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.
2018-A
Q That means that there were no separate minutes for these individual conferences, but they were parts of the general minutes?
A Yes, that is my recollection.
2018-B
Q Witness, I now pass on to the minutes, NOKW-346 of the 20th of March. There Saur tells you, "As far as Hungary is concerned, I should be greatful if the Field Marshall would call up Mr. Sauckel and tell him that the whole group mobilized in Hungary should be primarily at the disposal of the Jaegerstab. Large Schanz-Columns"--which means heavy labor companies, literally columns of ditch diggers-- "must be formed. The people have to be treated like the prisoners, criminal prisoners; otherwise they will not work." The witness Vorwald has already testified in this regard, but I ask you to give the Tribunal an answer yourself with regard to the question whether you granted this demand and whether you took steps with Sauckel.
A. At this day, Saur had summoned the German Engineers Association and the German Association of Electricians. He had summoned them to attend this meeting in order to get support in a general way from these circles. And I assumed that he wanted to boast a little bit--as we call it--and he wanted to show that he was giving, issuing directives to me, the Field Marshal; that I had no idea of executing these demands, and I have not taken any steps and have not discussed the matter, neither with Sauckel nor with anybody else, because, after all, that was no task for me, in any way. I had nothing to do whatsoever with construction questions. That is sufficient.
Q. Witness, in this same meeting, Saur speaks of 54,000 Czechoslovakians. There were 17,000 for Czechoslovakia, itself; 31,000 for the Reich. Would you tell us, witness; do you know anything about those Czech workers?
A. No.
Q. I now pass to you NOKW 388. There, you see; and this is the conference of 28 March 1944. Here a certain Mr. Nobel is speaking, and he says that the labor assignment situation in the repair sector is unsatisfactory. Of the 2,000 people promised -- not one has yet arrived. And you answer: "Tell Schmelter that if I can help in any way by calling Sauckel, etc, he should let me know." Later on, Schmelter came and no further discussion was made with regard to that matter. But how did that occur? What kind of people were they? Were they German workers -these repair workers who are experts -- or what kind of workers were they?
A. I could not tell you that in detail, but I assume that there might have been some of each kind. I don't know where these workers came from or to come from, but, in itself, we had in our repair sectors more Germans than in the new construction because this work after all is much more difficult. It is much more difficult. It is much more difficult than to produce spare parts for a new plane. Repair factories which I knew had German staff. But, here again, I could not call Sauckel because I never called Sauckel over the telephone at all; but I had offered it here because at an earlier stage already it had been said that Speer's people had difficulties with Sauckel and that they never took the chance of calling Sauckel over the telephone any more.
Q. Now, in this conference there are other discussions concerning labor questions, and, more precisely, the question that Sauckel did not fulfill the demands in spite of the fact that he had reported very large figures. Could the same be said with regard to this as what you have said concerning the Central Planning Board?
A. Yes.
Q. You speak of taking the servants away from the housewives--that means 800,000 servants-
A. Germans...
Q. Yes; Germans. And here you have to fight for 2,000 men.
A. Yes.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Do you say those domestic servants were Germans?
DR. BERGOLD: Yes, in Germany there were much larger proportion of young girls in the households as far as I know than is the case in the United States. In Germany, every household of upper-middle class people had house servants. That amounts to an enormous figure--and they are always Germans.
THE WITNESS: May I say one thing? There were already also, a certain number of Ukrainians, but this figure is in addition to the 800,000 German workers. But I wanted to have workers from these Germans because other documents show that I always fought against the tendency which was in accordance with Hitler's orders, according to which German women were not to be used as laborers, as far as possible.
2021 -A Hitler quoted biological reasons for that tendency but I didn't recognize these reasons because we were engaged in a battle for life or death of our nation, and, therefore, I considered it right that out of these German house servants our small figures should be covered.
Q. Witness, during the same conference you speak of a "robbing action" which had to be carried out because legal means could no longer be used... Would that mean that you were going to shanghai foreign workers--or how do you account for the words "robbing action?"
A. It should have been the contrary to the word "legal". That means we were willing to try to circumvene the German conscription, and towards other German authorities we wanted to violate these prescriptions. But we never succeeded in doing so, either, because, unfortunately, we were unable to do so.
Q. Witness, during the same conference, reference is made to the fact that you wanted to protect the fighter factories from having to surrender labor, and that, therefore, you wanted to write a letter to Keitel of the OKW, and a letter to Mr. Sauckel. Why did you propose that?
