bodies. In some cases children up to the age of 10 and even more are allotted 200 grams of bread daily, 200 grams of butter or margarine and 250 grams of sugar monthly, and nothing else (factory in Zeititz, near Wurzen, Saxony). * * *

Care of Children—* * * An indication of the awful conditions this may lead to is given by the fact that in the camps for eastern workers (camp for eastern workers “Waldlust”, Post Office Lauf, Pegnitz) there are cases of 8-year-old, weak and undernourished children put to forced labor and perishing from such treatment. * * *

Health Care—The fact that these bad conditions dangerously affect the state of health and the vitality of the workers is proved by many cases of tuberculosis found in very young people returning from the Reich to the General Government unfit for work. Their state of health is usually deteriorated past hope of recovery.

The reason is that a state of exhaustion resulting from overwork and malnutrition is not recognized as a disease condition until the illness manifests itself in high fever and fainting spells.

Protection of the Family—Grave depression is caused among the eastern workers by the order forbidding marriage among them within the borders of the Reich. * * * No less suffering is caused by the separation of families when wives and mothers of small children are torn away from their families and sent to the Reich for forced labor.

Religious Care—If under these bad conditions there is no moral support such as is normally provided by regular family life, then at least such moral support which the religious feeling of the Polish population require should be maintained and increased. The elimination of religious services, worship, and religious care from the life of the Polish workers, the prohibition of church attendance at a time when there is a religious service for other people, and other measures show a certain contempt for the influence of religion on the feelings and outlook of the workers. * * *

[Stamp] THE POLISH CENTRAL COMMITTEE

[Signed] [name illegible]

President

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 208-PS

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 55

REPORT BY SAUCKEL, 7 JULY 1944, ON THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
OF LABOR MOBILIZATION IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1944

Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan

Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation

Berlin W8, 7 July 1944

65 Mohren Street

Thuring House

Secret

NR 520/44/g Dr. ST/Ka

Special Delivery Letter

To:	All Top Reich Authorities
	The Reich Leader of the NSDAP
	All Top Army Agencies
	All Gauleiters

Subject:

Accomplishments of the Labor Mobilization in the first half of 1944.

Enclosed I am submitting the total figures on additional manpower placed at the disposal of the German war effort by the German Labor Offices in the first half-year of 1944. They represent only such manpower that was not previously employed in the German war effort.

According to the quota of 4,050,000 laborers set for this year, 2,000,000 new workers would have had to be secured in the first half of the year. Because of increased difficulties in Italy and in the occupied Western countries, regrettably one-half million less than that were found. If despite the known difficult situation it was possible to mobilize 1,500,000 people in the first half of the year, it is solely due to the exertion of all available energy.

Since the Proclamation of 17 February 1944, around 62,000 women have reported for “Voluntary Honorary Service,” and 52,000 of them have already been assigned to work.

Heil Hitler!

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan

Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation

Berlin, 7 July 1944

New Manpower Placed at the Disposal of the Economy
between 1 January and 30 June 1944

A. Entire Economy:

	Total			1,482,000

		Of these were:	Germans	848,000
			Foreigners	537,400
			War prisoners	96,600

B. Breakdown of allocation of [the persons listed under] A:

	Agriculture and Forestry			231,000
		Of them, foreigners		156,000
	Mining			46,000
		Of them, foreigners		34,000
	Metal industry			415,000
		Of them, foreigners		250,000
	All other [branches of] economy			790,000
		Of them, foreigners		194,000

C. Origin of foreign labor:

	Occupied Eastern Territories			284,000
	General Government			52,000
	Protectorate			23,000
	France, excluding Northern France			33,000
	Belgium, including Northern France			16,000
	Netherlands			15,000
	Italy			37,000
	Rest of Europe			77,400

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 3819-PS [^[86]]

PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 56

MINUTES OF A CONFERENCE ON 11 JULY 1944 ATTENDED BY MILCH, CONCERNING THE LABOR PROBLEM

LIST OF ATTENDANCE FOR THE CONFERENCE IN THE
REICH CHANCELLERY ON 11 JULY 1944 1600 HOURS

Name	Official capacity	Agency
Dr. Kuehne	Chief of Mil. Adm.	[illegible]

(1) Warlimont	General of Artillery [Lt. Gen.]	OKW

Dr. Kohlhaase	Director of Labor	Section of the Supreme Commissioner, Adriatic Coast, Trieste

Dr. Landfried	State Secretary, Chief of Mil. Adm.	Italy

(2) Walter Funk and Albert Speer

Milch		[illegible]

(3) Krosigk

(3) Steengracht	State Secretary	Foreign Office

Abetz	Ambassador	German Embassy in Paris

Hanel [?]	Major General	Armaments Commissioner Staff, France

von Linstow	Colonel, GSC	Military Commander, France

Sass	Colonel, GSC	General [Plenipotentiary] for Italy

Franssen	Major General	Armaments Inspector, Belgium

Waeger	Major General	Armaments Office

Sarnow	Ministerialdirektor	Gen. Staff of Army, QM Section

Koegel	Lieut. Col., GSC	Gen. Staff of Army, QM Section

Reeder	Chief of Mil. Adm.	Brussels

Heider	Chief of General Staff	Brussels

(4) Ley

(5) Sauckel	Labor Plenipotentiary	Berlin

H. Backe	Minister	Reich Food Ministry

Marrenbach	Chief [of Dept.]	German Labor Front

Leyers	Armaments Plenipotentiary	Italy

Also present:

Ministerial Direktor Klopfer (Party Chancellery)

Ministerialrat Froehling

Ambassador Rahn

Dr. Huber

(6) Chief of Police, Dr. Kaltenbrunner

General Labor Fuehrer Kretschmann

Colonel Meixner (OKW)

(1) United States vs. Wilhelm von Leeb, et al. See vols. X and XI.

