SAUCKEL: Only insofar as the work of Departments 3 and 5 were connected with my own task. Otherwise the functions of the Reich Ministry of Labor remained independent under the Reich Minister of Labor.
M. HERZOG: But within these departments you exercised the powers of the Reich Minister of Labor after your appointment as Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor?
SAUCKEL: Within my office as Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor. But I must emphasize that these departments were not under me; they were merely at my disposal. Great importance was attached to this difference at the time. The departments continued to work independently within the whole framework of the Ministry of Labor.
M. HERZOG: But as a result of this situation you exerted administrative autonomy in matters concerning labor?
SAUCKEL: Not an autonomy; it was done by vote. I could not issue decrees, but could only give instructions. In every case I had to get the agreement of the other administrative authorities and Reich ministries, and the agreement of the Führer or of my superior office.
M. HERZOG: Did you not have carte blanche from the Führer for the recruiting and the utilization of labor?
SAUCKEL: Not for recruiting and utilization, but for guiding and directing. If I may express it in this way, it was never a case of the workers’ agent—that is, of course, what allocation of labor really means—employing these workers himself. The firms employed the workers, not the agent.
M. HERZOG: For the recruiting of labor you had carte blanche from the Führer. Is that not true?
SAUCKEL: Not absolutely, and only after there had been a vote and after the agreement of the regional authorities concerned had been obtained, especially in the case of foreign countries. I never recruited workers in France without the express agreement of the French Government and with their collaboration. The French administration was used here.
M. HERZOG: Defendant Sauckel, you have on several occasions mentioned the agreements and arrangements made in France with those whom you yourself call “the leaders of collaboration.” You know better than any other that these leaders of collaboration, imposed upon France by the enemy, bound themselves only and that their acts were never ratified by the French people as a whole. Besides, these leaders of collaboration, whose testimony cannot be suspect to you, have themselves revealed that pressure was exerted upon them, and we will discuss that now. Is it true that on 16 April 1942, that is to say, less than a month after your appointment, you stated in a letter to the Defendant Rosenberg—which states your program and which was presented to you yesterday—that you included the recruiting of foreign workers in your program for the utilization[*] of labor?