“Gentlemen, I know that not every subordinate can say, ‘For me, the law no longer exists,’ but he has to have someone who covers up for him, not out of cowardice. But if you act according to the spirit of the old field service regulation, ‘Abstaining from doing something hurts us more than erring in the choice of the means,’ and if, moreover, you keep in touch and immediately clarify difficult points, so that something can be done, then we are willing to accept the responsibility, whether this is the law or not. I see only two possibilities for me and for Germany. Either we succeed and thereby save Germany, or we continue these slipshod methods and then get the fate that we deserve. I prefer to fall while I am doing something that is against the rules but that is right and sensible, and be called to account for it, and if you like, hanged, rather than be hanged because Papa Stalin is here in Berlin, or the Englishmen. I have no desire for that. I would rather die in a different way. But I think we can accomplish this task, too. We are in the fifth year of war. I repeat, the decision will come during the next six weeks!” (T-251-252.)
(b) Jaegerstab
We now come to a consideration of the Jaegerstab, formed on 1 March 1944, for the purpose of increasing production of fighter aircraft to meet the incessant and ever increasingly effective bomber attacks of the Americans and British which had seriously damaged the entire airplane industry in Germany. Every airplane factory with the accessory workshops had been hit at least three times. The Jaegerstab became essentially a concentration of experts drawn from various ministries. Its programs envisaged a decentralization of plane factories by transferring them in part to above-surface localities and in part to subterranean localities. Milch and Speer were joint chiefs of the Jaegerstab, and Karl Adolph [Otto] Saur functioned as Chief of Staff. SS Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler had supervision of the construction program. So far as this trial is concerned, we are interested in the work of the Jaegerstab only to the extent that it involves employment of foreign labor and prisoners of war. Did the Jaegerstab employ labor prohibited under international law, and if so, can Milch be held responsible for such illegal use?
In order to resolve this question we must review the documents submitted in evidence.
On 6-7 April 1944, Milch and Saur reported to Hitler on the achievements, up to that time, of the Jaegerstab and discussed with him the plans for further construction on a second work project. Hitler declared that he desired this project be set up in the Protectorate and, at this point, the minutes read, “If it should prove impossible there too to get hold of the necessary workers, the Fuehrer, himself, will contact the Reichsfuehrer SS and will give an order that the required 100,000 men are to be made available by bringing in Jews from Hungary.” (T-318.) Here Milch is put directly on notice that forced labor is being contemplated.
Fritz Schmelter, director of the Central Department for Employment and Distribution of Labor, and because of that a member of the Jaegerstab, declared in an affidavit on 9 December 1946, that Kammler utilized concentration camp prisoners placed at his disposal by the SS in order to carry out his share of the Jaegerstab construction program. Also, that Xaver Dorsch of the Todt Organization used foreign workers, part of whom were Hungarian Jews, to accomplish his part of the Jaegerstab construction program. Then Schmelter states, “Milch, as one of the two responsible chiefs of the Jaegerstab, personally directed, ordered or approved decisions made in the interests of Jaegerstab undertakings.” (T-322.)
On 13 November 1946, Saur, Chief of Staff of the Jaegerstab, declared in an interrogation that in the decentralization program Kammler divided 30 factories into 700 individual workshops, and that the workers used in the project were concentration camp prisoners. (T-323.)
Speer, in an interrogation made shortly after his capture, declared that Hungarian Jews were used in the building program. (T-325.)
At one of the Jaegerstab meetings, presided over by Milch, Stobbe-Dethleffsen, in discussing the matter of labor needed for the Jaegerstab program, requests a few German key personnel to supervise the concentration camp inmates “with the other subjugated people.” (T-328.)
At a Jaegerstab meeting on 6 March 1944, a Sturmbannfuehrer of the SS declared he had 5,000 prisoners in readiness for work, but needed 750 guard personnel. To this statement Milch commented, “We must distribute our German people as key personnel. That is, out of three construction companies we can probably make ten complete ones by introducing 70 percent foreigners.” (T-331.)