The complete employment of all prisoners of war as well as the use of a gigantic number of new foreign civilian workers, men and women, has become an indisputable necessity for the solution of the mobilization of labor program in this war.
All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.
It has always been natural for us Germans to refrain from cruelty and mean chicaneries towards the beaten enemy, even if he has proved himself the most bestial and most implacable adversary, and to treat him correctly and humanely, even when we expect useful work of him.
As long as the German armaments industry did not make it absolutely necessary, we refrained under any circumstances from the use of Soviet prisoners of war as well as of civilian workers, men or women, from the Soviet territories. This has now become impossible and the working capacity of these people must now be exploited to the greatest extent.
Therefore, I want to impress most cordially but also most emphatically upon all the men and women who participate decisively in this war in the labor mobilization program, the necessity to comply with all these necessities, decisions and measures, according to the old National Socialist principle:
Nothing for us, everything for the Fuehrer and his work,
that is, for the future of our Nation!
[Signed] Fritz Sauckel
[Stamp]