(2) Trial before International Military Tribunal. See Trial of Major War Criminals, vols. I-XIII, Nuremberg, 1947.

(3) United States vs. Ernst von Welzsaecker et al. See vols. XII, XIII and XIV.

(4) Trial before International Military Tribunal. See Trial of the Major War Criminals, vols. I-XLII, Nuremberg, 1947.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Ibid.

Berlin, 12 July 1944

To Rk. 5815 C

Subject: Stepped-up Procuring of Foreign Manpower

Executive Conference, 11 July 1944

Note

Participating in the executive conference were the departmental chiefs and representatives indicated in the attached list of those present. No guarantee can be given for the completeness of the list, as not all participants signed the register.

Reich Minister Dr. Lammers [^[87]] reported by way of introduction on the various proposals on hand by the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation calculated to bring about the increase in labor in Germany which is absolutely essential for winning the final victory. He limited the theme of the discussion by saying that all possibilities were to be examined by which the present deficit of foreign manpower could be offset, for example, the question of the reestablishment of an acceptable price and wage differential between the Reich and non-German territories. But the primary consideration will have to remain the solution of the question whether and in what form greater compulsion could be exerted to accept work in Germany. In this connection it must be examined how the police agencies, regarding the inadequacy of which the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation has serious complaints, could be strengthened, on the one hand, through bringing influence to bear on the foreign governments and, on the other, through reorganizing the indigenous police forces by an increased use of the Wehrmacht, the police or other German agencies. Reich Minister Dr. Lammers then gave the floor to the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation, Gauleiter Sauckel.

Gauleiter Sauckel stated that the present deficit of the half-year program for 2,025,000 foreign workers, to be filled by 30 June of the current year, totals 500,000. Of the total of 1,500,000 workers procured up to now, no less than 865,000 were Germans, of whom half were apprentices and women, two categories which cannot be regarded as full-fledged workers. Of the 560,000 foreigners put to work, three-fourths came from the East alone. This result was a scandal considering that the German people now are mobilized for work to the fullest extent and it represents the complete bankruptcy of German authorities in Italy and France, where hundreds of thousands of workers were still idling. In mobilizing the manpower we did not exert the necessary severity and, in particular, we were unable to achieve the necessary unity of the German authorities. It was quite improper for German authorities to interfere irresponsibly in the tasks of the GBA [Plenipotentiary for Labor Allocation]. He had to have much greater freedom of action, just as was the case in 1942. With the present methods of recruitment for voluntary employment we would not make any progress, for one thing because any volunteers still available exposed themselves to danger to life and limb from reprisals by their own fellow countrymen. If, on the other hand, they were forcibly hired and decently treated at their jobs, they would do completely satisfactory work. Attention to the wage and price questions connected with the subject was desirable, but in the present situation no longer so important. If no effective action were taken now, our manpower mobilization program would fail, with the consequence that the combat troops would no longer receive the weapons they need.

State Secretary von Steengracht, Foreign Office, stressed that the Reich Foreign Minister from the beginning had favored the same standpoint as the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation. The Foreign Office, however, could do nothing except press the foreign governments more or less urgently to meet German demands, and this has been done consistently up to the present. The police power was handled by others who, therefore, would now have to voice their opinion on the subject of the conference.

The Deputy for the Chief of the OKW, General Warlimont, referred to a recently issued Fuehrer order, according to which all German forces had to put themselves at the disposal of the task to secure manpower. Wherever the Wehrmacht was not employed exclusively in essential military duties (as, for example, in the construction of the coastal defenses), it would be available, but it could not actually be assigned for the purposes of the GBA [Sauckel]. General Warlimont made the following practical suggestions:

a. The troops employed in fighting partisans are to take over the additional task of securing manpower in the partisan areas. Everyone who cannot fully show cause for his presence in these areas is to be seized for labor;

b. When large cities, due to the difficulty of providing food, are wholly or partly evacuated, the population suitable for labor commitment is to be put to work with the assistance of the Wehrmacht;

c. The seizing of labor recruits among the refugees from the areas near the front is to receive special attention with the assistance of the Wehrmacht.

Gauleiter Sauckel accepted these suggestions with thanks and said that he expected that a certain measure of success would no doubt be achieved by these means.

On behalf of the Military Commander of Belgium and Northern France, the Chief of the Military Administration, Reeder, put up for discussion the possibility of expanding the Military Police, now totaling only 70, and of the Civilian Searching Service [Fahndungsdienst] consisting of Flemings and Walloons (1,100 strong). If the Military Police were increased to 200, appreciable results could be achieved. Upon inquiry by Reich Minister Dr. Lammers, General Warlimont promised on behalf of the OKW that the searching service would be reinforced.

