dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. FLACHSNER: May I refer in this connection to the answers of the witness Schmelter to Numbers 9 and 35 in the questionnaire which was submitted to him, and to the answer of the witness Schieber to Number 20. Herr Speer, Document Number R-124, Exhibit USA-179, which was submitted by the Prosecution, contains several remarks you made during the meetings of the Central Planning Board. Mr. President, may I draw your attention to Page 53 of the English text of my document book. Herr Speer, what do you mean to say by your remark concerning "idlers" in the meeting of 30 October 1942?
SPEER: I made the remark as reproduced by the stenographic record. Here, however, I had an opportunity to read all the shorthand notes of the Central Planning Board and I discovered that this remark was not followed up in any way and that no measures by me were demanded.
DR. FLACHSNER: On the same page of the document book, Mr. President, there is a statement from a meeting on 22 April 1943. Herr Speer, what do you have to say in connection with that remark regarding Russian prisoners of war?
SPEER: It can be elucidated very briefly. This is proof of the fact that the conception "armaments" must be understood in the Ray I have explained, because the two sectors from which the 90,000 Russians employed in armaments originated, according to this document, were the iron, steel, and metal industries with 29,000; and the industries constructing engines, boilers, vehicles and apparatuses of all sorts with 63,000.
DR. FLACHSNER: Herr Speer, the Prosecution has also mentioned a remark made by you on 25 May 1944. That, too, can be found on Page 53 of the English text of the document book. There you said at a conference with Keitel and Zeitzler that in accordance with Hitler's instructions the groups of auxiliary volunteers were to be dissolved, and that you would effect the transfer of the Russians from the rear army areas.
SPEER: Here, again, I read through the shorthand notes. It can be explained briefly. The "Hiwi" mentioned in the document are the so-called auxiliary volunteers who had joined the troops fighting in Russia. As the months went by, they took on large proportions, and during the retreat they followed along, as they would probably have been treated as traitors in their own country. These volunteers were not, however, as I desired it, put into industry, since the conference which was planned did not take place.
DR. FLACHSNER: Please make a brief statement concerning Sauckel's memorandum, 556-PS, which was submitted by the Prosecution, of a telephone call on 4 January 1943 which refers to labor allocation.
SPEER: After this telephone call further measures were to be taken in France to increase the number of workers available for allocation. Minutes of a Fuehrer conference which I found recently, namely, those of the meeting of 3 to 5 January 1943, show that at that time Hitler's statement of opinion referred to increased employment of French people in France for local industry and economy.
DR. FLACHSNER: Mr. President, I shall submit this document later because up to now I have not yet had the opportunity to...
THE PRESIDENT: Can you tell the Tribunal how long you are going to be, Dr. Flachsner?
DR. FLACHSNER: I hope, Mr. President, that I shad be through before 5 o'clock this afternoon.
THE PRESIDENT: You will not lose sight of what I have said to you already about the relevance of the argument and evidence you have been adducing up to date?
DR. FLACHSNER: I will not, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn now. [The Tribunal recessed until 1400  hours.] Afternoon Session
DR. FLACHSNER: Herr Speer, this morning we stopped at a discussion of Sauckel's telephone message of 4 January 1943 regarding the matter of labor allocation. As you have already stated, the minutes of a Fuehrer conference of 3 to 5 January, which I shall submit to the Tribunal later on, are connected with this. Will you please make a brief statement on the subject of that discussion?
SPEER: This record states that measures must be taken to raise economy in France to a higher level. It contains stern injunctions from Hitler concerning the ways and means that he contemplated using to this end. It states that acts of sabotage are to be punished with the most rigorous means and that "humanitarian muddleheadedness" is out of place. These minutes also show that at that time I asked Hitler to transfer the management of production questions in France to me, a step which was actually taken several months later. I mention this only for the purpose of making it clear, while I am still in a position to testify as a witness, that I did not carry out Hitler's policy of abandoning all "humanitarian muddleheadedness" in France. My attention was drawn to one case in which 10 hostages were to be shot as a reprisal for acts of industrial sabotage committed in the Meurthe-et-Moselle district. At that time I managed to prevent the sentence from being carried out. Roechling, who was at that time in charge of iron production in the occupied western territories, is my witness in this case. That is the only case I know of where hostages were to be shot on account of sabotage in production. I can also prove that, through a decision by Hitler dated September 1943, I was responsible for providing a supplementary meal in addition to the existing ration for factory workers employed in France. In a letter which I sent to the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor in December 1943, I strongly urged the necessity not only of paying wages to the workers in the occupied western territories, but also of making available to them a corresponding quantity of consumer goods-a line of policy which doubtless does not accord with the policy of plundering the western regions, on which so much stress has been laid by the French Prosecution. All three documents are in my possession and they can be produced.
SPEER: I only mention these facts to show that I neither approved nor followed the very harsh policy laid down by Hitler for application in France in the records of 3 to 5 January.
DR. FLACHSNER: I now turn to another point. Herr Speer, what did you have produced in France; that is, on the basis of your program?
SPEER: We have already discussed this at sufficient length No armament goods were manufactured, only bottleneck parts and consumer goods.
DR. FLACHSNER: Very well. I merely wanted to get that clear. The Prosecution has submitted to you minutes of a Fuehrer conference-R-124-dated March 1944 and containing a statement that you discussed with Hitler the Reich Marshal's proposal to deliver prisoners of war to France. What can you say to that?
SPEER: This record is dated 3 March 1944. From January until May 1944 I was seriously ill, and the discussion took place without me. A member of my staff was in charge of this discussion-a man who enjoyed the confidence of Hitler in an unusually high degree. In any case, the proposal was not carried out.
DR. FLACHSNER: Herr Speer, you attended the session of 30 May, at which the question was discussed of how the of lice of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor came to be established. Will you comment briefly on that point?
SPEER: I should like to say that I wanted a delegate to deal with all labor allocation problems connected with my task of military armament production. My chief concern in the allocation problem, at the beginning of my term of office, was with the Gauleiter, who carried on a policy of Gau particularism. The nonpolitical offices of the Labor Ministry could not proceed against the Gauleiter, and the result was that manpower inside Germany was frozen. I suggested to Hitler that he should appoint a Gauleiter whom I knew to this post-a man named Hanke. Goering, by the way, has already confirmed this. Hitler agreed. Two days later, Bormann made the suggestion that Sauckel be chosen. I did not know Sauckel well, but I was quite ready to accept the choice. It is quite possible that Sauckel did not know. anything about the affair and that he assumed-as he was was entitled to do-that he was chosen at my suggestion. The office of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor was created in the following way: Lammers declared that he could not issue special authority for a fraction of labor allocation as that would be doubtful procedure from an administrative point of view, and for that reason the whole question of manpower would have to be put into the hands of a plenipotentiary. At first they contemplated a Fuehrer decree. Goering protested on the grounds that it was his task under the Four Year Plan. A compromise was made, therefore, in accordance with which Sauckel was to be the Plenipotentiary General within the framework of the Four Year Plan, although he would be appointed by Hitler. This was a unique arrangement under the Four Year Plan. Thereby Sauckel was in effect subordinated to Hitler; and he always looked upon it in that way.
DR. FLACHSNER: You have heard that Sauckel, in giving his testimony on 30 May, said that Goering participated in the meetings of the Central Planning Board. Is that true?
SPEER: No, that is in no way correct. I would not have had any use for him, for after all, we had to carry out practical work.
DR. FLACHSNER: The Prosecution has submitted a statement by Sauckel dated 8 October 1945, according to which arrangements for his delegates to function in the occupied territories were supposed to have been made by you. Is that true?
SPEER: No. In 1941 I had not yet anything to do with armament; and even later, during the period of Sauckel's activity, I did not appoint these delegates and did not do much to promote their activities. That was a matter for Sauckel to handle; it was in his jurisdiction.
DR. FLACHSNER: The French Prosecution quoted from the record of Sauckel's preliminary interrogation on 27 September 1945. According to this record you gave a special order for transport trains with foreign workers.
SPEER: I believe it would be practical to deal at the same time with all the statements made by Sauckel which apply to me; that will save time.
DR. FLACHSNER: Please go ahead.
SPEER: Arrangements for transport trains were made by Sauckel and his staff. It is possible that air raids or a sudden change in the production program made it necessary for my office to ask for transport trains to be rerouted; but the responsibility for that always rested with the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor. Sauckel also testified here that after Stalingrad Goebbels and I started on the "total war effort." But that is not correct in this form. Stalingrad was in January 1943, and Goebbels started on his "total war effort" in August 1944. After Stalingrad a great reorganization program was to be carried out in Germany in order to free German labor. I myself was one of those who demanded this. Neither Goebbels nor I, however, was able to carry out this plan. A committee of three, Lammers, Keitel, and Bormann, was formed; but owing to their lack of technical knowledge they were unable to carry out their task. My Labor Allocation Department was further mentioned by Sauckel in his testimony. This worked as follows: Every large factory and every employer of labor had an allocation department which, naturally, came under mine. None of these departments, however, encroached in the slightest degree on Sauckel's tasks. Their sphere of activity was not very great, as may be seen from the fact that each was one of 50 or 60 departments coming under my office. If I had attached very much importance to it, it would have been one of my six or eight branch offices. Sauckel further mentioned the Stabsleiter discussions which took place in his office. A representative of my Labor Allocation Department for Army and Navy armament and for building attended these conferences. At these meetings, which were attended by about 15 people who were in need of labor, the question of priority was settled on the basis of Sauckel's information on the state of economy generally. These were really the functions erroneously ascribed here to the Central Planning Board.
SPEER: In addition it was asserted that I promoted the transport of foreign workers to Germany in April 1942 and that I was responsible for the fact that foreign workers were brought to Germany at all. That, however, is not true. I did not need to use any influence on Sauckel to attain that. In any case, it is evident from a document in my possession-the minutes of a Fuehrer conference of 3 May 1942-that the introduction of compulsory labor in the western region was approved by the Fuehrer at Sauckel's suggestion. I can further quote a speech, which I delivered on 18 April 1942, showing that at that period I was still of the opinion that the German building industry, which employed approximately 1.8 million workmen, was to be discontinued to a large extent to divert the necessary labor to the production of armaments. This speech which I made to my staff, in which I explained my principles and also discussed the question of manpower, does not contain any mention of the planning of a foreign labor draft. If I had been the active instigator of these plans, surely I would have mentioned the subject in this speech. Finally, in connection with Sauckel's testimony, I must correct the plan of the organization submitted here. It is incorrect in that the separate sectors enumerated in it are classified under various ministries. In reality these sectors of employers of labor were classified under various economic branches, independently of the ministries. They only corresponded where my own Ministry and the Air Ministry were concerned. It is also incorrect in stating that the building industry was represented in the Ministry of Economics. That came under my jurisdiction. From 1943 on, the chemical and mining industries, both of which are listed under the Ministry of Economics, were under my jurisdiction. To my knowledge, these branches were represented through plenipotentiaries in the Four Year Plan even prior to September 1943 and stated their requirements directly to Sauckel independently of the Ministry of Economics.
SPEER: This plan further is incorrect in stating that the demands for these workers from individual employers went directly to Hitler. It would have been impossible for Hitler to settle this dispute between 15 employers. As I have already said, the latter attended the Stabsleiter conferences, over which Sauckel presided.
DR. FLACHSNER: Herr Speer, what did you do with your documents at the end of the war?
SPEER: I felt bound to preserve my documents so that the necessary transition measures could be taken during reconstruction. I refused to allow these documents even to be sifted. They were turned over in their entirety to the Allied authorities here in Nuremberg, where I had a branch archive. I handed them over when I was still at liberty in the Flensburg zone. The Prosecution is thus in possession of all my documents to the number of several thousand, as well as all public speeches, Gauleiter speeches, and other speeches dealing with armament and industry; some 4,000 Fuehrer decisions, 5,000 pages of stenographic records of the Central Planning Board, memoranda, and so forth. I mention this only because these documents show conclusively to what extent my task was a technical and economic one.
DR. FLACHSNER: In your documents, as far as you remember, did you ever make statements regarding ideology, anti-Semitism, et cetera?
SPEER: No; I never made any statements of the kind, either in speeches or memoranda. I assume that otherwise the Prosecution would be in a position to produce something like that.
DR. FLACHSNER: Herr Speer, you also figured as armament Minister on the list of members of the new Government drawn up by the men responsible for the Putsch of 20 July. Did you participate in the attempted assassination of 20 July?
SPEER: I did not participate, nor was I informed of it in advance. At that time I was against assassinating Hitler.
DR. FLACHSNER: Mr. President, this point is mentioned in interrogatories by the witness Kempf under Point 9 and the witness Stahl under Point 1. [Turning to the defendant.] What was the reason why you, as the only minister from the National Socialist regime, were on the opposition list?
SPEER: At that period I was working in collaboration with Army experts of the General Staff and the commander of the Home Defense Forces. Both staffs were the nucleus of the attempt of 20 July. I had particularly close relations with Generaloberst Fromm, chief of the Home Defense Forces, and also with Generaloberst Zeitzler, the Chief of the Army General Staff. After 20 July Fromm was hanged and Zeitzler was dismissed from the Army. A close contact developed through this collaboration, and these circles recognized my technical achievements. I assumed at that time that that was why they wanted to retain me.
DR. FLACHSNER: So political reasons did not play any part in that connection?
SPEER: Certainly not directly. Of course, I was well known for the fact that for a long time I had spoken my mind emphatically and in public regarding the abuses which took place in Hitler's immediate circle. As I found out later, I shared the opinions of the men of 20 July in many points of principle.
DR. FLACHSNER: What were your relations with Hitler in regard to your work?
SPEER: My closest contact with him, in my capacity of architect, was probably during the period from 1937 to September 1939; after that, the relationship was no longer so close on account of the circumstances of the war. After I was appointed successor to Todt a closer but much more official working relationship was again established. Because of the heavy demands made upon me by my armament work, I had very little opportunity to go to headquarters. I only visited the Fuehrer's headquarters about once in 2 or 3 weeks. My 4 months' illness in the spring of 1944 was exploited by many people interested in weakening my position, and after 20 July the fact that I had been scheduled for the Ministry undoubtedly occasioned a shock to Hitler-a fact which Bormann and Goebbels used to start an open fight against me. The details are shown by a letter which I sent to Hitler on 20 December 1944 and which has been submitted as a document.
DR. FLACHSNER: Were you able to carry on political discussions with Hitler?
SPEER: No, he regarded me as a purely technical minister. Attempts to discuss political or personnel problems with him always failed because of the fact that he was unapproachable. From 1944 on, he was so averse to general discussions and discussions on the war situation that I set down my ideas in memorandum form and handed them to him. Hitler knew how to confine every man to his own specialty. He himself was therefore the only co-ordinating factor. This was far beyond his strength and also his knowledge. A unified political leadership was lacking in consequence, as was also an expert military office for making decisions.
DR. FLACHSNER: Then, as technical minister, do you wish to limit your responsibility to your sphere of work?
SPEER: No; I should like to say something of fundamental importance here. This war has brought an inconceivable catastrophe upon the German people, and indeed started a world catastrophe. Therefore it is my unquestionable duty to assume my share of responsibility for this disaster before the German people. This is all the more my obligation, all the more my responsibility, since the head of the Government has avoided responsibility before the German people and before the world. I, as an important member of the leadership of the Reich, therefore, share in the total responsibility, beginning with 1942. I will state my arguments in this connection in my final remarks.
DR. FLACHSNER: Do you assume responsibility for the affairs covered by the extensive sphere of your assignments?
SPEER: Of course, as far as it is possible according to the principles generally applied and as far as actions were taken according to my directives.
DR. FLACHSNER: Do you wish to refer to Fuehrer decrees in this connection?
SPEER: No. Insofar as Hitler gave me orders and I carried them out, I assume the responsibility for them. I did not, of course, carry out all the orders which he gave me.
DR. FLACHSNER: Mr. President, I turn now to a second part of my evidence in the case of the defendant. This presentation is not meant to exonerate the defendant from those charges, brought against Speer by the Prosecution, which apply to his actual sphere of activity. This part concerns itself rather with the accusations raised by the Prosecution against the defendant as a member of the so-called joint conspiracy. This second part is relatively brief and I assume that I shall be able to conclude my entire presentation of evidence within an hour. In this matter we are concerned with Speer's activity in preventing Hitler's destructive intentions in Germany and the occupied countries and with the measures he took and the attempts he made to shorten a war which he believed already lost. I assume that the High Tribunal will agree to my presentation. Herr Speer, up to what time did you devote all your powers to obtaining the strongest possible armament and thus continuing the war?
SPEER: Up to the middle of January 1945.
DR. FLACHSNER: Had not the war been lost before that?
SPEER: From a military point of view and as far as the general situation was concerned, it was certainly lost before that. It is difficult, however, to consider a war as lost and to draw the final conclusions as regards one's own person if one is faced with unconditional surrender.
DR. FLACHSNER: Did not considerations arising out of the production situation, of which you were in a position to have a comprehensive view, force you to regard the war as lost long before that?
SPEER: From the armament point of view not until the autumn of 1944, for I succeeded up to that time, in spite of bombing attacks, in maintaining a constant rise in production. If I may express it in figures, this was so great that in the year 1944 I could completely re-equip 130 infantry divisions and 40 armored divisions. That involved new equipment for 2 million men. This figure would have been 30 percent higher had it not been for the bombing attacks. We reached our production peak for the entire war in August 1944 for munitions; in September 1944 for aircraft; and in December 1944 for ordnance and the new U-boats. The new weapons were to be put into use a few months later, probably in February or March of 1945. I may mention only the jet planes which had already been announced in the press, the new U-boats, the new antiaircraft installations, et cetera. Here too, however, bombing attacks so retarded the mass production of these new weapons-which in the last phase of the war might have changed the situation-that they could no longer be used against the enemy in large numbers. All of these attempts were fruitless, however, since from 12 May 1944 on our fuel plants became targets for concentrated attacks from the air. This was catastrophic. 90 percent of the fuel was lost to us from that time on. The success of these attacks meant the loss of the war as far as production was concerned; for our new tanks and jet planes were of no use without fuel.
DR. FLACHSNER: Did you ten Hitler about the effect on production, of the bombing attacks?