All this is no longer possible in the case of Sauckel, and I would like to ask the Tribunal to make a decision whether these statements can be used as evidence.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Denney, we ill hear your argument on the objection alter the short intermission.
(A recess was taken.)
THE PRESIDENT: I shall hear you, Mr. Denney, on the objection of Dr. Bergold.
MR. DENNEY: Your Honor, please, in reference to Dr. Bergold's objection to the offer of Prosecution's Exhibit No. 41-A in evidence, being document No. 3721-PS, the interrogation of Fritz Sauckel, dated 22 September 1945, as we understand it, it is based on the grounds that the subject of the interrogation, Fritz Sauckel, due to his death, is not available for cross examination, therefore Article 19 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which was adapted pursuant to the London agreement between the United States of America, originally, the government of the French Republic, the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the government of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the prosecution of major war criminals of Europe, provides as follows:
The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non-technical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value.
Article 7, of ordinance number 7, promulgated by the office of Military Government of the United States for Germany, provides that the Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. They shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and non-technical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which they deem to have probative value. Interrupting for a moment, that is adopted in toto from Article 19 with the exception of the change of the word "they" to include the tribunals for the word "if" which should refer to the International Tribunal, Article 7 continues without limiting the foregoing general rules, the following shall be deemed admissible if they appear to the Tribunal to contain information of probative value relating to the charges: affidavits, depositions, interrogations, and other statements, diaries, letters, records, findings, statements, and judgments of the military tribunals, and the reviewing and confirming authorities of any of the United Nations, and copies of any document or other secondary evidence of the contents of any document, if the original is not readily available or cannot be produced without delay.
The Tribunal shall afford the opposing party such opportunity to question the authenticity, or probative value of such evidence as in the opinion of the Tribunal the ends of justice require.
Article 9 of the same ordinance No. 7 provides, the Tribunals shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge, but shall take judicial notice thereof. They shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United Nations, including the acts and documents of the committees set up in the various Allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military or other tribunals of any of the United Nations.
First, this document No. 3721-PS was admitted before the International Tribunal, and in addition I might add that it is purely within the power of the Tribunal to give such probative values as they deem a document merits. It is submitted in passing that we have offered in evidence in this case, and in other cases, statements equally important by men who are dead--Hitler, Himmler and many others.
I am informed by counsel for the Prosecution trying the case of the United States against Karl Brandt, that that Tribunal has ruled this morning in the case of an affidavit of one Dr. Ding. The case is not in point with this, because this is an interrogation, but it is submitted at least partially on the subject that this affidavit given by Ding was sworn to before an American army officer. Ding is now dead, and counsel for the defense objected to the admission; the Prosecution urged its admission on the grounds which have been urged here and the court admitted the document.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Denney, do you know whether this statement, which was introduced before the International Military Tribunal was the subject of cross examination?
MR. DENNEY: No, sir, I do not.
MR. DENNEY: I can look at the record and at least make an effort to determine and advise Your Honor.
JUDGE MUSSMANO: If it were the subject of inquiry before that Tribunal, it would seem that the objection made here by defense counsel would not have as much weight as if it had in merely as an uncommented upon document.
MR. DENNEY: If Your Honor please, the Prosecution is going to have, at later dates, other interrogations and other affidavits by people who are now no longer living. It is respectfully submitted that the test of admissibility is not made on the ground of opportunity for cross-examination based on article VII of Law Number 10; not for a moment denying the fact that Your Honors have the right to reject or admit whatever you see fit. However, the very nature of these proceedings are such that documents turn up, interrogations and affidavits, and it is impossible to bring the affiants or the interrogatee before the Court either because of physical difficulties or because of the fact that he is no longer living and is submitted that these are admissible and worth so much probative value as Your Honors see fit to give than.
THE PRESIDENT: It is true, Mr. Denney, that when this affidavit was admitted before the International Military Tribunal, Sauckel was still alive.
MR. DENNEY: Yes, sir.
THE PRESIDENT; So there was a possibility of cross-examination or of repudiation possibly. That is not at this moment. This may have nothing to do with your other points, but it seems to me to dispose of the point that that has been admitted under different circumstances before another Tribunal.
