And then a few lines further on:
“The superiority of the former over the latter which made itself felt more and more during the ... occupation facilitated to a large degree the resistance against the removal of workers.”
The text shows that the first-mentioned, the Defendant Speer, and the military commander...
THE PRESIDENT: That is all cumulative; that’s what you have been proving three or four times already.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Very well, I shall not continue with it.
I only want to rectify a mistake, Herr Speer. It is mentioned in the document that you had something to do with organizing forced labor in France; is that true?
SPEER: No, the organization of labor in France was not under my control.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: You have already mentioned that this shifting of the labor program was not only confined to France. Will you tell me to which other countries it also applied?
SPEER: Summarizing the last question: The program was extended to Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia. The entire production in these countries was also declared blocked, and the laborers in these blocked industries were given the same protection as in France, even after the meeting with Hitler on 4 January 1944, during which the new program for the West for 1944 was fixed. I adhered to this policy. The result was that during the first half of 1944, 33,000 workers came from France to Germany as compared with 500,000, proposed during that conference; and from other countries, too, only about 10 percent of the proposed workers were taken to Germany.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: What about the figures applying to workers from the Protectorate?