Naturally, ho couldn't avoid any restrictions which occurred in his very big house, but when I did go to him and when I did hear of such setbacks, then he always interfered and assisted me. I know the amount of raw materials which we were receiving, because I collaborated in their distribution in the Central Manning Board, but it was, of course, not possible for me to discover the sequence and the level of priority of raw materials which were assigned by Hitler; in other words, tho sequence of the program, or to alter it. That was something even Speer could not do.
Air rearmament during my period always occupied seventh place, whereas submarines occupied first place; tanks occupied second; ammunition for the Army occupied third; the fourth place was occupied by anti-aircraft artillery, then followed further supplies for the Army. I think anti-tank defenses, and then something else which belonged t o the Army, and then we came in seventh place, but within air armament the sequence was incidentally also decided upon by Hitler. One - bombers; two - transport aircraft; and three - fighters On the strength of that position it was extremely difficult for the fighter or rather, for the entire Air Force to increase armament and keep it up.
It is abundantly clear that in this matter, in order to do something for the Air Force. I would have to introduce very strict and severe measures. I suffered under tho conditions, something which I may be able to refer to tomorrow, to a horrible degree. I could sec the decline and collapse of my country drastically before my eyes. I knew how help could come; I tried it, and I didn't get there. I was stopped. That was something which we used to call in the German Army a paper war victory.
I think anyone can understand that who has ever been in such a war in any responsible position. I fought for this to tho limit of my strength and I must recognize here that all my collaborators, only very few of whom we have had here as witnesses, they were all chaps who helped mo. Not one of these people know any personal factors in this war and for months they didn't even see their families.
We, in our Ministry, slept in our offices for months and. months. I was so tired at night that I didn't even go into the shelter when there were air attacks, apart from which, of course, that didn't help very much; it wasn't the proper shelter. But in Speer's case there were many matters which he couldn't alter either, and he couldn't alleviate the situations.
When workers were taken away from mo, from my factories for instance, then there w s something I didn't even know and didn't over learn. When I arrived in one of the factories and they said, "So many people have now boon taken a.way from me", and I asked, "Who has taken thorn away?" Then I was told, "tho Labor Office." "Well, where did they go?" "Well, we don't know. I can't do anything either."
Then I would talk to Speer and he would say that ho would follow up tho matter, but ho had more work in his comprehensive machinery than to follow up little matters like that. The people who had actually done it didn't, of course, tell him about it. They quieted him down and told him it was all untrue and it was just another bit of stupid talk on tho part of the Air Force. We never got these people back. I am mentioning this case which is probably going to be important later. We could not tell who the workers were that our fact cries received, nor did we know which workers were taken away, but I think that this is something which we shall have to comic to later.
DR. BERGOLD: Your Honors, I shall now come to the foundation of the Central Planning Board. This is once again a comprehensive subject. We are just before the and of the session and I therefore beg to adjourn, but I have one other request. If, tomorrow, we deal in detail with the Contrail Planning Board it will be necessary for me to have the original records or the photostat copies which are in tho hands of the prosecution, and to have them here before us. At this moment they are in the Information Center. I shall be grateful if this High Tribunal would instruct the Information Center of tho Defense that tho entire records and minutes, inasmuch as they exist and their photostat copies, should be brought to this room for tomorrow morning.
THE PRESIDENT: If those records are available and are in the Defense Information Center, of course you nay have then. The proper parties will be notified to have then available for you tomorrow morning.
We shall recess until tomorrow morning at 9:30.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess until 0930 hours tomorrow morning.
(The Tribunal adjourned until 13 March 1947 at 0930 hours.)
Official transcript of the American Military Tribunal in the matter of the United States of America against Erhard Milch, defendant, sitting at Nuernberg, Germany, on 13 March, 0930, Justice Toms presiding.
THE MARSHALL: All persons in the courtroom please take your seats.
The Honorable, the Judges of Military Tribunal No. 2. Military Tribunal No. 2 is new in session.
God save the United States of America and this honorable Tribunal.
There will be order in the Court.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, do you know at what point the Central Planning Board was ordered and how did the creation of this institute come about?
