THE PRESIDENT: Does any other defendant’s counsel want to ask questions? Or perhaps we had better adjourn now.
[The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours.]
Afternoon Session
DR. SERVATIUS: Witness, you have already stated in connection with Sauckel’s directive regarding employment of labor that you were flooded with such directives. Were these directives carried out?
VON SCHIRACH: As far as my own information goes, I can confirm that. I had the impression that the functionaries of the labor employment administration felt that they had to keep strictly to Sauckel’s orders, and in those industrial plants which I visited I was able to ascertain that the requirements stated in the directives were in fact fulfilled.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did Sauckel himself take steps to insure that these things were carried out?
VON SCHIRACH: Yes. I remember that Sauckel once came to Vienna—I think in 1943—and that on that occasion he addressed all his labor employment functionaries and repeated orally everything which he had stated in his directives. He spoke of the foreign workers in particular, demanding just treatment for them; and I remember that on this occasion he even spoke of putting them on the same footing as German workers.
DR. SERVATIUS: I have a few more questions about the political leaders. How were political leaders on the Gauleiter level informed? Did the Gauleiter have individual interviews with the Führer, especially in connection with the Gauleiter assemblies?
VON SCHIRACH: No. After the Gauleiter assemblies the Führer always held forth in a comparatively large circle just as he did in his speeches. Interviews in the real sense of the word did not exist. He always made speeches. Fixed dates on which Gauleiter could have interviews with Hitler almost ceased to exist once the war had begun.