"There comes the murderbox again." After the arrival of the vehicle, the citizens of Hadamar watch the smoke rise out of the chimney and are tortured with the ever-present thought of the miserable victims, especially when repulsive odors annoy them, depending on the direction of the wind.
"The effect of the principles at work here are: Children call each other names and say, "You're crazy; you'll be sent to the baking even in Hadamar." Those who do not want to marry, or find no opportunity, say, "Marry, never'. Bring children into the world so they can be put into the bottling machine!" You hear old folks say, "Don't send me to a state hospital! After the feeble-minded have been finished off, the next useless caters whose turn will come are the old people."
"All God-fearing men consider this destruction of helpless beings as crass injustice. And if anybody says that Germany cannot win the war, if there is yet a just God, these expressions are not the result of a lack of love of fatherland but of a deep concern for our people. The population cannot grasp that systematic actions are carried out which in accordance with Par. 211 of the German criminal code are punishable with death'. High authority as a moral concept has suffered a severe shock as a result of these happenings. The official notice that N.N. had died of a contagious disease and for that reason his body had to be burned, no longer finds credence, and such official notices which are no longer believed have further undermined the ethical value of the concept of authority.
"Officials of the Secret State Police, it is said, are trying to suppress discussion of the Hadamar occurrences by means of severe threats. In the interest of public peace, this may be well intended. But the knowledge and the conviction will be increased with the bitter realization that discussion is prohibited with threats but that the actions themselves are not prosecuted under penal law."
This case is concerned with the euthanasia program because thousands of prisoners of all nationalities were transported from the concentration camps to euthanasia stations and murdered there. It is also true that camp doctors systematically killed inmates who were no longer able to work under the pretense that they were insane. These killings were usually accomplished by injections of phenol or gasoline. The executions were carried out under the code name "14 f 13" which apparently was derived from a file number in Amtsgruppe D of the WVHA. That office played an essential role in the operation of the program.
Thus, on 10 December 1941, the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps sent a letter to the camps of Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Neuengamme, and Niederhagen advising them that the Doctors' Commission would visit the concentration camps in the near future to select prisoners for "special treatment 14 f 13" and enclosing the usual form of questionnaire used in the euthanasia program. The camp doctors were directed to complete questionnaires on eligible prisoners in order to shorten the work of the Doctors' Commission. Exactly five days later, the camp doctors at Cross-Rosen had selected 293 inmates as eligible for screening by the Doctors' Commission. These unfortunate people were carefully listed under such headings as "Poles or Czechs in Protective Custody", "Shirkers", "Jews in Protective Custody", "Jews who were Habitual Criminals", "Jews who were shirkers" , "Jews Who Defiled the Race". A Jew who defiled the race was one who had married or had sexual intercourse with an Aryan.
This list was sent to the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, which in turn wrote Gross-Rosen to expect a Dr. Mennecke on the 16th of January 1942 who would make the final selection. Dr. Mennecke was one of the so-called experts in the euthanasia program who was commissioned to visit concentration camps. He was recently tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by a German court for his part in the program. He was brought to Nurnberg and testified for the Prosecution in the case against Karl Brandt et. al. Of the 293 inmates listed as eligible by the camp management at Gross-Rosen, 214 were selected for extermination by Dr. Mennecke and no less than 51 of those were of Polish or Czech nationality. A further substantial number were Jews of non-German nationality. Our proof will show that 127 of those prisoners were sent to the Bernburg euthanasia station and exterminated, 36 died before the transport left Gross-Rosen, and of the remainder, 42 were not transported because as a result of a thirty-day rest, they were again able to work.
This speedy recovery of the 42 inmates selected for extermination brought forth a reprimand from the WVHA. On 26 March 1942, Liebehenschel, Chief of Amt D I wrote to the camp commanders as follows:
THE PRESIDENT: Let me interrupt you Mr. Hart. Will you mark the spot please, and we will resume after the customary recess.
THE MARSHAL: This Tribunal is in recess for fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken.)
"Through the report of a camp commander it became known, that 42 of the 51 inmates selected for special treatment 14 f 13 became 'fit to work again' after some time which made their transfer for special treatment unnecessary. This shows that the selection of these inmates is not being effected in compliance with the rules laid down. Only those inmates who correspond to the conditions laid down and, this is the most important thing, who are no longer fit to work, are brought before the examining commission.
"In order to enable the concentration camps to carry out the tasks they are set, every inmates fit to work is to be put at the disposal of the camp. The camp commanders of the concentration camps are asked to give their special attention to this matter."
