DÖNITZ: I knew, of course, that there were foreign workers in Germany. It is just as self-evident that as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy I was not concerned as to how these workers were recruited. That was none of my business.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Did not Gauleiter Sauckel tell you on the occasion of this trip that he had got 5 million foreign workers into the Reich, of whom only 200,000 had come voluntarily?
DÖNITZ: I did not have a single conversation with Gauleiter Sauckel. I have never had a discussion with anyone about questions referring to workers.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Now, Defendant, you were head of a service department in the fifth and sixth years of the war. Wasn’t Germany, like every other country, searching around to scrape the bottom of the barrel for labor for all its requirements? Weren’t you in urgent need of labor, like every other country in the war?
DÖNITZ: I, too, think that we needed workers.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Are you telling the Tribunal that you did not know after these conferences with Hitler and with Speer that you were getting this labor by forcing foreign labor to come into the Reich and be used?
DÖNITZ: During my conferences with Hitler and Speer, the system of obtaining these workers was never mentioned at all. The methods did not interest me at all. During these conferences the labor question was not discussed at all. I was interested merely in how many submarines I received, that is, how large my allotment was in terms of ships built.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You tell the Tribunal you discussed that with Speer and he never told you where he was getting his labor? Is that your answer on this point?
DÖNITZ: Yes, that is my answer, and it is true.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Do you remember, just before we passed from the industrial side of it, that at certain meetings the representatives for coal and transport, and Gauleiter Kaufmann, the Reich Commissioner for Shipping, were present at meetings which you had with the Führer?