JUDGE MUSSMANO: If there was any other repudiation, then certainly, Defense Counsel should bring that to our notice.
THE PRESIDENT: In view of the fact that the same point has been raised before Tribunal One. I think it would be well if this Tribunal reserves its decision on this objection for further consideration and also for a conference with Tribunal One so that we may be consistent and, we hope, correct.
MR. DENNEY: Would your Honors care to have a short memorandum on the sections involved for your own convenience?
THE PRESIDENT: We have those sections. We have access to them. We can pass this now.
MR. DENNEY: Very well.
THE PRESIDENT: Was some disposition made of Document 031 PS?
MR. DENNEY: We do not intend to offer Document 031 PS, if Your Honor please.
The next document is Number L-159 which we offer as Prosecution's Exhibit Number 44. It appears on Page 230, in Your Honors. Document Book, I believe you have a copy of that Dr. Bergold?
DR. BERGOLD: Yes.
MR. DENNEY: This is a report dated May 15, 1945, presented by Mr. Barkley of the Congress of the United States relative to atrocities and other conditions in concentration camps in Germany. The Committee was requested by the General of the Army, Dwight D. Eisenhower through the Chief of Staff General of the Army George C. Marshall to visit these camps.
I turn now to page 235, Page 6 of the English original and refer to the second paragraph under the heading "The Three Classes of Evidence Upon Which This Report is Based." It is two pages after the page where the Committee Members are listed.
"Three classes or kinds of evidence were presented to us. The first was visual inspection of the camps themselves, freshly freed of SS supervision by the American troops. We saw the barracks, the work places, the physical facilities for torture, degradation, and execution. We saw the victims, both dead and alive, the atrocities practiced at these camps. We saw the process of liquidation by starvation while it was still going on. We saw the indescribable filth and smelled the nauseating stench before it was cleaned up, and we saw a number of victims of this liquidation process actually die.
The second kind of evidence we obtained was the testimony of eye-witnesses among the prisoners themselves to these atrocities. Many of the prisoners had been in camps we visited as long as three to four years. Many others had spent long terms as prisoners in several other similar camps. While these prisoners included men from nearly all the -139-A. countries of central Europe, whose speech, whose station in life, and whose education and previous environment differed widely from one another, yet the testimony of all of these witnesses was substantially the same.
Directly and through interpreters we talked to prisoners who had seen the hangings and the beatings and who had themselves experienced the systematic process of starvation, corporal punishment, and human degradation.
"The third kind of evidence was what may be called the common knowledge of the camp, that is to say, evidence of things done in the camp which were not done publicly but which, nevertheless, all prisoners were aware of. This is similar to certain knowledge possessed by prisoners generally in legitimate institutions like State penitentiaries. These prisoners, from custom and experience, from the conversation with the guards and among themselves, and from a very plain and almost mathematical kind of circumstantial evidence, have accurate knowledge of certain things which they have not actually seen with their own eyes.
"The prisoners at the camps speak about these things as though they had actually seen them. It was the unanimous opinion of our committee after talking to hundreds of prisoners that this third kind of evidence was often as accurate and reliable as the two kinds of direct evidence above referred to. An example of this kind of evidence will be found in that part of our report dealing with the torture chamber at Buchenwald, where no one actually saw the strangulations perpetrated in this chamber, but where the circumstantial evidence of it was so complete and clear as to leave no doubt in the mind of anyone."
I am turning over to page 248, Part 3, the Conclusion. For the interpreters "While the above three camps which were visited by the joint committee differed in some details, they were all of the same general pattern and design and administered for the same purpose.
"At each cf these camps we found four general classifications of prisoners: First, political prisoners; second, habitual criminals; third, conscientious or religious objectors; fourth, persons who were imprisoned for failure to work.
"Although differing in size, they all carried into effect the same pattern of death by hard labor, starvation, hanging strangulation, 140 a disease, brutality, gas chambers, gallows, and filthy and unsanitary conditions, which meant inevitable death eventually to every imprisoned person.