It is thus apparent that the euthanasia program had as its main purpose the execution of those no longer able to work. However, it was also used as a means for the extermination of Jews. This is clearly shown in the method of selecting Jews. The physical examination of Aryan inmates was certainly no more than perfunctory, but as to Jewish inmates there was no examination whatever. In November 1941, Dr. Mennecke wrote to his wife concerning the euthanasia examinations in Buchenwald as follows:
"As a second portion a total of 1200 Jews followed, all of whom do not need to be 'examined', but where it is sufficient to take the reasons for their arrest from the files (often very voluminous!) and to transfer them to the reports. Therefore, it is merely a theoretical work......."
The reasons for arrest which were considered as sufficient to justify exterminating Jews are also illuminating. We will present to the Tribunal a series of pictures of 63 Jews who were selected in Buchenwald. Dr. Mennecke wrote the reasons for arrest on the back of each of these pictures. One Jewess was noted as having a "Derogatory attitude toward the Reich; Continuous race defilement by keeping her Jewish descent a secret and rendering the Hitler salutes" Another had made "Incredibly impudent and spiteful remarks toward Germans. On the train made acquaintance of soldiers coming from the front, introduced herself as Jewess, gave them bread for coffee and cocoa, then insulted the soldiers in the meanest possible way." A third was said to be an "Anti-German Eastern Jew Agitator. In the camp: lazy, impudent, recalcitrant."
This murderous program continued long after the WVHA had assumed jurisdiction over the concentration camps.
From the middle of 1943 the selections were supposed to be limited to insane inmates unable to work. On 27 April 1943. Gluecks, Chief of Amtsgruppe D, sent the following order to the concentration camps:
"The Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police upon demonstration has decreed that in the future only insane prisoners can be selected for the notion 14 f 13 by the medical commissions appointed for this purpose.
All other prisoners unfit for work (persons suffering from tuberculosis, bedridden invalids, etc.) are absolutely to be excluded from this action. Bedridden prisoners are to be given suitable work, which can also be done in bed."
The Prosecution will present evidence on the operation of the euthanasia program in the Buchenwald, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, and Natzweiler concentration camps. These invalid transports were a thing of terror to all inmates as they were frequently used by the camp management as a means of disposing of prisoners considered to be undesirable. It appears that the extermination stations of Bernburg and Hartheim were the principal centers for killing prisoners. Frank Ziereiss, former commander of Mauthausen, estimated that at least 20,000 prisoners were executed at Hartheim over a period of one and half years.
The criminality of the euthanasia program as it operated in the Third Reich presents no novel question of law. The International Military Tribunal found that it involved the commission of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity and I quote from the Judgment, pp. 16916-17 of the English transcript:
"Reference should also be made to the policy which was in existence in Germany by the summer of 1940, under which all aged, insane, and incurable people, "useless eaters', were transferred to special institutions where they were killed, and their relatives informed that they had died from natural causes. The victims were not confined to German citizens, but included foreign laborers, who were no longer able to work, and were therefore useless to the German war machine. It has been estimated that at least some 275,OOO people were killed in this manner in nursing homes, hospitals and asylums, which were under the jurisdiction of the defendant Frick, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior. How many foreign workers were included in this total it has been quite impossible to determine."
A number of decisions of German courts since the end of the war have also held that the euthanasia program was in violation of the German penal law.
MR. HART: Mr. Robbins will continue with the opening statement.
MR. ROBBINS: Slave Labor.
A primary phase of National socialist policy which permeated every level of Party and Government, from the highest to the lowest, was that of enslaving peoples and exploiting their labors and energies. This policy of labor exploitation was emphasized in many of Hitler's speeches. His declaration on 9 November 1941 -- quoted in the judgment of the International Military Tribunal -- is typical. There he boasted that 250 million men lived in the territory which worked solely for Germany, and that the territory which worked indirectly for Germany contained 350 million men. "It is not doubtful," Hitler said, "that we shall succeed in harnessing the very Last man to our work." In Himmler's now infamous Posen speech on October 4th, 1943 the attitude of the SS toward Germany's slave laborers was strikingly related: and I quote:
"What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we shall take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Cultur; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests no only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, but it is clear, we Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these man animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with then." End of quote.
