The documents and reports of the meetings as offered by the prosecution are too voluminous to incorporate herein, but said records clearly show that the defendant was one of the authorized agents who dealt with the procurement, deportation, and work of thousands and thousands of slave laborers from occupied countries.
JAEGERSTAB
I find as a fact that it was the defendant who conceived and instigated the formation of the Jaegerstab, and that the defendant directed its activities and acted as its chairman. The Jaegerstab assumed control over fighter production and exploited foreign forced labor in the armament industry and directed the use of the same. The Jaegerstab was assigned top priority for their projects, for the recruitment and commitment of manpower in the air armament industry. From the meetings of said board as offered in evidence by the prosecution, the question of manpower was time and time again referred to by the defendant. When other methods of obtaining its labor was not forthcoming, the Jaegerstab recruited its own labor either directly or by engineering snatching expeditions for the seizure of manpower arriving on transports from the East.
At one of the meetings of the Jaegerstab, Prosecution Exhibit 54, page 28, the defendant made this statement to his subordinates, that “international law cannot be observed here.” When the question of Italian civilian labor was being discussed at a meeting of the Jaegerstab, the defendant made the statement and advocated the shooting of those who attempted to escape in transit.
I find as a fact that the Jaegerstab was not a mere discussion group but was an agency with absolute authority over fighter production and acted by orders and directives, fixed hours of labor and conditions of work, and on one occasion fixed the established hours of work per week in the aircraft industry at seventy-two hours.
Much of the labor employed by the Jaegerstab in aircraft production and in the air armament industry was from concentration camp inmates and foreign forced labor. The defendant was well acquainted with the procurement and allocation of this labor.
I find as a fact, from the evidence offered in the case, that after the arrival of forced slave labor from occupied countries they were poorly fed, poorly clothed, were forced to work an excessive amount of hours each week, and that their general condition and treatment as a result of such forced labor resulted in the death of a great many and the permanent disability of others, both in body and in mind.
GENERALLUFTZEUGMEISTER
I find as a fact from the evidence offered in the case, that the defendant, as Generalluftzeugmeister, had complete control of aircraft production and that he requisitioned labor for the aircraft industry with knowledge of the brutal and inhuman techniques in recruiting these laborers; and that he gave directives for the criminal treatment of the same in the centers of production. Fritz Sauckel, Plenipotentiary for Labor, stated that it was “Milch who produced manpower figures for aviation.” Albert Speer testified as follows: “The requests of the air armament industry for laborers were presented by Milch, and he did not permit anyone to take this right away from him until March 1944.”
I find as a fact from the evidence offered on the part of the prosecution, that prisoners of war were included in the manpower that the defendant was requisitioning and distributing to the aircraft industry with full knowledge that they were prisoners of war. As chief of aircraft production, the defendant regulated the treatment of foreign forced labor in the German aircraft industry, fixed hours of labor and conditions of work, and by directives to his subordinates formulated the basic policy for the handling of such labor within the industry.