A. Its employment must have taken place during the last days of March 1942. It originated from a discussion which Speer had with Hitler in the latter's headquarters. At the time when Speer had taken over the armament, I spoke with him about the fact that there was no higher authority which was acting according to clear-cut points of view when distributing raw material. Until then we had been receiving raw material through a certain department of the OKW. This department in turn had been getting it from the four-year plan. The OKW was distributing to the Army, Navy and Air-force but this department had no expert knowledge. Then subsequently the continuity of armament work suffered under this. Speer rather early recognized the state of affairs and without my having previous knowledge of it he tackled this question when talking to Hitler. As a result Hitler employed --- Hitler appointed Speer as the central planner for this subject.
Subsequently Speer made the request that I should take on this task together with him. Since Speer had been in the armament business rather briefly and since he said I would be able to help him -- at least this was the way how Speer discussed the matter with me shortly afterwards because I, myself, hadn't been at that conference. Following this, on the 2nd of April 1942, Speer and I together went to see Goering since Speer considered this task, which, after all, was in touch with the four-Year plan, should be discussed with Goering. Goering expressed agreement 1807 (a) but he demanded that a representative of the Secretary of State or his representative State Secretary Koerner, who was in official contact with the Four-Year plan should enter into tho Central Planning Board.
I know that Speer said at this point: "It seems to me three are rather too many for this job", and I said, "Well, I am only too willing to drop out. I have enough work as it is," and Speer interfered and said that was out of tho question. Goering said: "No, it is my view that there can be three." That is how the composition of Central Planning was realized. I can add that very much later Minister Funk joined Central Planning Board as a force which was done at the instance when the socalled "War-Production" -- and in this case we weren't talking about the armament business and civilian requirements and that matter when this had been transferred from Funk's Ministry to Speer's Ministry.
Q. Witness, did you, within the framework of Central Planning become the Armed Forces or Air Forces representative?
A. No, right at the very beginning that had been decided upon Hitler that, namely, that in no way I should look after my own interest there, that is to say, the interest of the Airforce, that I should be above the party. Later on there were demands from the Navy, which I had not known about this arrangement. They, too, wanted to have a representative in the Central Planning Board. But the emphatic answer, coming from Hitler himself, was given immediately to the effect that I was not in the Control Planning Board in my capacity which I was holding in the Airforce. It was not my task either to appear there on behalf of the entire Armed Forces, but on everybody's behalf, since distribution of raw materials for the whole of Germany and for all purposes was being dealt with.
Q. Witness, what were the actual tasks of this Control Planning Board?
A. The tasks had been communicated to me by Speer and had been confirmed through Goering. There was only distribution of raw materials 1808(a) to all holders of priority permits, holders of the contingent.
Q. Witness, what is what you call the "holder of a contingent"?
A. Well, the armed forces are such priority holders, and within the armed forces the Navy, Army, and Airforce are holders of those priorities. The coal industry holds these priorities; the stool Industry; the textile industry; the German cities and municipalities, for their municipal requirements, energy supplying industry.
Q. What about agriculture?
A. Most certainly agriculture, for agricultural machinery requires stool, requires coal, requires all sorts of things. Altogether, the forms according to which we used to distribute, and which contained the word "armament" on the list, contained, on the right, all the civilian purchasers, all the buyers. There were approximately 40 to 45 civilian holders of these priorities.
Q But then what did the Central Planning Board have to do with the Four Year Plan, to which there seemed to be some sort of formality through Speer?
A The Central Planning Board as such had nothing to do with the Four Year Plan; only Speer in his capacity as Armament Minister.
Q Did you ever report to Goering about the Central Planning Board?
A No, with the exception of that first meeting, when the matter was reported to him, it having taken place on the 2nd of April, 1942. Apart from that meeting, I have never talked to him or with him about the Central Planning Board.
Q According to your opinion, would Goering have called you in to the Central Planning Board if he, Goering, had founded it?
