And so I was surprised by the appointment of Rosenberg. He called on me for a short discussion in which he told me that the task given to him by the Führer also included handling of economic problems. Thereupon I placed a ministerial director in my ministry, Dr. Schlotterer, at Rosenberg’s disposal to work on these problems. And when the Ministry for Eastern Affairs was founded, as far as I know, in July, Dr. Schlotterer, with some of his colleagues, took over the direction of the economic department in Rosenberg’s Ministry. And simultaneously, as far as I remember, Dr. Schlotterer became a member of Economic Operational Staff East. This was the institution of the Four Year Plan which has been mentioned repeatedly here during the proceedings and which dealt with all economic problems in the Occupied Eastern Territories.
Beyond that, I had nothing to do with these matters. Naturally I asked Lammers as well as Rosenberg just what this signified, and both of them told me that the Führer was of the opinion that a war with Russia would become unavoidable, that along the entire Eastern Front the Russians had concentrated large reinforcements, that the discussions with Molotov, in which I had no part at all, had been unsatisfactory, that the Russians were making demands regarding the Baltic, the Balkan regions, and the Dardanelles, which could not be accepted by Germany, by the Führer. At any rate, this affair was as complete a surprise to me as to the German people, and I am convinced that this war was a great shock to the German people.
THE PRESIDENT: The witness spoke of July. Did he mean July 1940?
DR. SAUTER: As far as I know, July 1941.
THE PRESIDENT: You mean July 1941? That was after the war with Russia had begun. The witness can answer for himself, I suppose, can he not?
[Turning to the defendant.] Did you mean July 1940?
FUNK: The discussion with Rosenberg was at the end of April or the beginning of May 1941, and the Rosenberg Ministry was founded in July 1941.
DR. SAUTER: I now turn to a different point raised by the Prosecution. You are accused of having, as Reich Minister of Economics, committed punishable acts in connection with the criminal plan to persecute the Jews and to eliminate them from economic life. These are the happenings of November 1938. Will you therefore now describe your activity in this respect.
FUNK: May I ask the Tribunal to give me time for a rather detailed account on this topic. Then the points which we will treat later can be dealt with much more briefly. This is the charge of the Prosecution which really affects me most gravely.
When I took over the Ministry of Economics in February 1938, I very soon received demands from the Party, and especially from Goebbels and Ley, to eliminate the Jews from economic life, since they could not be tolerated. I was told that people were still buying in Jewish stores, and that the Party could not permit its members to buy in such stores; the Party also took offense at the fact that some high state officials, and in particular their wives, were still shopping in such stores. The sectional chairmen of the Labor Front refused to work with Jewish managers. There were constant clashes, I was told, and there would be no peace if the measures which had already been introduced here and there were not extended gradually to eliminate the Jews completely from economic life.