DR. DIX: Thank you. I have no further questions.
DR. ROBERT SERVATIUS (Counsel for Defendant Sauckel): Witness, on 21 March 1942 Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor. What were the reasons for Sauckel’s being chosen for this position?
LAMMERS: The Führer was of the opinion that the allocation of labor had not been pushed with the necessary intensity by the Reich Minister for Labor and that this task would, therefore, have to be transferred to a particularly energetic person.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did the Führer demand the use of foreign workers with particular emphasis?
LAMMERS: He demanded that all laborers who could possibly be made available should be used.
DR. SERVATIUS: Particularly with reference to foreign laborers?
LAMMERS: Yes, foreign countries were also mentioned in that connection, because at home we had exhausted all possibilities.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did you receive the assignment of informing the highest offices in the occupied territories of the demand that they do their best to support Sauckel’s task?
LAMMERS: That happened very much later. First the appointment of the Plenipotentiary for Allocation of Labor took place and was announced to all important offices. I do not think I added any particular demand to that. But at the beginning of 1944 a conference took place at the Führer’s headquarters dealing with the program of labor allocation for the year of 1944. At the end of that conference, during which Sauckel had been given a number of injunctions expressed in definite figures, I had the task of writing to all offices concerned and telling them that they should support the task Sauckel had just been given, with all the powers at their disposal.
DR. SERVATIUS: You are talking about a meeting at the beginning of January 1944. An extensive report which you prepared on that is available. According to this report, Sauckel said during that meeting that with regard to the number of foreign laborers he would find it difficult or perhaps even impossible to fulfill the demands made by the program. What was the reason he gave for that?