A No, I don't believe so. It only happened because Speer expressed his special wish to Hitler. Hitler, on his own initiative, would not have hit upon this idea either, because, generally speaking, such tasks were only handed over to one man, according to the so-called Fuehrer principle. Might I remind you in this connection of the General Plenipotentiary for Labor? There was only one man on that occasion too.
Q From whom did the Central Planning Board nave instructions?
A Directly from Hitler.
Q Through which channels were they given?
A Speer was with Hitler practically every week, for tne reason of army supplies, or other questions, sometimes staying with Hitler for several days. On such occasions hitler would mention his most important problems. For instance, he would mention the sequence of priorities of the various armament branches, which I explained to you yesterday.
Quite automatically, through this, the approximate priority ratings were laid down. However, within the individual spheres, because of the events of the war, there were current changes: At one moment one type of tank, and then at another moment another type of tank; or first one type of gun, and then another type of gun would be more important. That, of course, necessitated considerable rapid changes in the allotment of raw materials. That was the case, and to an even stronger degree, in the case of ammunitions, so that currently, probably during every such conference which took place in his office, Hitler used to express special wishes, which of course meant orders for us.
I personally took part in such conferences on nine occasions. Occasionally Speer would take me along to have me appear on the stage there, as he would put it. However, that ceased almost completely during the last years. Anyway, I know for certain, according to my documents, that I was there nine times.
Let me add at this point that State Secretary Koerner has never been there. Speer did not think that it was necessary for him to be taken along, and Koerner would not impose his presence either.
Q So that during such an order group of the Central Planning Board, Koerner was never there?
A No, he was not there, and he did not know about it either. He didn't know, therefore, how strongly Hitler inter fered in this sphere by giving orders.
Q But didn't you always report to him, either you or Speer, in the case of the meetings of Central Planning?
A It might have come as an aside during the meetings; one of us might have said, usually speer, "Hitler has given this or that order," but that wasn't anything very noticeable to Koerner.
Q Was it only because of the Central Planning Board that Speer went to see Hitler?
A No; that was one very small portion of all the other discussions, because Hitler was interested, to an extraordinary degree, in army armament, and even right down to the most minute detail. He himself decided, on his own initiative, the thickness of armor on armored fighting vehicles he decided upon the caliber and type of gun which should be fitted to tanks; he decided the thickness and the caliber of anti-tank defensive armor; he himself laid down, personally, the supply rate of ammunition for every type of gun. I had an awful lot of difficulty with him over anti-aircraft ammunition in that connection, since Hitler would never depart, during that time, from anything which he had once laid down. He had changed a groat deal from his pre-war days.
Q We shall come to speak about that at some other point.
Witness, a business statute of the Central Planning Board is available, dated 20 October 1942. I shall put this to you.
DR. BERGOLD: Your Honors, this is document R-124, Exhibit No. 48-A. It is contained in the German document book of the Prosecution, No. 3-B. On one occasion, during the examination of the witness Koerner, it has already played its part.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, have you found it?
JUDGE MUSMANNO: It is document book 3-B, at pages 2 and 3.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, you can see that there is a letter from a Mr. Schieber, which is attached to the Statute of the Central Planning Board, and which is dated 20 October 1942, which, according to your notes, must have been signed.
Will you please define your attitude towards the question as to whether you know this statute and whether you have signed it?
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, document R-124 comprises a whole volume. What page are you referring to? Perhaps Mr. Denney can tell us.
MR. DENNEY: Pages 2 and 5 of document book 3-B, Your Honor.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, will you continue?
A This statute was compiled by the armament industry in a one-sided manner. It did not come before me, nor did I sign it. The date appears to me to be peculiar, since Central Planning had been created at the end of march. And now on the 30th of October, we are faced with a statute; all this, of course, in 1942.
Q Witness, aren't you mistaken? Isn't it the 20th?
A Well, on one occasion it says "30". It says the 20th at the beginning, and then on one occasion, at the back it says the 30th. Perhaps it is supposed to be the 20th; probably it is a misprint.
