On the subject of workers from the Netherlands, Goering said on 28 October 1943, in the presence of the defendant—
“After that has been done once, one has to modify the system for the second blow. Then the Dutch people will be no longer out in the streets on Sunday for pleasure promenades * * *. First, all the people must be brought together in a pen. Then they will be asked individually who works where. Then the men will be selected accordingly.” (T-2094.)
And on the subject of foreign exchange at that same meeting, Goering contributed this bit of wisdom in finance—
“All we need to do is to fix the rate of exchange * * * today the German mark equals 20 francs, tomorrow 23, then 27, then 40, and so forth, up to one million, or one billion. We have had all that. The same holds true for the guilder. One cigarette now costs in Holland 1.50 guilders; formerly it cost 10 cents. I merely have to say, 1.50 guilders equal 10 pfennigs or one mark equals 15 guilders.” (T-2095.)
It may be well to note at once that all quotations from the transcript represent excerpts from records and documents located in the official files of the German Reich. The evidence advanced by the prosecution in this case was almost exclusively documentary. Thus, if any observation in this opinion seems overly emphatic and appears to go beyond the restraint usually found in judicial pronouncements, it will still fall short of the force of language employed in some of the original reports made by German officials to their own superiors at the time of the events described. A top secret memorandum on conditions in occupied Russian territory declared—
“It is no longer a secret from friend or foe that hundreds of thousands of them literally have died of hunger or cold in our camps * * *. We now experience the grotesque picture of having to recruit millions of laborers from the occupied eastern territories, after prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies, in order to fill the gaps that are formed within Germany. Now the food question no longer existed. In the prevailing limitless abuse of the Slavic humanity, recruiting methods were used which probably had their origin only in the blackest periods of the slave trade.” (T-121.)
Even Rosenberg acknowledged the severity and harshness of the recruitment program and protested, not, to be sure, on humanitarian grounds, but because “endangered persons prefer to escape their fate” by going over to guerilla bands. (T-78.)
The fury with which the manhunt for workers was prosecuted reached such extremes that in many instances villages were burned down as “retribution for failure to comply with the demand for the appropriation of labor forces directed to the communities.” (T-80.)
And it was not only where large numbers were demanded that savage reprisals occurred. In a little village where 25 workers had been ordered but none reported, the German militia set fire to the houses of those who had fled. Then—
“The people who had hurried to the scene were forbidden to extinguish the flames, beaten and arrested, so that seven homesteads burned down. The policemen meanwhile ignited other houses. The people fell on their knees and kissed their hands, but the policemen beat them with rubber truncheons.” (T-80-81.)