Q. Witness, that means that neither the labor office nor the Armament Inspectorate were under your supervision, as the GL.
A. Yes that is quite correct.
Q. But Speer has testified that until the very end you did not renounce the command of the air industry. What could you say to this effect?
A. If Speer should mean that my personnel official, in the way I described before, talked with his, Speer’s armament office, once a month, then it is quite correct; but my officials might have used these occasions, and how far he worked with my name on these occasions I do not know. I hope he did so in order to get his point through. I was never present. I never heard how these negotiations went on. Should Speer mean, however, that my work in that field was the same as his in his field, then he makes a mistake, for I did not have that organization nor did I have the task. My field was only a very specialized one compared to Speer’s field. * * * I might add perhaps, that Speer did not know my organization; of course we never discussed it. He knew, of course, that I had a technical office; he knew that I had a planning office, and he also knew that I had an economic department for the contracts of industry. After all, he fought a battle to take the whole economic department into his sphere, and when I said he couldn’t possibly do it, he waited until the whole armament industry came under his charge. We two always settled everything in a friendly manner after that up to the last moment. Even if there were a certain amount of conflicting interests, which sometimes were quite considerable, particularly between our subordinate officers—there were quite severe battles between those subordinate officers at times—but we always poured oil on the troubled waters, Mr. Speer and I.
Q. Witness, but couldn’t it be, that in the sphere of the Central Planning Board in presenting the labor demands of your industry, you spoke for your own interests?
A. I cannot recall, and I have read some of the records, but in not one of them, there is not one word said that I had any special demands for the Luftwaffe. Apart from the fact that once or twice I remarked that I was equally badly off, that I didn’t get anything, but that doesn’t mean that I was looking after my interests in the GL. If I talked about workers at the Central Planning Board, I did so at Speer’s request, to give him in the armament industry all the support. Speer was particularly pleased when I played the wild man and became a little strong. He once told me, “you are much better at this than I am; I am only a civilian; I can’t do it as well as you can”. And sometimes he pepped me up and said “Speak a little more fiercely, please”, which I was only too delighted to do for him. That was meant to achieve something which you may wish to ask me about a little later on: How we could get Sauckel to speak clearly. How we could get rid of the suspicion that we through our inefficiency cannot bring German industry up to the high level, to the right level.
Q. Witness, during these conferences of the Central Planning Board did it happen that the bulk of the workers was discussed, or was it rather a question of bringing new workers into Germany?
A. No, it was only the labor question as such, only inasmuch as it was important for the increase of raw materials in accordance with Hitler’s order, and indeed always as an attack on Sauckel in order to get him to give us the people or to say he cannot do it. As we knew he could not supply them, our main demand which we wished to achieve was an open statement by Sauckel, “I haven’t got the workers whom you need”.
Q. Witness, but if your air force industry, for instance, either the labor offices or the Armament Inspectorates had made requests to Speer, and when your planning office had checked these demands in order to find out what was really necessary and what was unnecessary, was it a matter of proposing what kind of workers you wanted to have and what kind of workers should be distributed into these different production programs? Was it a question of deciding whether you needed German workers or rather more foreigners?