DR. SERVATIUS: Yes.
Witness, did you, in a meeting of the Central Planning Board ...
SAUCKEL: May I be allowed to say a word with regard to this manifesto?
DR. SERVATIUS: Yes.
SAUCKEL: When I issued the manifesto, I was met with the objection, mainly from Dr. Goebbels, that a manifesto should really be issued only by the Führer and not by a subordinate authority such as myself. Then I found that I was having difficulties in getting the manifesto printed. After I had had 150,000 copies printed for all the German economic offices, for all the works managers and all the other offices which were interested, I had it printed again myself in this emphatic form and personally sent it once more, with a covering letter, to all those offices.
In this manifesto, in spite of the difficulties which I encountered, I especially advocated that in the occupied territories themselves the workers should be treated in accordance with my principles and according to my directives and orders.
I respectfully ask the Court to be allowed to read a few sentences from it:
“I therefore order that for all the occupied territories, for the treatment, feeding, billeting, and payment of foreign workers, appropriate regulations and directives be issued similar to those valid for foreigners in the Reich. They are to be adjusted to the respective local conditions and applied in accordance with prevailing conditions.
“In a number of the Eastern Territories indigenous male and female civilian labor working for the German war industry or the German Wehrmacht is undernourished. In the urgent interests of the German war industry in this territory this condition should be remedied. It is checking production and is dangerous. And endeavor must therefore be made by all means available to provide additional food for these workers and their families. This additional food must be given only in accordance with the output of work.
“It is only through the good care and treatment of the whole of the available European labor on the one hand, and through its most rigid concentration”—here I mean organizational—“leadership and direction on the other hand, that the fluctuation of labor in the Reich and in the occupied territories can be limited to a minimum, and a generally stable, lasting and reliable output be achieved.”