Besides these farmers' lands, a great number of state farms should be created by the taking over of the Sovchosen and/or the creation of new estates whose production would have to deliver the excess of agricultural products necessary for Europe.
IV. The Slav as Worker
Necessity of Realistic Policy
As initially pictured, every member of the rural population less means a weakening of the labor power as well as fighting power of the Reich. All occurrences of the recent past prove that there is no room for ideologies at this time. Where this demand is not heeded because of ideological reasons, for the sake of future problems, where the law of the best utilization of man-power is violated, the objection of the soldiers as well as that of responsible civil servants arises with justification. Thus we hear again and again from leading Germans in the East, the regret expressed that we learn too little from the English, who—under the cover of long term policy—act on the basis of the needs of the hour, while we antagonize people in the East and cause the greatest difficulties in reconstruction only in order to proclaim distant aims, whose accomplishment is in no way certain, but which come about on its own accord after a victory.
He who just like the reporter, has gone through English schooling and knows the English manner of treating foreign peoples, can only confirm that the greatest mistake of our entire Eastern policy is to be found in this field. First of all we have to win the war. Having won it, we can shape the area as we see fit. Every proclamation of an aim that repulses those who are of the most use for us in the Eastern area today, which makes them resent the German leadership, is, from a soldier's point of view, a mistake which has to be continually rectified by the commitment of German blood.
Thus the Project Sauckel as earned out in the Eastern area has caused unrest and dissatisfaction which is the equivalent of a lost battle, though without doubt it was the final means to cover the requirements for workers of the German economy.
Dangerous Excesses.
But the executing agencies have committed errors which should have been avoided: De-lousing of Russian girls by men, taking of nude photographs in forced positions, locking female doctors in cars in order to make them available to the transport leaders, transporting of shackled girls in shirts through Russian localities to the railroad, etc.... (The complete material has been channeled through the proper army regions to the OKH.)
Important Imponderables.
It is of course correct to consider these things without sentimentality. In spite of that the results of such errors must not be overlooked. Before everything, the treatment of the Eastern workers in the Reich is decisive. According to all previous reports the results in household and in agriculture are good; in industry bad. The fact that male and female workers housed in camps have no leave, that exercise of religion etc., in contrast to conditions in the Russian territories, is prohibited, leads the population of the occupied Eastern territories to the conclusion that the Slav is treated and utilized as a slave. The result is that when today a commission for the hiring of labor for the Reich appears in a region, everybody, as far as possible, flees into the woods.