THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Stahmer, is there any chance that the defendant will finish by tonight?
DR. STAHMER: This is the last question.
THE PRESIDENT: Please continue.
GÖRING: The question of the deportation of workers had therefore also to be regarded from this point of view of security. We were obliged to feed, as far as possible, the entire occupied territory. We also had to dispose of manpower and, at the same time had to consider the removal especially of those who had no work in their own country and represented a danger in the growth of the underground resistance arising against us.
If these age groups were drafted into Germany for work, it was because of basic considerations of security, in order that they should not be left idle in their own country—and thus be made available for the work and the struggle against us—but should be used to our advantage in economic war.
Thirdly—I want to mention these things just very briefly—in conclusion, the war of propaganda. At one point in the Indictment it is also mentioned that we requisitioned radios, which is, to be sure, a matter of course. For the great importance in propaganda warfare enemy propaganda had, which extended by way of radio far into the hinterland, no one has felt more strongly than Germany. All the great dangers of underground movements, partisan war, the resistance movements and sabotage, and everything connected with it, and finally also in this war, this embitterment and this atmosphere, have been called forth to the extreme by this mutual fight over the radio.
Also whatever happened in the way of atrocities and similar acts, which should not be tolerated, are in the last analysis, if one thinks about it calmly, to be attributed primarily to the war of propaganda.
Therefore the regulations on land warfare of the Hague Convention are in my opinion not an instrument which can be used as a basis for a modern war, because they do not take into consideration the essential principles of this war; the war in the air, the economic war, and the war of propaganda.
And at this point I should like to say the same words which one of our greatest, most important, and toughest opponents, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, used: “In the struggle for life and death there is in the end no legality.”
THE PRESIDENT: The Court will adjourn.