This is the fresh manpower put at the disposal of German industry during the period of 1 January to 30 June 1944.
I have furnished the proof I owed to the Tribunal. The Tribunal will, moreover, remember Sauckel’s admission at the 58th conference of the Four Year Plan, which I have read to you previously. Sauckel admitted that there were 5 million foreign workers in Germany, of whom 200,000 were actually volunteers.
The materiality of the crime exposed is at the same time established by the circumstances of its perpetration and by the multitude of the victims affected. To prove the gravity of its effect, I have but to recall the treatment to which foreign workers were subjected in Germany.
German propaganda always claimed that foreign workers deported to Germany were treated on equal basis with German workers: the same living conditions, the same labor contracts, and the same discipline. This contention, as such, is not conclusive. My American colleagues have furnished proof of the blows which the National Socialist conspirators have dealt to the dignity and decency of the life of the German worker. The reality is worse yet. Foreign workers did not enjoy the treatment in Germany to which they were entitled as human beings. I affirm this and I will prove it to the Tribunal.
But before going into that I wish to call the Tribunal’s attention to the significance of the new crime which I am denouncing. It does not only make the crime of deportation complete but provides its true meaning also. I said that the policy of the defendants in the occupied territories could be summed up as follows:
Utilization of the productive forces and extermination of the unproductive forces. This is the principle representing one of the favorite concepts of National Socialism, on the basis of which the treatment inflicted on foreign workers by the defendants should be judged. The Germans have exploited the human potential of the occupied countries to the extreme limit of the strength of the individuals concerned. They showed some consideration for foreign workers only insofar as they wished to increase their output. But as soon as their capacity for work decreased, the foreign workers shared the common lot of deportees.
I shall prove my argument by expounding to the Tribunal the working and living conditions and rules of discipline which were imposed on foreign workers deported to Germany.
I request the Tribunal to charge the Defendant Sauckel with the facts I am going to denounce. He was put in charge of the working conditions for foreign workers, following an agreement to which he freely consented. The text of this agreement, made with Ley, the Chief of the German Labor Front, on 2 June 1943, was published in the Reichsarbeitsblatt, 1943, Part I, Page 558. I submitted this to the Tribunal at the beginning of my presentation as Exhibit Number RF-18.
This agreement shows that the treatment of foreign workers was subject to control by the inspection department of the Allocation of Labor (Arbeitseinsatz). The Defendant Sauckel could therefore not ignore the mistreatment to which foreigners were subjected. If not prescribed it was tolerated by him.
The working conditions of workers deported to Germany provided the first evidence of the determination of the defendants to exploit the human potential of the occupied territories to the extreme limit of its strength.