Speer: In any case we ought to force the coal production with all our power. I now have here a statement on the distribution of the Soviet prisoners. There are 368,000 altogether. Of these are: 101,000 in agriculture; 94,000 in the mining industry—who are not available in any case; 15,000 in the building materials industry; 26,000 in iron and metal production where they cannot be extracted either; 29,000 in the manufacture of iron, steel, and metal goods; 63,000 in the manufacture of machines, boilers, and cars, and similar appliances, which means in armaments industry; and 10,000 in the chemical industry. Agriculture has received by far the most of them, and the men employed there could in the course of time be exchanged for women. The 90,000 Russian PW’s employed in the whole of the armaments industry are for the greatest part skilled men. If you can extract 8-10,000 men from there, it would already be the limit.
Kehrl: Would it not be possible to add Serbians, etc.?
Sogemeier: We ought not to mix too much.
Rohland: For God’s sake, no Serbians! We had very bad experiences with mixing.
Speer: Everything depends on the amount of the influx from abroad.
Schieber: If anyway nothing arrives, the mines certainly will get nothing.
Timm: Gauleiter Sauckel is perfectly convinced that the transports will be on their way within a short time. Now the front has been consolidated at last.
Schieber: We ought to be grateful that the weather has allowed the farmer to keep things going in some way despite the little labor being available to him. For the farmer, the coal supply is just as important as for the whole of the armaments industry. When we discuss tomorrow the nitrogen problem we shall see the same; our first need is coal.
Koerner: On 1 April we had in agriculture a deficit of about 600,000 laborers. It had been planned to cover it by supplying labor from the East, mainly women. These laborers will first have to be supplied until other laborers are released from agriculture. We are just entering the season where the heaviest work in the fields has to be done, for which many laborers are necessary. Much labor is needed for the hoeing of the fruits, and it is to be hoped that this year the harvest can be started early which would be rendered much more difficult if an exchange of labor would have to take place.