I shall now read a little bit further down on page 3, No. 5.
It is true that the DEST was an SS plant and it is true that SS member Mummenthey stood at its head, equal in rank with his co-business managers. Actually the DEST was an enterprise which was in uniform only under compulsion and which was managed purely according to principles of commercial law and economics.
Without the connection with its holding company and Pohl's power of command, and without Mummenthey's membership in the SS the DEST and thereby Mummenthey also, would hardly have to defend themselves before this forum. It would be judged within the frame work of hundreds of German industries which likewise employed concentration camp prisoners during the war.
Why should not the DEST also, if one thinks of it apart from the omnipotence of the Camp Commandants, have belonged to those economic enterprises which would have been capable of generosity toward their workers? Why could not Mummenthey, too, have been an economic leader who surrounded his workers with that attentive care which was confirmed in the Milch trial by the affidavit of Schinner to the credit of another world renowned German firm? Must Mummenthey really have been a man who unconditionally subscribed to the master race theory and saw in the prisoners not the creator of valuable work, but the object of an asocial policy of exploitation? Did not Bickel describe Mummenthey as the "white raven", whose trend of thought would knowingly contrast with that of the other SS--leaders? Did not the witness Engler expressly exclude Mummenthey from the circle of murders responsible for the concentration camp crimes.
In my final plea I also defined my attitude to the charges raised by the prosecution that the members of Amtsgruppe W were fanatical national socialists and also fanatical business men.
I have refuted this charge describing Mummenthey's career in the SS and I pointed out in particular that he originally was a member of the SS, a mounted SS, this organization, according to the prosecution Witness Sachs, which was joined only by the more clever class of people.
I have, furthermore, stressed the point that Mummenthey was not an SS officer in the common sense of the word but was, according to Bickel's words, an economist who had been put in a uniform.
I shall continue on page 7, number d: Mummenthey's hearing yielded nothing according to which he participated in criminal actions of the SS, or knew about them. This agrees with the testimony of the witness Wolff, according to which Mummenthey could not have arrived at the concept that the SS was a criminal system - even if he had heard of the events in the concentration camps.
The basis of the International Military Tribunal for its establishing the criminal character of the SS was formed in particular by the Prosecution and the extermination of the Jews. The question as to whether Mummenthey, as one of the business managers of DEST, or as a member of the SS, knew of the various phases of the persecution and extermination of the Jews or participated in them, requires, therefore, a special examination. This examination showed that Mummenthey could neither be brought into connection via OSTI or Wolomin or Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Herzogenbusch, with the extermination of the Jews.
I have also dealt in detail in my written final plea with Sanner's affidavit the incorrection was shown by Walter's and Bickel's affidavits.
Finally, I have dealt with the Reinhardt Fund, and I have again repeated the proof that Mummenthey knew nothing about the source from which the loan granted Allach came, and am proving my point by Belter's affidavit and by the testimony of Mummenthey himself while testifying as a witness in his own behalf.
Then I shall pass on to page number 12 of my final plea:
Mummenthey did not have any more extensive opportunities to obtain information than the majority of the German people. He himself testified that the facts on which the International Military Tribunal based it declaration of the SS as a criminal organization were hidden from him.
Even if he had found out about such things he, in his special position, would not have had the opportunity to prevent them or to resign from the SS and the Economic and Administrative Main Office.
The witnesses Wolff and Schmidt-Klevenow confirm this. A request for transfer to the front would, according to Wolff's testimony - because of lack of personal connection - not have had a chance of success either. And, in addition, Pohl confirmed this emphatically.
I shall continue: Under number 2 of my written final plea, I have dealt with the penal responsibility of the defendant Mummenthey within the framework of his business management, and have prove that both according to German law and also according to international law he is only responsible for what happened within his sphere of competency.
I have pointed out that the inmate labor assignment was in the hands of Schondorf -- the man who is now a free man in England while Mummenthey is here before you as a defendant.
I have, finally, pointed out that due to the decentralization of the plants the responsibility for the plants rested with the work manager and that the Main Administration in Berlin only interpolated in order to decide on basic questions.
