DR. SERVATIUS: Was he entitled to such measures, in your opinion?
ROSENBERG: Reich Commissioner Koch had jurisdiction over the execution of all orders coming from the highest Reich authorities. He was responsible for the execution of all measures within the bounds of the instructions. He had, I now believe, often overstepped the bounds of these instructions and acted on his own initiative in taking, as he thought, exclusively war economic measures. Sometimes I heard of these measures, and often I did not, as appears from the document.
THE PRESIDENT: The question you were asked was whether in your opinion he was entitled to burn houses because people refused to work, and you have given a long answer which seems to me to be no answer to the question.
ROSENBERG: In my opinion he did not have the right to burn down houses and therefore I intervened, and he tried to justify himself.
DR. SERVATIUS: In order to carry out the labor recruiting, there were to be recruiting measures which, it is true, had to be applied with a certain amount of administrative coercion. How far was coercion permissible, is there legal and illegal coercion, and how do you judge the measures that were carried out in practice?
ROSENBERG: I myself insisted up until 1943 on a voluntary recruitment. But in the face of the urgent demands from the Führer I could not maintain this stand any longer and I agreed therefore—in order to have a legal form at least—that certain age groups should be called up. From these age groups all those working who were needed in the Occupied Eastern Territories were to be excluded. But the others were to be brought from all sides with the help of their own administrations in the regional commissariat, that is, the little burgomasters in the Occupied Eastern Territories, and there is no doubt, of course, that to give force to these demands the police stood at the disposal of the administration in the execution of this program.
DR. SERVATIUS: If there were abuses, could Koch stop them? Did you have no influence in the matter?
ROSENBERG: It was the duty of the Reich commissioner to whom the regional government of the Ukraine was subordinated to investigate and to take action, in accordance with the instructions which he had received from me.
DR. SERVATIUS: But why did you go to Sauckel as well? Was it Sauckel’s duty also to stop this?
ROSENBERG: Sauckel, as the deputy of the Delegate for the Four Year Plan, had the right to give instructions to me, as Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and over and above that, he had the right to bypass me and give instructions to the Reich commissioners, a right which, he used a few times in giving lectures in the general districts of the Ukraine and of the Eastern territories.