"We found in each case, that the supervision of the camps was carried out by criminal tactics cf SS troops, who, in addition to their own brutality, assigned some of their punitive duties to the prisoners, especially the habitual criminals who had charge of the barracks in which all types of prisoners wore subject to their vicious and inhuman methods.
"We found that this entire program constituted a systematic form of torture, and death administer to intellectuals, political loaders, and all others who would not embrace and support the Nazi philosophy and program. We found the extent, devices, methods, and conditions of torture almost beyond the power of words to describe.
"We found, from all the evidence available, that in these craps the Jews and Russians and Poles wore treated with a greater degree of severity than other nationalities. No found that a colossal scheme of extermination was planned and put into effect against all those in occupied countries who refused to accept the principles of nazi-ism or who opposed the sadding of the Nazi yoke on their countries. The Nazi leadership in the pursuit of this policy found especially expedient the use of various forms of terrorism calculated to reduce the opposition and to render futile all efforts to threw off the yoke.
"The over-all pattern of the scheme varied but little. First, vast numbers of nationals of overrun countries were abducted and brought into Germany sometimes whole families, sometimes just the men. The number of these persons is variously estimated at between twelve and twenty million people. These poeple were forced to labor long; hours by their Nazi masters, and slight infractions they were place in concentration camps.
"Likewise, the intellegentsia, college professors, former army generals, business leaders, and professional men of the occupied countries, were taken captive and placed in these caps unless they agreed to spread the doctrines advocated by the Nazis.
"The treatment accorded to these prisoners in the concentration camps was generally as follows; They were herded together in some wooden barracks not large enough for one-tenth of their number.
They were forced to sleep on wooden frames covered with wooden boards in tiers of two, three, and even four, sometimes with no covering, sometimes with a bundle of dirty rags serving both as pallet and coverlet.
"Their food consisted generally of about one-half a pound of black bread per dry and a bowl of watery soup for noon and night, and not always that. Owing to the great numbers crowded into a small space and to the lack of adequate sustenance, lice and vermin multiplied, disease became rampant, and those who did not soon die of disease or torture began the long, slow process of starvation. Notwithstanding the deliberate starvation program inflicted upon these prisoners by lack of adequate food, we found no evidence that the people of Germany as a whole were suffering from any lack of sufficient food or clothing. The contrast was so striking that the only conclusion which we could reach was that the starvation of the inmates of these camps was deliberate.
"Upon entrance into these camps, newcomers were forced to work either at an adjoining war factory or were placed "in commando" on various jobs in the vicinity, being returned each night to their stall in the barracks. Generally, a German criminal was placed in charge of each "block" or shed in which the prisoners slept. Periodically, he would choose the one prisoner of his block who seemed the most alert or intelligent or showed the most leadership qualities. These would report to the guards' room and would never be heard from again. The generally accepted belief of the prisoners was that these were shot or gassed or hanged and then cremated. A refusal to work or an infraction of the rules usually meant flogging and other types of torture, such as having the fingernails pulled out, and in each case usually ended in death after extensive suffering. The policies herein described constituted a calculated and diabolical program of planned torture and extermination on the part of those who were in control of the German Government. These camps, on the whole, were conducted and controlled by the SS and the Gestapo, who acted under orders from their superiors or who were given wide discretion in the methods which they were to adopt in perpetrating these hideous and inhuman sufferings.
"It is the opinion of your committee that these practices constituted no less than organized crime against civilization and humanity and that those who were responsible for them should have meted out to them swift, certain, and adequate punishment."
If Your Honor please, there is one document which is in Book Number 2, to which I would like to call your attention. I shall have to get my copies out before I can tell you which one it is. A speech by Himmler was omitted. We should like to offer it at this time.
If Your Honor please it was given Exhibit Number 44 at the time it was offered. Judge Dixon tells me that is correct. This document appears in Document Book Number 2A, Page 14. It is on Page 13 of the German Document Book. It is 1919-PS. And we offer this at this time as Prosecution Exhibit Number 45. This is a speech given by Reichsfuehrer SS, Heinrich Himmler, at a meeting of the SS Major Generals (SS Gruppenfuehrer) at Posen, on October 4th 1943. The first part appears on Page 3, I believe, of the German original and is now on Page 13 of the German Document Book.
"The Russian Army was herded together in great pockets, ground down, taken prisoner. At that time we did not value the mass of humanity as we value it today, as raw material, as labor. What after all, thinking in eras of generations, is not to be regretted, but is now deplorable by reason of the loss of labor, is that the prisoners died in tens and hundreds of thousands of exhaustion and hunger."
I will skip the next paragraph, and I go down to the next full one which I believe is one the same page of the Document Book, it is Page 23 of the initial speech.
"One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS man: We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nation can offer in the way of good blood of cur type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur; otherwise, it is of no importance to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and careless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude toward animals, will also assure a decent attitude towards those human animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes to me and says, "I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them" then I have to say, "You are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are sons of German mothers. They are our own blood." That is what I want to instill into this SS and what I believe I have instilled into them as one of the most sacred laws of the future. Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. It is for them that we must provide and plan, work and fight, nothing else. We can be indifferent to anything else. I wish the SS to adopt this attitude to the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians. All else is vain, fraud against our own nation and obstacles to the early winning of the war."
Now, if Your Honor please, that concludes, with the exception of the reading of some transcript from the initial case into the record, the presentation of the general background on Slave Labor.
In Book 2-A, Document Number NO-1179; which appears on page 6, of your Honors' Document Book; starting with Page 16910 of the original opinion of the International Military Tribunal. We offer this as Exhibit Number 46. It is Pages 16910 to 16917. It goes from Pages 6 to 13 in Your Honors' Document Book.
"Slave Labor Policy "Article 6 (section b) of the Charter provides that the "ill treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose, of civilian population of or in occupied territory" shall be a War Crime.
The laws relating to forced labor by the inhabitants of occupied territories are found in Article 52 of the Hague Convention, which provides:
'Requisition in kind and services shall not be demanded from municipalities or inhabitants except for the needs of the army of occupation. They shall be in proportion to the resources of the country, and of such a nature as not to involve the inhabitants in the obligation of taking part in military operations against their own country.'
The policy of the German occupation authorities was in flagrant violation of the terms of this convention. Some idea of this policy may be gathered from the statement made by Hitler in a speech on November 9, 1941:
'The territory which now works for us contains more than 250,000,000 men, but the territory which works indirectly for us includes now more than 350,000,000. In the measures in which it concerns German territory, the domain which we have taken under our administration, it is not doubtful that we shall succeed in harnessing the very last man to this work."
The actual results achieved were not so complete as this, but the German occupation authorities did succeed in forcing many of the inhabitants of the occupied territories to work for the German war effort, and in deporting at least 5,000,000 persons to Germany to serve German industry and agriculture.
In the early stages of the war, manpower in the occupied territories was under the control of various occupation authorities, and the procedure varied from country to country. In all the occupied territories compulsory labor service was promptly instituted. Inhabitants of the occupied countries were conscripted and compelled to work in local occupations, to assist the German war economy. In many cases they were forced to work on German fortifications and military installations. As local supplies of raw materials and local industrial capacity became inadequate to meet the German requirements, the system of deporting laborers to Germany was put into force. By the middle of April 1940 compulsory deportation of laborers to Germany had been ordered in the Government General; and a similar procedure was followed in other eastern territories as they were occupied. A description of this compulsory deportation from Poland was given by Himmler. In an address to 68 officers he recalled how in weather 40 degrees below zero they had to "haul away thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands." On a later occasion Himmler stated:
'Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down foam exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished...We must realize that we have 6-7 million foreigners in Germany...They are none of them dangerous so long as we take severe measures at the merest trifles.'
During the first two years of the German occupation of France, Belgium, Holland and Norway, however, an attempt was made to obtain the necessary workers on a voluntary basis. How unsuccessful this was may be seen from the report of the meeting of the Central Planning Board on the 1st of March 1944.
The representative of the defendant Speer, one Koehrl, speaking of the situation in France, said:
'During all this time a great number of Frenchmen were recruited, and voluntarily went to Germany.'
148 a He was interrupted by the defendant Sauckel:
'Not only voluntary, some were recruited forcibly.'
To which Koehrl replied:
'The calling up started after the recruitment no longer yielded enough results.'