I shall continue on page 15, number 5: Naturally, all the questions of local allocation of prisoners belonged to the matters to be taken care of by the plant managers independently of the Main Administration, especially the negotiations with the Kommandantur about continued release of those prisoners needed in the plant. Thus it also was their duty to see to it that the allocation of labor would run smoothly and in orderly channels at the plant itself. Pohl's order of 1 May 1942, Document R-129, subordinated the plant managers in all questions of allocation of prisoners exclusively to the Kommandantur as the plant directors. This results in the fact that the subordination of the plant managers to the business management of the DEST had to be limited only to technical questions but, principally, did not include questions of labor allocation of prisoners. Within this subordination relationship Mummenthey alone was not their superior - not even in his fictitious capacity as Amtschief - but they were subordinate to the board of business managers in which each business manager represented his own special field.
Thus, various witnesses, such as Baier, Hohberg, as well as several affidavits, bore witness to the fact and agreed that Mummenthey was a correct and decent business man who conscientiously fulfilled his duties and rather did too much than too little in this respect.
And now to number 7: Thus it can be stated that Mummenthey cannot be held responsible for the labor allocation of prisoners under penal law. If, in spite of it, during this time he tried to improve the working and living conditions of the prisoners, he did something which was outside of his actual competence. No legal standpoint could be maintained if one construes from this voluntary action dictated by humane motives a criminally punishable responsibility.
In number 3 of my written final plea I have dealt with the question of concentration camps and the conscription for labor. I can refrain from again going in to the objective basis of the concentration camps since a number of my colleagues have commented on this subject. I have also dealt with these fundamentals in my final plea, but in doing so I have confined myself much more to the question as to how Mummenthey looked at these things; in particular, how he, believing in the integrity of government agencies, was convinced of the legality of the issuance of a protective custody order and the execution of the detention by the executing agency, namely, the headquarters of the concentration camps, as being justified measures.
I shall continue on page 18, number 2: There was no reason to doubt the legality of the commitment, and the confinement in, con centration camps after Mummenthey's explanation, and numerous other testimonies. Mummenthey knew nothing of abuses by the Gestapo when it transferred persons in to the concentration camps.
If in one or the other case the commitment into a concentration camp did not agree with the feelings of an individual or even of a number of people, this did not mean a recognizance of an absolutely illegal limitation of personal freedom, but only a criticism of the harshness and pitiless way in which the National Socialist regime protected the security of the state from the freedom of the individual by exercising the special right claimed by it.
As far as the compulsory work of the concentration camp inmates is concerned, it seemed very similar to Mummenthey to the other already existing legal provisions governing compulsory labor on the basis of his observations of the economic development of Germany and his special knowledge in the field of labor and penal law.
I do not need to mention further how these regulations in detail at the time before and after the beginning of the war followed one another. They wore described in detail by my colleagues and in my final plea. I have pointed out the fact that in the Justice Administration parallel appearances have arisen for decades, not only in Germany but also in other states. I have emphasized in particular the compulsory work of the pre-trial witnesses and stressed the general conscription for labor which existed in Germany at the time.
Then I continue on page 21, number 5: It had finally become known to Mummenthey that under the pressure of the general shortage of labor, the labor also allocation of concentration camp inmates had been ordered through the "work and service order" of 11 November 1938. The repeated changes of this provision up to its final reformulation in the "Standard Decree for labor allocation and premium setup" brought home to Mummenthey the further development of these governmental measures.
However, neither Mummenthey nor any of the other Economic Office Chiefs had ever heard of Pohl's report of 30 April 1942 to Himmler according to which he wanted to give foremost consideration to the economic aspect of utilization of all labor reserves, including those in the camps and in which he therefore stressed the necessity of changing the concentration camps from their existing political form in to an economic organization.
In any case, Pohl's order of 30 April 1942, which he issued in this connection, showed the military orientation of the labor allocation by the Chief of the Office Group D, Office of Inspection of Concentration Camps - that is, by the highest Reich authority.
Finally, we have to add the personal impressions that Munnenthey had gained in Hamburg and Glasmoor on the housing and working methods of the prisoners. After all this, no doubts of any kind could arise in Mummenthey as to the justification of the use of inmates labor purposes. The fact as such never can be a crime against humanity; for where otherwise, would be the intervention of the Control Council against the forced labor camps in the Russian zone which have been made credible by Mummenthey Exhibit 47.
In paragraph 4, I have dealt with the question as to how far the charges made by the Prosecution against the defendant that in certain plants of the DEST also prisoners of war, foreigners and Jews were employed. By that the DEST is said to have violated the provisions of the Hague Convention on Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention. Certain findings were made here in this trial which, however, were not conclusive. The main important question, however, is not whether such an employment has been carried out. The main question is did Munnenthey know about it? On the basis of the transcript I have dealt with this question in detail and, I agree with the President that the exactness and the objectivity of my statement can be understood much better by studying all these documents rather than by listening to a speed to tiring for the brain in view of the overwhelming material. On the other hand, however, I do believe it important to deal with that question orally, as to how far Munnenthey had the duty to inform himself concerning the employment of prisoners war, foreigners and Jews. Therefore, I shall read that with my oral part of my final plea, which is contained on page 26, number 3:On account of the strict regulations prohibiting also for Mummenthey a conversation with prisoners about their personal conditions, it was therefore not immediately possible for him to gain private information.
Inasmuch as Mummenthey got into personal touch with individual prisoners despite these regulations in the later years of the war, he never even received through hints any closer information about the reason for their arrest or about other personal conditions which could have caused him to suspect the legality of their employment.
Finally, there existed no obligation on the part of Mummenthey to inquire and learn from the prisoners the Kommando leaders or the camp headquarters about the nationality and the reason for imprisonment of the inmates either in routine duties in his position as co-manager or even officially as so-called Chief of Office.
Mummenthey's position as co-manager of the DEST was in no way different from that of any other manager in another enterprise which received from the legal authorities an allocation of prison labor. Here again no manager would get the idea, nor could it be expected of him to inquire into the personal conditions of the prisoners before using them as labor - particularly since they often changed from day to day. This would not only be a disturbance of the plant, but an unauthorized interference with the authority of the legal administration.
The same situation would prevail if one were to demand that Mummenthey check every day before beginning work, the personal conditions of the prisoners. Such an action on the part of the SS-Fuehrer Mummenthey would have been regarded as an even more adamant interference with the authority of the camp commandant, who alone, in accordance with R-129, was in change of labor allocation - then with that of the legal administration.
During the trial Mummenthey always assumed responsibility only in his capacity as co-manager of the DEST within the scope of the provisions of the commercial law.
Mummenthey has never recognized a responsibility as chief of office. His contractual relationship was of a purely private nature and was based on a private contract with the DEST. One would expect too much from Mummenthey's supervisory duties if one deducted therefrom an obligation toward malting such inquiries.
The same applies to an increased degree to any attempt to deduct from Mummenthey's designation as so-called chief of office such an obligation. This would run contrary to whatever has been said by those directly concerned here about the meaning of the title. Unanimously this designation was stated to be a fiction without form or substance born out of Pohl's military bureaucratic way of thought. It lacked not only every real, but also cerebral basis in the civil service law as against the chiefs of office of the Office Groups A to D, and of other Main Offices and agencies.
And even especially if one wants to attach official function to the title of Chief of Office - such an extension of the obligation toward information and inquiry would be contrary to the character of an official position. A civil service position naturally implies the subordination under the authority of higher office. To concede such an obligation toward information and supervision would dissolve all boulders of competence and thus the constitutional setup itself.
In summing up - it may be said that Mummenthey neither participated in, nor had knowledge of, acts which carried in them violations of international conventions and which represented war crimes.
The prosecution raises the charge against Mummenthey that he was a "master of slave labor." It is charged that the DEST, as an economic enterprise of the SS, had demanded from the prisoners the highest possible output of work at the least possible cost to itself, and that it had systematically required the performance of labor which surpassed the working capacity of the prisoners.
It would mean denying Mummenthey his ability of a leading business man if one were to dispute the mercantile view points which influenced his management of the DEST.
It was certainly his ambition to be successful in providing a sufficient amount of building material in fulfillment of the task that had been set for the DEST. That, as a matter of fact, happened to be the obligation which he had incurred by his contract. In this connection I agree with Bickel.
On the basis of my frequent talks with Mummenthey I cannot, however, shares Bickel's view to the effect that Mummenthey's recognized friendliness toward prisoners was based on his mercantile interest. I agree that raw material and labor are the two essential factors of all production plants which guide all plant managers. This fact was recognized by this same Court in the trial of the former Field Marshal General Milch.
Mummenthey, however, apart from this, possessed in advance a special disposition with regard to his work which determined him to consider not only economic, but also ethical and social points of view. It was not the fulfillment of the productive tasks of the DEST which first prevailed upon his to such effect. On the contrary, the pursuance of such policy was a reflection of what was the deepest basis of his whole personality -- outwardly appearing as the result of his education and Professional training. Both elements, the commercial as well as the social interest, were components through the combination of which the idea of education emerged as the final result.
Therefore, it would be absurd to assume that the DEST, as production plant under the management of Mummenthey, had made an effort to make the fulfillment of its tasks illusory through the "extermination of prisoners through labor."
Work results which are unobjectionable with respect to quality as well as to quantity can be achieved only with healthy workers fit to work and enjoying work. At a time when the manpower reserve was dwindling at a continuously increasing rate in consequence of the demands of the Wehrmacht, an economic policy as the one described above would actually have been suicide.
An insinuation connecting such a policy with Mummenthey can originate only with persons who do not want to see the truth, who deliberately mix up economic policy with party politics, economic enterprise with concentration camp.
Perhaps it would have been a wiser line of action on the part of Pohl if he already had more emphatically pointed out the obvious absurdity of such contention, and had more distinctly accentuated the dividing lines separating the Administration and Economy Main Office from the Office Group D in spite of the incorporation of the concentration camp inspection.
It is the merit of the witness Bickel to have disclosed the wound which, like a festering abscess, infected the entire organization of the SS with the taint from which new hundreds of thousands are doomed to suffer. Bickel point out the really guilty criminals in the whole of their brutality. They alone are responsible for the ghastly consequences revealed through the present, and other, trials. Himmler and his obedient satellites in the Reich Security Main Office, in the concentration camp inspection and in the various camp headquarters, -they alone against all well-intentioned remonstrances presented by Mummenthey saw in the prisoner the object of the power politics of frenzied camp commandants.
In this connection it may also be allowed to draw the attention to the legal importance of the document R-129/40, II, 70, the order of 30 April 1942 issued by Pohl with the best of intentions -- I take that for granted without further argumentation -- but which in the course of time would prove to be a Danaean gift.
Pohl issued this order in his capacity as chief of the Economy and Administration Main Office - that means, acting within the sphere from which he as a natural consequence of his ideas never estranged himself?
The order was addressed to agencies on lower levels of the Economy and Administration Main Office and to individuals outside such afencies, i.e., the plant manager.
With respect to the contents -- this directive constitutes a mixtum compositum militare et civile - insofar as this directive as actual order from the chief of the Economy and Administration Main Office could be addressed only to the Office Group D and the camp commandants -- whereas it could be considered only a direction from the business manager of the DWB, being by commercial law the only person entitled to act as representative, to employees of economic enterprises connected with the holding company through interlocking of capital and organization agreements.
The motive which prompted Pohl -- elimination of the dualism in the management of the employees - was justified. It would have been consistent with this same objection to transfer all SS-plants to the concentration camp administration, thus creating a setup similar to the one in operation for installations with their own plants under the administration of the Ministry of Justice.
However, Pohl shrank from drawing this final consequence for fear of what might follow afterwards. Therefore, what was done was only a half measure and, for this reason, entirely inadequate. He transferred the management of the plant to persons completely lacking the economic mind necessary for a plant manager and ignorant of the art of handling and employing workers.
Acting in the double capacity outlined above, Pohl transferred the economic responsibility for the part of the personnel consisting of prisoners from the economic sphere to exclusive police agency - namely, the commandants - on whom, in addition, he conferred the economically completely impossible title of plant managers. He did not transfer it to the plant manager whom he reduced to assistants of the commandants. But, at the sane tine, he imposed upon then, and not upon the business managers of the individual companies or the so-called office chiefs (Amtschefs) a co-responsibility for failures with respect to output and profits.
The consequence of this was that not only the accommodation, the feeding, the clothing, etc. of the prisoners were concerns of the camp commandant, but also the allocation of prison labor to the works whenever it was not a question of purely professional directions. From an economic view point, and from the point of view of the SS as well as the business managers, the so-called office chiefs (Amtschefs) were no more allowed to handle these questions without interfering with the sphere of competency of another agency which, from that time on, could claim that this group of questions was exclusively within their range of rights and duties.
The unhappy consequences of this absurd order from a man having no knowledge whatsoever of economic matters - in particular, of the management of a business enterprise - soon became manifest to an appalling extent.
Now economic considerations, but points of view of the police were decisive for all measures taken by the camp commandants. The tyranny of violence now started, exercised by the spirits of the camp headquarters which Pohl - as in the words of the poet - had raised but now could no more control. That is the tragedy of Pohl's life, arising from his primitive military mind.
A subordination of the labor camps to the management of the plant managers would have made a proper labor allocation possible, thus being a preparatory step towards application of the procedure customary in the administration of justice of letting the prisoners serve their sentence term under gradually loss hard conditions, also to the concentration camp prisoners.
From this dualism which Pohl tried but was unable to eliminate, arose the fight over the problem "man" Carried on through five years, by Mummenthey in a way involving much personal sacrifice and which he finally concluded, recapitulating the words of Montgomery:
Nobody except he who personally knows the tragedy of these years can measure what enormous quantities of energy and working power were wasted by Mummenthey on the realization of his ideas.
The shifting of the responsibility for the allocation of prisoners from the sphere of the enterprises to the sphere of the concentration camps, however, forces upon us unconditionally a conclusion of basic importance for the problem concerning the responsibility of Mummenthey.
The Document R-129, introduced by the Prosecution, is not a document which supports the case of the Prosecution with respect to the DEST and Mummenthey. On the contrary, it constitutes evidence in their defense to such strong degree that the Prosecution could never have produced one more favorable for Mummenthey. In the face of the clear wording of this document the business management of the economic enterprises of the SS can, ex nunc, no more be charged with a responsibility for the allocation of prison labor nor for the way it was practiced, nor for abuses and atrocities found to have taken place in connection therewith. Mummenthey has fought against this order with superior authorities. His failure is due to the repudiation of all his ideas. It is not Mummenthey, but the camp commandants who, since 1 May 1942, are solely responsible for all this.
The examination of the question whether the utilization of the work of prisoners by the DEST constitutes "slave labor" leads to a critical valuation of this concept as such.
In Section I, subparagraph 1 of the international convention on slavery, signed in Geneva 25 September 1926, slavery is defined as the status or the position of a person on whom the powers incident to ownership, or some of them, are exercised. In Section II slave trade is described as being any act of acquisition or cession of a person with the intention of placing him in the state of enslavement.
This definition implies that forced labor, or the amount or the nature of the remuneration as such, in international opinion are not decisive for the concept of enslavement but, rather, the violation of the dignity of a human being implied when men are being made equal to dead things. Thus the nature of the basic agreement is decisive, by virtue of which the duty to work is enforced either plainly or through purchase or cession of a human being.
In the case of the DEST the persons employed were not forced laborers or displaced persons, as in the case of Action Sauckel, or similar enterprises - but persons imprisoned by the Administration of Justice or the police, and assigned to work for the DEST by the official executive authority representing the state, namely, the camp headquarters.
