Despite the pains he took, his superiors mistrusted him so much that both Goering and Hitler contemplated to have him put out of the way.
I shall show that he never endorsed the theory of the superman and of the master race; that he always remained humane and that he intervened on behalf of friends with disregard for his own security. He never was cruel. It may be that some of the minutes carry wild speeches about him which must strike your Honors who come from a different world and are used to different customs as terrible and incomprehensible. I shall prove to you that in the barracks yards, which made the first impress on the sensitive mind of young Milch, wild expressions were quite common and that in German barracks yards bombastic expressions were considered normal and truly militaristic style. Nobody in Germany did at any time take these expressions at face value. For this human element in particular, the old saying holds true that dogs which bark do not bite.
This man, however, was all the more inclined to use these shocking expressions due to the fact that in a number of accidents he had suffered severe concussions of the brain as a result of which he was more susceptible to fits of anger than other people; all the more so since he was overburdened with work and always frantic because time was too short. But witnesses will appear before this Tribunal who will confirm that no one in his surroundings took these fits of wrath, these crazy words, seriously; that these expressions never went further than the circle of his intimates, and that they in no way had any effect. His raving and yelling would make so little impression that when people around him noticed he was about to have another fit of rage, one would hear the familiar quotation: “In a moment somebody will be hanged again and then nothing happens.”
I shall show that this man knew nothing at all of the many abominable happenings which occurred out in the country, sometimes committed by persons who were under his command, and that, for example, the connection with the experiments at Dachau were so remote and incidental that he could not even surmise what the men there undertook to do. The sphere of his duties was so terrific, the burden of his work so great that he truly would have needed to be a superman if he were expected to have known all that the prosecution finds out today from records and from the examination of the offenders. It is appropriate to use a Latin quotation here with a little change: “Quod est in actis, non semper est in munde.” Not everything that the investigating mind uncovers at a later date and interconnects was so in actual fact. The poet says “Easy for him to speak who speaks last.” This man is charged with letting prisoners be abused and killed. I shall prove that this was not so. I shall even prove that, for example, he did everything possible to protect so-called terror fliers from being lynched. He was a man who tried to attenuate verdicts pronounced by competent courts of justice and who never favored death sentences.
The prosecution charges him with the enslavement of the peoples of Europe. I shall prove that he never aspired to enslavement; that information on deportations and shanghaiing never reached him; and that, on the contrary, information reached him which was bound to confuse his judgment and which permitted him to engage in deeds which now are considered as wrong. Up to this day the opinion still prevails that everybody in Germany knew everything about all the cruelties. Slowly, however, the recognition comes through that this is not correct. In the “Neue Zeitung”, the official organ of the military government, a German anti-Fascist by the name of Arnold Weiss Reuthel, whose book on the concentration camps is considered noteworthy by the newspapers, published an article “On the Psychological Causes.” There he states literally:
“One would have termed anybody who informed the public of such happenings a scoundrel or a lunatic. This also explains why people who did not see these things with their own eyes and did not suffer from them day after day, even today still refuse to believe that they actually happened. Yes, to me too it seems today often a dream and impossible when I think back and try to persuade myself that they really happened, the fearful excesses to which I was a witness during my 5 years in the concentration camp.”
Thus writes, be it noted, a man who suffered for years in a concentration camp himself. It has been proved again and again that the most painstaking secrecy was maintained regarding the atrocities. This is no hollow talk. This is the truth. The actual perpetrators dissembled, denied, lied, in a way that could not have been surpassed in cunning. The documents show you, Honorable Judges, that it was forbidden for Rascher to make reports without Himmler’s authorization. Himmler wanted to draw the veil of secrecy over everything. But even with a Hitler, Sauckel, for example, soft-pedalled all his doings in the procuring of the foreign workers. Regarding this, I will submit evidence.
I shall also show that the assignment of these workers was not a point in any program existing from the outset; that it was exclusively an emergency device which the exigencies of the war forced upon Germany. So at least all this had to appear to him, the man who did not belong to the innermost circle. That he could not think otherwise will be demonstrated to the Court, to the Tribunal.
It is misleading when the honorable representative of the prosecution in his opening speech points out that this man had more to do with the use of forced labor than any other man in Germany. The International Military Tribunal, in its judgment on Speer, whose position, as no one in this courtroom can doubt, was far more powerful and significant than that of this man here, has stated:[[71]] “Speer’s position was such that he did not have to deal directly with the atrocities and the carrying out of the forced labor program.” On Sauckel, the International Military Tribunal says:[[72]] “It is nevertheless established beyond all doubt that Sauckel had the over-all responsibility for the slave-labor program.” I shall offer evidence that Sauckel actually also had the sole power over the manner in which the people were recruited and brought to Germany, and over the urgent work for which they were required.
The prosecution submitted much evidence in Document Books No. IA and IB which contain the speeches and decrees of all kinds of persons and offices in Germany and in the territories formerly occupied. In my opinion, however, it never proved that the defendant knew of all these things, much less that he had anything to do with them. I shall prove that he knew nothing of all this and that it was all so far remote from his sphere of action that, logically speaking and considering his numerous tasks, he could know nothing about it.