Actually, what is correct is that the Central Planning Board had decided that it would not have any personnel of its own because, contrary to the General Plenipotentiary for Labor, the Central Planning Board did not represent any dependent department. For this reason, and following a suggestion of Speer's, we stated that every one of us would nominate a deputy. I, on my part, always detailed the respective chief of my planning department for this assignment. Speer too chose the chief of his planning department, and Koerner had one of his ministerial counsellors whom he detailed for that.
It is wrong, however, that the Central Planning Board had been created by the Fuehrer and the Reich Marshal for the purpose of the unified conduct of the armament and war economy. It had expressly only been created for the distribution of raw materials. It is equally wrong that these representatives, these deputies, had any supervisory authorities regarding decisions, with the exception, of course, of supervising the distribution of raw materials.
I think that is probably the most important part of what it contains.
Q. Thank you; may be that is enough.
A. May be I might add that under point seven dealing with the assignments, one of the tasks which is mentioned is that of increasing production for the purpose of improving raw material supplies, and also for the purpose of necessary alterations of the distribution. This means a listing of the actual tasks, namely, supply with raw materials and the necessary changes in the distribution, with reference to the distribution. The improvement cf raw material supplies, which is mentioned hero, was not a matter for the Central Planning Board, but a matter for the Armament Ministry, which was responsible for coal and steel production. The Central Planning Board could not by any means, however, interfere in Speer's jurisdiction. Speer would not have tolerated it either.
Q. Witness, thank you. I am now going to another part of the Document Book 111-B of the Prosecution which was put to you, namely, R-124, the minutes of the first meeting of the Central Planning Board on the 27th of April, 1942. Your Honors, you will find this listed in the index in Book III-A, on the last page of the index; it is the fifth item from the bottom, page 21 and page 22.
MR. DENNEY: Pages 21 and 22 , your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: What did you say, Mr. Denney?
MR. DENNEY: Page 21, page 22, Document Book III-B.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, we are here concerned with the records of the first meeting of the Central Planning Board, in which the part of the Central Planning Board Duties are once more defined, and I would like you to make a statement as to whether these minutes are correct, and whether it conforms with the so-called statute which you have just read , or whether it is in contradiction thereof.
A. First of all I want to say in connection with this that I had never known that the Central Planning Board was mentioned within the four year plan; according to what I had known, it had nothing to do with the four year plan; Goering's authority for the formation of the Central Planning Board, because of the contact I might mention that (previously the four year plan 1815 (a) had distributed raw materials on a high level) it had not been transferred as part of the organization of the four year plan.
This was a matter, this was an institution created by Hitler who had by-passed the four year plan and it was only Speer's tactfulness which brought about this conference with Goering. Goering, of course, never once interferred in the question of distributing raw materials; he left that entirely to Hitler. He would only have landed in a controversy with Hitler if he had done so. Speer, on the other hand, did mention this during that meeting, namely, that the Central Planning Board had the task of leading, that is to say, it wasn't going to deal with the details of the plan since special institutions were in existence for that purpose everywhere. For instance, it wasn't going to distribute orders to iron or steel concerns, let's say iron; it is only going to be done for the entire steel industry, and that is how you must understand the statement contained on page 2, under Roman numeral II, and the letter "c" for Charlie. The industry producing iron will be unified in the Reich. This wasn't by any means instructions coming from the Central Planning Hoard; this was an order from the Armament Ministry. This is merely mentioned there, here, because I don't know who prepared these minutes, but probably a certain Mr. Steffler, but I don't know his name; I don't know that name. It might be the Minister's counsel, Hermann, whose name is mentioned here; he was coal representative at the time; that is the type of representatives which I have said we all had.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you ask the witness whether he was present at this meeting?
DR. BERGoLD: Yes, I shall ask him.
Q. Were you present -- at this meeting?
A. Yes.
Q. Witness, it is your opinion that even this first record of the Central Planning Board meeting is inexact and does not correspond with the true discussions which took place.
A. May I state quite basically in connection with this that I hardly ever had my deputy with me when I went to the meetings; no had a- lot of other assignments and these meetings went on for several hours.
