The man who had approximately the same task as my own in Speer’s Ministry was Mr. Saur. Saur was a very clever man, very able, very energetic, and since he was always sent to report to Hitler personally, he knew Hitler and his intentions very well, and he knew therefore that Hitler was not so keen on air armament, and from that he drew the conclusion which led to these encroachments into our sphere. I was very anxious to have him join the Jaegerstab so that there too he would share in the responsibility. There was a struggle about this with Speer until it finally came about that Saur joined the Jaegerstab. I did not want to found the Jaegerstab without him, and it turned out that Saur now tackled this new task very energetically and he did in fact succeed to some extent in bringing Hitler at least to a standstill. But Hitler’s views and Hitler’s orders he could not change. Apart from that it was necessary, if I wanted to transfer armament work to Speer, for the final armament would have to go through Saur’s hands eventually, so it was essential that Saur should be included right from the start.
Q. Thank you. Did you give him responsibility to a small or a large extent within the Jaegerstab?
A. Let me answer that like this: I gave him as much freedom of action as possible, since he was going to take it over later, and it was his nature that when any matter was placed in his hands he took it up very energetically, and I was happy to see that he was going ahead so vigorously.
Q. Witness, you have made notes about everything you did during the war. Can you tell this high Tribunal whether you gradually withdrew from the Jaegerstab and how many meetings you participated in each month?
A. In March, I participated in 15 meetings—they took place daily—and two trips. In April, I participated in eight meetings, and one journey. In May, I attended five meetings and took part in two journeys. In June I attended two meetings only, and had also two journeys. In July, I didn’t attend any meetings at all, neither did I participate in any journey. I took more active interest in the journeys, totaling seven, in order to go into the provinces and show that the handing over of my task to Saur was taking place with my agreement. These are the figures: March 15, then eight, then five, then two.
Q. You mean the meetings?
A. Yes; that applies to meetings. In other words, I participated in a total of 30 meetings.
Q. But there was one more on 1 August 1944, wasn’t there?
A. That was after my retirement. It was a meeting when Speer was in the chair, in which the Jaegerstab was now finally discontinuing its work, as the tasks of the Jaegerstab were now being incorporated with ordinary armament under Speer in the armament staff. It was a purely formal meeting of handing over, and I deliberately took part, so as not to create the impression that I was leaving reluctantly or that I was angry about anything, for, of course, the exact opposite was the case.