Morning Session

M. HERZOG: Mr. President, Your Honors, at the end of yesterday’s session I was expounding to the Tribunal the conditions under which the compulsory labor service was progressively imposed in France. I reached the second action of the Defendant Sauckel as set out in the laws and decrees of 16 February 1943. Sauckel’s second action accelerated the enforced enrollment of Frenchmen during the months of February and March 1943. Several tens of thousands of young men of the 1940 and 1942 classes were deported to Germany by the application of the law of 16 February. The tempo of these deportations slowed down in the month of April, but the Arbeitseinsatz immediately formulated new requirements. On 9 April 1943 the Defendant Sauckel asked the French authorities to furnish him with 120,000 workers during the month of May and 100,000 during the month of June. In June he made it known that he wished to effect the transfer of 500,000 workers up to 31 December.

Sauckel’s third action was about to begin. It was to be marked, on 3 June 1943, by the total mobilization of the 1942 class. All exemptions provided by the law of 16 February and subsequent texts were withdrawn, and the young men of the 1942 class were tracked down throughout France.

In reality, Sauckel’s third action was especially manifested by a violent pressure on the part of the defendant, tending towards a mass deportation by forced recruiting. I offer in evidence three documents which testify to the action taken by Sauckel in the summer of 1943.

The first document is a letter from Sauckel to Hitler, dated 27 June 1943. Drafted by the defendant upon his return from a trip to France, it contains an outlined plan for the recruiting of French workers for the second half of 1943. Its object was, on the one hand, to secure 1 million workers to be assigned in France to French armament factories and, on the other hand, 500,000 French workers to be deported to Germany. This letter constitutes Document 556(39)-PS, which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-65. I quote:

“Weimar, 27 June 1943.

“My Führer:

“Herewith I beg to report my return from my official trip to France.