Hermann Goering, as Plenipotentiary General for the Four Year Plan, is also responsible for all the crimes involved in the Nazi slave labor program. In addition, Alfred Rosenberg as Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Hans Frank as Governor-General of the Government-General of Poland, Artur Seyss-Inquart as Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands, and Wilhelm Keitel as chief of the OKW share responsibility for the recruitment by force and terror and for the deportation to Germany of the citizens of the areas overrun or subjugated by the Wehrmacht.
1. PLANNING FOR THE USE OF SLAVE LABOR
The use of vast numbers of foreign workers was planned before Germany went to war and was an integral part of the conspiracy for waging aggressive war. On 23 May 1939 a meeting was held in Hitler’s study at the Reichs Chancellery. Goering, Raeder, and Keitel were present. According to the minutes of this meeting, (L-79) Hitler stated that he intended to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity. He further stated:
“* * * If fate brings us into contact with the West, the possession of extensive areas in the East will be advantageous. We shall be able to rely upon record harvests, 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”. (L-79)
The slave labor program was designed to achieve two purposes. The primary purpose was to satisfy the labor requirements of the Nazi war machine by compelling foreign workers, in effect, to make war against their own countries and its allies. The secondary purpose was to destroy or weaken peoples deemed inferior by the Nazi racialists, or deemed potentially hostile by the Nazi planners of world supremacy. These purposes were expressed by the conspirators themselves. In Sauckel’s Labor Mobilization Program (016-PS) which he sent to Rosenberg on 20 April 1942, Sauckel declared:
“* * * 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 materials 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.” (016-PS)
The theory of the “master race,” which underlay the conspirators’ labor policy in the East, was expressed in the following words by Erich Koch, Reichskommissar for the Ukraine, at a meeting of the National Socialist Party on 5 March 1943 in Kiev:
“1. We are the master race and must govern hard but just * * *.
“2. I will draw the very last out of this country. I did not come to spread bliss. I have come to help the Fuehrer. The population must work, work, and work again * * * for some people are getting excited, that the population may not get enough to eat. The population cannot demand that, one has only to remember what our heroes were deprived of in Stalingrad * * *. We definitely did not come here to give out manna. We have come here to create the basis for victory.