DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, I think this question has not yet been dealt with. Yesterday internal administration was discussed. A second series of agencies existed for taking care of the factories, namely, through the Armament Commission and the Armament Inspection Office; and there was a third possibility open to the witness Speer for making contact with the factories through the Reich Labor Efficiency Engineers. In this connection I wanted to ask him another question.
SPEER: I shall be glad to explain it.
DR. SERVATIUS: Did not the Labor Efficiency Engineers constitute your only real possibility of improving conditions in the concerns, and did you have direct supervision?
SPEER: I must define for you the task of the labor engineers; it was an engineering task, that is shown in their designation.
DR. SERVATIUS: It was limited to this engineering task?
SPEER: Yes.
DR. SERVATIUS: Then I have no more questions.
DR. FLÄCHSNER: Mr. President, I have only two questions arising out of the cross-examination.
One of the questions is this: Herr Speer, I refer once more to the answer which you gave to Justice Jackson at the end of the cross-examination, and to clarify that answer I would like to ask you this: In assuming a common responsibility, did you want to acknowledge measurable guilt or coresponsibility under the penal law, or did you want to record a historical responsibility before your own people and before history?
SPEER: That question is a very difficult one to answer; it is actually one which the Tribunal will decide in its verdict. I only wanted to say that even in an authoritarian system the leaders must accept a common responsibility, and that it is impossible for them to dodge that common responsibility after the catastrophe, for if the war had been won the leaders would also presumably have laid claim to common responsibility. But to what extent that is punishable under law or ethics I cannot decide, and it was not my purpose to decide.