Koerner's deputy, the representative whom he brought along, always kept the minutes in the sense of observing Koerner's meaning. Sometimes I did read through these brief minutes, and I might say that I pointed out to Koerner and Speer that facts always seemed altered considerably, but all three of us used to laugh about consider it, and with a flick of the wrist we used to it quite unimportant to have these minutes altered afterwards because all of these minutes appeared of no importance whatsoever. What was important were decisions of the Central Planning Board, and they were taken down most exactly, and they contained to my knowledge only contingencies of raw materials such as we had distributed in the proportion of two large forms on the left side the armament, on the right side the civilian consumers. By means of the four year plan, which was previously mentioned, the Armament Industry was to limit civilian consumers and that distribution of non-metal materials and non-ferreous metal, or building materials also came in this sphere. This was all assigned by us, and it was always our own signature which was affixed to it every three months because, generally speaking, they went out every three months, so that those brief minutes which are taken, some small official, ministry of counsel, or whatever the matter may be, would always see to it in the first place that the reputation of his shop wouldn't be damaged. Apart from that, these men were not informed about our real intentions and purposes.
Q. Witness, on this occasion we might touch upon the value or lack of value of the so-called verbal minutes, now that we have come to this subject, don't you think.
These verbal minutes, which are very comprehensive, very voluminous, even with reference to one meeting, the whole volume it seems. Were they examined?
A. No, that wasn't possible. I might have examined one or the other minutes at the beginning, and I did on one occasion try to make improvements, but I found that it contained so many mistakes that at the time of reading and improving them would have amounted to fifty per cent more time than the actual meeting. These meetings often went on four or more hours or so, and I really did not have the time to sit down for something like six hours afterwards in order to put this right. I know that there wasn't any one who 1817(a) read through them, and I didn't really know why these records, these verbatim records, were prepared.
I thought perhaps it was a question of supervision for us, and I had no cause to state I an not going to allow myself to be supervised. If you went to the pains of having one stenographer who would do nothing but write, but who was stumped by the fact that we sometimes spoke too quickly or not too clearly; that stenographer often sat far away from the man who was speaking, or the stenographer didn't know the name of the man who was speaking, and there was a lot of muddle in that respect. He didn't know whether the man who was sitting on the left was talking or his neighbor on the right, and one mistake after another occurred. I gave it up pretty quickly after looking through these minutes. I once asked the others whether they were reading the minutes through and they just laughed at mo, and said that they had more and better jobs on hand, and I said so have I.
Q. Witness, you have just said that these stenographers who sat on the side could quite often not even distinguish between the speaker, whether it was he or his neighbor. What was the custom; did you remain seated while you were speaking, or did one always rise?
A. No, no, we all stayed seated; we all remained seated and the stenographer couldn't always see who was speaking because on certain occasions a lot of people were there. If you invited one man to a meeting in Germany, then possibly he always brought his entire staff along so that he could answer all the questions; and if you invited one, sometimes fifteen or twenty shewed up. I sometimes asked whether these men didn't have anything else to do because we were not really concerned with details, only with the basic, larger points, and they used to say, well, everybody is invited.
Q. Witness, did it happen that specific orders were given to stenographers for them to alter certain points or omit them? So that apart from accidental mistakes, deliberate mistakes were being made?
A. I have recollections of many occasions that Speer, who used to sit next to me, would shout to the stenographer across the room and say "leave that out what the Field Marshal just said."
Unfortunately, this is notorious before this Tribunal the expressions and words I used, which were not always too carefully chosen. I always have said during my entire life what came to my mind at that moment, and I, as a soldier, was never taught to hide my opinion. But sometimes, in order to refreshen sometimes boring meetings, I used rather forceful language to shake up the others a bit so that they would at last come out with their true opinions, because many of the people were only there as experts on individual points, and had perhaps too much respect for us. Quite often ministers were there; even in Germany a minister and a Field Marshal have a fairly high ranking position; and the German is rather more inclined to show too much respect than too little. Now, if they found that I too would use strong expressions on one occasion, or another, then they would loosen up a bit and they would start talking, and they would feel then that I can let go too. I was keen to have clarity, and that the cat wouldn't always run around the hot porridge, because, after all, we had to know the truth and the real background.