On further inquiry by Reich Minister Dr. Lammers, as to whether the population suitable for work could not be taken along as the troops withdrew from an area, Colonel Saas ([Plenipotentiary] General for Italy) stated that Field Marshal Kesselring had already directed that the population in a zone of 30 kilometers’ depth behind the front was to be “captured”. This measure, however, could not be extended to areas extending farther behind the lines, because of the most severe shock that would be inflicted on the whole structure of these areas, especially in regard to the industry still in full production.

Gauleiter Sauckel was of the opinion that widest circles of the Wehrmacht saw something disreputable in the labor recruiting program. There had been actual instances where German soldiers had endeavored to protect the population from being taken away by German labor recruiting agencies. Therefore it was essential to explain to the front troops the extraordinary importance of labor recruiting. In contrast to the much too mild German method, it was part of the Bolshevist conception of war for the fighting troops, on occupying a new territory, to put the entire population to work at once. The question for the administration thus was not one of mass recruiting, but of being consistent. It would be necessary to establish a few object lessons, and the passive resistance would quickly change into active cooperation. Nor ought one to shrink from proceeding drastically against the administrative heads [Behoerdenleiter] themselves who sabotage the labor recruitment. Not the small refractory offenders should be punished, but the responsible administrative heads. In addition to these compulsory measures, other means too must be applied. Thus it would be advisable to remove a large part of the exceptional Italian crops in order to improve the rations of the German and foreign workers. A special problem was presented by the entirely insufficient rations for the Italian military internees who were almost starving. The Fuehrer should be asked to have the statute for these military internees gradually altered. This would release a not inconsiderable labor potential.

Reich Leader Dr. Ley underscored these statements and suggested the establishment of a searching service made up by all German forces in the non-German territories, that would carry out the ruthless recruiting in large areas.

These proposals were countered by the following objections:

Reich Minister Funk holds that ruthless raids would entail considerable disturbances in the industries of the non-German territories. The same opinion is held by the Chief of the Military Administration of Italy, State Secretary Dr. Landfried, who believes that the German forces making up the executive body are too weak, and fears that the Italian population would escape seizure in great numbers and flee to uncontrollable areas.

Reich Minister Speer states that he had an interest in both promoting increased labor recruiting for the Reich and maintaining the production in the non-German territories. Up to the present, 25 to 30 percent of the German war production was furnished by the occupied Western territories and Italy, with Italy alone supplying 12½ percent. The Fuehrer had recently decided that this production must be maintained as long as possible, in spite of the difficulties already existing, especially in the field of transportation. The Military Administration, in the opinion of Reich Minister Speer, was easily capable to seize sufficient foreign workers at its present strength, as only a relatively small police force was needed for that purpose. The chief need was for stricter orders, but violent measures or large-scale round-ups were not to be carried out. Rather it would be advisable to proceed gradually with clean methods.

On behalf of the Military Commander in France, Chief of Military Administration Dr. Michel, referred to the statements of State Secretary Dr. Landfried and stated that the situation in France was similar. The calling up of entire age groups was being prepared in France, but had not yet begun as the German military authorities had not yet been able to give their consent. The good will of the highest French authorities could not be doubted, but it was lacking partly at the lower and middle levels. The friendly administrators and individuals willing to work and showing cooperativeness toward the German authorities, exposed themselves to reprisals by the French population.

Ambassador Abetz confirmed these statements. The application of severe measures, such as the shooting of French functionaries, was of no avail. Such a policy only served to drive the population into the Maquis. In these territories, where there were large German armed forces, it would no doubt be possible to obtain a few more ten-thousands of workers. Then these same German forces could be employed in police duty, which would also turn up large numbers of workers. In Paris, the evacuation of which was being considered, 100,000 to 200,000 workers could be seized. In this connection it might be possible to transfer the manpower of entire industries in a body.

The Chief of the Security Police, Dr. Kaltenbrunner, declared himself willing, if asked by the GBA, to place the Security Police at his disposal for this purpose, but pointed out their numerical weakness. For all of France he had only 2,400 men available. It was questionable whether entire age groups could be seized with these feeble forces. In his opinion, the Foreign Office must exercise a stronger influence on the foreign governments.

State Secretary von Steengracht, Foreign Office, commented to the effect that the agreements made with the foreign governments were entirely sufficient. The governments had always been willing, upon requests of the Foreign Office, to issue the necessary orders. If these orders were not carried out, this was due to the inadequate police power of the foreign governments themselves. In France, it had been reduced to a minimum for political reasons. In Italy an executive power was no longer extant. The Foreign Office was willing at any time, he said, to exercise stronger pressure on the foreign governments, but did not expect too much from that. State Secretary von Steengracht asked Ambassador Rahn to comment on this for Italy.

