A. No. That wasn’t possible. I might have examined one or the other minutes at the beginning, and I did on one occasion try to make improvements, but I found that it contained so many mistakes that the time of reading and improving them would have amounted to fifty percent more time than the actual meeting. These meetings often went on for four or more hours or so, and I really did not have the time to sit down for something like six hours afterwards in order to put the minutes right. I know that there wasn’t any one who read through them, and I didn’t really know why these records, these verbatim records, were prepared. I thought perhaps it was a question of supervision for us, and I had no cause to state that I would not allow myself to be supervised. If you went to the pains of having one stenographer who would do nothing but write, but who was stumped by the fact that we sometimes spoke too quickly or not too clearly; a stenographer who often sat far away from the man who was speaking, or who didn’t know the name of the man who was speaking, there was bound to be a lot of muddle in that respect. He didn’t know whether the man who was sitting on the left was talking or his neighbor on the right, and one mistake after another occurred. I gave it up pretty quickly after looking through these minutes. I once asked the others whether they read through the minutes and they just laughed at me, and said that they had more and better jobs on hand, and I said so had I.
Q. Witness, you have just said that these stenographers who sat on the side could quite often not even distinguish between the speaker, whether it was he or his neighbor. What was the custom; did you remain seated while you were speaking, or did one always rise?
A. No, no, we all stayed seated; we all remained seated and the stenographer couldn’t always see who was speaking because on certain occasions a lot of people were there. If you invited one man to a meeting in Germany, then possibly he always brought his entire staff along so that he could answer all the questions; and if you invited one, sometimes fifteen or twenty showed up. I sometimes asked whether these men didn’t have anything else to do because we were not really concerned with details, only with the basic, larger points, and they used to say, well, everybody is invited.
Q. Witness, did it happen that specific orders were given to stenographers to alter certain points or omit them? So that apart from accidental mistakes, deliberate mistakes were being made?
A. I have recollections of many occasions that Speer, who used to sit next to me, would shout to the stenographer across the room and say, “Leave that out, what the Field Marshal just said.” Unfortunately, notorious before this Tribunal are the expressions and words I used, which were not always too carefully chosen. I have always said during my entire life what came to my mind at the moment, and I, as a soldier, was never taught to hide my opinion. But sometimes, in order to refreshen sometimes boring meetings, I used rather forceful language to shake up the others a bit so that they would at last come out with their true opinions, because many of the people were only there as experts on individual points. Quite often ministers were there; even in Germany a minister and a field marshal have a fairly high-ranking position; and the German is rather more inclined to speak too much than too little. Now, if they found that I too would use strong expressions on one occasion, or another, then they would loosen up a bit and they would start talking, since they felt that I had let go too. I was keen to have clarity, and that the cat wouldn’t always run around the hot porridge, because, after all, we had to know the truth and the real background.
Since Speer was much more cautious and much more courteous, never having been a soldier, I could allow myself the exhibition of freedom, and unfortunately I did.
Q. Yes, unfortunately. So that statements of that kind of yours were either stricken or they were altered?
A. That warning of Speer’s only came into force if I stated my criticism of the higher leaders too severely. If, for instance, somewhere Hitler had given assignments or orders which, to my view, were wrong, or even as to orders coming from Goering or other people, the Minister of the Interior or the Minister of the Police or some other person, then I even here would state my frank criticism amongst these people. Usually I didn’t have any other possibility to state my deviating opinion, and I had the inner urge to say it out aloud. Speer, in my interest, would have it struck out, and he told me a few times afterward, “For heaven’s sake, do be careful. They will hang you one day.” But of course he meant by the German side. Sometimes when I myself became aware of the fact that in my criticism of these high-ranking gentlemen I had gone too far, I would say to the stenographer, “Leave that out.” And on one or two or three occasions I said, “Change it. Put someone else in there as having been referred to,” because I myself discovered—mind you, I wasn’t always aware that I criticized too severely, but since Speer told me so a few times, I controlled myself a little more—that I had said too much and that it was a mistake, and so I intervened myself.
Q. Witness, after our discussion concerning labor questions, in connection with the decree concerning the Central Planning Board, I want you to answer my question now, whether and what powers the Central Planning Board had with reference to the Plenipotentiary General for Labor, Sauckel?