It was appropriate that the most unmerciful and satanic part of the slave labor program -- that carried out in the concentration camps --
THE PRESIDENT: I am obliged to say that the trouble is in one of the earphones, or in some connection with the earphones. The line is clear, and the transmission is clear, and part of the earphones are all right. Are you getting it over the line? Is it important enough that you hear now and you can get a copy of it later, all right? Well, you can hear the interpreter directly (discussion ensued with a German counsel). All right, between listening to the interpreter directly, and getting a copy of it afterwards. I think you are amply protected. Let's proceed.
MR. ROBBINS: Your Honor, if only a few can not hear, they might sit in those seats along here.
DR. SEIDL: Dr. Seidl for the defendant Pohl. Mr. President, the defendants are entitled to hear, but at least speaking for the defendant Pohl, and Dr. Seidl alone, I have no objection against this. Although the system is out of order, this at any time might be ready provided afterwards we are given a copy of at least a statement of the Prosecution. Now the question is, however, whether the Court would think it ethical in regard to the various rules that the defendants themselves will be informed later of the contents of the opening statement of the Prosecution by reading the speech later on. I am told the defendants are not in a position of listening to the translation of the speech, and under the circumstances I must leave it to the Court whether because of the shortcoming of the electrical transmission if the Court itself be justified to continue with the opening statement.
THE PRESIDENT: How many defendants are not able to hear? The defendants, I mean, not the counsel, but the defendants? You can hear or can not? How many defendant can not hear the translation? (Some of defendants raise their hands). It seems it is those on the one circuit, apparently that is the one difficult line. The Tribunal regards it as rather serious that half of them and their counsel can not hear what is being stated. That ceases to be a minor difficulty. I am advised by the technical staff it will take from twenty minutes to half-an-hour to remedy the situation.
Perhaps we had better let them repair it immediately.
MR. McHANEY: Might I suggest an adjournment now and reconvene at 12:30 or 1:00 o'clock instead of the customary 1:30.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, I think we will take a short recess and then reassemble. It may be they can remedy this more quickly the we think, and if so there won't be any confusion in the adjournment, and the cafeteria, will not be upset, and so forth. Just remain around and we will take a poll at 12:00 o'clock to see what shape we are in then.
(Emergency recess)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal No. 2 is again in session.
MR. ROBBINS: May it please the Tribunal. It was appropriate that the most unmerciful and satanic part of the slave labor program that carried out in the concentration camps -- should have been entrusted to Oswald Pohl and the members of the WHA. The various precursors of the WVHA, with the help of Pohl and others of the defendants, had proved their ability to exploit the inmates of concentration camps. As early as 1939 Himmler ordered that supervision over economic matters and use of inmate labor should be under Pohl, although administration of camps at that time was still under the Concentration Camp Inspectorate. In 1939, also, the defendant Mummenthey was made business manager of the DEST stone industry which was one of the most lethal employers of concentration camp inmates. In 1940 he argued vigorously, on the basis of his experience, that the DEST industry should remain an enterprise operated with inmate labor only. Volk, too, as well as others of of the defendants, had thoroughly mastered the economics of slave labor. By the time Pohl's group was reorganized in February 1942, they had developed a science of exhausting the last effort of these whose productive capacity was so pitifully small from malnutrition and mistreatment.
When the WVHA assumed complete jurisdiction over the concentration camps, Pohl wrote to Himmler explaining his plans for the utilization of inmate labor: quote:
"1) The war has brought about a marked change in the structure of the concentration camps and has changed their duties with regard to the employment of the prisoners. The custody of prisoners for the sole reasons of security, education, or prevention is no longer the main consideration. The mobilization of all prisoners who are fit for work, for purposes of the war now, and for purposes of construction in take forthcoming peace, come to the foreground more and more.
"2) From this knowledge some necessary measures result with the aim to transform the concentration camps into organizations more suitable for the economic tasks, whilst they were formerly merely politically interested.
"3) For this reason I have gathered together all the leaders of the former Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, all Camp-Commanders, and all managers and supervisors of work.
On the 23rd and 24th April 1942, I compiled in the order attached the main essentials which have to be brought into effect with the utmost urgency if the commencement of work for purposes of the armament industry is not to be delayed."
The order by Pohl referred to in the letter to Himmler, was addressed to all concentration camp commanders and work managers and contained the following provisions:
"The camp-commanders alone are responsible for the employment of the labor available. This employment must be, in the true meaning of the word, exhaustive, in order to obtain the greatest measure of performance.
"Work is allotted by the Chief of the Department D centrally and alone. The campcommanders themselves may not accept on their own initiative work offered by third parties and may not negotiate about it.
"There is no limit to working hours. Their duration depends on the kind of working establishments in the camps and the kind of work to be done. They are fixed by the camp-commanders alone.
"Any circumstances which may result in a shortening of work hours (e.g. meals, rollcalls) have therefore to be restricted to a minimum which cannot be condensed any further. It is forbidden to allow long walks to the place of working and noon intervals are only for eating purposes.
"Guard-duties have to be freed from their traditional rigidity and to be made more flexible having regard to the coming tasks of peace. Sentries on horseback, watchdogs, and movable obstacles are to be developed."
Every means, except humane treatment, was employed by the defendants to extract every effort to the last gasp of the workers before they died, as they did by the thousands, from overwork: "employment must be in the true sense of the word exhaustive," "there is no limit to working hours," "sentries on horseback and watchdogs are to be used." In the SS industries, in stone quarries, gravel pits, coal mines, underground armament plants, construction brigades, camp workshops, the laborers weltered in their bloody misery.
The labor economics of the defendants was not, however, designed simply to produce work, for, had it been, far more could have been achieved by decent treatment of the workers. But an equally important purpose of the SS, as a criminal organization, and of the WVHA, as an essential element of the SS, was the annihilation of so-called inferior peoples. Thousands were marked as "subhuman" and thereby slated for death for being Jews and Poles. But before they were to die they were to be driven, degraded, and damnified until death was a merciful delivery. Under the WVHA the typical concentration camp was not actually an extermination camp nor a labor camp, for either purpose could have been carried out quicker and much more efficiently. But they were the cruelest and most fiendish combination of both which could be devised by these defendants. Impossible physical exertion extracted under the whip of a mounted guard provided torture and ultimately death. This dichotomy in purpose of the slave labor program is also shown by the fact that senseless and useless labor, without any constructive purpose, was continuously carried out in the camps. Walls and even entire buildings were erected only to be torn down the following day, again to be re-built on the next. Prisoners were forced to carry huge rocks from one place to another, and on the following day to carry then back again. Contradictory purposes -- profit and production, on the one hand, and torture and murder, on the other, made the search for manpower one of the most important parts of the concentration camp labor program.
In the work details both inside and outside the concentration camps, every inmate was utilized -- political and criminal prisoners, the sick, the lame, those who had already been exhausted from overwork, clergymen, prisoners of war, women, and children.
As an illustration: the fact that one-third of the workers in the SS industries were sick was put forward by one of the WVHA officials as an objection to a proposed increase in the charges for concentration camp labor. A file memorandum of 24 April 1944, on this subject stated:
"The prisoners receiving a pay of RM 0.25 per working day are those who can only be employed on a very limited scale. They are all sick people engaged in the manufacturing of weaving and plaiting products in the plants of Auschwitz, Dachau, Neuengamme and Stutthoff. Consequently about 1/3 of the DAW workers are already excluded from a pay raise for prisoners in the sense of the letter received."
Priests of Polish and Lithuanian nationality were worked and used on all kinds of labor pursuant to an order of Himmler. However the order mercifully provided, that German, Dutch and Norwegian priests were to be employed only in gardening work. But, even gardening work in the concentration camps was deadly, and consisted primarily of carrying stone and earth. Workers were forced to carry tremendous loads, on the double, under the constant scrutiny of guards. Dogs were set upon those who fell behind. Many were shot while working; many others died from beatings and attacks by the dogs. Nevertheless, gardening was considered one of the better assignments.
Simply to obtain another source of slave labor, prisoners of war were placed in concentration camps upon the slightest pretext. An order of Mueller of 30 March 1943 provided that escaped Russian prisoners of war were to be sent to concentration camps if they stole bread at night while making their escape.
By 1944 no reason whatever was given in many cases, for transferring prisoners of war into the custody of the WVHA other than that workers were needed. As an example, Himmler sent the following telegram to SS-Gruppenfuehrer Fegelein on 6 August 1944:
"Find out what the Polish Officers still in the Prisoners of War Camp are doing. Have they been assigned to work or not? If not, I suggest that they be transferred to the concentration camps immediately and be assigned to work as prisoners."
Under the most inhumane conditions prisoners of war were used in munitions factories, coal mines, and stone quarries. On 30 September 1944, Himmler officially recognized the extensive use of Prisoners of war by the WVHA and ordered that their mobilization would be coordinated with Pohl and Berger in joint action with the then-existing labor mobilization offices.
The work of women and children was also a part of the labor program of the WVHA. On 6 January 1943, Himmler wrote to Pohl as follows:
"In operations against guerilla troops, men, women and children suspected of guerilla activities will be rounded up and shipped to the camps in Lublin or Auschwitz.
