SAUCKEL: During the first months or in the first weeks, I believe, of my appointment I was called to see Heydrich. In a very precise way, Heydrich told me that he considered my program fantastic, such as it had been approved by the Führer, and that I must realize that I was making his work very difficult in demanding that barbed wire and similar fences should not and must not be put around the labor camps, but rather taken down. He then said curtly that I must realize that if it was I who was responsible for the allocation of labor, it was he who was responsible for security. That is what he told me.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did you accept the fact that these strict police measures now existed?
SAUCKEL: Through constant efforts I had these police measures gradually reduced as far as they concerned the workers who were employed in Germany through my agency and my office.
DR. SERVATIUS: What did your authority to issue instructions consist of? Could you issue orders or had you to negotiate, and how was this carried out in practice?
SAUCKEL: The authority I had to issue instructions was doubtful from the beginning because, owing to the necessities of war, the lack of manpower, and so on, I was forbidden to establish any office of my own or any other new office or organization. I could only pass on instructions after negotiation with the supreme authorities of the Reich and after detailed consultation. These instructions were, of course, of a purely departmental nature. I could not interfere in matters of administration.
DR. SERVATIUS: How was this right to issue instructions exercised with regard to the high authorities in the occupied territories?
SAUCKEL: It was exactly the same, merely of a departmental nature. In practice it was the passing on of the Führer’s orders which were to be carried out there through the individual machinery of each separate administration.
DR. SERVATIUS: Could you give binding instructions to military authorities, to the Economic Inspectorate East, for example?
SAUCKEL: No, there was a strict order from the Führer that in the Army areas, the operational areas of the Commanders-in-Chief, the latter only were competent, and when they had examined military conditions and the situation, everything had to be regulated according to the needs of these high military commands.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did that apply to the military commander in France, or could you act directly there?