MR. DODD: What you are telling us is you tried to get them voluntarily and you found they would not go, so then you forced them to go. Isn’t that so?
ROSENBERG: That coercion took place here is true and is not disputed. Where an excess took place—and some terrible excesses took place—I did my utmost to prevent it or alleviate it.
MR. DODD: All right. You, of course, had promulgated an order in your own ministry concerning compulsory labor, had you not?
ROSENBERG: Yes. In the beginning, a general compulsory labor service law was promulgated.
MR. DODD: That’s right, on the 19th of December 1941.
ROSENBERG: It may be that it was promulgated about that time.
MR. DODD: Well, you can accept that as being so, I think, that that is the date of your decree concerning compulsory labor, the compulsory labor, significantly—I want to make this very clear to you—in the Occupied Eastern Territories.
ROSENBERG: Yes.
MR. DODD: That order was promulgated by you as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
ROSENBERG: Yes.