Hostages in large numbers were demanded and killed. Mass punishments were inflicted, so savage that whole communities were extinguished. Rosenberg was advised of the annihilation of three unidentified villages in Slovakia. In May of 1943, another village of about 40 farms and 220 inhabitants was ordered wiped out. The entire population was ordered shot, the cattle and property impounded, and the order required that “the village will be destroyed totally by fire.” A secret report from Rosenberg’s Reich Ministry of Eastern territory reveals that:
“Food rations allowed the Russian population are so low that they fail to secure their existence and provide only for minimum subsistence of limited duration. The population, does not know if they will still live tomorrow. They are faced with death by starvation.
“The roads are clogged by hundreds of thousands of people, sometime as many as one million according to the estimate of experts, who wander around in search of nourishment.
“Sauckel’s action has caused great unrest among the civilians. Russian girls were deloused by men, nude photos in forced positions were taken, women doctors were locked into freight cars for the pleasure of the transport commanders, women in night shirts were fettered and forced through the Russian towns to the railroad station, etc. All this material has been sent to the OKH.”
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 or so damaging. In a speech made on January 25, 1944, the defendant Frank, Governor-General of Poland, boasted, “I have sent 1,300,000 Polish workers into the Reich.” The defendant Sauckel reported that “out of the five million foreign workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily.” This fact was reported to the Fuehrer and defendants Speer, Goering, and Keitel (R-124). Children of 10 to 14 years were impressed into service by telegraphic order of Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories:
“The Command is further charged with the transferring of worthwhile Russian youth between 10-14 years of age, to the Reich. The authority is not affected by the changes connected with the evacuation and transportation to the reception camps of Pialystok, Krajewo, and Olitei. The Fuehrer wishes that this activity be increased even more.” (200-PS).
When enough labor was not forthcoming, prisoners of war were forced in 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 prisoners of war, from the territories of the West as well of the East, actually in Germany, must be completely incorporated into the German armament and munition industries. Their production must be brought to the highest possible level.
“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 undisputable 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 degrees of expenditure.” (016-PS).