MR. DODD: Now, just a minute. I don’t think it is necessary for you to give us a list of the table of contents of the book. I simply asked you if you wrote that introduction.
ROSENBERG: Yes, of course.
MR. DODD: Now, with respect to the well-known forced labor program. I think it is perfectly clear to everyone who has been in attendance at these sessions before this Tribunal, and of course to yourself, that there was a forced labor program in effect, or a so-called slave labor program, both in the East and in the Western occupied countries. Isn’t that a fact?
ROSENBERG: Yes, the law of 21 March is concerned therewith with workers from the occupied countries who were to be taken to Germany. In Germany there was also a compulsory labor law.
MR. DODD: Now, there are only two possible offices under the then German State which can, by any stretch of the imagination, be held responsible either in part or altogether for that forced slave labor program. Isn’t that so? Two principal offices, at least.
ROSENBERG: Yes, indeed.
MR. DODD: And they were your own ministry and the office of the Defendant Sauckel. That is pretty simple. Is that true or not?
ROSENBERG: It is correct that Gauleiter Sauckel had been given the authority to pass orders to me and to all the supreme Reich authorities. It was my duty to make known and carry through these orders in the Occupied Eastern Territories according to my powers, my judgment, and my instructions.
MR. DODD: Did you carry out the compulsory labor directives under your ministry, force people to leave their homes and their communities to go to Germany and to work for the German State?
ROSENBERG: I fought for about three-quarters of a year for this recruitment of workers in the East to be put on a voluntary basis. From my record of a discussion with Gauleiter Sauckel still in the year 1943, it is very evident that at all times I made efforts to do this. I also mentioned how many millions of leaflets, of posters, and pamphlets I distributed in these countries so that this principle would be carried through. However, when I heard that if the number of German workers who had to go to the front could not be replaced, the German Army reserves would be at an end, then I could not protest any longer against recruitment of certain age-classes, or use of local authorities and forces of the gendarmerie to assist in this work. Yesterday I already ...