“As a rule, no more children will be shot.”
Not an out-and-out prohibition against shooting children; not that more care should be exercised in the handling of children; but only a general, vague suggestion that this SS battalion of murderers must not fire at children on sight just as one might mow down sparrows or rabbits. However, if the situation requires, then of course, children will be shot with everybody else, for the order goes on to say, “Slavs will interpret all soft treatment on our part as weakness.” “The most important thing,” the directive concludes, “is the recruitment of workers.” (T-129-130.)
(b) Treatment of Workers
On 20 April 1942, Fritz Sauckel announced his labor mobilization program which contained the one supremely cruel proposition regarding treatment of foreign workers—
“All the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.” (T-58.)
After the announcement of this inhuman decree of maximum work with minimum sustenance, Sauckel followed with—
“It has always been natural for us Germans to refrain from cruelty and mean chicaneries towards the beaten enemy, even if he has proved himself the most bestial and most implacable adversary, and to treat him correctly and humanly, even when we expect useful work of him.” (T-58-59.)
It can be imagined with what kindness an underling of Sauckel’s would treat a worker whom Sauckel has already characterized as a “bestial and most implacable adversary”.
As a result of the minimum sustenance directive it is not difficult to understand the report of a Dr. Hupe who stated—
“During the last few days we have established that the food for the Russians employed here is so miserable that the people are getting weaker from day to day. Investigations showed that single Russians are not able to place a piece of metal for turning into position, for instance, because of lack of physical strength. The same conditions exist at all places of work where Russians are employed.” (T-55.)