Dr. Bergold: I am not speaking about Central Planning Board here. I am only speaking about the GL.
Q. I know, but in the Central Planning Board what particular field was Koerner interested in—the navy?
A. Koerner? No. He was mainly in charge of agriculture. He testified to that effect.
Presiding Judge Toms: Very well.
[Dr. Bergold continues.]
Speer was with Hitler almost once a week and had therefore much more influence to which Sauckel’s power set the only limit. The man, Milch, never possessed such a machine. The GL was nothing but a technical agency in the Reich Air Ministry which generally, as the witnesses Vorwald and Hertel confirmed, was told by the General Staff of the Luftwaffe what was to be constructed. If Milch had really been the powerful man as the prosecution describes him, it would have been possible for him to carry out his plan for Germany’s air defense. But the achievement of this goal for which this man worked with unbelievable effort and with all energy was denied to him simply because he was only in charge of a technical office which could not make any decisions whatsoever. Hitler, Goering, and the General Staff of the Luftwaffe decided what this man had to construct and what plans he was to carry out. He carried them out within the framework of the task with which he was entrusted, always being suspended in the middle, without ground under his feet, without the direct authority to give orders to industry, without influence on the supply of manpower and materials; he could only get influence through the Central Planning Board, and there too the fundamental decisions were made by Hitler, by the latter himself, on the advice of Speer. It is not necessary for me to name all the witnesses. All his collaborators have testified to that effect.
May it please the Tribunal, if you examine the statements made by Hertel and Vorwald, you will gather from them beyond any doubt that the GL had nothing to do at all with the question of labor, with the recruiting, transportation, and assignment of workers. The GL, and this cannot possibly be doubted by anyone after hearing all these witnesses and especially after Milch’s testimony, had merely to make the blueprints for airplanes and the construction necessary for this purpose, and then to place the orders with the completely independent industry, following in all this the instructions of the General Staff and the orders given by Hitler and Goering. All witnesses from the GL have confirmed before you that the GL had nothing to do at all with the labor question; that he did not request one single worker or exert any influence on Sauckel. It is true that requests for labor passed, for statistical reasons as well as for control purposes, through the GL office. But it is important to remember and never to forget that industry submitted its real labor requests throughout the country to the labor exchange offices which were Sauckel’s agencies and to the armament inspectorates and armament detachments which were Speer’s agencies.
Vorwald and the defendant himself have shown you with unmistakable clearness that the only thing which the GL had to do with these requests was merely that he examined these requests of industry concerning the material point as well as the labor point, and that he then reported to the Speer Ministry whether and in how far the requests of industry were exaggerated and false and if the GL considered fewer material and less manpower to be adequate.
Now, what does such an activity actually mean? Surely not, as the prosecution submits, the enslavement of new workers, but exactly the contrary; namely their reduction. If the GL had not exercised this activity, Sauckel would have got much larger requests from industry and he would have procured this labor by means of more forceful methods than he actually did. That industry had to request workers in order to carry out its tasks assigned by Hitler, Goering, and the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, who were the authorities who decided on the extent of the construction program of air armaments, was however not caused by the GL. He was nothing else but an executive organ in the chain of command from Hitler, Goering, and the General Staff. He was merely the technical agency which had to make the blueprints and constructions, and then, after approval by higher authorities, had to submit them to industry for the undertaking of the orders.
This, your Honors, is the recital of the evidence produced on the activity of the GL, and the only thing which the GL did in the framework of this activity was to reduce to the lowest level the requests for labor made by industry, for the many reasons that he was sufficiently expert to look through the exaggerated requests of industry which could never get enough workers. It is significant that the GL minutes which have been submitted nowhere reveal a discussion of real manpower guidance, but, at the utmost, that once a few questions were discussed for information purposes. It is furthermore highly significant that among the entire organizations of the GL there were no offices for labor assignment and labor research as was the case in the Armament Ministry of Speer (see Defense Exhibit 55), but merely for statistics of the personnel. There is nothing to clarify the real situation better than this fact.