“According to reports of transportation commanders”—Transportleiter—“presented to me, the special trains provided by the German railway have frequently been in a really broken-down condition. Numerous window panes have been missing in the coaches. Old French coaches without lavatories have been partly employed so that the workers had to fit up an emptied compartment as a lavatory. In other cases, the coaches were not heated in winter so that the lavatories quickly became unusable because the water system was frozen and the flushing apparatus was therefore without water.”
The Tribunal will unquestionably have noticed or observed that a number of the documents which we have referred to—and which we have offered—consist of complaints by functionaries of the Defendant Rosenberg’s Ministry, or by others, concerning the conditions under which foreign workers were recruited and lived. I think it is appropriate to say that these documents have been presented by the Prosecution really for two purposes, or for a dual purpose; to establish, first, the facts recited therein, of course, but also to show that these conspirators had knowledge of these conditions and that notwithstanding their knowledge of these conditions, these conspirators continued to countenance and assist in this enslavement program of a vast number of citizens of occupied countries.
Once within Germany, slave laborers were subjected to almost unbelievable brutality and degradation by their captors; and the character of this treatment was in part made plain by the conspirators’ own statements, as in Document Number 016-PS, which is in evidence as Exhibit USA-168; and I refer to Page 12, Paragraph 2 of the English text. In the German text it appears at Page 17, Paragraph 4. Quoting directly:
“All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way that they produce to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.”
Force and brutality as instruments of production found a ready adherent in the Defendant Speer who, in the presence of the Defendant Sauckel, said at a meeting of the Central Planning Board—and I refer to Document Number R-124, which is already in evidence and which has been referred to previously. It bears the Exhibit Number USA-179. I refer particularly to Page 42 of that Document R-124, and Paragraph 2 of that Page 42. The Defendant Speer, speaking at that meeting, stated:
“We must also discuss the slackers. Ley has ascertained that the side list decreased at once to one-fourth or one-fifth in factories where doctors are on the staff who examine the sick men. There is nothing to be said against SS and police taking drastic steps and putting those known as slackers into concentration camps. There is no alternative. Let it happen several times and the news will soon go around.”
At a later meeting of the Central Planning Board, Field Marshal Milch agreed that so far as workers were concerned—and again I refer to Document Number R-124 and to Page 26, Paragraph 2, in the English text, and in the German text at Page 17, Paragraph 1. Field Marshal Milch, speaking at a meeting of the Central Planning Board when the Defendant Speer was present, stated; and I am quoting directly:
“The list of the shirkers should be entrusted to Himmler . . . .”
Milch made particular reference to foreign workers again in this Document Number R-124 at Page 26, Paragraph 3—in the German text it appears at Page 18, Paragraph 3—when he said; and I am quoting him directly:
“It is therefore not possible to exploit fully all the foreigners unless we compel them by piece-work wages and have the possibility of taking measures against foreigners who are not doing their bit.”