While Gauleiter of Vienna Von Schirach continued to function as Reichsleiter for Youth Education and in this capacity he was informed of the Hitler Jugend’s participation in the plan put into effect in the fall of 1944 under which 50,000 young people between the ages of 10 and 20 were evacuated into Germany from areas recaptured by the Soviet forces and used as apprentices in German industry and as auxiliaries in units of the German Armed Forces. In the summer of 1942 Von Schirach telegraphed Bormann urging that a bombing attack on an English cultural town be carried out in retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich which, he claimed, had been planned by the British.
Conclusion
The Tribunal finds that Von Schirach is not guilty on Count One. He is guilty under Count Four.
SAUCKEL
Sauckel is indicted under all four Counts. Sauckel joined the Nazi Party in 1923, and became Gauleiter of Thuringia in 1927. He was a member of the Thuringian legislature from 1927 to 1933, was appointed Reichsstatthalter for Thuringia in 1932, and Thuringian Minister of the Interior and head of the Thuringian State Ministry in May 1933. He became a member of the Reichstag in 1933. He held the formal rank of Obergruppenführer in both the SA and the SS.
Crimes against Peace
The evidence has not satisfied the Tribunal that Sauckel was sufficiently connected with the common plan to wage aggressive war or sufficiently involved in the planning or waging of the aggressive wars to allow the Tribunal to convict him on Counts One or Two.
War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
On 21 March 1942 Hitler appointed Sauckel Plenipotentiary General for the Utilization of Labor, with authority to put under uniform control “the utilization of all available manpower, including that of workers recruited abroad and of prisoners of war”. Sauckel was instructed to operate within the fabric of the Four Year Plan, and on 27 March 1942 Göring issued a decree as Commissioner for the Four Year Plan transferring his manpower sections to Sauckel. On 30 September 1942 Hitler gave Sauckel authority to appoint Commissioners in the various occupied territories, and “to take all necessary measures for the enforcement” of the Decree of 21 March 1942.
Under the authority which he obtained by these decrees, Sauckel set up a program for the mobilization of the labor resources available to the Reich. One of the important parts of this mobilization was the systematic exploitation, by force, of the labor resources of the occupied territories. Shortly after Sauckel had taken office, he had the governing authorities in the various occupied territories issue decrees, establishing compulsory labor service in Germany. Under the authority of these decrees Sauckel’s commissioners, backed up by the police authorities of the occupied territories, obtained and sent to Germany the laborers which were necessary to fill the quotas given them by Sauckel. He described so-called “voluntary” recruiting by a whole batch of male and female agents just as was done in the olden times for shanghaiing”. That real voluntary recruiting was the exception rather than the rule is shown by Sauckel’s statement on 1 March 1944, that “out of five million foreign workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily”. Although he now claims that the statement is not true, the circumstances under which it was made, as well as the evidence presented before the Tribunal, leave no doubt that it was substantially accurate.