dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
DR. SERVATIUS: It may, however, also be committed by subordinate agencies acting on their own authority without the knowledge or intention of their superior authorities. In that case the head of the agency acting on its own accord bears the responsibility. Lastly, it may be a case of a purely individual act committed against the regulations in force. For such an act the individual is solely responsible. It follows that the Defendant Sauckel is responsible, to begin with, only for such general orders and instructions which he has given, not however for independent acts by superior authorities in the occupied territories or by supreme Reich authorities, such as the Chief of SS and Police, which were not under his jurisdiction. The orders and directives of the Defendant Sauckel have been submitted, and they must show whether the mobilization of labor as ordered by him was in fact a regulated one or was tantamount to an "ill-treatment" of the population. Apart from the call for volunteers, mobilization of labor took place on the basis of a compulsory service decree, signed as a legal measure in accordance with Hitler's instructions by the territorial commanders. The authority to issue such laws exceeded the powers of the Defendant Sauckel, nor could he ask that any such laws be issued. He did however approve of them and made them the basis for his work. The contents of these laws were consistent with the fundamental ideas of the German laws concerning compulsory labor service. These laws were coercive. The use of coercive measures is not called for as long as the legal authority of the occupying power is acknowledged by the population; they become necessary only when such authority fails. In this connection the Defendant Sauckel has repeatedly asked for the maintenance of executive authority by operations in partisan-infested territories for overpowering the resistance movement (Document R-124). No legal objections can be raised against the fact that to this end he demanded the use of means provided by the State.
DR. SERVATIUS: He is wrongly incriminated only by the words "SS and Police," which have been connected by the Prosecution with the conception of crime. Such an incrimination would only be justified if the criminal character of the Police had been proven and if the Defendant Sauckel at that time had had cognizance of such criminal activity. That force may be used in case of resistance against orders of the occupation force cannot be disputed. The question is, where are the limits of force and whether or not there are legal and illegal, admissible and inadmissible, human and inhuman, measures of force. If fundamental laws are no longer deemed to be valid when a state of siege is declared within a state, surely this will apply all the more to a power occupying another country in wartime. Anyone who refuses to carry out the orders of the occupying power knowingly participates in the fight to which he is not entitled and has to accept the consequences. Obedience is the primary duty toward the occupying power; and where patriotism and obedience are conflicting issues, the law decides against patriotism. The punishment meted out is, as such, not subject to any limitation; and the threats of punishment by an occupation power are, for purposes of intimidation, usually extremely severe. The question is whether there exists a limit, from the standpoint of humanity, which prohibits punishment in excess of the legitimate purpose which may be considered unwarranted. Orders like the burning of houses, which were issued independently by subordinate offices in connection with the recruitment of labor, must be examined from this point of view. This question is not easy to answer, if one bears in mind the special underlying circumstances and realizes that it was a case here of an open struggle between the occupying power and the population, with official support from the enemy. In case of uprisings and organized general resistance one cannot disclaim the applicability of the military laws as practiced by the combat troops.
DR. SERVATIUS: Necessity alone must be the decisive factor in this case. International law has put only one limit to coercive measures in forbidding, in Article 50 of the Hague Convention on Land Warfare, collective punishment of an entire population for the deeds of individuals for which the population cannot be held partially responsible. It is essential that such partial responsibility shall have been established by actual events and not construed through orders. It is not specified wherein collective punishment may consist. The limitations of humanity, as I already pointed out, must be respected, but in war this is a vague conception; necessity and practical value must always have preference. Next to the manner of recruiting labor, the conditions of work may represent an ill-treatment which can be looked upon as a war crime. On principle, there can be no question of ill-treatment whenever the foreign workers are generally treated in the same way as the workers of the home country. Different treatment is only permissible when special circumstances justify it. Whereas generally foreign workers work on the same level as the Germans the so-called, Eastern Workers were discriminated against. The most striking difference here was the limitation of freedom. If this had been arbitrary, that would be sufficient reason for declaring this to be ill-treatment. But the reasons for this limitation of freedom were not arbitrary; they were conditioned by the State's need for security. During wartime the presence of an enemy alien in the country always represents a danger, and it is for that very reason that originally the bringing in of foreign workers had been dispensed with. Only when necessity demanded the utilization of foreign workers did the need of security have to be taken into account simultaneously. The measures to be taken will depend upon the danger, which will vary according to the attitude of the alien. Whereas police measures with regard to the French were almost imperceptible, the Eastern Workers were in the beginning kept under supervision in camps.
DR. SERVATIUS: The natural interest of the state lies in attaining security by winning the aliens over inwardly because their collaboration is desired. This will never be achieved by depriving them of their freedom. As long as the attitude of the alien cannot be clearly assessed, especially if he be like the citizens of the Soviet Union, propagandistically trained, more stringent control may be necessary. However, it must not develop into permanent captivity, and should at most constitute a sort of quarantine. To deprive people without guilt of their liberty for an extended period is not admissible, because that would correspond to a forbidden collective punishment. The mere assumption of danger is not sufficient to justify such limitations; there must be certain acts which show that such foreign workers appear dangerous even under normal working conditions. The custody of Eastern Workers behind barbed wire and without permission to go out, as ordered by Himmler, must be regarded as ill-treatment if it is a permanent practice. The Defendant Sauckel, guided by a feeling that in this matter the limits of the permissible had been overstepped, immediately took steps against this and in a tough fight against Himmler demanded and obtained the withdrawal of barbed wire and the prohibition to go out, as can be seen from the ensuing decrees, Document Number Sauckel-10, Exhibit USA-206. Where in spite of later arrangements the old methods were still applied by the police, Sauckel always intervened whenever he heard of such occurrences. This has been confirmed repeatedly by witnesses. I refer particularly to Exhibit Sauckel-10, the statement by the witness Goetz. Another controversial point was the identification by a badge "Ost," which was maintained until 1944 and then replaced by a national insignia. This identification of the Eastern Workers, who were free to move among the population, was necessary for security reasons. This cannot be considered ill-treatment.
DR. SERVATIUS: The distaste for this sign shown by the Eastern Workers was chiefly due to the defamation of this badge by propaganda, and the Defendant Sauckel always tried to change this insignia and to replace it by a national insignia such as the other workers wore voluntarily. He finally prevailed here also against Himmler (Document RF-810, Page 12). Equality must also exist between a nation's own workers and foreign workers with regard to the rules concerning maintenance of discipline. With all belligerent states the war has raised the same problem as to how to deal with those workers who do not properly fulfill their work duties; that is to say, slackers, shirkers, and saboteurs. The practice of discharge, common in peacetime, is ineffective during war; on the other hand, deserters from work cannot be tolerated today by any belligerent. In cases amounting to sabotage, police and penal measures were called for, the principal one being a short term in a labor training camp; in certain extreme cases, imprisonment in a concentration camp was inflicted. Document 1063-PS, RF-345, shows the similarity in the execution of the regulations as applied to Germans and foreigners. Such police measures, which are caused by disloyal conduct of the worker, are justified. The Wartburg Document ItF-810 shows in the report of the expert Dr. Sturm that such measures were carried out on a very moderate scale and that only 0.1 to 0.2 per thousand were thus punished. Hence it follows that the issue of regulations concerning the maintenance of discipline is not yet in itself an ill-treatment which might form the basis for a crime against humanity. Such ill-treatment, however, can consist of excesses such as did occur outside the competence of the Defendant Sauckel. He can only be held responsible for those if he himself was subjectively to blame in that he knew of such excesses and approved of them although- he might have prevented them.
DR. SERVATIUS: In summing up one can say that the "regulated mobilization of labor" is permissible in international law and that restrictions imposed on workers within the limits of necessities must be permitted for reasons of state security. On the other hand, excesses in carrying out the regulations must be looked upon as ill-treatment and may amount to crimes against humanity. Responsibility for those rests with whoever has instigated them or who, within the sphere of his competence, failed to prevent them in the performance of his duty. When measuring the grave charges brought against the Defendant Sauckel by the standards of the aforesaid legal considerations, it will be necessary first of all to single out those fields in which the evidence reveals him to be absolutely clear of any responsibility. In the first place, it is not proved that the Defendant Sauckel can be connected with the biological extermination of the population. His whole interest, as has been shown, pointed toward the opposite direction, since his purpose was to obtain people as laborers. He had nothing to do with migration measures and any methods used in that respect. Work in concentration camps was just as far removed from the Defendant Sauckel's responsibility. Himmler's speech in Posen in October 1943 (Document 1919-PS, Page 21) reveals that the SS had erected gigantic armament plants of their own. We know that Himmler covered his extensive labor requirements by despotic arbitrary arrests of persons in occupied territories. Inside Germany he had workers engaged in regular employment arrested on insignificant pretexts and brought to concentration camps, fraudulently using the regular labor offices. This is clearly shown in Document 1063-PS, containing a letter dated 17 December 1942 as well as a letter dated 25 June 1943, in which a requirement of 35,000 prisoners is signified. Moreover, no correspondence with reference to concentration camp labor ever passed through Sauckel's offices. As an example, I refer to Document 1584-PS containing some correspondence with Himmler's department.
DR. SERVATIUS: The Defendant Sauckel's name is never mentioned with reference to a conscription of prisoners, and the witnesses have unanimously stated that the Defendant Sauckel had no connection with these matters. This is also confirmed by the statement of the Director of the armament ministry's Labor Office, Schmelter, who received the prisoners required direct from Himmler. Another field which must be eliminated is the conscription of Jews for labor. This formed a part of labor conscription of concentration camp prisoners; it was Himmler's own personal secret sphere. This is revealed for instance by Document R-91, in which Himmler's service orders the arrest of 45,000 Jews as concentration camp prisoners. By the production of Document L-61 the Prosecution has attempted to convict Sauckel of a share of guilt in this field. This document is a letter, dated 26 November 1942, from Sauckel's office to the presidents of the provincial labor offices, stating that by agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and SD, Jewish workers remaining in the plants must be withdrawn and evacuated to Poland. As a matter of fact, this letter actually confirms that Sauckel had nothing to do with Jewish labor in the concentration camps, since Jewish workers were withdrawn from his department under the very pretext of evacuation. The measure is indeed solely concerned with the purely technical matter of excluding the Jewish laborers and replacing them by Poles, an operation which could not have been carried out without the participation of Sauckel's office. This letter is in continuation of a correspondence which can be traced back to the period prior to Sauckel's assumption of office, and Document L-156 subsequently deals with the same technical operation. The unimportant character of the matter is attested by the fact that these letters were not sent from the Defendant Sauckel's head office in the Thuringerhaus, but from an auxiliary office in the Saarlandstrasse.
DR. SERVATIUS: The Defendant Sauckel disclaims knowledge of this correspondence and points out that the letters do not bear his original signature but were, according to the routine of his service, made out in his name just because they were of minor importance. The fact that the letters begin with the routine business term of "by agreement with," instead of "by consent of," the Chief of Police and SD does not mean that they refer to an agreement reached, but simply points to the agency in charge of the matter. Next, reference has been made to "extermination by labor." However, Documents 682-PS and 654-PS, dated September 1942, unmistakably show that this is a case of a secret maneuver of Himmler and Goebbels in co-operation with the Reich Minister of Justice, Thierack. The Defendant Sauckel is not involved. Neither was the conscription of workers for the Organization Todt under Sauckel's responsibility. The accusations proceeding from Document UK-56 in this respect, bearing upon labor conscription methods in the Channel Islands, do not therefore concern him. The documents do not show that the Defendant Sauckel was aware of these proceedings or that he could have prevented them. This separation between the Defendant Sauckel's labor jurisdiction and the Organization Todt is confirmed in Document ~191, the report of the International Labor Office in Montreal. The enlistment of labor by civil and military departments is another chapter. This was to a certain extent carried out as 'Pirate'' mobilization and kept secret from the Defendant Sauckel, because he opposed these practices and endeavored to prevent them by all means. Occasionally he was by-passed by higher orders. In this category there is labor enlistment by the SS, the Reichsbahn, Air Force construction battalions, Speer's transport and traffic units, fortification and engineering staffs, and other services. The exclusion of these aspects from the scope of the Indictment should exonerate Sauckel all the more since in these cases his directives did not apply.
DR. SERVATIUS: Document 204-PS illustrates in this respect the circumstances in which transport auxiliaries were produced in White Russia. Document 334-PS shows the same with regard to the execution of an independent drive for Air Force auxiliaries, which cannot be held against Sauckel. The commitment of adolescents, known as the Hay Action, according to Document 031-PS of 14 June 194A, remained outside Sauckel's jurisdiction and activities, as becomes clear from the document itself. The 9th Army together with the Eastern Ministry were the originators. A letter from the Codefendant Rosenberg to Reich Minister Lammers of 20 July 1944 (Document 345-PS) falsely refers to the "agreement" of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor; on the other hand it states that the Defendant Sauckel was not connected with an SS helper action and that he refused co-operation in this affair. According to this, as stated by Document 1137-PS of 19 October 1944, a special office in the Rosenberg Ministry with its own personnel attended to the seizure of juveniles. The Defendant Sauckel's agency was by-passed and labor furnished directly to the armament industry. In circumvention of the Defendant Sauckel's agency certain measures also took place which Hitler caused by direct orders to the local offices of the Armed Forces and of the civil administration; this for instance applied to the labor commitment ordered in the occupied territories for the fortification of the Crimea (Document UK-68). The enlistment of labor in Holland, which was carried out by the Armed Forces against the protest of the labor service offices, is another of these cases; this is shown in Document 3003-PS and is confirmed by the Defendant Seyss-Inquart. An important sector, which is beyond the Defendant Sauckel's responsibility, embraces all the actions undertaken as punitive measures against partisans and resistance groups. These are independent police measures; I already spoke about their judicial evaluation. Whether they were admissible and could be approved depends on the circumstances.
DR. SERVATIUS: For example, measures against the resistance movement in France, as described in Document UK-78 (French Government Report), cannot be included under the direct responsibility of Defendant Sauckel. Thus the most incriminating occurrences enumerated in Count 3, Paragraph VIII of the Indictment under "Deportation," which ended in concentration camps, are not within the responsibility of the Defendant Sauckel. The deportations for political and racial reasons, which are also mentioned under VIII (B) of the Indictment, such as the deportation of French citizens to concentration camps, do not come within the responsibility of the Defendant Sauckel either. The resettlement of Slovenes and Yugoslavs described under (B) 2, must also be excluded. According to the Indictment (under VIII, (H) 2) only part of the approximately 5 million Soviet citizens mentioned are stated to have been seized for labor commitment, the remainder being removed in other ways to which the regulations of the Defendant Sauckel did not apply. This is important not so much on account of the number of people involved, but because the alleged bad conditions might have applied in that very sector, since there the danger of improper treatment was unquestionably greater.
THE PRESIDENT: Would that be a convenient time to break off? [A recess was taken.]
DR. SERVATIUS: The prisoners of war are also exempted from the field of responsibility of the Defendant Sauckel. Such labor did not have to be enlisted but was only directed. This was done by means of special labor offices, which operated independently in connection with the prisoner-of-war camps and collaborated exclusively with the Armed Forces. Their task consisted only of employing prisoners of war where they were needed. The Defendant Sauckel could only request a transfer of prisoners of war. This is referred to in the Prosecution Document 1296-PS, of 27 July 1943, which mentions under Heading III the increase in the employment of prisoners of war in collaboration with the Army High Command. The assignment of prisoners of war to plants took place under the supervision of the Armed Forces, who at the same time enforced observance of the Geneva Convention. Sauckel is in no way connected with the death of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war of the Soviet Union 1941 of whom Himmler speaks in his Posen speech (Document 1919-PS) and for whose replacement workers had to be brought in. By Document USSR-415, the official Soviet report about the Lamsdorf Camp, the Defendant Sauckel is connected with the alleged ill-treatment of prisoners; but this is done merely because the number of personnel in the camp was reported to him as a purely routine matter. The charge cannot be maintained. The document, moreover, is not chronologically substantiated after the year 1941. The Defendant Sauckel, although personally not competent, intervened in excess of his official duties for the care of the prisoners of war, because he had an interest in their work morale. He issued general decrees; this Document Sauckel-36 shows that he demanded an adequate standard food supply, and Document Sauckel-39 shows that he demanded the same working hours as for German workers; he also stressed the fact that no disciplinary punishment could be inflicted by the plants. Further discrimination among the accusations raised must be made according to the time of the incidents.
DR. SERVATIUS: The Defendant Sauckel did not take over his office until 21 March 1942. His measures, therefore, could only have had effect some time later. What conditions prevailed previous to that can be seen from some documents dating from 1941. In Document 1206-PS leading authorities advocated feeding the workers on horse and cat meat, and in Document USSR-177 the production of bread of very inferior quality is suggested. Just a short time before the Defendant Sauckel took office Himmler in a sharp decree ordered the confinement of the workers behind barbed wire. It is fair to say that an extremely low level in the treatment of the foreign workers at that time in the Reich had been reached. The conception which prevailed with regard to the powers of resistance and the working capacity of the Russians is tragic. With the advent of the Defendant Sauckel a fundamental change took place, which led to a constantly increasing improvement of the situation. The credit for having effected a change here is, according to some documents I will cite, solely due to the Defendant Sauckel. This is shown in particular by Document EC-318, which is a record, dated 15 April 1942, of the first meeting between the Defendant Sauckel and Reich Minister Seldte and his specialist staff when taking office. It is recorded there that it was the Defendant Sauckel who made his assumption of office dependent on the condition that food supplies for foreigners must equal those for Germans, and that the granting of this request was guaranteed by Hitler, Goering, the Minister for Food, Darre, and his state secretary, Backe. It is also established there that the Defendant Sauckel demanded the removal of the barbed wire, and actually succeeded in this; and finally, that he immediately took steps against the low wages of the Eastern Workers. The execution of his fundamental demands was then also immediately followed through With tenacity by the Defendant Sauckel against the resistance of all authorities.