dtufail/nuremberg-trials-corpus huggingface dataset:
MR. DODD: Now, turning to another matter, we also understood you to say yesterday that when you wrote your book, The Myth of the 20th Century, you expressed your personal opinion and you did not intend it to have any great effect upon state affairs. Is that a fair statement of your testimony of yesterday with respect to your book?
ROSENBERG: I did not quite follow the last sentence. I must say, I wrote The Myth of the 20th Century during the years 1927 and 1928 approximately, after certain historical and other preliminary studies. It was published in October 1930 with an introduction to the effect that this was a purely personal opinion, and that the political organization of which I was a member was not responsible for it.
MR. DODD: Very good. I will ask that you be shown Document 3553-PS. That is also, if Your Honor pleases, Exhibit Number USA-352. It is already in evidence. [Turning to the defendant.] Now, you wrote a preface or a little introduction for that edition of that book. It is right there before you. You said in it: "To the 150,000th copy: The Myth has today drawn deep, ineffaceable furrows into the emotional life of the German people. Every new edition is a clear indication that a decisive spiritual and mental revolution is growing into a historical event. Many things which in my book seemed to be a peculiar idea have already become a reality of State policy. Many other things will yet, I hope, materialize as a further result of this new vigor." You wrote that?
ROSENBERG: That is certainly entirely correct. This book of 700 pages does not concern only those points of which I am accused here. This book deals with a large number of problems, the problem of the peasants, of the world states, of the concept of socialism, of the relation between leadership, industry, and labor, a presentation of the judgment...
MR. DODD: Now, just a minute. I don't think it is necessary for you to give us a list of the table of contents of the book. I simply asked you if you wrote that introduction.
ROSENBERG: Yes, of course.
MR. DODD: Now, with respect to the well-known forced labor program. I think it is perfectly clear to everyone who has been in attendance at these sessions before this Tribunal, and of course to yourself, that there was a forced labor program in effect, or a so-called slave labor program, both in the East and in the Western occupied countries. Isn't that a fact?
ROSENBERG: Yes, the law of 21 March is concerned therewith with workers from the occupied countries who were to be taken to Germany. In Germany there was also a compulsory labor law.
MR. DODD: Now, there are only two possible offices under the then German State which can, by any stretch of the imagination, be held responsible either in part or altogether for that forced slave labor program. Isn't that so? Two principal offices, at least.
ROSENBERG: Yes, indeed.
MR. DODD: And they were your own ministry and the of lice of the Defendant Sauckel. That is pretty simple. Is that true or not?
ROSENBERG: It is correct that Gauleiter Sauckel had been given the authority to pass orders to me and to all the supreme Reich authorities. It was my duty to make known and carry through these orders in the Occupied Eastern Territories according to my powers, my judgment, and my instructions.
MR. DODD: Did you carry out the compulsory labor directives under your ministry, force people to leave their homes and their communities to go to Germany and to work for the German State?
ROSENBERG: I fought for about three-quarters of a year for this recruitment of workers in the East to be put on a voluntary basis. From my record of a discussion with Gauleiter Sauckel still in the year 1943, it is very evident that at all times I made efforts to do this. I also mentioned how many millions of leaflets, of posters, and pamphlets I distributed in these countries so that this principle would be carried through. However, when I heard that if the number of German workers who had to go to the front could not be replaced, the German Army reserves would be at an end, then I could not protest any longer against recruitment of certain age-classes, or use of local authorities and forces of the gendarmerie to assist in this work. Yesterday I already...
MR. DODD: What you are telling us is you tried to get them voluntarily and you found they would not go, so then you forced them to go. Isn't that so?
ROSENBERG: That coercion took place here is true and is not disputed. Where an excess took place-and some terrible excesses took place-I did my utmost to prevent it or alleviate it.
MR. DODD: All right. You, of course, had promulgated an order in your own ministry concerning compulsory labor, had you not?
ROSENBERG: Yes. In the beginning, a general compulsory labor service law was promulgated.
MR. DODD: That's right, on the 19th of December 1941.
ROSENBERG: It may be that it was promulgated about that time.
MR. DODD: Well, you can accept that as being so, I think, that that is the date of your decree concerning compulsory labor, the compulsory labor, significantly-I want to make this very clear to you-in the Occupied Eastern Territories.
ROSENBERG: Yes.
MR. DODD: That order was promulgated by you as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
ROSENBERG: Yes.
