From this it does not follow that Nazi Germany did not succeed in carrying out mass deportations of foreign workers. The number of native workers from the occupied territories of Western Europe who were deported into Germany is very high. More numerous still were those workers compelled to work at home in factories and workyards under the control of the occupation authorities.
I shall give the Tribunal statistical information which will enable it to verify my statements. These statistics are fragmentary. They are excerpts from reports compiled by the governments of the occupied countries after their liberation and from reports sent during the war by the Arbeitseinsatz office to its superiors.
The statistics of Allied origin are incomplete. The records on which they are based have been partially destroyed. On the other hand, the administrations of the occupied territories are in possession of second-hand information only whenever the requisitions of workers were made directly by the occupation authorities. As to the German statistics, they are also incomplete since the Allied authorities have not yet discovered all the records of the enemy.
It is, however, possible to give to the Tribunal an exact evaluation of the extent of the deportations effected by Germany. This evaluation will furnish proof that the violations of international law committed by the defendants did not remain in the tentative stage characterized by a beginning only—though reprehensible as such; they brought about social disorder such as, under penal law, constitutes the perpetration of the crime.
I shall first submit to the Tribunal the statistics furnished by the official reports of the French Government. The French Government’s report has been published by the Institute of Market Analysis. It contains numerous statistical tables from which I quote the total figures. The figures are as follows: 738,000 workers were pressed into compulsory labor service in France; 875,952 French workers were deported to German factories; 987,687 prisoners of war were utilized for the Reich war economy. A total of 2,601,639 workers of French citizenship thus were pressed into work serving the war effort of National Socialist Germany.
From the official report of the Belgian Government it appears that 150,000 persons were pressed into compulsory labor; and the report of the Dutch Government gives a figure of 431,400 persons; but it should be noted that this figure does not take into account the systematic raids undertaken during November 1944, nor the deportations carried out in 1945.
I am submitting to the Tribunal exact figures which cover all the stages of the policy of recruiting foreign labor. These figures are taken from the reports of the Defendant Sauckel himself or of various administrative offices concerned with the deportation of labor. The extent of labor utilized in the occupied territories is demonstrated by the statistics concerning workers who were used in constructing fortifications of the so-called Atlantic Wall as part of the Organization Todt, which I recall was directed by the Defendant Speer after the death of its founder. These statistics are to be found in a teletype message sent to Hitler by the Defendant Sauckel on 17 May 1943. It is Document 556(33)-PS, which I submit to the Tribunal as Exhibit Number RF-84. I quote:
“The Delegate for the Four Year Plan. The Plenipotentiary General for Allocation of Labor, Berlin, to the Führer, headquarters of the Führer.
“My Führer! I beg to submit to you the following figures on the manpower employed in the Todt Organization: