The evidence presented by the prosecution tended to show that the defendant advocated the most extreme measures in dealing with foreign forced labor, inhuman measures which violated every recognized principle of decency. When foreign forced laborers refused to work, the defendant ordered that they be shot. When they attempted to revolt the defendant directed that some of their numbers be killed, regardless of their personal guilt or innocence. In the case of prisoners of war who attempted to escape, the defendant ordered that these prisoners be shot and later hanged in the factory for all to see. On one occasion the defendant made the following statement, Prosecution Exhibit 145:

“The other day I talked to Himmler about it, and I told him that his main task should be to see to the production of German industry in case of internal uprisings of the foreign workers. I said that consequently a well established method should exist, and I have already given orders to the Chief A. W.[[167]] and to the training stations to get military training in this field. If, for instance, in the Locality X an uprising is started, then a sergeant with a few men, or else a lieutenant with thirty men has to turn up in the plant, and first of all shoot into the crowd with a machine gun. What he should do after is to shoot down as many people as possible in case of revolt. I have given orders to that effect, and even if our own foreign workers are involved—and then every tenth man is to be singled out and shot while the others are lined up and see him.”

On another occasion, Prosecution Exhibit 148, when the defendant was speaking of the treatment of foreign workers, he made the following statement.

“In all these matters energetic interference must be made. I am of the opinion that there should be only two types of punishment in such cases; firstly, a concentration camp for foreigners, and secondly, capital punishment.”

The prosecution offered a great number of documents containing statements made by the defendant in regard to orders and threats of violence, for mistreatment and punishment, tortures, killings, and hangings of foreign workers. Space is too short to quote in this judgment all of such pertinent documents.

Although the defendant denied making a number of these statements appearing in the documents, he admitted the authenticity and utterances of many, with the excuse that he was a man of very violent temper, who, when worried from overwork, was not wholly responsible for many utterances made by him. He protested further that he did not actually mean nor intend for orders given in such fits of temper to be carried out, but they were simply the result of uncontrolled anger, and understood by his associates and subordinates to have been uttered in such vein. In further extenuation he declared that head injuries resulting from two serious accidents were largely responsible for such uncontrollable temper.

I have given due consideration to the explanation given by the defendant and am compelled to reject it. If but only a few of such remarks could be attributed to the defendant, his protestations might be given some credence; but when statements such as appear in the documents have been persistently made over long periods of time, at many places and under such varying conditions, the only logical conclusion that can be reached is that they reflect the true and considered attitude of the defendant toward the Nazi foreign labor policy and its victims and are not mere aberrations brought on by fits of uncontrollable anger. I find as a fact, therefore, that the true attitude of the defendant toward foreign laborers and prisoners of war is that reflected in the documents of the prosecution and was not the result of uncontrollable fits of temper. I find, further, that the defendant ordered, advised, counselled, and procured inhumane and illegal treatment of foreign workers resulting in permanent injury and death to many.

COUNT NO. 2

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

The prosecution contends that in violation of the laws of war and of crimes against humanity, high-altitude and freezing experiments were carried out by the Luftwaffe physicians at Dachau, and that said physicians who conducted such experiments were under the command of and subordinate to the defendant Milch.