GEN. ALEXANDROV: Were Defendant Funk, as Minister of Economics, and Defendant Speer, as Minister for Armaments, the principal intermediaries between the industrialists and yourself as suppliers of manpower? Is that correct?
SAUCKEL: The end of your sentence contains a very erroneous conclusion. They were not middlemen between myself and the industries, but the industries were responsible to the Ministry for Armaments. Of course there were personal instructions issued about this in the course of years. I did not negotiate with the industries. The industries asked for workers and they got them, as did the agricultural industries.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: Please tell me, what part did the Defendants Funk and Speer play in the execution of these measures? I do not want any long drawn-out explanations. Answer me briefly.
SAUCKEL: Those two ministers were heads of the various business enterprises inside German economy which came within the jurisdiction of their ministries. They received their workers, and that was the end of my task.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: Did the Defendants Frank, Seyss-Inquart, and Neurath participate in the execution of these measures for the allocation of labor in such territories as were under their jurisdiction? I mean the territories of Poland, Bohemia and Moravia, and Holland. Is that correct?
SAUCKEL: These gentlemen, within the framework of their duties inside their own territories, supported me in issuing decrees and laws, and they themselves attached great importance to the proper and humane drafting of these laws and decrees.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: What was the part played by Defendant Fritzsche?
SAUCKEL: That I cannot tell you. I only met Dr. Fritzsche in Germany on one occasion—and that a very brief one—in, I believe, 1945, the beginning of 1945. I never spoke to him at all about my work, nor do I know whether he had anything to do with it. I can only state that I made repeated applications to the Reich Ministry for Propaganda to have my instructions and directives—as contained in the document books submitted by my defense counsel—widely circulated, particularly to the industries and other circles which received these workers.
GEN. ALEXANDROV: But one defendant is left—Bormann—and he is missing. What part did he play? He placed at your disposal the entire Party machinery of the NSDAP, did he not?
SAUCKEL: No, he did not. He placed the Gauleiter at my disposal. The instructions which I issued to the Gauleiter and the letters which I addressed to them—three of which are available here, and there never were many more of them—were to the effect that I was entitled to call on the Party for assistance in insuring the welfare, feeding, and clothing of the workers, and to see that they received everything that was humanly necessary and all we could possibly supply in view of existing wartime conditions. That was the role played by the Party, to the extent that it was asked to do so for me. Thus it was a form of control for the benefit of the foreign and German workers employed in Germany. Otherwise the Party had nothing to do with it. Incidentally, I did not much like interference on the part of outside offices.