“All the prisoners of war in Norway receive only sufficient food to keep them alive without working. The felling of timber, however, makes such physical demands on these prisoners of war that, if the food remains the same, a considerable decline in production must soon be expected.”
This note applies to the situation of the 82,000 prisoners of war held captive in Norway, 30,000 of whom were employed on very hard construction work which was being carried out by the Todt organization. This is found in the first paragraph of Page 7.
I now present to the Tribunal a document, Number 820-PS, Page 9 in the document book. It deals with the establishment of prisoner-of-war camps in the regions exposed to aerial bombardment. It was issued by headquarters. It is dated 18 August 1943. It was sent by the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force to the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht. We submit it as Exhibit Number RF-358, and we shall read to the Tribunal Paragraph 3:
“The Commander-in-Chief, Air General Staff, proposes to erect prisoner-of-war camps in the residential quarters of cities, in order to obtain a certain protection thereby.”
I skip a paragraph:
“In view of the above reason, consideration should be given to the immediate erection of such camps in a large number of cities which appear to be endangered by air attacks. As the discussions with the city of Frankfurt . . . have shown, the towns will support and speed up the construction of the camps by all available means.”
The last paragraph:
“So far, there are in Germany about 8,000 prisoners of war of the British and American Air Forces (without counting those in hospitals). By evacuating the camps actually in existence, which might be used to house bombed-out people, we should immediately have at our disposal prisoners of war for a fairly large number of such camps.”
This refers to the camps set up in bombed areas and areas which were particularly exposed.
On Page 10 the Tribunal will find a document issued by the Führer’s headquarters, dated 3 September 1943, dealing with the establishment of these new prisoner-of-war camps for British and American airmen. We submit this document as Exhibit Number RF-339 (Document Number 823-PS):