Another consideration which must be appended here is whether the Defendant Sauckel had not exhausted the manpower of the country by his measures to such an extent that more workers could only be obtained by inhuman methods and that the Defendant Sauckel must have known this. The important point here is the figure for the “quotas.” It has been established that they were high, but it has also been established that they were not fixed arbitrarily, but only after a careful study by the statistical department. Only a small percentage of the population was actually apprehended, and the decisive issue was not so much their inability to perform the work required as their will to offer resistance. In the occupied territories of the East were large reserves of manpower, especially among older adolescents, which were not effectively utilized. The German troops, their ranks greatly thinned, saw the densely populated villages during their retreat, and then felt the impact of the enemy thus reinforced shortly afterward.
In France there were likewise many forces which placed themselves under the protection of the Maquis or the “blocked factories.” This is confirmed not only by the French Government Report, Document Number RF-22, but is also apparent from a remark which Kehrl, a witness for the Codefendant Speer, made in the Central Planning Board on 1 March 1944, Document R-124, Page 66. This witness states there that labor was available on an abundant scale in France.
Another conclusive contribution here is Document 1764-PS, Page 6, which is the report by Minister Hemmen of 15 February 1944, which deals with the “Reconstruction Program” of Marshal Pétain, and points out that the population was unscathed by war and was increasing by 300,000 young men every year.
If the number of workers mobilized is deemed to be of importance in this connection, it must be compared with the total population figures, while on the other hand it should be taken into consideration that Germany did not demand anything which she did not ask of herself to an even higher degree. The Defendant Sauckel was forced to the conclusion that the people, instead of being unable to work, did not want to do so. In order to influence the people the propaganda struggle intensified, and threats of punishment were proclaimed by both parties; this first engendered in the population of the occupied territories a conflict of feelings which was the undoing of many.
The Defendant Sauckel could with good reason refer to the results of the counterpropaganda and of the deteriorating war situation as necessitating coercion; he could not, however, on the basis of the information at his disposal become convinced that the exhaustion of the countries was so great that nothing more could be extracted from them without the use of inhuman methods. The Defendant Sauckel believed he could obtain his object by creating special working conditions rather than by using violence. As an example I refer to the promise which Sauckel himself gave on 3 May 1943 in Riga, Document 2228-PS.
Apart from all this there is one more field of labor procurement which must be put in a different category. That is the liberation of prisoners of war on condition that labor forces be made available for Germany by “relève” or “transformation.”
The French Government Report RF-22 declares both methods of procuring labor forces to be inadmissible. It is pointed out in the report that the exchange on the basis of “relève” amounted to the enslavement of a roughly threefold number of French workers. Against this it must be stated that the replacement workers came only for 6 months for voluntary work and in succession. At the end of 18 months all workers were free, while the prisoner was liberated immediately.
Coercion for the execution of the “relève” did not exist. From a legal point of view it was not assailable. Captivity can be terminated at any time; release may be made subject to a condition. The French report unduly stresses its moral indignation in quoting a phrase of the president of a news agency of the United States; this phrase speaks of the “abominable choice of either to work for the hereditary enemy or to deprive a son of one’s own country of a chance of release from captivity.”
To refute this, I refer to the healthy sentiment according to which in the older Russian literature such a change was applauded as a patriotic and magnanimous deed during the Nordic War. Neither the King of Sweden nor Peter the Great seems to have considered exchange as equal to replacement by a substitute slave.
The “transformation” (“Erleichtertes Statut”) is contained in Document Number Sauckel-101. This is the release of a Frenchman from captivity if he accepts other work, or under condition that an additional French worker should come to Germany according to the “relève” regulations. No prisoner of war was forced in this manner to change his legal status, but whole camps volunteered for it. If a prisoner made use of the possibility offered, he forfeited thereby the special legal protection of the Geneva Convention with regard to work; but this was done in agreement with his government, and thus does not constitute a violation of international law.