To which the defendant Sauckel replied:
'Out of the five million workers who arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily.' and Koehrl rejoined:
'Let us forget for the moment whether or not some slight pressure was used. Formally, at least, they were volunteers.'
Committees were set up to encourage recruiting, and a vigorous propaganda campaign was begun to induce workers to volunteer for service in Germany. This propaganda campaign included, for example, the promise that a prisoner of war world be returned for every laborer who volunteered to go to Germany. In some cases it was supplemented by withdrawing the ration cards of all laborers who refused to go to Germany, or by discharging them from their jobs and denying them unemployment benefit or an opportunity to work elsewhere. In some cases workers and their families were threatened with reprisals by the police if they refused to go to Germany. It was on the 21st of March 1942 that the defendant Sauckel was appointed Plenipotentiary-General for the Utilization of Labor, with authority over 'all available manpower, including that of workers recruited abroad, and of prisoners of war.'
The defendant Sauckel was directly under the defendant Goering as Commissioner of the Four Year Plan, and a Goering decree of the 27th March 1942 transferred all his authority over manpower to Sauckel. Sauckel's instructions, too, were that foreign labor should be recruited on a voluntary basis, but also provided that ' where, however, in the occupied territories, the appeal for volunteers does not suffice, obligatory service and drafting must under all circumstances be resorted to.' Rules requiring labor service in Germany were published in all the occupied territories.
The number of laborers to be supplied was fixed by Sauckel, and the local authorities were instructed to meet these requirements by conscription if necessary. That conscription was the rule rather than the exception is shewn by the statement of Sauckel already quoted, on the 1st March 1944.
The defendant Sauckel frequently asserted that the workers belonging to foreign nations were treated humanely, and that the conditions in which they lived were good. But whatever the intention of Sauckel may have been, and however much he may have desired that foreign laborers should be treated humanely, the evidence before the Tribunal establishes the fact that the conscription of labor was accomplished in many cases by drastic and violent methods. The "mistakes and blunders" were on a very great scale. Manhunts took place in the streets, at motion picture houses, even at churches and at night in private houses. Houses were sometimes burnt down, and the families taken as hostages, practices which were described" ........
DR. BERGOLD: The continuation is missing. If the Counsel for Prosecution is continuing I have no objection because the verdict is known to me because I was present at the first trial and I am familiar with this document.
MR. DENNEY: You are agreeable to let me continue reading it? I am sure if there are any errors I make his Honor will correct me.
MR. BERGOLD: Yes
MR. DENNEY: "... practices which were described, by the defendant Rosenberg as having their origin 'in the blackest periods of the slave trade. ' The methods used in obtaining forced labor from the Ukraine appear from an order issued to SD officers which stated:
'It will not be possible always to refrain from using force... When searching villages especially when it has been necessary to burn down a village, the whole population will be put at the disposed of the Commissioner by force... is a rule no more children will be shot... If we limit harsh measures through the above orders for the time being, it is only done for the following reasons... The most important thing is the recruitment of workers.'
The resources and needs of the occupied countries were completely disregarded in carrying out this policy. The treatment of the laborers was governed by Sauckel's instructions of the 20th April 1942 to the effect that:
'All the men must be fed, sheltered and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent, at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.'
The evidence showed that workers destined for the Reich were sent under guard to Germany, often packed in trains without adequate heat, food, clothing or sanitary facilities. The evidence further showed that the treatment of the laborers in Germany in many cases was brutal and degrading. The evidence relating to the Krupp Works at Essen snowed that punishments of the most cruel kind were inflicted on the workers. Theoretically at least the workers were paid, mused and fed by the DAF, and even permitted to transfer their savings and to send mail and parcels back to their native country; but restrictive regulations took a proportion of the pay; the camps in which they were housed were insanitary; and the food was very often less than the minimum necessary to give the workers strength to do their jobs. In the case of Poles employed on farms in Germany, the employers were given authority to inflict corporal punishment and were ordered, if possible, to house them in stables, not in their own homes. They were subject to constant super vision by the Gestapo and the SS, and if they attempted to leave their jobs they were sent to correction camps or concentration camps.