Timm: We can hardly hope to achieve that, since this might have something to do with the convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war.
Milch: The man who acts there for you can wear a uniform all right and be a soldier. Only his superior will not be Herr Reinecke but Herr Sauckel.
For psychological reasons emphasis should be placed on first of all covering the requirements of the Wehrmacht branches, without other considerations. The feeling, we don’t get it anyway, has gradually permeated our whole air force industry—and I heard the same about the army. I will admit that these gigantic allocations are completely misjudged. For example, in the Luftwaffe where from an original allocation of 480,000, a balance of 150,000 was left over [per Saldo uebrig]. The plants always look only at the balance [Saldo]. However, there are many plants also who have suffered an actual decrease in manpower, especially in a young industry like ours, which is occupied with the manufacture of very special products. This industry has many young people, of whom many again have been drafted into the Wehrmacht. This drafting is done in such an idiotic way that one actually has to feel ashamed. All three experimenting engineers working on a development which may have an important bearing on the outcome of the war are simply drafted. They are not sent to the front or into training but sit around in the back somewhere and are guarding some camp. No consideration whatsoever is given to individual cases. Of course the plants then call for replacements. The masses cannot fill these breaches, and qualified replacements we cannot supply at all. Herr Dr. Werner, for example, writes a letter to Herr Schieber of which he forwards a copy to me and which states that production figures established in the delivery schedules can no longer be met, owing to the fact that for weeks partially even for months, no manpower has been allocated, and that even current withdrawals cannot be replaced by the labor offices [Arbeitsaemter]. The fact, that we can no longer meet the demands of the rising production, that backlogs are increasing more and more, fills him with rising apprehension. He then goes into details, but always reverts to the same conclusion: everything might be accomplished, we could even get the necessary material; in the final analysis we fail, however, in one important aspect in connection with our whole armament program—the allocation of manpower. If only we had, if only we had—thus it goes all day and in every conference.
I am convinced that many people are beginning to put in fake requests and exaggerate their requirements. There is only one way to straighten out this affair. In my department, I do it this way: if for months a spare part cannot be found, the entire front begins to hoard this article; so, for instance, the tail skid of a Ju 52. Then we proceeded to manufacture triple the amount of the expected requirements, yet no tail skids were available. Ordnance stock piles were filled with it; but they did not issue any. I then said: We will now manufacture nothing but tail skids until we hear shouts not to send any more. Thus, an affair like that gets finally straightened out. And here likewise we must say for once: We will supply the required laborers to the industry, if necessary by depriving other fields. Agriculture, at the moment can spare laborers; it does not need them from 15 November to 15 March of next year. It is just a waste to have to feed them. Only a small number will be needed for the procurement of wood. Thus we are able to generously help industry and later on again replenish agriculture. At the same time we have the advantage of getting fairly well-fed people. As Herr Timm recently explained, prisoners of war from the Ukraine would not serve our purpose; they could not regain their physical strength on what they get to eat in the industry. Even supplying them with better food than we give to our own people would not be sufficient to get them beyond a still weakened condition. In agriculture they get additional food. Don’t muzzle the mouth of a beast when food lies all around it. This is also of advantage to prisoners of war and workers from the East.
However, we have to finally do away with the general feeling: we have nothing and we want yet anything; we have been forsaken by God and the Fuehrer; constantly more and more is demanded of us; how can we still believe in this great program? We can only carry it out if we have such faith in it, as is spoken of in the Bible. In January we started with a monthly production of 2,000 engines; today we have reached 4,000, and in a year and a half I must reach 14,000. That of course is a gigantic achievement for a month. Every engine has at least 1,200 h.p. If in measurements of horsepower I compare the present with the former World War, then the present achievement is 40 times as great. What an immense amount of manpower was available at that time for an industry so totally different from ours! Yet today we must come up to more than three times that, which we have already done. That means, that in airplane engines alone we have to achieve 135 to 140 times as much as we did in the World War. Dr. Werner who is responsible for the engine industry proposed how this can be done. He said: We must apply a mass production scale everywhere, or else we will not accomplish it. He has very progressive ideas in this field. With the airplane engine, it can be done for sure. Crankshafts and connecting rods, etc., we can produce on a mass production scale. Today we manufacture 40,000 connecting rods. However, we still have no machines today that assemble these products individually on the assembly line. The Americans have such machines. We are lacking about 10 construction engineers and 5 mechanics; they just simply cannot be procured. One must for once satisfy the needs of the people again. I have always put them off until November and told them that Sauckel would produce the necessary labor from agriculture.
Speer: We must also discuss the slackers. Ley has ascertained that the sick list decreased to one-fourth or one-fifth in factories where doctors are on the staff who are examining the sick men. There is nothing to be said against SS and police taking drastic steps and putting those known as slackers into concentration camps. There is no alternative. Let it happen several times and the news will soon go around.
Sauckel: We talked of taking the waiters out of the restaurants in Germany. But in this respect we have absolutely an abundance in France, the General Government and the Protectorate. As long as we have not skimmed that off, we could not take the responsibility towards the German people for such a measure. Again a cable of the Foreign Minister has burst into my recent negotiations in France stating that under no circumstances should the Ministry Laval be put into peril. The Fuehrer has said: If the French show no good will, then I shall retake the 800,000 French PW’s. If they show good will, then the French wives can follow their husbands to Germany and work there. Of course, he said, I have an interest that Laval remains in power. The Ministry Laval will remain, it depends only on us. And Laval cannot go back after he has reproduced in his speech and spoken before the French passages which he has taken verbally out of my appeal. Only Pétain could bring him to fall. I wish to draw your attention to the fact, however, that in France there is a surplus of young men all of whom we could use in Germany. If we expect our people to accept severest restrictions then we cannot admit such luxuries in Paris as, e.g., small restaurants with bands of 25 musicians and two waiters per table. I am firmly convinced, if we are brutal also against the others then we can extract quite a considerable number of men out of the General Government—I sent an efficient man, President Struwe, over there—and of the Protectorate. This need not interfere with the armament industry over there. There is, therefore, no fear that the demand could not be met.