MR. DODD: I ask that you be shown Document 1975-PS. It is Exhibit Number USA-820, already in evidence-not in evidence, I'm sorry. I am now offering it. [The document was submitted to the defendant.] I don't care to stress this document too much except to have you verify the fact that this is the order which you promulgated, and in the first paragraph with the small Figure 1, you stated, "All inhabitants of the Occupied Eastern Territories are subject to the general liability for work according to their capacity." And I wish to point out the paragraph under that small Number 1, with the Number 3, where you say, "A special ruling is drawn up for Jews." That is the 19th day of December 1941.
ROSENBERG: The document which has been submitted to me is signed by the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine and is concerned with a skeleton law of the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. I ask that I be shown the skeleton law of the Minister for the Occupied Easter Territories in order that I may judge correctly the carrying out provisions issued by the Reich Commissioner.
MR. DODD: Well, we can make that available to you. This is taken from the official gazette of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. You are not disputing, are you, the fact that you promulgated this order and that these two paragraphs I read to you were in it?
ROSENBERG: That I am not disputing.
MR. DODD: All right. If you care to look at all at the other paragraphs and at other parts, I will see that they are made available to you, but for the present purposes I can assure you there is no trick in connection with this. I want to move on to another document.
ROSENBERG: I would like to refer to just one point. Under Paragraph 1 it says expressly that people not completely able to work are to be used according to their capability for work. This shows the state of health had been considered.
MR. DODD: Yes, I read that to you. Now, you had a permanent state secretary by the name of Alfred Meyer, isn't that so?
ROSENBERG: I do not find anything here regarding the laws about Jews. There was a point mentioned about the directive for Jews, only it is not here.
MR. DODD: You will find it just below the sentence to which you made reference a minute ago, two paragraphs below it. There is a Figure 3 in parentheses and then this statement: "A special ruling is drawn up for Jews." Don't you find that there?
ROSENBERG: I do not find it here-oh, on this page, yes. That refers to another law, yes.
MR. DODD: That's all right. I just asked you if it was there, and it is. Let's go on. I asked you if you had a permanent staff secretary by the name of Meyer, Alfred Meyer, Meyer.
ROSENBERG: Yes.
MR. DODD: I want to show you Document 580-PS, which will become Exhibit Number USA-821. Now, this is an order from your Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and it is signed by your permanent staff! secretary, Alfred Meyer, and it is addressed to the Reich Commissioner for the Ostland, a man by the name of Lohse, Lohse, and also to the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, a man by the name of Koch about whom we have heard a good deal in this Trial I want to have you agree, if you will, that the order calls for 247,000 industrial workers and 380,000 agricultural workers. Now, I want you to turn specifically to Page 2 of the English translation and to Page 2, as well, of the German text, and Line 14 of the English text and Line 22 of the German text. The paragraph has before it the Figure 6, and it says: "The workers are to be recruited. Forced enlistment should be avoided; instead, for political reasons, the enlistment should be kept on a voluntary basis. In case the enlistment should not bring the required results and there should be a surplus of workers still available, use may be made in case of emergency, and in agreement with the Commissioner General of the decree dated 19 December 1941 concerning the introduction of compulsory labor in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Promises..." So that this order, signed by Meyer of your staff, directing the Reich commissioners in the Eastern Occupied Territories, was founded on your decree of 19 December 1941 for compulsory labor.
ROSENBERG: Mr. Prosecutor, you read the introduction, and from that we can see also that my deputy clearly tried in every way to avoid forced enlistment and, as he says, the enlistment was to "be kept on a voluntary basis." That is proof of what I already said yesterday, that Meyer, my permanent deputy, most emphatically tried to work along these Ones, and lastly this does not refer to arbitrary measures but rather to a general compulsory labor law in the Occupied Eastern Territories which would prevent hundreds of thousands who could neither work nor study from wandering about idly in the streets. I would however like to read also the end of the paragraph, and that says: "Promises which cannot be kept may not be given, neither in writing nor verbally. Therefore, the announcements, posters, and appeals in the press and over the radio may therefore not contain any untrue information in order to avoid disappointment among the workers employed in the Reich, and thus reactions against future recruitment in the Occupied Eastern Territories." I think a more legal attitude in the midst of war is not at all thinkable.
MR. DODD: Very good. All I am trying to indicate here, and to see if you will not agree with it, is that you, nevertheless, despite these remonstrance's and these objections which we do not deny that you made, did authorize your people in the Eastern Occupied Territories actually to conscript and force people to come to work in Germany, and you did it on the basis of your own decree. That is the point I am trying to make with you.
ROSENBERG: A compulsory labor law was issued by me at the end of 1941 for the territory of the Reichskommissariat concerned, that is, for the Ostland and for the Ukraine. The compulsory recruitment of this manpower for the Reich was not taken until much later, and compulsory labor service in the occupied countries was, in my opinion, legally necessary so that on the one hand no wildcat recruitment would take place, and also to prevent chaos resulting from the hundreds of thousands loitering in the streets.
THE PRESIDENT: You are not answering the question. You are giving a long paraphrase for the one word "yes," which is the answer you ought to have made.
ROSENBERG: When compulsory labor service was also instituted for the Reich, I said that I was in favor of voluntary enlistment. I could not persist in this attitude for long and therefore, of course, I agreed that then also compulsory labor laws would have to be instituted. I already admitted that three times yesterday; I have not disputed it.
MR. DODD: Yes, I know you repeated it three times yesterday and again this morning. In your own defense document-Rosenberg-11, I think it is-which is the letter that you wrote to Koch on the 14th of December 1942-I don't think it will be necessary to show it to you again; I think you saw it yesterday-you specifically mentioned to Koch the matter of picking up people from lines in front of theaters and off the streets, those people who were attending movies and matters of that sort. You knew that was going on under your decree of compulsory labor, didn't you? You were objecting to it, but you knew it was going on.
ROSENBERG: Excesses are connected with every law, and as soon as I learned of excesses, I did take steps against them.
MR. DODD: Very good. Now, finally, with respect to this forced labor matter, would you say as a matter of fairness and honesty that your ministry was not very largely responsible for this terrible program of forcing people from their homes into Germany, or do you say that you must accept a very considerable responsibility for what happened to these hundreds of thousands of people out of the Eastern occupied areas?
ROSENBERG: I, of course, will take the responsibility for these laws which I issued, and for any framework of directives which were issued by my ministry. The territorial governments were legally responsible for their execution. Where they went beyond these measures-they were 1,500 kilometers away from me- I concerned myself with every case. Many exaggerations were made and excesses also took place. I admit that terrible things did occur. I tried to intervene, to apply punitive measures and because of this quite a number of German officials were taken to court and were sentenced.
MR. DODD: Leaving aside the terrible things that happened to people, attuning that no great violence took place, the very fact of forcing them against their wills to leave is something else that you will accept responsibility for, I assume.
ROSENBERG: Yes, indeed.
MR. DODD: And you also feel that a considerable part of this. . .
ROSENBERG: [Interposing.] I accept the responsibility due to a State law which empowered Gauleiter Sauckel to place these claims to me which I applied in legal form to the Eastern territories.
MR. DODD: Briefly, I want to remind you, while we are on this subject, that you acknowledged yesterday that you did consent to the taking of children as young as 10, 12, and 14 years old and removing them to Germany, and I think you told us that at first it did disturb you, but when you found out there were happy recreational circumstances, your mind was eased. Is that a fair statement of your position on forcing those children from the East?
ROSENBERG: No, that is not correct. I do not know just what the translation of the document was, but the opposite was true. I wanted to prevent anything from happening in any action in the operational zone which might, under certain circumstances, be of gravest importance for many children. Then, upon the request of the Army Group Center-which anyway would have done it on its own-I took over the care of these children on condition that I take most scrupulous care of them and care for their own mothers, that they have contact with their parents, and so that they might be returned to their homeland again later on. That is certainly the exact opposite of what the Prosecution has submitted from this document here.
MR. DODD: Well, I don't want to dwell much longer on it except to remind you that that document which you have seen and which you discussed yesterday, states, among other things, that by removing these children out of the East you will be doing more than one thing; you will be destroying the biological potentiality of those people in the East. That is what you approved among other things, isn't it?
ROSENBERG: Yes. That is contained in the first point of the Prosecution and it was already read. I have made it clear by reading the whole document that my approval did not depend at all on that point, that in the first report I definitely refused that as an argument, and that only after hearing other information did I find a method, for which the women thanked me despite the fact that not I but the Hitler Jugend in Dessau and elsewhere deserve the credit for taking care of them in this way.
MR. DODD: Actually, I understand from all your testimony that, with the possible exception of the little while of which we have been talking, you have been very benign and humane towards these people under your jurisdiction in the Occupied Eastern Territories. You wanted to be very kind to them.
ROSENBERG: I do not want at all to claim for myself any such sentimental phraseology. However, in the midst of this terrible war in the East, which brought with it the continual murder of German employees and German agricultural officials, I only tried to carry on an intelligent policy and to induce the people to heartfelt voluntary cooperation.
MR. DODD: Yes. Now I ask that you be shown Document 1058-PS, which is Exhibit USA-147. [The document was submitted to the defendant.] You now have that before you. It is an extract from a speech which you made with your closest collaborators, and it has been referred to before. It is a speech that you made on the 20th of June 1941, the day before the attack was launched against Soviet Russia. I want to refer to the very first paragraph, and the only one on the paper. It says: "The job of feeding the German people stands in these years without a doubt...."
ROSENBERG: What page is that?
MR. DODD: It is the first page; there is only one page. Oh, you have the whole document. You referred to it yesterday; I think you will be able to find it. It is at Page 8, Line 54. You may recall it; you talked about it yesterday. As a matter of fact, you said it was an impromptu speech. Do you find it on Page 8?
ROSENBERG: Yes, I have found it.
MR. DODD: In that paragraph you say, among other things- and I want to call it to your attention for a specific purpose-you say that the job of feeding the German people is at the top of the list, and that the southern regions and the northern Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding of the German people. And you go on to say that you see no reason why there is any obligation to feed the Russian people with the surplus products of the territory. Then you say, "We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any feelings." You then go on to say, "A very extensive evacuation will undoubtedly be necessary and the future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians." Now, you read us some parts of that speech yesterday that you seemed to think were quite to your credit. Were all parts of the speech impromptu or are you suggesting that only the parts that seem damaging to you now were impromptu?
ROSENBERG: I just used a few key words and gave the speech that way. This paragraph has been read by the Prosecution three or four times. Yesterday when we discussed this speech I myself expressly referred to this paragraph. Beyond that, I admitted that I was told by people connected with the Four Year Plan that it was not certain whether the industry of the Moscow industrial region could be fully maintained after its conquest-here the "wagon factories" are mentioned. Restriction might be necessary to some key industries, and through that a difficult problem in the supply of this area would arise. My remarks pointed out that, of necessity, these unemployed would probably have to be evacuated. I expressly referred to this document, namely, the first document of the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories on this question where, under seven most important points for the civilian administration, Point 3 concerns the feeding of the civilian population. Later in the document it says that famines are to be avoided in any event and that in such a case the population was to receive special rations. I believe that in these hard times, in view of the laws and directives, it was impossible for me to do more than that. My entire political and spiritual position is to be concluded from what I said yesterday about the demand for liberty and culture in the Ukraine, about the sovereignty of the Caucasians, and also about the Russian State and its big...
MR. DODD: All right. I don't want you to go into all that. I understand you thoroughly, and I think everyone else does. I merely wanted to point out to you that on that early date you did say there would be harsh necessities and that there would be very many hard years for the Russians. That is all. And if you don't want to acknowledge that you were serious in saying that, as you were in saying the other things, then I won't press you on it. I want to turn to document...
ROSENBERG: Mr. Prosecutor, I believe that not much more could have been done for this problem than by planning beforehand how to master the difficulties rather than afterwards. Other occupation forces have had the same experience.
MR. DODD: All right. I ask that you be shown Document 045-PS, Exhibit USA-822. [The document was submitted to the defendant.]
ROSENBERG: Perhaps I might say something more about the translation of this passage. It was translated to me that these measures were to be carried through "without any feeling." In the original it says "beyond feeling," or "above feeling."
MR. DODD: All right, I accept your interpretation; we won't have any trouble about that. Now, will you please look at this document? This is a memorandum found in your files, for your information.
ROSENBERG: Yes.
MR. DODD: You set out there, in the second paragraph, what you call the aim of German politics, notably in the Ukraine, as having been laid down by the Fuehrer. They are, you say, exploitation and mobilization of raw materials, a German settlement in certain regions, no artificial education of the population towards intellectualism, but the preservation of their labor strength; apart from that, an extensive unconcern with the interior affairs. Then, moving down a little bit-because I don't think it is necessary to read all of it, much of it has been referred to in another document-we come down to the 12th line from the bottom of that paragraph. Beginning at the 14th line: "After continuous observation of the state of affairs in the Occupied Eastern Territories, I am convinced that German politics may have their own, possibly contemptuous opinion of the qualities of the conquered peoples, but that it is not the mission of German political representatives to proclaim measures and opinions which could eventually reduce the conquered peoples to dull despair instead of promoting the desired utilization of manpower to capacity." Then, in the next paragraph, you say: "If at home we had to announce our aims to the whole nation most openly and aggressively, in contrast to the others, the political leaders in the East must remain silent where German policy calls for necessary harshness. They must remain silent as to any derogatory opinions which they may form about the conquered peoples. Yes, a clever German policy may in certain circumstances do more in the German interest through alleviations which do not affect policy and certain humane concessions, than through open, inconsiderate brutality." Were you honestly expressing your views when you wrote that memorandum on the 16th of March 1942?