Ambassador Rahn believes that there is still a sufficient number of workers in Italy, so that in theory 1 million could still be taken out, although 2/3 of the Italian territory and population had been lost. He had always been in favor of the system of drafting age classes. This was generally successful until the fall of Rome, as could be seen from the fact that it was possible to seize 200,000 Italians for military service. Since that time the situation in Italy had become extremely difficult, however, as the fall of Rome was an enormous shock to the Italian people. The German authorities had done what they could to neutralize these effects and to that end had merged all executive power in the person of Marshal Graziani. At present, however, the use of violent methods on a large scale was impracticable because it would cause complete disorder and disrupt production. The best example for this is the retaliatory action ordered by the Fuehrer because of the strikes in Turin, when 10 percent of all factory labor forces were to be conscripted because they were shirkers. A force of 4,000 Germans was brought together for that purpose. The result was that the food and power supply of Turin was cut off by the resistance movement so that 250,000 workers had to stop working. This could not be tolerated in view of the substantial contribution of the Italian armament industry to the war effort. Field Marshal Kesselring declared that continuation of forced recruitment would cause not only the loss of the armament production in the upper Italian area, but the loss of the entire theater of war. In the face of this statement the hardiest political will must keep silent. The only thing which could be done was the execution of the forced recruitment in the rebellious area proper. Ambassador Rahn believes the following practical suggestions could be carried out:

a. The recruitment of volunteers is to be continued.

b. To a limited extent, plants are to be transferred to the Reich with machinery and workers.

c. The transfer of wage savings of the Italian workers in Germany to their homeland, which is not functioning well, is to be ensured. For this purpose an automatic procedure is to be introduced which Ambassador Rahn had already proposed in another connection.

d. The system of the induction of age classes will be resumed when the German military authorities consider the time ripe.

In answer to the reported remark of Field Marshal Kesselring, General Warlimont (OKW) commented that this remark was unknown to the OKW. The OKW’s approval of this standpoint could therefore not yet be assumed.

Gauleiter Sauckel declared that all these proposals were inadequate since they were not suited to mobilize the masses of manpower which he needed. The execution of all these proposals had already been tried in practice since the labor mobilization authorities had at no time limited themselves to any single method. He still had to name as seriously damaging to the execution of the labor mobilization plan the fact that his far-reaching jurisdiction and powers had been made the subject of discussion. What he needed, as already said, was “elbow room”.

At the suggestion of Reich Minister Dr. Lammers, Gauleiter Sauckel declared himself willing to set up several programmatic demands on which he would consult with the interested parties and which then would be submitted to the Fuehrer with a request for endorsement and translation into law. A written formulation will follow. For the time being the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation presents his demands as follows:

a. The proposals of General Warlimont will be discussed directly among the interested parties and will be carried out jointly.

b. The Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation receives permission to establish local security and recruiting machineries for labor recruitment, which will operate on the basis of his orders and directives without interference by other offices.

c. The regulations on recruitment of labor for Germany promulgated by French and Italian authorities are to be given solid foundations by concrete implementation orders which guarantee the most active collaboration of foreign authorities in the acquisition of manpower.

After these statements were made Reich Minister Dr. Lammers closed the meeting, pointing out that he would leave the further handling of the problem to those concerned, as proposed.

[Initialed] L. [Lammers]

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-124

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 1

EXTRACT FROM REPORT ON FUEHRER CONFERENCE ATTENDED
BY MILCH ON 19 FEBRUARY 1942

POINTS OF DISCUSSION ON VISIT TO FUEHRER HEADQUARTERS
ON 19 FEBRUARY 1942

16. Upon recommendation of Field Marshal Milch, the Fuehrer decides that the 6-month contracts for foreign workers should be dropped and that tax regulations, which stand in the way against this measure, are to be rescinded. Rather, contracts are to be introduced which would provide, in the event of employment of longer duration (exceeding six months), a single lump sum compensation of some kind—also in view of the fact that there would be a corresponding saving of the cost of travel back and forth.

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-124

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 32

EXTRACT FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE MINUTES,
21 AND 22 APRIL 1942

POINTS OF DISCUSSION FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE
OF 21 AND 22 APRIL 1942

Speer:

20. The Fuehrer explains clearly in an elaborate form that he does not approve the bad food dispensed to the Russians. The Russians must absolutely be given sufficient food, and Sauckel has to see to it that this food will now be guaranteed by Backe.

21. The Fuehrer is surprised that the civilian Russians are kept like prisoners of war behind a barbed wire fence. I told him that this was due to a decree issued by him. The Fuehrer knows nothing of such a decree. I request the documents pertaining thereto to be included in the forthcoming Fuehrer file and at the same time to see to it that Sauckel will arrange to have the civilian Russians no longer treated like prisoners of war.

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-124

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 2

EXTRACT FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE MINUTES
OF 3, 4, 5 JANUARY 1943

Berlin, 8 January 1943

POINTS OF DISCUSSION AT THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE
OF 3, 4, 5 JANUARY 1943

Speer:

55. The Fuehrer demands unequivocally that in no case must it be permitted that France be less burdened than Germany. Germany must sacrifice her blood for this war. We must insist that France intensify her economic contribution. Any French workers on that job showing signs of resistance will be deported, if necessary, as civilian internees. At the slightest attempt of sabotage the most rigorous measures must be taken. Any maudlin humanitarianism is out of place.

TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT 407-II-PS [^[88]]

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 3

REPORT FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 10 MARCH 1943, CONCERNING
DIFFICULTIES ORIGINATING FROM THE DRAFT OF
MANPOWER IN FORMER SOVIET TERRITORIES

Teletype

10 March 1943

To the Fuehrer

Fuehrer Headquarters

With the urgent request to be submitted to the Fuehrer in person immediately for decision

Subject:

Difficulties originating from draft of manpower in former Soviet territories.

My Fuehrer,

You may be assured that the labor assignment is being pushed by me with fanatical will but also with circumspection and with due consideration for economic and technical as well as human necessities and conditions.

Replacement for soldiers who will be relieved and the stockpiling of additional labor needed for the armament programs can and will be carried through, notwithstanding the fact that especially during the last two winter months the greatest difficulties had to be overcome. Yet it was possible to make 258,000 foreign workers available to the war economy for January and February alone despite the fact that in the East transports practically ceased. The employment of German men and women is in full progress.

Inasmuch as the difficulties of the winter months will now gradually disappear, and as preparations were made by me, also the transports from the East can again be resumed in full measure. Although the yield of the registration and employment of German men and women is excellent, the employment of the strongest and most efficient foreigners who are used to work cannot be neglected.

Unfortunately, some of the commanding generals [Oberbefehlshaber] in the East have prohibited the compulsory enrollment of men and women in the conquered Soviet territories for—as Gauleiter Koch [^[89]] informs me—political reasons.

My Fuehrer, in order to enable me to carry out my assignment, I ask that these orders be rescinded. I consider it entirely impossible that the population of former Soviet nationality could be accorded a greater measure of consideration than our German people on whom I have been forced to place very drastic measures. Should it no longer be possible to enforce the compulsion to work in the East, nor to draft labor, then the German war economy and agriculture will likewise no longer be able to fulfil their tasks in full measure.

I myself am of the opinion that under no circumstances should the commanders of our armies give credence to the Bolshevist propaganda of atrocities and defamation. After all, it is to the interest of the generals themselves that replacements for the troops be made in opportune time.

I take permission to point out that—without wishing to discredit their best will—it is impossible to put German women—entirely inexperienced in work—into the place of hundreds of thousands of excellent workers who now have to go to the front as soldiers. It must be possible for me to replace them with people from the Eastern territories.

I myself report to you that all foreign nationals who are working with us are being treated satisfactorily according to humane standards; that they are being treated correctly and fairly; they are being fed, housed, yes, even clothed. Because of my own experience in the service of foreign nations, I am even bold enough to claim that never before have foreign workers been so decently treated anywhere in the world as is being done by the German people during this the hardest of all wars.

I therefore ask you, my Fuehrer, to cancel orders which prevent the enrollment of foreign male and female workers and to kindly advise me whether my concept of the assignment as laid down herein still is correct.

I ask your permission to report to you in person on several important points of the labor recruitment early next week, possibly on Tuesday.

In lasting gratitude, loyalty and obedience, yours,

[Signed] Fritz Sauckel

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-124

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 33

EXTRACT FROM REPORT ON FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 30 MAY 1943

Obersalzberg, 1 June 1943

Fuehrer Conference on 30 May 1943

Speer:

[Marginal Note] Schieber, Pleiger, Sauckel, Backe, Keitel, Waeger.

19. The coal situation causes the Fuehrer to call a meeting with Pleiger, Sauckel, Backe, and Keitel.

At this meeting will be discussed the allocation of sufficient labor for the coal district, the removal of Russian prisoners of war from farming and small war industries (insofar as they are employed as unskilled labor) and their replacement by other workers from the Ukraine, Poland, etc.

Furthermore it is intended, if possible, to raise the food rations of the German miners, even above present levels. The Russians are to get plentiful additional rations, which will be individually allotted by plant managers on the basis of efficiency.

Additionally the German workers—and particularly also the Russian prisoners of war—will receive bonuses for higher production in the form of tobacco and similar items.

The details are to be discussed in a preliminary conference so as to establish uniform data as regards quantities, etc., for submission to the Fuehrer.

On no account must we capitulate to existing conditions on the coal question. Coal is the critical basis for maintaining our production and the entire domestic economy.

[Marginal Note] Saur, Kippung, Milch, Dornberger.

20. The Fuehrer desires that in areas which are certainly recurrent targets of enemy air attacks (Ruhr District, Krupp-Essen) about 100 to 200 rocket projector batteries be installed, which experimentally are to fire a steady stream of rockets set for the computed altitude of the enemy formations.

Some of these rockets will, on detonating, loose wire coils. The Fuehrer expects, after all, significant and not only psychological effects from massed, unaimed fire against concentrated air attacks on these targets.

Milch and Dornberger are to state their views on the subject.

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-124

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 4

EXTRACT FROM REPORT OF FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF
11-12 SEPTEMBER 1943

14 September 1943

FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 11-12 SEPTEMBER 1943

Dethleffsen:

16. The Fuehrer brings up the question of air force matériel production and the discussion with Messerschmitt, and asks for my personal intervention with the Reich Marshal [Goering] and Field Marshal Milch to cut down appreciably on the number of aircraft types.

17. The Fuehrer approves Messerschmitt’s recommendation that a monthly conference be held on questions pertaining to developments and productions for the Luftwaffe, on the introduction of new types and modifications with the participation of construction designers and production experts. This is to be discussed with Field Marshal Milch.

Milch:

18. The Fuehrer is displeased that the long-range Messerschmitt plane had not yet been taken up by the Luftwaffe. M. is said to have been unable to obtain the support of the Luftwaffe for it.

PARTIAL TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT R-124

DEFENSE EXHIBIT 34

EXTRACT FROM FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 1-4 JANUARY 1944,
CONCERNING SPEER’S REPORT ON THE FRENCH
LABOR SITUATION

6 January 1944

FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 1-4 JANUARY 1944

[Marginal Note] Kehrl, Waeger.

The Fuehrer has been informed of the differences of opinion with the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation. According to my arguments, the principal thing is to exploit the industry of France for Germany to a larger extent, in order to be able to locate there about 1 million additional workers. However, Sauckel is of the opinion that first of all workers have to be brought to Germany.

The Fuehrer explains that in his view the transfer to France is of extreme importance, be it only on account of the possibility to increase the production of iron connected therewith. In spite of this, in his opinion, one cannot do without bringing additional French labor to Germany. It must, therefore, be attempted to find a happy union of both things. In this connection he proposes to designate protected works in France, in order to induce the French to work in these plants just through the pressure of allocation of labor for Germany. Upon my statement that the protected plants have already been established, he affirms again the importance of this institution and the necessity to create here a basis of long-range confidence. He thinks that it is my affair whether I will be able to do without French labor or not; Sauckel could be only happy if I would do without them.

Upon my reply that this is not the only problem, but that also the question of the executive power is involved, since otherwise a loss of prestige for Germany and a disorder in the allocation of French labor would be inevitable, the Fuehrer declares that this is, of course, one of the most important bases for further discussions. I then told him that on 3 January there will be a meeting between Himmler, Keitel, Sauckel, and myself (Kehrl) (is the Foreign Office to be included?), at which these problems will be discussed. Subsequently there shall be a meeting with him, at which the possibility of executive power in France, as far as the allocation, and the transport of French workers to Germany is concerned, will be laid before him. (Kehrl to do advance work, that we also make a claim for executive power for the protection of the factories in France against terror bands.)

[74] The basic importance of this Hitler conference on 23 May 1939 was emphasized by the IMT Judgment. See Trial of Major War Criminals, vol. I, pp. 188 and 200, Nuremberg, 1947.

For translation of entire document see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. VII, pp. 847-854, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[75] When the prosecution introduced this document in evidence, the following colloquy ensued (Tr. p. 49):

Judge Speight: Do you establish a chain between all of these documents which you read and the defendant?

Mr. Denney: If your Honor please, the prosecution, in presenting these documents, has in mind to give an over-all picture of the way slave labor was treated in Germany, going back to the early days showing that this defendant knew because of attendance at the May 1939, conference that slave labor was going to be employed. Then as Air Ordnance Master General, later as Chief of the Jaegerstab, and later as a member of the Central Planning Board, we will connect him with enterprises involving slave labor.

Judge Speight: Very well.

[76] Allgemeines Wehrmachtamt of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. See case of United States vs. Wilhelm von Leeb, et al., vols. X, XI.

[77] For more complete translation of document see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. V, pp. 744-754, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[78] For complete translation of document, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. III, pp. 46-59, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[79] For complete translation of document, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. III, pp. 130-146, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[80] For complete translation of document, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. III, pp. 242-251, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[81] Otto Braeutigam, member of the Economic Political Department of the Foreign Office. As of May 1941 detached by the German Foreign Office to Rosenberg’s Agency, the Eastern Ministry (Ost-Ministerium).

[82] For more complete translation of document, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. III, pp. 778-9, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[83] For more complete translation of document, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. IV, pp. 79-93, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[84] For more complete translation of document, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. III, pp. 234-238, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[85] For more complete translation, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. VIII, pp. 104-107, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[86] For more complete translation, see Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. VI pp. 760-772, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

[87] United States vs. Ernst von Welzsaecker, et al. See Vols. XII, XIII, XIV.

[88] After Dr. Bergold read this document into the record he made the following statement (Tr. pp. 520-521):

“Which proves that until March 1943, the commanders in the conquered territories were opposed to the labor conscription, and that it was Sauckel who demanded that this opposition be removed, because he was of the opinion that foreign people had to produce the same as the German people. It is further important that he didn’t declare that to the Fuehrer alone but also to the defendant [witness] Speer and the defendant Milch. Accordingly, the defendant [witness] Speer later on will attest that never before have foreigners been treated so fairly. In other words, he lied to the men who were to work with him.”

[89] 1130-PS. See Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. III, pp. 797-799, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946.

