DR. FLÄCHSNER: Please describe briefly your attitude toward the meeting of 11 July 1944, to which we have already referred once before. This was Document 3819-PS. Please be very brief.
SPEER: During this meeting of 11 July I maintained my point of view. Once again I pointed to Germany’s reserves, as becomes apparent from the minutes, and I announced that the transport difficulties should not be allowed to influence production, and that the blocked factories were to be kept up in those territories. Both I and the military commanders of the occupied territories were perfectly aware of the fact that with this the well-known consequences for these blocked factories would be the same as before, that is, that the transfer of labor from the occupied western territories to Germany would be stopped.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: The French Prosecution has presented a Document Number 814, Exhibit RF-1516. It presented it during the session of 30 May, if I remember correctly. It came up during the cross-examination of your Codefendant Sauckel.
According to this order troops were to round up workers in the West. Please give a brief statement on that. So as to refresh your memory, I want to say that reference is made in this telegram to the meeting of 11 July.
SPEER: The minutes of the meeting show, as I said before, that I opposed measures of coercion. I did not see Keitel’s actual order.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Number 824 is another document submitted by the French Prosecution on the same subject. It is a letter by General Von Kluge dated 25 July 1944; Exhibit RF-515. It refers to the telegram from Keitel which has been previously mentioned. Do you know anything about it, and whether that order was ever actually carried out?
SPEER: I know that the order was not carried out. To understand the situation, it is necessary to become familiar with the atmosphere prevailing about 20 July. At that time not every order from headquarters was carried out. As the investigations after 20 July proved, at that time in his capacity as Commander, West, Kluge was already planning negotiations with the western enemies for a capitulation and probably he made his initial attempts at that time. That, incidentally, was the reason for his suicide after the attempt of 20 July had failed. It is out of the question...
THE PRESIDENT: You gave the number 1824. What does that mean?
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Mr. President, Number 824 is the number which the French Prosecution has given to this document. That is the number under which it has submitted it. Unfortunately, I cannot ascertain the exhibit number. I have made inquiries, but I have not had an answer yet.
I am just given to understand that it is RF-1515. That is its exhibit number.