The obligation to work imposed upon the prisoners was recognized by the present Tribunal in the Milch verdict to be an expedient measure in the interest of the prisoners against which no objection for inhumanity could be raised. Such obligation is a normal measure in nearly all civilized states throughout the world and, therefore, cannot constitute a violation of the general dignity of human beings. The obligation to work imposed upon a prison can, therefore, never be termed an enslavement, and the work as such never "slave labor."
In the course of the trial "forced labor without pay" or "granting of food and accommodation only" as remuneration for the work, were mentioned as essential criteria of slave labor.
It cannot be denied that forced labor or obligation to work result in conditions similar to a state of enslavement, and that in this connection also the question of the remuneration can be of a certain importance. These two characteristics, however, are not a criterion of enslavement according to the Geneva Convention.
This reference already shows how dangerous it is to generalize concepts which have been established for certain cases. From the sphere of internationally established formulations referring to a certain set of facts, such concept easily sinks into the sphere of slogans being applied to completely different sets of facts by means of the virtually anathematized legal analogy.
Therefore the only question which still needs an answer is whether the nature of the remuneration could give the prison labor an accessory character of being slave labor in the sense of the Geneva Convention.
Concerning this question the following principal views are to be expounded in the first place:
(a) The protective custody procedure in pursuance of regulation existing at that time was not a procedure before an ordinary court, that is true, but still it was a legally established police procedure. The prisoner was imprisoned by the German Reich, administration of justice. The correctness of this assertion is proved, that is, also through the extension of the law on accident care for prisoners, from 1900, to apply also to prisoners in concentration camps, whereas, previously it had applied only to Justice and Police prisoners, and similarly through other regulations according to which concentration camp police prisoners had a status more or less equal to that of justice prisoners, that is, through the. regulations providing that prisoners and concentration camp inmates be fed by the Reich food Ministry.
(b) The German Reich, police administration, acting through the camp headquarters, allocated prisoners to work for the DEST, but in return the DEST had the obligation towards the German Reich within their plants to assign the prisoners as imprisoned by the German Reich to such work as was within the scope of tasks imposed upon the DEST. These facts were the basis of the legal relationship can only be judged as a parallel to that which arises when an official of a certain agency is assigned to another agency for temporary duty, that is, a transfer from the District Court, Nurnberg in Bavaria, to the District Court Torgau in Prussia. No legal relationship under civil law would arise between the District Court Torgau and the official from the District Court Nurnberg, and this was no more the case through the assignment of the prisoner of the DEST. Exactly as the District Court Nurnberg had to provide the salary for the official detached for duty with the District Court Torgau, the German Reich also had to assume the responsibility for the remuneration of the prisoner.
Whether the justice or the police prisoner received a remunerative for the work which he had to carry out in pursuance of the camp regulations was a matter exactly as immaterial to the DEST as the payment of the salary to the official from the District Court Nurnberg would be to the District Court Torgau; this was a concern of the German Reich exclusively, represented by the administration of justice in the case of judicial prisoners and represented by the police administration in the case of police prisoners?
(c) The Reich represented by the police administration was on the other hand entitled to demand of the enterprise a compensation for the expenses arising to it from food, clothing, wages, etc., during worktime, just as the Bavarian administration of justice in the case of the above mentioned official was entitled to demand a refundment of the salary for the discharge of the official from the Prussian Administration of Justice. This claim to indemnification was asserted by the Reich in our case in the form of a compensation for prisoners work, which the DEST had to pay to the Reich treasury represented by the Kommanduer just as other enterprises to which judicial prisoners had been assigned had to pay such a compensation to the authority executing the punishment.
(d) The question as to the amount in which the Reich actually demanded such an indemnification from the DEST did likewise not touch the DEST in itself. The Reich could demand the compensation in any amount and could under certain circumstances renounce it.
Pohl in his position as representative of the Reich actually fixed the payment for prisoners and since the amount of the payments in this new field of prisoners allocation had not been established from the beginning, it developed in three stages:
(a) Originally the DEST paid the Reich prisoners a compensation amounting to 30 pfennigs a person per day.
(b) Later the DEST in addition to the amount of 30 pfennigs paid an mount in cash to the prisoner directly which was calculated in percentage for the prisoner involved on the basis of a wage list in agreement with the wages of a civilian worker. This cash amount was consciously not designated as wages, or payment but as a premium, that is, as a reward for work done, or service rendered.