III. OPENING STATEMENTS

A. Opening Statement for the Prosecution[[64]]

B. Opening Statement for the Defense[[70]]

IV. SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCUMENTS ANDTESTIMONY OF WITNESSES OF PROSECUTIONAND DEFENSE

A. Slave Labor

I. GENERAL SLAVE LABOR PROGRAM IN GERMANY

Prosecution Documents

Defense Documents

EXTRACT FROM MINUTES OF FUEHRER CONFERENCE, 23 MAY 1939

Top Secret

LETTER FROM THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS OFBADEN, 6 MARCH 1941, CONTAINING DIRECTIVES REGARDINGTHE TREATMENT OF POLISH FARM WORKERS

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM THE REICH LABOR MINISTRY TOPRESIDENTS OF REGIONAL LABOR OFFICES, 26 AUGUST 1941,CONCERNING THE USE OF FRENCH AND RUSSIAN PW’S

Annex 1 to the Decree of the Reich Minister of Armamentand Munitions

MEMORANDUM OF KEITEL, 31 OCTOBER 1941, CONCERNING THEUSE OF PW’S IN THE ARMAMENT INDUSTRY

OUTLINES OF DIRECTIVES OF GOERING REGARDING THEEMPLOYMENT OF PW’S IN THE ARMAMENT INDUSTRY,7 NOVEMBER 1941

NOTES ON OUTLINES LAID DOWN BY THE REICH MARSHAL[GOERING] AT THE MEETING OF 7 NOVEMBER1941 IN THE REICH AIR MINISTRY [RLM]

Employment of Russian PW’s

EXTRACTS FROM SECRET ORDER OF HIMMLER, 20 FEBRUARY 1942,CONCERNING THE COMMITMENT AND TREATMENT OFMANPOWER FROM THE EAST

A. MANPOWER FROM THE ORIGINAL SOVIET RUSSIANTERRITORY

B. MANPOWER FROM THE BALTIC COUNTRIES ANDFOREIGN MANPOWER, NOT OF POLISH ORIGIN,FROM THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND FROMTHE ANNEXED EASTERN TERRITORIES

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO ROSENBERG, 24 APRIL 1942, ANDEXTRACTS FROM REPORT ON SAUCKEL’S LABORMOBILIZATION PROGRAM, 20 APRIL 1942

The Task and its Solution

Prisoners of War and Foreign Workers

EXTRACTS FROM INTERDEPARTMENTAL REPORT OF THE MINISTRYFOR OCCUPIED EASTERN TERRITORIES, 30 SEPTEMBER 1942,CONCERNING THE STATUS OF EASTERN LABORERS

EXTRACTS FROM TOP SECRET MEMORANDUM, SIGNED BYBRAEUTIGAM,[[81]] 25 OCTOBER 1942, CONCERNINGEFFECTS OF SLAVE LABOR PROGRAM

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO THE PRESIDENTS OF LABOR OFFICES,26 NOVEMBER 1942, CONCERNING DEPORTATION ANDEMPLOYMENT OF POLES AND JEWS

EXTRACT FROM ORDER OF MUELLER, 17 DECEMBER 1942,CONCERNING PRISONERS QUALIFIED FOR WORKTO BE SENT TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM GERMAN-APPOINTED UKRAINIANMAIN COMMITTEE TO FRANK, FEBRUARY 1943

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 14 APRIL 1943, CONCERNING LABOR QUESTIONS

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 3 JUNE 1943, CONCERNINGFOREIGN LABOR SITUATION

EXTRACTS FROM REPORT RENDERED TO RIECKE,MINISTERIALDIREKTOR IN THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE,28 JUNE 1943, ON EXPERIENCES IN POLITICALAND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN THE EAST

EXTRACTS FROM REPORT BY LEYSER TO ROSENBERG, 30 JUNE 1943, ON CONDITIONS IN THE DISTRICT ZHITOMIR

EXTRACTS FROM MEMORANDUM OF A CONFERENCE, 18 FEBRUARY 1944, CONCERNING THE RELEASE OF INDIGENOUS LABOR FOR PURPOSES OF THE REICH

PROCUREMENT OF INDIGENOUS WORKERS FORPURPOSES OF THE REICH

EXTRACTS FROM A LETTER FROM THE (GERMAN-APPOINTED) POLISH MAIN COMMITTEE TO THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT OF POLAND ON THE CONDITIONS OF POLISH WORKERS IN GERMANY, 17 MAY 1944

REPORT BY SAUCKEL, 7 JULY 1944, ON THE ACCOMPLISHMENTSOF LABOR MOBILIZATION IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1944

New Manpower Placed at the Disposal of the Economybetween 1 January and 30 June 1944

MINUTES OF A CONFERENCE ON 11 JULY 1944 ATTENDED BY MILCH, CONCERNING THE LABOR PROBLEM

LIST OF ATTENDANCE FOR THE CONFERENCE IN THEREICH CHANCELLERY ON 11 JULY 1944 1600 HOURS

EXTRACT FROM REPORT ON FUEHRER CONFERENCE ATTENDEDBY MILCH ON 19 FEBRUARY 1942

POINTS OF DISCUSSION ON VISIT TO FUEHRER HEADQUARTERSON 19 FEBRUARY 1942

EXTRACT FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE MINUTES,21 AND 22 APRIL 1942

POINTS OF DISCUSSION FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCEOF 21 AND 22 APRIL 1942

EXTRACT FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE MINUTESOF 3, 4, 5 JANUARY 1943

POINTS OF DISCUSSION AT THE FUEHRER CONFERENCEOF 3, 4, 5 JANUARY 1943

REPORT FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 10 MARCH 1943, CONCERNINGDIFFICULTIES ORIGINATING FROM THE DRAFT OFMANPOWER IN FORMER SOVIET TERRITORIES

EXTRACT FROM REPORT ON FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 30 MAY 1943

EXTRACT FROM REPORT OF FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF11-12 SEPTEMBER 1943

FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 11-12 SEPTEMBER 1943

EXTRACT FROM FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 1-4 JANUARY 1944,CONCERNING SPEER’S REPORT ON THE FRENCHLABOR SITUATION

FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 1-4 JANUARY 1944

A. Opening Statement for the Prosecution [^[64]]

B. Opening Statement for the Defense [^[70]]

IV. SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCUMENTS AND
TESTIMONY OF WITNESSES OF PROSECUTION
AND DEFENSE

LETTER FROM THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS OF
BADEN, 6 MARCH 1941, CONTAINING DIRECTIVES REGARDING
THE TREATMENT OF POLISH FARM WORKERS

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM THE REICH LABOR MINISTRY TO
PRESIDENTS OF REGIONAL LABOR OFFICES, 26 AUGUST 1941,
CONCERNING THE USE OF FRENCH AND RUSSIAN PW’S

Annex 1 to the Decree of the Reich Minister of Armament
and Munitions

MEMORANDUM OF KEITEL, 31 OCTOBER 1941, CONCERNING THE
USE OF PW’S IN THE ARMAMENT INDUSTRY

OUTLINES OF DIRECTIVES OF GOERING REGARDING THE
EMPLOYMENT OF PW’S IN THE ARMAMENT INDUSTRY,
7 NOVEMBER 1941

NOTES ON OUTLINES LAID DOWN BY THE REICH MARSHAL
[GOERING] AT THE MEETING OF 7 NOVEMBER
1941 IN THE REICH AIR MINISTRY [RLM]

EXTRACTS FROM SECRET ORDER OF HIMMLER, 20 FEBRUARY 1942,
CONCERNING THE COMMITMENT AND TREATMENT OF
MANPOWER FROM THE EAST

A. MANPOWER FROM THE ORIGINAL SOVIET RUSSIAN
TERRITORY

B. MANPOWER FROM THE BALTIC COUNTRIES AND
FOREIGN MANPOWER, NOT OF POLISH ORIGIN,
FROM THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND FROM
THE ANNEXED EASTERN TERRITORIES

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO ROSENBERG, 24 APRIL 1942, AND
EXTRACTS FROM REPORT ON SAUCKEL’S LABOR
MOBILIZATION PROGRAM, 20 APRIL 1942

EXTRACTS FROM INTERDEPARTMENTAL REPORT OF THE MINISTRY
FOR OCCUPIED EASTERN TERRITORIES, 30 SEPTEMBER 1942,
CONCERNING THE STATUS OF EASTERN LABORERS

EXTRACTS FROM TOP SECRET MEMORANDUM, SIGNED BY
BRAEUTIGAM,[^[81]] 25 OCTOBER 1942, CONCERNING
EFFECTS OF SLAVE LABOR PROGRAM

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO THE PRESIDENTS OF LABOR OFFICES,
26 NOVEMBER 1942, CONCERNING DEPORTATION AND
EMPLOYMENT OF POLES AND JEWS

EXTRACT FROM ORDER OF MUELLER, 17 DECEMBER 1942,
CONCERNING PRISONERS QUALIFIED FOR WORK
TO BE SENT TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM GERMAN-APPOINTED UKRAINIAN
MAIN COMMITTEE TO FRANK, FEBRUARY 1943

LETTER FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 3 JUNE 1943, CONCERNING
FOREIGN LABOR SITUATION

EXTRACTS FROM REPORT RENDERED TO RIECKE,
MINISTERIALDIREKTOR IN THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE,
28 JUNE 1943, ON EXPERIENCES IN POLITICAL
AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN THE EAST

PROCUREMENT OF INDIGENOUS WORKERS FOR
PURPOSES OF THE REICH

REPORT BY SAUCKEL, 7 JULY 1944, ON THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
OF LABOR MOBILIZATION IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1944

New Manpower Placed at the Disposal of the Economy
between 1 January and 30 June 1944

LIST OF ATTENDANCE FOR THE CONFERENCE IN THE
REICH CHANCELLERY ON 11 JULY 1944 1600 HOURS

EXTRACT FROM REPORT ON FUEHRER CONFERENCE ATTENDED
BY MILCH ON 19 FEBRUARY 1942

POINTS OF DISCUSSION ON VISIT TO FUEHRER HEADQUARTERS
ON 19 FEBRUARY 1942

EXTRACT FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE MINUTES,
21 AND 22 APRIL 1942

POINTS OF DISCUSSION FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE
OF 21 AND 22 APRIL 1942

EXTRACT FROM THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE MINUTES
OF 3, 4, 5 JANUARY 1943

POINTS OF DISCUSSION AT THE FUEHRER CONFERENCE
OF 3, 4, 5 JANUARY 1943

REPORT FROM SAUCKEL TO HITLER, 10 MARCH 1943, CONCERNING
DIFFICULTIES ORIGINATING FROM THE DRAFT OF
MANPOWER IN FORMER SOVIET TERRITORIES

EXTRACT FROM REPORT OF FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF
11-12 SEPTEMBER 1943

EXTRACT FROM FUEHRER CONFERENCE OF 1-4 JANUARY 1944,
CONCERNING SPEER’S REPORT ON THE FRENCH
LABOR SITUATION