THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Then, the answer is that you asked nobody? Is that right?
SAUCKEL: I did not ask anybody. I could not ask anybody, because all offices wanted these measures and accepted them. There was never any discussion to the contrary.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): And did you say that it was not the task of the Police to enforce recruiting for labor?
SAUCKEL: It was not the task of the Police to carry out recruitment.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Well, why did you say at the conference on 4 January 1944, which is reported in the Document 1292-PS, that you would do everything in your power to furnish the requested manpower in 1944; but whether it would succeed depended primarily on what German enforcement agents would be made available, and that your project could not be carried out with domestic enforcement agents? Does that not mean that the Police would have to enforce your recruitment programs?
SAUCKEL: No, it means—the reproduction of these minutes is not very exact—I explained to the Führer that I probably would not be able to carry out his program because there were very large partisan areas; and as long as these partisan areas were not cleared up, so that a regular administration could be established there, no recruitment could take place there either. First of all, therefore, normal administrative conditions would have to be established again. That could be done only by those organs whose task it was.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): What did you mean by German enforcement agents?
SAUCKEL: By German enforcement agencies I meant the normal administration as such, but in some territories that was too weak.
THE TRIBUNAL (Mr. Biddle): Well, then, why was it that the Reichsführer SS explained that the enforcement agents put at his disposal were extremely few, if those enforcement agents were not police agents?
SAUCKEL: I did not understand the question correctly in the first place. The Reichsführer, I believe, said—according to my recollection—that for the pacification of these areas he did not have troops enough because they were all at the front. That did not refer to the recruitment and management of compulsory labor, but to the re-establishment of normal conditions in these areas.