Speer, as he told me, mentioned this to Hitler dozens of times. It was here for the first time that various controversies arose between Speer and Sauckel.
The first difficulties between Speer as Armament Minister and Sauckel came to Hitler for decision. Speer said, “I’m short of workers”. Sauckel said, “I have fulfilled all your demands”, and as proof he submitted his figures. Between the figures which Speer had and those which Sauckel had, no comparison was ever possible. They were based on different suppositions. Speer was unable to obtain the basis for the figures which were at Sauckel’s disposal. In their conflict Hitler took the side of Sauckel. He wished thereby to exercise pressure on Speer to increase armament. Speer was unable to do so because he did not have the workers who had to produce coal.
This struggle went on through the years. At first Speer still hoped that Sauckel would still bring the workers into his factories until in the summer of 1943 he gave up this hope. In the Central Planning Board this, of course, was discussed, and it was also discussed how much steel we could obtain for the next three months and how we could distribute it. Always there was this contrast between the figures—Hitler wishes to have 3.2 million tons of steel; we can only distribute 2.6 millions because Speer is quite unable to produce more. The consequence was again that Hitler reproached Speer for not producing more steel although Sauckel had supplied the workers. The Central Planning Board was not responsible for the quantity of raw materials at his disposal. Speer asked me to give him my support in this question. I did so quite frequently in the meetings and also when I reported to Goering because we wished to convince Goering that we did not have the workers so that Goering would intervene with Hitler in that sense.
But I was unable to obtain Goering’s support. Goering took Hitler’s side, and he said, “The workers are there”. All that was left now was for Speer in the first line and we ourselves who wished to help him in the second line to attack Sauckel. Sauckel escaped all meetings for a long time. Sometimes he sent a representative, and in some cases he himself appeared, but he and his representative pursued the same policy by giving us a lot of figures and alleging they had fulfilled everything. Our doubts in these figures increased. Hitler became more and more impatient and the reproaches for Speer towards the end of 1943 became insufferable. Whereas Hitler supported Speer until roughly the middle of 1943 and regarded him as one of the first collaborators, the relations became much more cool later on, and I explain that mainly through this conflict. I myself had the same annoyance both with Goering and with Hitler, who maintained in opposition to me that I had been given all of the workers.
Our mood wasn’t very nice about this, obviously because although we had no personal ambition we did not wish to be blamed for something that we were not responsible for, bad armament, and to have stated that because of bad armament the war had been lost. That reproach, of course, we could foresee, and it was obvious that we fought against it with every means within our disposal. We felt ourselves to be quite innocent in this field, but in order to prove our innocence, we were missing one link in the chain, and that was to show beyond doubt that Sauckel’s figures were untrue. They were not wrong by accident; they were deliberately forged, in our opinion, because Sauckel wished to impress Hitler with his own efficiency in his ability to fulfill all the demands of Hitler in the sphere of labor.
Sauckel pursued that policy up to 4 January 1944. Only when there was a conference with Hitler on 4 January 1944, of which I was a participant, did he there say for the first time to Hitler, “Up to now I always fulfilled all your demands, my Fuehrer. Whether that will still be possible with the new demands of four million workers, I can no longer guarantee.”
Q. Witness, we will come later to this conference. Now, I ask you to go back to answer one question. Did the Central Planning Board have authority to request labor and to distribute it?
A. A clear “no” to both parts of the question. The question of labor was discussed in the Central Planning Board only in the interest of Speer because Speer needed help and knew I would always give him my support. * * *
* * * I may claim, for example, that throughout my activities, anyway shortly after the beginning of the war, that is to say, on 9 November, there were about sixty production managers of factories—no, not managers but so-called men of trust [Vertrauensmaenner], elected by workers—these men came to me and I found out they wanted to ask me to get their rations increased. At that time the whole nutrition was based upon lower rations; these people in our high industries were not entitled to the supplementary rations for heavy workers, and these people explained to me that now that there was a war, and they were forced to work in different factories from peacetime, their housing was much further away from their places of work, and in the morning and at night they had to travel longer; and, therefore, their food was insufficient. That gave me the idea to apply for a new supplementary ration and as we became very set in this question, it became possible to achieve that supplementary ration which was now for the benefit of all workers. And I have now gotten hold of documentary evidence that supplementary rations were also given to foreign workers; that was a supplementary ration for foreign workers working long hours. As this documentary evidence shows it is an affidavit actually the food of German and foreign workers was the same. But I also wanted to say that it is quite possible that there are cases where this principle was not observed, but that was against the will of the German Government if it happened.