The next area would be the Protectorate on which I cannot make a final statement today. We have been promised for the month of March about 10,000 laborers. But I am of the opinion that some loosening-up is possible. The Plenipotentiary will soon in a personal visit take in hand the possibility of this loosening-up.
France is included in the account with 100,000 laborers for March. Messages which I received permit us to hope that this number will be increased in the middle of March. Belgium is included with 40,000, Holland with 30,000, Slovakia with 20,000, who, it is true, are exclusively suited for agriculture, since their share of individual workers has been completely delivered. This item consists exclusively of agricultural laborers, owing to a state treaty. For the remaining part of the foreign areas I included another 10,000. This amounts altogether to 400,000 laborers who should arrive in March. One might be entitled to add for the last month altogether 10,000 prisoners of war. These are men to be drawn from the East. It can be expected that this number might under certain conditions be surpassed, since the High Command intends especially for operational reasons, to take the prisoners of war back to the Reich, particularly from the areas threatened by the enemy.
A former item concerns the fluctuation of labor which certainly amounts to about 100,000 laborers. Then there are items which at the moment cannot be estimated—the yield from the threatened areas and from the “Stoppage-action”. Here I cannot venture to name final figures, but I hope to be able to do so next month.
Sauckel: Of course, we regret very much that last autumn we were unable to recruit as much as we would have liked in the areas which now are again in enemy hands. This is partly due to the fact that we were not assisted in the degree we had expected. Moreover we were not able to effect the removal of the civil population which had been planned. These events are an urgent reminder of the fact that it is necessary to employ foreign laborers at once and in great numbers in Germany proper and in the actual armaments industry. You may be certain that we wish to achieve this. We have not the slightest interest in creating difficulties for an armaments office, even for those working for German interest abroad, by taking labor away from them to an unreasonable extent. But on this occasion I should like to ask you to try and understand our procedure. We Germans surely have sent to the front between 50 and 75 percent of our skilled workers. A part of them has been killed while the nations subjugated by us need no longer shed their blood. Thus they can preserve their entire capacity with regard to skilled workers, inasmuch as they have not been transferred to Germany which is the case only for a much smaller percentage than all of us supposed, and in fact they do use them partly for manufacturing things which are not in the least important for the German war economy. If we proceed energetically against this abuse, I ask you to give me credit for so much reason that I do not intend to damage the foreign interests of the German armaments industry. The quality of the foreign worker is such that it cannot be compared with that of the German worker. But even then I intend to create a similar proportion between skilled and workers trained for their job, as it exists in Germany by force of tradition, since it has come about that we had to send men to the front in much larger numbers than we requested France or any other country to do. Moreover we shall endeavor increasingly to bring about on a generous scale the adaptation of the French, Polish, and Czech workers. I do not see for the moment any necessity for limiting the use of foreign labor. The only thing I ask for is that we understand each other, so that the immense difficulties and friction between the respective authorities disappear and the program drawn up by us will by no means be frustrated by such things.
There are without a doubt still enough men in France, Holland, Belgium, the Protectorate, and the General Government to meet our labor demands for the next months. I confess that I expect more success from such a procedure with respect to heavier work or for work where shifts of 10 or more hours are customary, than from relying on the use of German women and men exclusively. We shall have better success by proceeding this way provided the foreign workers still obey, which remains a risk we always run, than by using weaker German women and girls as labor in places of very important armament work, where foreigners may be used for security reasons. * * *
* * * The situation in France is this; after I and my assistants had succeeded after difficult discussions in inducing Laval to introduce the Service Act this act has now been enlarged, owing to our pressure so that already yesterday three French age groups have been called up. We are now, therefore, legally and with the assistance of the French Government entitled to recruit laborers in France from three age groups, whom we can use in French factories in the future, but of whom we may choose some for our use in Germany and send them to Germany. I think in France the ice is now broken. According to reports received they now have begun to think about a possible break-through by the Bolshevists and the dangers which thereby threaten Europe. The resistance which the French Government has hitherto shown is diminishing. Within the next days I shall go to France in order to set the whole thing into motion, so that the losses in the East may be somewhat balanced by increasing recruitment and calling-up in France.
If we receive comprehensive lists in time, we shall, I think, be able to cover all demands by dispatching in March 800,000 laborers.
Speer: Recruitment abroad as such is supported by us. We only fear very much that the skilled workers extracted from the occupied countries do not always reach the appropriate factories in Germany. It might certainly be better if we acted in such a way that the parent firms of Germany which work with the French and Czech factories would comb out the foreign workers more than before for their own use.
Sauckel: We made an agreement with Field Marshal Milch. You will get the factories which are urgently needed for your airplane motors, etc.; these will be completely safeguarded. In the same way I promised Admiral of the Fleet Doenitz[[95]] today that the U-boat repair firms proper are absolutely safeguarded. We shall even be able to provide our own armament factories on French soil with labor extracted from French factories, in the main from the unoccupied territory where there still are metal works which have their full complement of skilled workers without even having been touched so far.
Hildebrand: May I point out at this point that we have to figure that we shall be deprived of the Italian workers this year. This according to present discussions, concerns 300,000 men altogether, or 15 to 20,000 a month. If we deduct the first installment, the remaining ones to a great part are just highly skilled metal workers.