SPEER: No. In 1941 I had not yet anything to do with armament; and even later, during the period of Sauckel’s activity, I did not appoint these delegates and did not do much to promote their activities. That was a matter for Sauckel to handle; it was in his jurisdiction.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: The French Prosecution quoted from the record of Sauckel’s preliminary interrogation on 27 September 1945. According to this record you gave a special order for transport trains with foreign workers.
SPEER: I believe it would be practical to deal at the same time with all the statements made by Sauckel which apply to me; that will save time.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Please go ahead.
SPEER: Arrangements for transport trains were made by Sauckel and his staff. It is possible that air raids or a sudden change in the production program made it necessary for my office to ask for transport trains to be rerouted; but the responsibility for that always rested with the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor.
Sauckel also testified here that after Stalingrad Goebbels and I started on the “total war effort.” But that is not correct in this form. Stalingrad was in January 1943, and Goebbels started on his “total war effort” in August 1944. After Stalingrad a great reorganization program was to be carried out in Germany in order to free German labor. I myself was one of those who demanded this. Neither Goebbels nor I, however, was able to carry out this plan. A committee of three, Lammers, Keitel, and Bormann, was formed; but owing to their lack of technical knowledge they were unable to carry out their task.
My Labor Allocation Department was further mentioned by Sauckel in his testimony. This worked as follows: Every large factory and every employer of labor had an allocation department which, naturally, came under mine. None of these departments, however, encroached in the slightest degree on Sauckel’s tasks. Their sphere of activity was not very great, as may be seen from the fact that each was one of 50 or 60 departments coming under my office. If I had attached very much importance to it, it would have been one of my six or eight branch offices.
Sauckel further mentioned the Stabsleiter discussions which took place in his office. A representative of my Labor Allocation Department for Army and Navy armament and for building attended these conferences. At these meetings, which were attended by about 15 people who were in need of labor, the question of priority was settled on the basis of Sauckel’s information on the state of economy generally. These were really the functions erroneously ascribed here to the Central Planning Board.
In addition it was asserted that I promoted the transport of foreign workers to Germany in April 1942 and that I was responsible for the fact that foreign workers were brought to Germany at all. That, however, is not true. I did not need to use any influence on Sauckel to attain that. In any case, it is evident from a document in my possession—the minutes of a Führer conference of 3 May 1942—that the introduction of compulsory labor in the western region was approved by the Führer at Sauckel’s suggestion.
I can further quote a speech, which I delivered on 18 April 1942, showing that at that period I was still of the opinion that the German building industry, which employed approximately 1.8 million workmen, was to be discontinued to a large extent to divert the necessary labor to the production of armaments. This speech which I made to my staff, in which I explained my principles and also discussed the question of manpower, does not contain any mention of the planning of a foreign labor draft. If I had been the active instigator of these plans, surely I would have mentioned the subject in this speech.