"The Higher SS and Police Chiefs will arrange the shipments with the Chief of the Security Police, the Chief of the SS-Main Economic and Administration Office and the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps. The Chief of the SS-Main Economic and Administrative Office, in agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and SD, suggest the establishment of collective camps for children and adolescents in Lublin. In these camps a racial and political examination will take place. Racially worthless adolescents, male and female, will be assigned as apprentices to the economic enterprises of the Concentration Camps.
"Children will have to be brought up. This will be done by teaching them obedience, diligency, unconditional subordination and honesty towards their German masters.
They will do sums to one hundred, learn to recognize traffic signs and be prepared for their special occupations as farm workers, locksmiths, stone-masons, joiners, etc. The girls will be trained as farm workers, weavers, spinners, knitters and for similar jobs."
Women were used in the most exacting labor, and even in the deadly construction commandoes, pursuant to Pohl's request. On 24 may 1944 Pohl sent the following telegram to Himmler:
"The first transportation of Jews from Hungary show that about 50% of the Jews who are fit to work are women. Since there is not sufficient adequate purely female work available for this large number of women, we must put them to work for OT construction projects. Your approval is requested. The OT agrees."
Himmler replied:
"Of course Jewish women are to be used for labor. In this case one has merely to provide a healthy diet. Here a diet with raw vegetables is important. Be sure to import garlic from Hungary in sufficient quantity.
The ever-present problem for the WVHA was to obtain replacements as fast as the inmates were killed or disabled in the work program. It is an almost unbelievable fact that workers were killed by overwork, mistreatment, and malnutrition at such a rate that it was impossible for the apprehension agencies to replenish the workers as fast as they died. Rudolf Hoess, Chief of Amt D I, has estimated that in the industries with particularly severe working conditions, as in the mines, 20% of the workers each month either died at their work or were sent back for extermination because of inability to work.
The dilemma became so acute that the Chief of the Security Police and SD made the following complaint to Pohl in December 1942:
"In answer to the letter addressed to the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police, a copy of which was sent to me by the Adjutant's Office of the Reichsfuehrer-SS I have to inform you that in the meantime measures have been taken to increase the total number of prisoners in the concentration camps.
"As soon as these measures are completed I shall give other instructions. But I should like, however, to point out in this connection that because of the great number of deaths in the concentration camps, it was impossible to increase the total number of prisoners, in spite of the increased numbers sent to them recently, and that with a constant or even increasing death rate, it is unlikely that an improvement can be effected even by sending an increased number of prisoners."
Similarly, in the same month, the medical office of the WVHA, Amt D III, complained in a letter to the camp doctors of all the concentration camps:
"In the enclosed a compilation of the current arrivals and departures in all the concentration camps is sent to you for your information. It discloses that out of 136,000 arrivals about 70,000 died. With such a high rate of death the number of the prisoners can never be brought up to the figure as has been ordered by the Reichsfuehrer-SS."
On 20 August 1942, the camp physician at Buchenwald made the following request in the interest of saving paper:
"It is requested to examine whether it is necessary to issue reports of the death of political Russians....as political Russians form the greatest number among the dead prisoners at the present time, more time and paper could be saved if these death reports were dropped."
One source of concentration camp inmates was the Reich Ministry of Justice. On 18 September 1942 Himmler and the Minister of Justice conferred at Himmler's field command post. A captured file memorandum by the Minister records that one of the items of agreement was that certain prisoners should be delivered by the Ministry of Justice to the SS to be worked to death. On this point, the memorandum reads:
"The delivery of anti-social elements from the execution of their sentence to the Reich Fuehrer of the SS to be worked to death. Persons under protective arrest, Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians, Poles with more than 3-year sentences, Czechs and Germans with more than 8-year sentences, according to the decision of the Reich Minister for Justice. First of all the worst antisocial elements amongst those just mentioned are to be handed over."
Shortly after this conference the Minister wrote to Reichsleiter Bermann:
"With a view to freeing the German people of Poles, Russians, Jews and Gypsies and with a view of making the Eastern territories which have been incorporated into the Reich available for settlements for German nationals, I intend to turn over criminal proceedings against Poles, Russians, Jews and Gypsies to the Reichsfuehrer SS. In so doing I base myself on the principle that the administration of Justice can only make a small contribution to the extermination of members of these peoples."