(c) Since in the course of time the Kommandantur raised objections to the payment in cash, the cash amounts of all prisoners were later transferred to the treasury of the camp administration in a collective transfer based on a collective list. The treasury credited the individual amounts to the prisoners accounts. The prisoners could freely dispose over these amounts by buying merchandise, by transferring them to their dependents, or by accumulating these amounts up to the time of their release.
(d) In 1942 this system was replaced by the premium system designed by office D-II. The premium system of office D-II provided for the acquisition of premium bills by the DEST, and the possibility of exchanging them in the concentration camp for goods. Whether and in how far the Reich still owes amounts to the prisoners in case of the Reich or has not exchanged them, is a question which need not be discussed in this connection.
The payment made by the DEST to the Reich for the services rendered by the prisoners thus did not represent wages which the DEST had to pay, or did pay to the prisoner indirectly or directly for his work. The reason why the amount of the payment to begin with was low, and at the end of the war still was below the amount which the Reich had to pay for the maintenance of the prisoners, including the compensation due to them for their work, partly, is that the Reich did acknowledge its obligation to give the DEST a subvention.
(a) The DEST was a public - a SS - enterprise. As such it had to accomplish a series of tasks which in themselves would have been a public task, thus a task of the Reich. This included the production of building material for the building programs, thus a mixed task, a task in the interest of private economy and of the public, insofar as large public buildings were involved, the establishment of most up-to-date works for the production of building materials, thus a task of industrial development, the training of future workers, retraining of persons of other trades, training of unskilled workers into skilled workers, thus a task of industrial labor, finally a task of training sustained by the execution of the arrest, that is, the training, or education of criminal, anti-social elements to be skilled workers for avoiding relapses, etc.
The DEST was not in a position to finance these tasks with its own funds. It, therefore, needed the assistance of the Reich by keeping the production costs low by way of subventions.
The evidence has proved that Mummenthey continually intervened in favor of an increase of payment to be made to the Reich. This fact is striking in itself, because it is in contradiction to the business motives which partly determined Mummenthey in his management of the DEST. It can, however, easily be explained by Mummenthey's commercial efforts to prevent sham profits by keeping the production costs low, and to avoid the reproach of gaining such profits by cheap labor. Out of social reflections Mummenthey, on the other hand, wished to induce the Reich to make greater payments, for the prisoners by keeping the compensation on a higher level.
Bickel as commercial leader of the prisoners at Neuengamme testified that his works in 1944 let the prisoners have roughly one-third of the prisoners compensations paid to the Reich in the form of premiums.
The situation was not much different in the other works. These contributions were occasioned by Mummenthey's constant urging the managers of the works to let the prisoners have as many privileges as possible. In this connection it must be established that these additional services were voluntary.
In concluding I wish to state the following with regard to the chapter of slave labor.
(a) To those who are acquainted with the German Administration of Criminal Justice, it is an established fact that the administration of justice until World War I was only determined by the purpose of punishment if it employed prisoners in enterprises owned by the prison. After World War I, the administration of justice without giving up the primary of the purpose of punishment, proceeded to supply outside enterprises with prisoners. In the middle of the twenties the Thuringian administration of justice prompted by the idea of replacing the purpose of punishment by the purpose of improvement of character, created its own limited partnership for its penitentiaries in a place in Thuringia, where the first consideration was no longer the work carried out as a penalty, but an individual industrial employment for the purpose of improvement of character far away from the penitentiary. This was to enable the prisoners to return into civilian life.
(b) The DEST, the DAW, and also the Deutsche Versuchsaustalt fur Ernaehrung, the German Food Research Institution, which for this reason had been granted privileges by the administration of justice in the field of taxes, were so to speak, an attempt to develop this type of industry, which combined the performance of industrial tasks with the idea of training the prisoners to lead a regular civilian life. Therewith their attempts ran along lines which for a considerable time had attracted the attention of the public in an increasing measure.