“The Government General represents a Polish reserve of manpower—a vast Polish labor camp. The Poles will also benefit from this, as we look after their health and see to it that they do not starve, et cetera, but they must never be raised to a higher level, for they will then become anarchists and Communists. It will therefore be proper for the Poles to remain Roman Catholics; Polish priests will receive food from us and will, for that very reason, direct their little sheep along the path we favor. The priests will be paid by us and will, in return, preach what we wish them to preach. If any priest acts differently, we shall make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted. This is entirely in our interests. Should the Poles rise to a higher level of development, they will cease to be that manpower of which we are in need. In other respects it will suffice for a Pole to possess a small holding in the Government General—a large farm is not at all necessary; he will have to earn the money he requires in Germany. It is precisely this cheap labor we need; every German and every German worker will benefit by this cheap labor.
“A strict German administration must exist in the Government General to keep order in the labor reservations. These reservations mean for us the maintenance of agriculture, particularly of our large estates, and they are, besides, a source of supply of labor.”
I see no necessity to read into the record the exchange of views between those present, although it is mentioned in the document, and I shall go on directly to Hitler’s final statements:
“To sum up, the Führer wants to state once more:
“1. The lowest German workman and the lowest German peasant must always stand economically 10 percent above any Pole.”
I omit the second paragraph and pass to the third which is of great interest:
“3. I do not wish”—the Führer stressed—“that a German workman should, as a rule work more than 8 hours when we return to normal conditions; if a Pole, however, works 14 hours, he is still, in spite of that, to earn less than a German workman.
“4. The ideal picture is this: A Pole must possess a small holding in the Government General which will, to a certain extent, provide him and his family with food. The money required by him for clothes, supplementary foods, et cetera, et cetera, he must earn by working in Germany. The Government General must become a center for supplying seasonal unskilled labor, particularly agricultural laborers. The existence of these workmen will be fully guaranteed, because they will always be used as cheap labor.”
This document deals with the question of Hitler’s attitude towards Poland and the Polish people with such exhaustive clarity that it calls for no further comment.
I wish only to draw Your Honors’ attention to three points.