A report on the progress of this undertaking was made to Pohl by the Chief of the Security Police and SD on 21 Dec. 1942. The latter, in describing his efforts to increase the total number of inmates in the concentration camps, stated that 12,000 prisoners had been named by the Justice Ministry, that some had been transferred, and that subordinate agencies have orders to transfer an additional 35,000 prisoners. Correspondence during march and April 1943 between Pohl and Himmler shows that the SS was not failing in its task of working these prisoners to death. Pohl reported that the death rate of prisoners transferred from the Justice Ministry was an average of 30% per year and even higher in Mauthausen. Out of 10,191 such prisoners, Mauthausen received 7,587 and 3,306 had died by the first of the year.
Theoretically, the RSHA had jurisdiction over internment of inmates, length of sentence, and release from the camp.
In practice, however, the economic purposes of the WVHA prevailed ever the punitive objectives of the RSHA. Release of workers who were employed at socalled "important work locations" was first cleared with the WVHA. SS victimes were sent to the camps by the thousands without any regard for penal consideration and for no other purpose than increasing the number of slave laborers. So-called inferior races were herded into the camps by the thousands without any pretext of charges. As an example, Himmler wrote to Gluecks, in January 1942, as follows:
"As no more Russian prisoners of war are expected in the near future, I shall sent to the camps a large number of Jews and Jewesses who will be sent out of Germany. Make the necessary arrangements for the reception of 100,000 male Jews and up to 50,000 Jewesses into the concentration camps during the next 4 weeks. The concentration camps will have to deal with major economical problems and tasks in the next weeks. SS Gruppenfuehrer POHL will inform you of particulars."
In the summer of 1942, Russian workers were transferred to concentration camps in such numbers that the WVHA, with all of its bookkeeping facilities, was unable to keep a record, even by serial number, of their arrival or transfer. On 1 August 1942, the Chief of Amtsgruppe D sent the following order to the commanders of concentration camps:
"According to a communication from the Reich Security Main Office in the letter referred to above, the technical office of the Reich Security Office Main Office will register the transferred Soviet Russian civilian workers only in numbers. There will be no special treatment of each individual case.
"In order to save paper and labor I, therefore, direct that neither the arrival of such a prisoner nor his transfer into another camp is to be individually reported; moreover, no camp index cards are to be made out and sent to the Reich Security Main Office office IV C 2. Reports to this office are not to be made either."
It is obvious that the absence of individual records of the prisoners made administration of any penal policy impossible whether the end be reformation, deterrence or even incapacitation.
The International Military Tribunal correctly found that:
"Steps were continually taken, involving the use of the Security Police and SD and even the Waffen SS, to insure that the SS had an adequate supply of concentration camp labor for its projects."
The WVHA was intimately connected in a variety of ways with the cruelty, torture, and murders which particularly characterized the slave labor program in the building of armaments. Both Amtsgruppe C, in charge of construction, and Amtsgruppe W, in charge of the SS industries, were engaged in the actual construction of armaments, and each had its own munitions program, using inmate labor supplied by Amtsgruppe D, on a gigantic scale. In addition, the WVHA supplied thousands of workers to private industries engaged in the manufacturing of armaments. Finally, the WVHA worked in close cooperation with the highest Reich officials in the armament program - Goering, Speer, Sauckel, Sauer, and Waegler. I shall briefly refer to each of these phases of armament construction.
Amtsgruppe C, under Kammler and his deputies, Eirenschmalz, Kiefer, and Busching, not only constructed plants for other agencies on a gigantic scale but in addition Kammler was given over-all authority for producing V-1 and V-2 weapons at Concentration Camp Nordhausen-Dora. The giant munitions plant was constructed underground to escape allied bombings and was located on the outskirts of Nordhausen, 125 miles southwest of Berlin. Approximately 80,000 slave laborers were used at Dora and they were forced to work, eat, and sleep in the dankness of the subterranean tunnels, and were driven 14 hours a day along the 31 miles of railroad track in the underground factories. The tempo of work was deadly and the living conditions unbearable. Literally thousands of inmates were murdered on this project. One transport of unfortunates after another left Buchenwald and nearby camps for Dora - never to return. The V weapons were a specialty of the SS and of the WVHA and were constructed upon the lives of those foreigners whose countries were to be destroyed by them.
Amtsgruppe W, under the supervision of the defendants Pohl, Georg Loerner, Baier, Volk, and Mummenthey, also used inmate labor on a wide scale and under the most inhumane conditions, in manufacturing armaments in its Amt IV plants, which were located in almost every camp under the WVHA, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Lublin, Ravensbrueck, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof.