To overcome resistance to his slave labor program, the Defendant Sauckel improvised new impressment measures which were applied to both France and Italy by his own agents and which he himself labelled as grotesque. I now refer to Document Number R-124, which is Exhibit USA-179, and particularly Page 2 and Paragraph 2 of the English text; in the German text it appears at Page 8, Paragraph 1. Quoting directly from that page and that paragraph a statement made by Sauckel on 1 March 1944 at a meeting of the Central Planning Board:
“The most abominable point against which I have to fight is the claim that there is no organization in these districts properly to recruit Frenchmen, Belgians, and Italians and to dispatch them to work. So I have even proceeded to employ and train a whole staff of French and Italian agents of both sexes who for good pay, just as was done in olden times for ‘shanghaiing,’ go hunting for men and dupe them, using liquor as well as persuasion in order to dispatch them to Germany.
“Moreover, I have charged several capable men with founding a special labor allocation organization of our own, and this by training and arming, under the aegis of the Higher SS and Police Führer, a number of indigenous units; but I still have to ask the munitions ministry for arms for these men. For during the last year alone several dozens of high-ranking labor allocation officials of great ability have been shot. All these means must be used, grotesque as it may sound, to refute the allegation that there is no organization to bring labor to Germany from these countries.”
This same slave labor hunt proceeded in Holland, as it did in France, with terror and abduction. I now refer to Document Number 1726-PS, which is Exhibit USA-195. This document is entitled, “Statement of the Netherlands Government in View of the Prosecution and Punishment of the German Major War Criminals.” I wish to quote from enclosure “h,” entitled “Central Bureau for Statistics—The Deportation of Netherlands’ Workmen to Germany.” It is Page 1 of the English text, starting with the first paragraph; and in the German text it appears at Page 1, also Paragraph 1. Quoting it directly, it reads as follows:
“Many big and medium-size large business concerns, especially in the metal industry, were visited by German commissions who selected workmen for deportation. This combing-out was called the ‘Sauckel action,’ so named after its leader, who was charged with the procurement, of foreign workmen for Germany.
“The employers had to cancel the contracts with the selected workmen; and the latter were forced to register at the labor offices, which then took charge of the deportation under supervision of German ‘Fachberater.’
“Workmen who refused—relatively few—were prosecuted by the Sicherheitsdienst—the SD. If captured by this service, they were mostly lodged for some time in one of the infamous prisoners’ camps in the Netherlands and eventually put to work in Germany.