SPEER: It is clear that a worker who has not enough food cannot achieve a good work output. I already said yesterday that every head of a plant, and I too at the top, was naturally interested in having well-fed and satisfied workers, because badly fed, dissatisfied workers make more mistakes and produce poor results.
I should like to comment on this document. The document is dated 25 February 1942. At that time there were official instructions that the Russian workers who came to the Reich should be treated worse than the western prisoners of war and the western workers. I learned of this through complaints from the heads of concerns. In my document book, there is a Führer protocol which dates from the middle of March 1942—that is, 3 or 4 weeks after this document—in which I called Hitler’s attention to the fact that the feeding both of Russian prisoners of war and of Russian workers was absolutely insufficient and that they would have to be given an adequate diet, and that moreover the Russian workers were being kept behind barbed wire like prisoners of war and that that would have to be stopped also. The protocol shows that in both cases I succeeded in getting Hitler to agree that conditions should be changed and they were changed.
I must say furthermore that it was really to Sauckel’s credit that he fought against a mountain of stupidity and did everything so that foreign workers and prisoners of war should be treated better and receive decent food.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: Well, we will go on with the conditions later. Because I am going to ask you, if you are not responsible and Sauckel is not responsible, who is responsible for these conditions, and you can keep it in mind that is the question that we are coming up to here.
I will show you a new document, which is a statement, D-398, which would be Exhibit USA 894-A, taken by the British-American team in the investigation of this work camp at Krupp’s.
Well, D-321. I can use that just as well. We will use Document D-321, which becomes 893.
THE PRESIDENT: 894 was the last number you gave us. What number is this document that you are now offering?
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON: 398 was 894. 321 will be 895.
Now, this relates to the—this is an employee of the Reich Railways. None of our investigation, I may say, is based upon the statements of the prisoners themselves.
“I, the undersigned, Adam Schmidt, employed as Betriebswart on the Essen-West Railway Station and residing ... state voluntarily and on oath: