Q. Witness, I shall come now to your speech of 25 March 1944, which has been repeatedly mentioned here. Document NOKW 017, Exhibit 54. It is your speech to the Chief Engineers of the Luftwaffe and the Chief Quartermasters. It says here at one point that for the construction a few hundred thousand laborers were being used who were withdrawn from other places. By that don't you mean these 100,000 Jews we just mentioned?
A. No, under no circumstances, but at that time from many other constructions which were already operating workers had been transferred here for those purposes.
Q. Witness-
A. May I add to that this: I could not possibly imagine why Jews would be used as construction workers. Therefore, I am sure that it would be strictly untrue. Jews are not known as carpenters and bricklayers. They are mostly people who work in offices. I don't believe that one could possibly expect construction work from them. I myself as a man who has never done that kind of work, I don't believe that I would qualify for this type of work.
Q. Witness, explain to us now the purpose of this speech of yours, which uses rather strong words.
A. During the strong air raids we had, many material stocks, mainly of parts, had been lost -- through those air raids, that is. The new output of these parts could not possibly keep pace with the destruction. There was only one way left, namely, to take these parts from troop stocks. The troops had large stocks which the GL himself had no power of disposal over whatsoever. He just gave the orders for the manufacture of them. The requests of the troops in my opinion were always too high. Four point two billions worth of parts were being ordered at that time. That goes to show you clearly my part. If we wanted to have these planes which were half ready in time, then it was possible only if the troops would give us small single parts. Prior to this conference many tests to that effect had been made.
We had tried several times. However, the Quartermaster general on the basis of the vote of 2004 a his Chief Quartermasters and Chief Engineers, had refused my wishes; in other words, he had not complied with them.
I was very indignant about that. Saur came to see me and stressed once more that the output of planes or their completion was impossible. He thought that the army would have taken care of this long ago. However, in the Luftwaffe there does not seem to be a definite power of giving orders, and he would have certain discussions with reference to this matter with the higherups. That, for the second time, annoyed me, and when this conference took place immediately after these things, I used very strong words. I was harsh with the purpose of seeing to it that the Quartermastergeneral with his staff would give me the parts that were needed. That was the purpose and the aim of the whole thing and in contradiction with what I mentioned before -- namely that they had refused me these parts, the harsh military speech I held there was crowned with success.
Q. Witness, in this speech there are certain passage which in themselves have nothing to do with those aims you just mentioned. I would like to show you these passages. At one spot you come to the question concerning human beings, and you say that the part of the Luftwaffe with reference to labor assignments had been assigning foreigners, that the foreigners were running away and not keeping their contracts, and that if a foreman reprimands or beats one of these young laborers who is doing sabotage, he, the foreman, gets into trouble, and that the international right could not be used here and that you would see to it yourself that the prisoners, with the exception of the Americans and British, would be removed from the power of the military organization and then, with inference to a man who does sabotage, that he ought to be hanged in his own factory or workshop. What does that have to do with these aims that you mentioned?
A. As far as the prisoners of war were concerned, as far as they were working with the Luftwaffe itself, the Quartermaster general and the Chief Quartermaster had something to with it.
This was to be a threat to that department namely, that certain rights would be withdrawn from their jurisdiction. Of course, I could not do that. I don't believe.
2005a that Goering would have complied or followed this suggestion of mine if I had made one.
I have no excuse whatsoever for these words which I used, although I did have excuses for other passages. Now I have had the time to read this passage in peace, and I could not understand myself. I can only repeat that I myself was in a complete desperate position. I could see what was coming, and I could no longer help my people. At that time -- I do not wish to say this as an excuse, but just in order to explain something -- I was under the impression of my accident that I could not quite heal my concussion, because at that time I could not possibly leave my office for one minute. I knew that, therefore, my doctor was worried about me, and he tried to help me with all sorts of drugs and medicines.
Q. Witness, a number of witnesses who were here have stated that very often you used such expressions of indignation, that you had outbursts of rage. At that time when you made that statement, did you have the sincere wish to get through with these measures?
A. No; I can say that with a good consciance. Never, never in my life did I do such a thing, and I believe that he who really knows me knows exactly that, on the contrary, I was different. However, at that time I simply had to use strong words, and could not use strong words on the people I wanted to use them on. That you could not do because of the discipline which you have in an army. I also have to say that immediately after such a discussion I myself did no longer know what I had said during one of those outbursts of rage. Even today I could not say for sure that I said that. However, I cannot deny it.
Q. Witness, did you at that time use such wild expressions with reference to these Luftwaffe gentlemen, and did you threaten them as well?
A. Yes, I did. I read right now that I did so. I am very sorry even today that I used such strong words against my comrads.
Q. Later on you heard a different passage to the effect that the people who acted as if they were sick ought to be sent to work or whipped 2006a to work and that the whip should be used as a medicine.
That is a similar statement?
A. That was just silly talk, so to speak, and I also used strong words on myself and called myself an idiot once in a while.
Q. Did you ever issue orders to send people to work with the whip?
A. Never, and I am sure that I myself would have intervened in such a case.
Q. Did you ever have anybody hanged because of sabotage at any time?
A. No. Number 1, I did not do it. Number 2, I could not do it. I never had anybody punished for sabotage in any way because that was not within my field of tasks, not even in these single instances where actual sabotage had taken place.
Q. Witness, weren't you afraid, however, that such words that you used before this circle of men, that those people would actually act according to your words?
A. In this circle there was nobody who could possibly have the power to carry out my statements, and secondly, I believe that everybody knew me, because my friends already at that time had told me that I had lost my control over myself, and that it was very good that quite a few people did not take me seriously, for hardly anybody took me serious ly. Then I also promised myself that I would not burst into rage again. However, at that time I did not have full control over myself because the situation was becoming more serious everyday now, and also the knowledge that all this could have been avoided, it would never have been necessary to wage a war, and if so that the war could have been terminated long ago, and that apart from all this that if nothing else the destruction of - Germany could have been avoided. That the thought did not leave me alone day or night, and that actually contributed to these explosions. When everything was over, from that day I became more quiet.
Q. Witness, those people you spoke to were soldiers, right?
A. Yes.
Q. Those soldiers, according to your knowledge, could they possibly have been led to carry out these orders which were against the international law?
A. No, never. What they thought and said show that. They were right, that people thought I was crazy during such outbursts. I myself was in no position to judge that, however.
Q. Witness, however, a certain number of measures in contradiction to international rights were carried out in Germany. Did you know anything about that, couldn't you have thought then that "maybe I am also causing such measures against international right?"
A. No, I did not know that, with the very few exceptions that were discussed here. However, I never brought them into direct connection with myself, and there was no connection whatsoever at any time.
Q. That is sufficient, Witness. Witness, I shall come now to the Fuehrer conferences which have been submitted in this book, that is Exhibit No. 48.D, from document No. R-124. At one point it says, namely at the conference of the 6th and 7th of April, 1944, that the Fuehrer demands the transfer or does not think the transfer of French workers into Alsace possible, and you will remember that during Jaegerstab sessions you had proposed that these French laborers be put into barracks. Would you make a statement to that?
A. May I ask you for the date of that conference?
Q. Just a moment, it was on the 6th and 7th of April, 1944.
A. The question was that an engine factory from near Munich which had been bombed out there was to be transferred to the tunnel in Markirch. Markirch, as far as I knew, is between Baden and Alsace, but never on Alsace territory. The workers who were to be assigned there, as far as I knew, were Russians, and these in charge of them were Frenchmen. Now, according to what I knew Hitler was to have given an order that Frenchmen could not be used in Alsace. These two hundred Frenchmen, however, had already worked together with the Russians for a long time, and they knew them therefore, and they know their whole sphere of tasks. In other words, it was useless to put those workers there without their supervision, or rather their technical supervision. I tried, by making use of my words, to bypass Hitler's orders somehow. I know, however, that there were a few people in this conference who, with reference to my contradicting Hitler's order, would have reported that to Hitler immediately.
In other words, I had to be very careful of the words I chose. My only aim at that time was to help this industry factory, to the effect that it could resume its manufacture, and that was only possible with the French supervisory forces. All those words with reference to putting them in barracks, etc., were only to induce Hitler to cease his resistance, that they were not to be put in barracks practically speaking, and that it was intended either there can be seen from the local conditions there. I hope thus to be able to get Hitler's permission.
Q. You also proposed that these people not be damaged somehow, or that they should be compensated by additional bonuses, and to put this on a friendly basis?
A. As far as I know these two hundred people were people of high quality. In other words, there were masters or controllers or engineers, foremen. They had come voluntarily, and even at that time they were entirely on our side, and I myself was far from mistreating these people, but all we would have to do was arrange with them how to do or take care of the whole thing in such a manner that Hitler would not interfere.
Q. Witness, Thinks. That is sufficient. Witness, then I have the Hitler conference of the third to the fifth of June, 1944 I wish to discuss here. It is also document R-124 Exhibit 48-D. First of all a different question, during those Fuehrer conferences, were you always present there?
A. Those are the Speer records?
Q. Yes.
A. No. During all those years of war I have seen Hitler nine times altogether during which time Speer was there, and Speer was there once, a week. May I ask you again for the date?
Q. That was the third to the fifth of June, 1944.
DR. BERGOLD: That is on Page 82, your Honors.
A. A. I was not at Hitler's at all then.
Q. Witness, did Speer show you or give you the full contents of the records which he had drawn up himself?
A. No, he only gave me an extract then when the extract was of importance for the G.L., but that happened very seldom.
Q. Witness, during this conference in which you were not present, Speer on Cipher 22 pointed Hitler's attention to the fact that each month from the entire economy thirty to forty thousand workers or prisoners of war escaped and have been caught again by the police and were recaptured, then that these people were then put to work in the interests as concentration camp prisoners. Did he ever speak to you about this matter, namely that these escapees were recaptured by the police and then used as concentration camp prisoners?
A. No, I did not know of that and I an most surprised at the great amount, of the large figures that can be seen. We never heard such figures.
Q. Witness, I shall come then to the two last records of the Control Planning Board which the Prosecution has introduced, namely the 55th and the 56th meetings, the board meetings. The question is of the iron quotas and the others of the construction plans or projects. You said at one point, namely during the first conference, the 55th conference, the G.B. construction, 100,000 tons are allotted to them. Was that for the Jaegerstab?
A. No, I take it for all its construction plans or projects, because this 55th meeting came before the 55th, and in the 56th meeting the construction quotas are discussed again. However, the steel question had already been taken care of before.
Then the entire quota, that was the entire quota that they received for a whole year.
Q. Then there is also the question that the planning office is given power to build up a forrous reserve for repairs of steel, and to give 30,000 tons to the Jaegerstab. Those 30,000 tons, were these meant for construction purposes or what were they meant for?
A. No, that could not be for construction, because as you said yourself, the question was of iron weights. I remember, however, this conference. The question was that Speer had a special quota for his navy armament, a special quota of stool, and the same applied to the Luftwaffe, for the G.L. Sauer then demanded that he was not to go the round about way of asking for the whole supply over the G.L. in order to be able to receive steel, but he wanted to have a certain amount over which he could have the power of disposal, which he could distribute at a given moment, and that could be understood. The G.L. did not have the steel at its disposal. After all, we did not have such great amounts of steel. Just like Sauer, he needed them. Therefore, we went to see the Central Planning Board as representatives of the Luftwaffe, and we asked for this quota.
Q. That's sufficient, witness. Now, as we have discussed the last documents of the Central Planning Board, I already mentioned the other thing before, about the 55 million construction quotas. I would like to ask you, in conclusion, to say how many sessions, according to your opinion, of the Central planning Board had anything to do with the labor question? There were 60 meetings altogether.
A. According to the record, as I was able to see at the trials, from the 60 meetings 11 of them discussed the labor question. Nine out of those 11 meetings, exclusively, discussed the increase of coke production, in order to produce more steel. The 10th meeting back here also discussed or touched that point, however, discussed the labor question more explicitly, that is the 53rd meeting, during which we finally wanted Sauckel's representative to speak. Then the 54th meeting, in which only Sauckel discussed, namely, only laborers, at a special report of Sauckel's for justification was with one single aim. Sauckel at last has to confess that he could not bring those laborers or workers promised. And I don't believe I have to mention all the rest because I mentioned that before, on Friday. We wanted to know the reason for not preparing Hitler's requests, and we continued to make them obvious.
Q. Witness, after the Central planning Board had something to do with the labor question, don't you think that many meetings concerned would have probably taken place then?
A. I believe that then daily meetings would have been necessary for such a task, and if, for instance, the Jaegerstab had daily meetings for its production, and that the number of workers who were discussed at all these meetings with the exception of all those statistical discussions of the 54th meeting, was only a fraction, generally speaking, of all labor figures, namely, only what we needed, in order to reach steel production through coal production. All the questions concerning armament there were not discussed. There were greater questions of greater importance on special fields, for instance, than this question.
If you ask me now what it was all about, I'd say now that the question was of 30 million workers 2013 a who were employed here in Germany, than, oh, the number was probably a hundred thousand workers, if it is ever discussed.
And, frorm these proportions of figures you can see very clearly that in the Central Planning Board, generally speaking, they did not discuss labor assignment questions.
Q. Thank you, witness, Now, witness, I shall come to these single records of the Jaegerstab meetings. First of all, to NOKW-337, all the documents which I mentioned before are part of Exhibit 75. This document I have just mentioned now refers to the session of the 6th March 1944, which is on page 133, Your Honors.
They are speaking here, witness, of construction companies, namely, three construction companies of the Luftwaffe. What was to happen with these construction companies?
A. At the time being I cannot tell you by heart. All I know is that construction companies of the Luftwaffe were German soldiers, of all the age groups.
Q. You speak later on of three construction companies; that you could possibly make ten out of three construction companies if you could possibly bring in 70 percent of foreign laborers. What do you mean by these foreign laborers or foreign people?
A. I take it that they are civilians and not soldiers. They are just transfers for the construction industry before the Jaegerstab had taken place. In other words, repair work was being done to buildings destroyed by bombing. At the time, as far as I can remember, approximately one million of construction workers - German construction workers - were here.
Q. In other words, you mean German workers who were called?
A. Yes. At that time there was a certain change in that field for the benefit of the Jaegerstab. With Stoppeldettnetzen, for instance. We had arranged it with him.
Q. Witness, during the same meeting they spoke of these famous 64 miners. Can you tell anything to this Tribunal about it?
A. Miners are people who are to build tunnels, and these people were being occupied with the Fuehrer Construction Works in Berchtesgaden. They were Germans because foreigners were not allowed to work in Berchtesgaden. I applied for it that these laborers be put at our disposal because I thought it important to be able to build out the caves which we already had at the time with the help of these men. This had been ordered and I thought it rather useful that these people were there instead of working in Berchtesgaden. I could not imagine anything, inasfar as air raid shelters were concerned, for Berchtesgaden, that is, there were hundreds, rather thousands of different points that were in danger. That was refused by Hitler personally, and he proposed we should have 10,000 people trained as miners with the SS, namely Germans. I thought the whole thing was said in order to put me in a ridiculous position. After all, where were we to get 10,000 people who were free for that kind of work, and, apart from that, what were we to do with 10,000 miners? After all, we did not want to go from pole to pole for grinding a hole right through the earth. That is all I know about these 64 miners. I wanted to show with my statement that the orders were always given, indeed. However, if one asked for help which one did not have, for execution of these orders, then one was laughed at.
Q. Witness, these miners - were they Germans or concentration camp inmates, or were they foreign laborers?
A. I must repeat that they could only be Germans. Namely, because foreigners were not allowed to work in Berchtesgaden in the first place, and in the second place, I don't believe that our policemen would have been so stupid as to give these concentration camp inmates high explosives into their hands, because high explosives are of great importance for the miners, that is where the name is derived from; that is the chief tool for a miner, and high explosives cannot be supervised in such a way that one or the other takes along a little bit, and if he does, nobody could find out.
Q. Witness, at one point you say that you would ask the SS to send you more miners from Italy and Czechoslovakia. Were those foreigners?
A. No. These people were people from the Waffen SS. They were building there for the German army in Italy. There they were building certain forts, defense positions and shelters. I had been told that they were there. I hadn't seen them myself and no one came from there, but that's just like it used to be in all similar cases. It was just a proposal which we made, because, somehow, we wanted to carry out the orders given us.
Q. Thank you. Witness, do you know that the SS had a miners' school or a school for miners, which was training some personnel?
A. Yes, I understood that during that conference with Hitler and, if I remember correctly, Hitler reproached the Wehrmacht, that they did not have these miners. However, in reality it was nothing else but a pioneer's school. And all other Wehrmacht branches also had such pioneer schools.
Q. Only members of the SS were used there?
A. Yes, it was just a purely military school.
Q. Witness, in that session Saur proposes one thing, namely, to turn over to Stalags, these prisoners of war of the SS in order to get a stronger hold on the Italians. Did the Jaegerstab do anything in that respect?
A. No. I may stress here the point that the Jaegerstab itself, by itself, could do nothing whatsoever. The Jaegerstab itself could not even apply for a typist. If the Jaegerstab needed a typist, it had to apply for a girl at the R.L.M. or at the Speer ministry.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will recess until 1:30.
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is in recess until 1330 this afternoon.
AFTERNOON SESSION "The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 17 March 1947."
THE MARSHAL: All persons in the courtroom will please take their seats.
Tribunal Number 2 is again in session.
ERHARD MILCH-Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, in Document NOKW-337, which we just submitted and in which we have talked of the miners, there is a passage--excuse me--no, that is a mistake.
In the Document NOKW-338, which again is Exhibit 75 I now come to the Jaegerstab conference of March 17. In this document reference is made to concentration camp inmates, and it is a conversation between Saur and Stobbe Detleffsen. For instance, Stobbe-Detleffsen says, "Requests are made to me for German labor," and it is said here, "You have five thousand concentration camp inmates; give me a thousand German workers." did you have any knowledge of the fact that such barter business between concentration camp inmates and German workers was carried out?
A No.
Q Can you remember at all that this matter had been discussed in the Jaegerstab?
A No, I have no memory of that because this was not in my field of task.
Q Is it correct that these Jaegerstab conferences were very often dissolved into individual conferences?
A Yes, very often.
Q How did that occur? Would you please explain it to us in detail how this came about in a general way?
A During the first conferences, these took place in the Reich Air Ministry. Later on when daily attacks--when attacks during the day accumulated also on Berlin, Saur suggested that the conferences be moved to Tempelhof 2017- A because there was a big air raid shelter.
The Reich Air Ministry had no air raid shelter. That was the location.
In Tempelhof I almost never took part in the conferences. That was only very exceptional. Otherwise, during the first period they were in our medium hall, conference hall, and the gentlemen who were then ordered to come to these meetings; for instance, I ordered them, I summoned the gentlemen from the Air Ministry who were to take part, where as Saur summoned those for the Speer Ministry. These gentlemen held a common conference in which in general, though only production questions were dealt with, which after all now were already discussed in the Jaegerstab and had been shifted over to the Speer Ministry, if now, for instance the question--what factory is to be moved into what subterranean construction,--this question now was being dealt with, then it was not discussed with all but only at another instance the gentlemen who were concerned with this question. All these larger planning questions for mass production were discussed in such individual conferences.
THE PRESIDENT: Witness, will you tell us please with what Ministry Stobbe-Detleffsen was connected?
THE WITNESS: He came from the Speer Ministry. There he had a division for constructions.
Q Witness, but if these minutes are a continuous report and if they were individual questions, were these minutes collected as general minutes or how did this occur?
A Either the reporters came along to these individual conferences entered these conferences also in the minutes of the meeting, or else it simply entered into the minutes because there only was one report for every meeting, even if the meeting took place in several locations.
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