TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT EC-318

Conference of Presidents under the chairmanship of the Plenipotentiary General for the Commitment of Labor (Arbeitseinsatz), Gauleiter SAUCKEL, held on 15 April 1942
The Reich Minister of Labor, who arrived accompanied by the "Staatssekretaere" Dr. SYRUP and Dr. ENGEL and who remained here throughout the meeting, has welcomed Gauleiter SAUCKEL, assured him of the close cooperation of the depart-
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ments that were made available to him, and emphasized that differences which still remained would be settled in the most friendly manner in the course of a discussion between him and SAUCKEL.
Gauleiter SAUCKEL thanked him for the friendly welcome and asked that he should not be considered an intruder. He had been surprised by the mandate given to him, and he considered it a temporary mandate. He was wholeheartedly a Gauleiter and had no intention of becoming a Minister of State. He considered the mandate as having been entrusted to him for the duration of the war only. Besides, the question was not which person would carry out the Fuehrer's difficult mandate to regulate the commitment (Einsatz), but that the regulating work would be carried out. To him the difficulty of the task appeared to be the fact that it was not only an organizational and mechanical problem but that it was work involving the Germans. All his co-workers would have to remain conscious of the fact that they were regulating and committing people of German blood, with a German soul, and that fact invested their work with serious responsibility. That was also why he considered it necessary to work in closest cooperation with the Party, which was charged with leading the human element in Germany; that was why he had appointed the Gauleiters as his deputies. That did not mean that the Presidents of the State Labor Offices [Landesarbeitsaemter] would be subordinated to the Gauleiters, but merely that they should cooperate with the Gauleiters in comradely fashion, so that the latter could facilitate their difficult tasks. He requested that the President and Trustees who were present should immediately call on the Gauleiters. He, on his part, would take care of the correct briefing of the Gauleiters, and would also see to it that no interference with departmental work would occur.
SAUCKEL estimated manpower requirements at one million, to which number another 600,000 workers would be added in the course of time. Replacements would have to be procured for
370,000 skilled workers drafted into the Armed Forces. The drafting of these 370,000 skilled workers meant a serious handicap for the armament industry; it would have to be made up by raising the idealism and work morale of the remaining workers, by spurring key workers on to maximum effort; and that would also lead to extensive integration of the Party and of the German Labor Front.
He had discussed his task with the Fuehrer in a conversation that had lasted for several hours, and immediately after that he had discussed it with the Reich Marshal for more than eight hours. Tiie most important solution envisaged by the Fuehrer, the Reich
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Marshal and himself was in exploiting the manpower of the East; all previous directives were cancelled, and all previous misgivings had been put aside. One million Russians would have to be brought into the Reich as rapidly as possible; with such speed that the output of some of these Russians would become available even prior to . the offensive. Prisoners of war presently on hand would have to be utilized as rapidly as possible. The principal effort would be devoted to the recruiting of Russian civilians.
The prerequisite for his acceptance of his mandate had been the assurance that Russians would be fed approximately the same ration allowance that was in force for the German civilian population. He had been in a position to accept his mandate only after he had been assured of that by the Fuehrer, by Reich Marshal GOERING, by Reich Minister DARRE and by State Secretary BACKE. In order to maintain the productive strength of the Russians it was necessary to feed them at the level of the ration allowances now in force for the German civilian population. He has based his opinion on the experience of a Russian of German ancestry who had worked in Russian exile for many years and who had gathered his experiences in the Russian Deportation Camps. He convincingly stated that the food supply for deported Russians in the work camps had been at least as ample as food supply allotted by the current German rationing. Furthermore, the food supply should be adapted to Russian national habits. The better they would be fed, the greater the output that could be squeezed out of them. The goal towards which he was working was the establishment of plants employing solely Frenchmen, Belgians and Dutchmen.
But he would not only have ensured their food supply; he had also taken into consideration the emotional reaction of Russians brought here for work. Therefore his second demand had been that the barbed wire would have to go. He had succeeded in that also, in the course of negotiations with the Reichsfuehrer SS. The Russians would be billeted in compact camps, which would be guarded; they could be taken out by guards, and they would be trained and taken care of by the Party. They would have to be handled so roughly by the German administration in the East that they should come to feel that they would prefer to go to Germany for work. Thirdly, he had termed the prevailing wage rates decreed by the Reich Marshal as intolerable, and had persuaded the Reich Marshal that Russians should have the possibility to earn up to one half of the wages of German workers. What they could not use in the camps would be credited to them in a savings account, and they would receive a Savings-book listing their savings*
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It would be explained to them that after their return to Russia, they could acquire land with their accumulated savings and establish themselves there (contrast to Communism).
To recapitulate the Russian problem, one would have to state that the spiritual prerequisites for the Russians had to be created in Germany in order to make it possible to demand output from them. Once these spiritual prerequisites had been created, the necessary output would have to be demanded most energetically also, and it would be self-understood that their treatment would be tough and j ust.