SPEER: No.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: No.
Did you learn, on your visit at Mauthausen or on another occasion, about the cruelties which took place at this concentration camp and at other concentration camps?
SPEER: No.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Now, I should like to conclude my questions on the utilization of workers by asking you: Did you have any interest in the fact that a healthy and sufficiently trained labor supply should be at your disposal?
SPEER: Naturally I had the utmost interest along this line even though I was not competent for this. As from 1942 we had mass production in armament, and this system with assembly-line workers demands an extraordinary large percentage of skilled workers. Because of drafting for military service, these skilled laborers had become especially important, so that any loss of a worker or the illness of a worker meant a big loss for me as well.
Since a worker needed an apprenticeship of 6 to 12 weeks and since even after this for a period of about 6 months a great amount of scrap must be allowed for—for it takes about that much time before quality work can be expected—it is evident that the care of skilled workers in industry was an added worry for us.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: The Prosecution has mentioned the so-called extermination by work. Could a change of personnel, which would have taken place through extermination by work, be tolerated at all by an industry?
SPEER: No. A change in the workers, in the way in which it was described here, cannot be borne by any industry. It is out of the question that in any German industry anything like that took place without my hearing about it; and I never heard anything of that sort.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Herr Speer, the Prosecution asserts that you applied means of terror and brutality so that the achievements of the compulsory workers would be increased to the utmost...