MR. COUNSELLOR RAGINSKY: You will give your consents or explanations to the questions afterward. But meanwhile listen to the questions as I put them to you. If you want to give your explanation with regard to this, you are entitled to do so later.
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, General Raginsky, the Tribunal would prefer to have the comments now.
MR. COUNSELLOR RAGINSKY: Mr. President, if the defendant wishes to give an explanation with regard to this article, I shall let him do so, of course.
SPEER: The text which you omitted reads as follows:
“At my suggestion, the Führer ordered that those heads of concerns and employees, and also those officials and officers, who attempt to secure material or labor by giving inaccurate information will receive severe prison sentences or the death sentences.”
The reasons for this were as follows: When I took over my office, the demands addressed to the central departments were increased by the intermediate departments handling the demands. Each of the many intermediate departments added something of its own, so that the demands reaching me were quite enormous and incredible, and made planning quite impossible. For example, because of these additions the demands which I received for copper in one year amounted to more than the whole world’s yearly production of copper. And in order to prevent this and to obtain accurate indications, I issued an order to deter these officials, officers, heads of concerns, and employees from giving false figures.
In my Gauleiter speech I spoke of this, and I said the result of this decree would surely be that no one would any longer dare to forward false information to higher offices, and that was the purpose of the decree; I said that it would never be necessary to put the decree into effect, since I did not believe that the heads of concerns, employees, officials, and officers would in view of such a severe penalty have enough boldness to continue supplying false indications.
In fact, no penalty was ever imposed, but the result of the decree was that demands for materials and workers reaching me decreased considerably.
MR. COUNSELLOR RAGINSKY: You maintained that your obligations and duties as a Minister included only production. Did I understand you correctly?
SPEER: Yes, armaments and war production.