A. From the fighter factories, soldiers were continuing to be drafted into the German Wehrmacht. We only heard of that later on, after the fact. And, therefore, I tried to succeed, in obtaining that the drafting from the fighter factories was to be informed first of all--was to be told us in the fighter staff, in order to enable us to raise a protest. And, therefore, the name Keitel OKW and Sauckel, of course, had to know that, because he, after all, was supposed to send reserves and replacements into these factories. But the old method was used; the Armed Forces only notified the factories of the drafting, and we didn't even hear of it at all. And we were suddenly quite astonished to see that the production was decreasing. And when we asked the factory then, they just told us: Well, they have drafted so-and-so many soldiers from our factory. We have lost again so-and-so 2022-A many of our skilled workers.
Q. That is sufficient, witness. In the document NOKW 365, a certain Mr. Lange says: Schmelter's man complains especially that they have now no chance to make severe demands on Sauckel which would be carried out. Saur then asked you that it would be best if you, yourself, went to Sauckel as the man in charge of labor recruitment, and you said 2022-B to him," I shall tell him that the 10,000 red tickets have not been covered."
Did you actually ask Sauckel or tell Sauckel?
A. No, I did not tell him. After the meeting I told the man that he should do so himself because Saur's demands, after all, went much further. And I answered that I only wanted to tell him something about the red tickets, but, after all, that was not a question I had to deal with.
Q. Witness -
A. Furthermore, I want to say that might have meant, also, I would tell him. That means, if I were in your place I would--and not "I will." This kind of mistake happens very often on every page of the minutes because I never had the intention to speak with Sauckel, myself because, after all, that would have served no purpose whatsoever. And especially, if there were no witnesses while I talked with him.
Q. Witness, I now pass to NOKW 334. This document deals with the assignment of French forces -- we already talked of that matter; but it deals also with the assignment of prisoners of war -- near Braunschweig, and there you say the famous sentence: "I also think it is a very good thing that POW's should be sent there if Braunschweig is always attacked." What does this sentence mean?
A. In this conference there was a representative of the high command of the Luftwaffe. Before the meeting I had succeeded--and this was quite some work for me--in obtaining that we would get a barracks for our workers on airfields which, according to my statements, was about 15 kilometers or 20 kilometers out of Braunschweig. And in these barracks there were the fighters. Home fighters were placed in these barracks. When, finally, I succeeded in getting the barracks for ourselves, the home authorities who were in charge of these fighters made difficulties. I had received my permission from the General Staff but the Air Fleet, the Home Air Fleet, said, No; and the representative had declared that the fighters should remain there, and had to remain there. I said, I have to get that factory; I need it for the purposes of the fighter staff.
And on that they said, already in one of the preliminary conferences: "What do you want there at all? After all, the factory won't be standing very long anyhow. It is much better if you shift the workers and the production somewhere else right away."
But we had no place anywhere else. Then I said, "Even if the attacks are there, it is much better if these people get there and are sent there because in this factory they are mainly old people and women, and if we send young people there, they can also help when the plances are around, when it's burning, and they can also have the clearing work," because the women were not very good for that kind of work and also the old men couldn't give much help. But the danger was not great there. It's quite obvious exactly from the fact that the Air Fleet Reichs, the Home Air Fleet, had sent home fighters there. The factories at Braunschweig were in the city, right near the city, and these places which were far out were not attacked. But if they should have been attacked, then these people could have helped.
I wanted to bring forward the argument and refute the argument of the Home Air Fleet which was trying to get these barracks away from us.
Q. Thank you. Witness, I now pass on to NOKW-389, which is the conference of the 2nd of May. There an incident in the earlier work is referred to, during which POW's had started a large-scale mutiny. Did you have any knowledge of this mutiny?
A. Yes, I had received a so-called special report on that matter before the conference, that is - and the whole matter was so unique and so different from anything that had happened before that I hardly believed the contents. I did not really believe the contents and I wanted to wait on what the definite report would be.
Q. Witness, Kammler said on that occasion that he had thirty people hanged in special treatment. Was the fighter staff in any way connected with that matter, or in what capacity had Kammler hanged these people?
A. There was no connection whatsoever with the fighter staff anyway, but I assume that it was some occurrence in the framework of the SS at some time. I don't know Kammler very well, but it might even have been just a tale he gave us in order to influence the others - in order to boast. I couldn't tell what it was.
Q. Witness, I now pass to Document LO-390. This is the matter with the Italians, and there also we have a connection with the Document NOKW 442.