dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
MR. DODD: Because of these measures a certain disquietude had developed which, according to individual reports, was spreading very much and might produce difficulties everywhere. General Field Marshal Goering some time ago pointed out, in his long speech, the necessity to deport into the Reich a million workers. me supply so far was 160,000. However, great difficulties had to be overcome here. Therefore it would be advisable to co-operate with the district and town chiefs in the execution of the compulsion, so that one could be sure from the start that this action would be reasonably expedient. The arrest of young Poles when leaving church service or the cinema would bring about an ever increasing nervousness of the Poles. Generally speaking, he had no objections at all to the rubbish, capable of work yet often loitering about, being snatched from the streets. The best method for this, however, would be the organization of a raid; and it would be absolutely justifiable to stop a Pole in the street and to question him as to what he was doing, where he was working, et cetera ." I should like to refer to another entry in the diary of the Defendant Frank, and I offer in evidence an extract from the entry made on the 16th day of March 1940, which appears in the document book as 2233(b)-PS, and it is Exhibit USA-174. I wish particularly to quote from the third page of the English text: "The Governor General remarks that he had long negotiations in Berlin the representatives of the Reich Ministry for Finance and the Reich Ministry for Food. Urgent demands have been made there that Polish farm workers should be sent to the Reich in greater numbers. He has made the statement in Berlin that he, if it is demanded from him, could of course exercise force in some such manner: he could have the police surround a village and get the men and women in question out by force, and then send them to Germany.
MR. DODD: But one can also work differently, besides these police measures, by retaining the unemployment compensation of these workers in question." The instruments of force and terror used to carry out this program reached into many phases of Polish life. German labor authorities raided churches and theaters, seized those present, and shipped them back to Germany. And this appears in a memorandum to Himmler, which we offer in evidence as Document Number 2220-PS, and it bears Exhibit Number USA-175. This memorandum is dated the 17th day of April 1943; and it was written by Dr. Lammers, the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, and deals with the situation in the Government General of Poland.
DR. SERVATIUS: I should like to call the attention of the Tribunal to the fact that the last three documents, which have just been read, were not made available to me beforehand. They do not appear on the original list of documents, nor have I been able to find them on the later list. I therefore request that the reading of these documents be held in abeyance until I have had an opportunity to read them and to discuss them with my client. Perhaps I may, at the same time, lodge an additional complaint. I received some interrogation records in English the day before yesterday. I consulted my client about them and he told me that they are not the actual transcripts of his words in the interrogation, because he was interrogated in German; an interpreter translated his statements into English, and then they were taken down. These documents cannot have any evidential value since they were not presented to the defendant for certification; he did not sign them, nor were they read to him. They are transcripts in English, a language of which the defendant understands little or nothing. I also discovered that another interrogation record on the Defendant Speer contains statements which incriminate my client but which are apparently also incorrect, as I established in consultation with the Defendant Speer. I should like to have an opportunity of discussing the matter with the representative of the Prosecution and of clearing up these differences-to decide to what extent I can agree to the use of these documents. They were to be presented by the Prosecution today or tomorrow at the latest, but for the time being I must object to their use.
THE PRESIDENT: As I understand it, you said to us that the last three documents were not available to you and that they were not in the original list. Is that right?
DR. SERVATIUS: Not up to now. I want to have an opportunity of reading these documents in advance. They are being read here without my having seen them.
THE PRESIDENT: And then you went on to deal with the interrogations which have not been put into evidence.
DR. SERVATIUS: Yes, I wanted to take the opportunity of saying that I wished to discuss these documents with the Prosecution before they are submitted to the Tribunal tomorrow, or probably even today. Meanwhile I must object to their being used as evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd, do you know what the circumstances are about these three documents white have not been supplied?
MR. DODD: I do not, Your Honor. They have been placed in the defendants' Information Center and they partly have been in the information list. It may be that through some oversight these entries of this diary were neglected.
DR. SERVATIUS: I have these documents before me now; they are not numbered; the document concerning Sauckel begins on Page 10-question and answer on Pages 11 and 12. The record is not continuous; it consists of fragments of a transcript, which I want to trace to its origin.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel for the Prosecution will supply you with these documents at the adjournment this afternoon. With reference to the interrogation, if they propose to use any interrogation in the Trial tomorrow, they can also supply you with any documents which are material to that interrogation.
DR. SERVATIUS: Thank you. . MR. DODD: I believe I was referring to Document Number 2220-PS.
THE PRESIDENT: That is right. You have not begun to read it yet.
MR. DODD: I propose to read from the fourth page of the English text, Paragraph 2 at the top of the page, particularly the last two sentences of the paragraph; and in the German text the passage is found in Page 10, Paragraph 1. Quoting directly, it is as follows: "As things were, the recruiting of manpower had to be accomplished by means Of more or less forceful methods, such as the instances when certain groups appointed by the labor offices caught church and movie-goers indiscriminately and transported them into the Reich. That such methods only undermine the people's willingness to work and the people's confidence to such a degree that it cannot be checked even with terror, is just as clear as the consequences brought about by a strengthening of the political resistance movement." That is the end of the quotation. We say that Polish farmland was confiscated with the aid of the SS and was distributed to German inhabitants or held in trust for the German community, and the farm owners were employed as laborers or transported to Germany against their will. We refer to Document Number 1352-PS, which bears Exhibit Number USA-176. This document is a report of the SS, and it bears the title "Achievement of Confiscations of Polish Agricultural Enterprises with the Purpose of Transferring the Poles to the Old Reich and Employing them as Agricultural Workers." I wish to read from the first page of the English text beginning with the fifth paragraph; and in the German text it appears on Page 9, Paragraph 1 on that page. Quoting: "It is possible without difficulty to accomplish the confiscation of small agricultural enterprises in the villages in which larger agricultural enterprises have been already confiscated and are under the management of the East German Corporation for Agricultural Development." And then passing down three sentences, there is this statement which I quote: "The former owners of Polish farms together with their families will be transferred to the Old Reich by the employment offices for employment as farm workers.
MR. DODD: In this way many hundreds of Polish agricultural workers can be placed at the disposal of agriculture in the Old Reich in the shortest and simplest manner. ~ this way, to begin with, the most pressing shortage now felt in a very disagreeable manner, especially in the root-crop districts, will be quickly removed." Pursuant to the directions of the Defendant Sauckel, his agents and the SS men deported Polish men to Germany without their families, thereby accomplishing one of the basic purposes of the program, the supplying of labor for the German war effort, and at the same time, weakening the reproductive potential of the Polish people. I wish to refer directly to Document L-61, which bears Exhibit Number USA-177. This document is a letter from the Defendant Sauckel to the presidents of the land labor offices. It. is dated the 26th day of November 1942, and I want to read from the first paragraph of that letter which states as follows: "In agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and the SD, these Jews who are still in employment are also, from now on, to be evacuated from the territory of the Reich and are to be replaced by Poles, who are being evacuated from the Government General." And passing to the third paragraph of that same letter, we find this statement. Quoting: "The Poles who are to be evacuated as a result of this measure will be put into concentration camps and put to work, insofar as they are criminal or asocial elements. The remaining Poles, so far as they are suitable for labor, will be transported-without family-into the Reich, particularly to Berlin, where they win be put at the disposal of the labor allocation offices to work in armament factories instead of the Jews who are to be replaced."
THE PRESIDENT: Who is the Chief of the Security Police, mentioned in the second paragraph?
MR. DODD: The Chief of the Security Police was Heinrich Himmler. He was also the Reichsfuehrer of the SS.
DR. SERVATIUS: May I say something with regard to this document. The Defendant Sauckel denies knowledge of it and says that the place of dispatch, not mentioned during the reading of this document, is of importance. The document, according to its letterhead, was written at 96 Saarland Strasse, which was not the office of the Defendant Sauckel. The second point is that this document, contrary to the statement in the document list classifying it as an original letter of Sauckel, was not signed by him. Moreover the certification of the signature, customary on all documents, is missing. May I ask the prosecutor to read this into the record, so that I can come back to it later.
THE PRESIDENT: If the procedure which the Tribunal has laid down has been carried out, either the original document or a photostat copy were in your Information Center; and you can then compare or show to your client either the photostat or the original.
DR. SERVATIUS: I have done that and only object now to the fact that from the reading of this document parts which I consider important are being omitted. If this letter is being read here it must be read in its entirety, including the parts which I consider important, namely, the letterhead and the type of signature.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat that.
DR. SERVATIUS: I am asking that if it is to be used as evidence, the letter should be read in its entirety, including its complete heading and the signature as it appears, namely, "signed Sauckel." The certification of the signature is missing, a fact from which my client draws certain conclusions in his favor.
THE PRESIDENT: You will have an opportunity after adjournment of seeing this document; and you have been told already that you can refer, when your turn comes to present your defense, to the whole of any document. It is inconvenient to the Tribunal to have many interruptions of this sort; and if you wish to refer to the whole document, you will be able to do so at a later stage.
DR. SERVATIUS: I must assume then, Mr. President, that it is admissible to read parts of a document instead of the whole. Did I understand correctly?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, certainly. You can put in a part or the whole of the document when your turn comes. We will adjourn now; but, Mr. Dodd, you will satisfy this counsel for the Defense as to the reason why he had not got these documents.
DR. SERVATIUS: Yes, I understand, Mr. President.
MR. DODD: Yes, I will.
THE PRESIDENT: And you will make them available to him and insure that he has an opportunity of seeing the original of this document so that he can check the signature.
MR. DODD: We will, and I will see that the original is available to him.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, we will adjourn now. [The Tribunal adjourned until 12 December 1945 at 1000 hours.]
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn this morning at 12:30 for a closed session and sit again at 2:00 o'clock.
MR. DODD: May it please the Tribunal, I should like to report to the Tribunal this morning with reference to the questions which arose yesterday afternoon concerning three documents. After adjournment we found that Document 2220-PS was in the defendants' information Center in photostatic form, and that the two other documents, being respectively two entries from the Frank diary, were also there but in a different form. The Frank diary consists of some 40-odd volumes which we, of course, were not able to photostat, so we had placed instead in the defendants' room the excerpts. As a matter of fact, we had placed the entire document book there.
DR. ALFRED SEIDL (Counsel for the Defendant Frank): Yesterday the Prosecution submitted documents concerning the Defendant Frank; the numbers are 2233(a)-PS and 2233(b)-PS, which were presented as Exhibits USA-173 add USA-174. These are not ordinary documents, but excerpts from the diary of Frank. Six weeks ago I applied in writing to have this diary, which consists of 42 heavy, thick volumes, submitted to me. I made this request for the first time on the 2d of September, the second time on the 16th of November, the third time on the 18th of November, and the fourth time on the 3rd of December. Unfortunately, I have not so far received this diary, and I should like to ask the Tribunal that it be submitted to me as soon as possible, not least because this material was surrendered by the Defendant Frank himself to the officers who arrested him and was to be used as evidence for his defense. I am of course not in a position to work through all this material in a few days, and I should like to ask the Tribunal that this diary be put at my disposal without delay. In this connection I should like to call the attention of the Tribunal to another matter. The Tribunal has already approved that the four long speeches which the Defendant Frank delivered in Germany in 1942 and which led to his dismissal by Hitler from all his offices should be put at my disposal as evidence. The General Secretary of the Tribunal informed me of this on the 4th of December, but unfortunately I have not so far received copies of these speeches. I should be very grateful, therefore, if the Tribunal will ensure that its decisions are carried out and that the documents are submitted to me without delay.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will look into these matters with the General Secretary of the Tribunal, and doubtless it will be able to arrange that you should have these documents submitted to you by the defendants' counsel Information Center.
DR. SEIDL: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Mr. Dodd.
MR. DODD: May I refer briefly to the discussion that we were engaged in yesterday in order to take up the train of thought. I wish to remind the Tribunal that we were discussing or had just completed a discussion of Document L-61, which had to do with a letter written by the Defendant Sauckel to the presidents of the "Lander" labor offices. I had read two excerpts from that letter. Referring to the letter, we say that the Nazi campaign of force and terror and abduction was described in another letter to the Defendant Frank, which we wish to refer to as Document Number 1526-PS.
THE PRESIDENT: Before you pass from that, Mr. Dodd, has either the original or the photostatic copy been shown to Sauckel's counsel?
MR. DODD: Oh, yes, Sir. A photostatic copy was in the defendants' Formation Center, and after adjournment yesterday we got the original and handed it to him here in this room.
THE PRESIDENT: And he saw it?
MR. DODD: Yes, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Very well.
MR. DODD: This document, Number 1526-PS, USA-178, is a letter written by the chairman of the Ukrainian Main Committee at Krakow in February 1943. I wish to read from the third page of the English text, beginning with the second paragraph; the same passage in the German text at Page 2, Paragraph 5. I quote: "The general nervousness is still further increased by the wrong methods of labor mobilization which have been used more and more frequently in recent months. "The wild and ruthless manhunt as practiced everywhere in towns and country, in streets, squares, stations, even in churches, as well as at night in homes, has shaken the feeling of security of the inhabitants. Every man is exposed to the danger of being seized suddenly and unexpectedly, anywhere and at any time, by the police, and brought into an assembly camp. None of his relatives knows what has happened to him, and only weeks or months later one or another gives news of his fate by a postcard." I wish to turn to Enclosure 5 on Page 8 of this document, which I quote: "In November of last year an inspection of all males of the age-classes born 1910 to 1920 was ordered in the area of Zalesaczyti (district of Czortkow). After the men had appeared for inspection, all those who were selected were arrested at once, loaded into trains, and sent to the Reich. Similar recruitment of laborers for the Reich also took place in other areas of this district. Following some interventions, the action was then stopped." The resistance of the Polish people to this enslavement program and the necessity for increased force were described by the Defendant Sauckel's deputy, one Timm, at a meeting of the Central Planning Board, which was, by the way, Hitler's wartime planning agency. It was made up of the Defendant Speer, field Marshal Milch, and State Secretary Korner. The Central Planing Board was the highest level economic planning agency, exercising production controls by allocating raw materials and labor to industrial users. Now, Document R-124, Exhibit USA-179.
MR. DODD: This document consists of excerpts from minutes of the meetings of this Central Planning Board and minutes of conferences between the Defendant Speer and Hitler. Only the excerpts, of course, from these minutes upon which we rely are being offered in evidence. I would say to the Tribunal, however, that the balance of the minutes are available-can be made available-if the Tribunal so desires. This deputy of Sauckel, his name being Timm, made a statement at the 36th conference of the Central Planning Board; and it appears on Page 14, Paragraph a of the English text of Document R-124, and on Page 10, Paragraph 2 of the German text: "Especially in Poland the situation at the moment is extraordinarily serious. It is known that violent battles have occurred just because of these actions. The resistance against the administration established by us is very strong. Quite a number of our men have been exposed to increased dangers; and just in the last 2 or 3 weeks some of them have been shot dead, for example, the head of the Labor Office of Warsaw, who was shot in his Office 14 days ago, and yesterday another man again. This is how matters stand at present; and the recruiting itself even if done with the best will, remains extremely difficult unless police reinforcements are at hand." Deportation and enslavement of civilians reached unprecedented levels in the so-called Eastern Occupied Territories. These wholesale deportations resulted directly from labor demands made by the Defendant Sauckel on the Defendant Rosenberg, who was the Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, and his subordinates, and also on the Armed Forces-a demand made directly on the Armed Forces by the Defendant Sauckel. On the 5th of October 1942, for example, the Defendant Sauckel wrote to the Defendant Rosenberg, stating that 2 million foreign laborers were required and that the majority of these would have to be drafted from the recently occupied Eastern territories and especially from the Ukraine.
MR. DODD: I wish to refer at this point to Document 017-PS, which bears Exhibit Number USA-180. This letter from the Defendant Sauckel to the Defendant Rosenberg I wish to quote in full. It begins by saying: "The Fuehrer has worked out new and most urgent plans for armament which require the quick mobilization of two million more foreign workers. The Fuehrer therefore has granted me, for the execution of his decree of 21 March 1942, new powers for my new duties, and has especially authored me to take whatever measures I think are necessary in the Reich, the Protectorate, the Government General, as well as in the occupied territories, in order to assure, at all costs an orderly mobilization of labor for the German armament industry. "The additional required labor forces win have to be. drafted, for the most part, from the recently occupied Eastern Territories, especially from the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Therefore, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine must furnish 225,000 workers by 31 December 1842 and 225,000 more by 1 May 1942. "I ask you to inform Reich Commissioner, Gauleiter, Party Member Koch at once about the new situation and requirements and especially to see that he supports personally in every possible way the execution of this new order. "I intend to visit Party Member Koch shortly and I would be grateful if he could inform me as to where and when I could meet him for a personal discussion. Just now though, I ask that the recruiting be taken up at once with all energy and the use of every factor, especially the experts of the labor offices. All directives which temporarily limited the procurement of Eastern Workers are annulled. The Reich procurement for the next months must be given priority over all other measures.... 12 Dec.45 "I do not ignore the difficulties which exist for the execution of this new order, but I am convinced that with the ruthless use of all resources and with the full co-operation of an concerned the execution of the new demands can be accomplished by the date fixed.