DR. SERVATIUS: Mr. President, the defense counsel for Defendant
Rosenberg may engage in cross-questioning, but it does not appear to me
to be the right moment for him to make a speech of accusation against my
client.
MR. DODD: Mr. President, I am well aware of the facts that there have
been two cross-examinations, and I have no desire to go on with another
one. However, we do have one document that we think is of some
importance and which was turned over to General Alexandrov, but I think
there must have been some language difficulty. The translation of it was
not presented. I would like the permission of the Tribunal to ask one or
two questions of this defendant about it and to present it. I think it
is rather important that it be presented.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd, the Tribunal does not think that this ought to
create a precedent, but in view of your statement that the document was
supplied to General Alexandrov and that, for some reason, he did not
deal with it, we will allow you to cross-examine upon it.
MR. DODD: Very well, Sir.
Witness, do you remember an occasion in 1942, just after your
appointment, when you met with some officials of the Ministry of Labor
and you discussed with them the program which you were about to
institute and for which you were about to take responsibility? Do you
recall it?
SAUCKEL: I cannot, of course, remember details of that discussion.
Various points of the program were discussed, and I might also say in
connection with the comments made by the defense counsel for the
Defendant Rosenberg since what he has been quoting is...
MR. DODD: Just a minute, just a minute. I simply asked you if you
remembered this meeting, and you said you did not, and now there is the
document.
SAUCKEL: Details of that conference I do not remember.
MR. DODD: And now take a look at the minutes of the meeting.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the document?
MR. DODD: This is EC-318.
THE PRESIDENT: What is the exhibit number? Has it been offered or not?
MR. DODD: I am now offering it. I was waiting to get the number from the
secretary.
I will have to get the number a little later, Mr. President. I had not
made preparations to submit this document, so I did not have the number
in advance.
[_Turning to the defendant._] Now, I want to call your attention
particularly to a few passages. You start out by telling the officials
who were gathered there that you want to co-operate closely with them;
and then, moving along, you give some idea of the number of workers whom
you intend to recruit. You say there is an estimated requirement of 1
million; and you also made perfectly clear that day that you were to get
most of your people, most of these workers, from the East and
particularly from Soviet Russia.
You told these officials that you had talked for several hours with the
Führer and for 8 hours with the Reich Marshal, and that you all agreed
that the most important problem was the exploitation of the manpower in
the East.
You further stated—do you see that in there?
SAUCKEL: Where does it say exploitation? I cannot find that word.
MR. DODD: Well, do you find where you say you had discussed your task
with the Führer in a conversation that had lasted for several hours? Do
you find that?
SAUCKEL: I cannot find it.
MR. DODD: You have the German there before you, have you not?
SAUCKEL: Yes, but will you please be kind enough to tell me the page?
MR. DODD: In the middle of Page 2. Have you found it?
SAUCKEL: Mr. Prosecutor, I want particularly to point out to you the
difference in German between the words “Ausnutzung” and “Ausbeutung.”
“Ausbeutung” (exploitation) is a word which, in the language of the
workers, has a rather bad implication, but “Ausnutzung” (use of) is
quite an ordinary concept; to use something means making it useful. That
is a great difference in meaning in the German language.
MR. DODD: Well, we will stand by ours and you may stand by yours, and
the Tribunal will ascertain between the two of us who has the correct
translation.
In any event, whether you said “use of” or “exploit,” you did say that
the most important solution was either the use of or the exploitation...
SAUCKEL: But that is not the same thing, Mr. Prosecutor. In German there
is a fundamental difference in meaning. I must point out that the word
exploitation is a word which I did not use and did not want to use.
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant, would you speak a little bit lower. You quite
drown the interpreter’s voice.
SAUCKEL: I beg your pardon, My Lord.
MR. DODD: I am not concerned with whether or not you agree with the word
“exploit.” That is a very unimportant part of this document, as I think
you probably already recognize.
SAUCKEL: I beg to contradict you. That word is most important from the
humane point of view.
MR. DODD: I don’t care to have any argument with you at all. We...
THE PRESIDENT: Defendant, the Tribunal is perfectly well able to
understand the difference between the use of the words, and you have
told us the translation you say is right.
MR. DODD: Now, if you move down a little bit, do you recall having said
that 1 million Russians would have to be brought into Germany as rapidly
as possible, to become available even prior to the offensive?
It is the next sentence or two there in your text. You won’t see it by
looking at me. Do you read the next sentence?
SAUCKEL: Yes, I should like permission to read the next sentence:
“The necessary condition for taking on the task would be the
assurance that Russians would be given approximately the same
rations as have been in force for the German civilian
population.”
MR. DODD: You have skipped the sentence that I want you to read. I know
that one comes along, but I want you to read the one where you say you
would have to bring 1 million Russians into the Reich as rapidly as
possible, and that is the very next or almost the next sentence after
the one you have been discussing, about the word “exploit” or “use of.”
SAUCKEL: “...must be brought to the Reich as quickly as possible.”
MR. DODD: That is all I want to know. Do you remember saying that?
SAUCKEL: Yes, I said that. I must say in connection with this that this
is a record which I have never seen before or checked. Someone made it,
but the record itself I was not familiar with, and it was never
submitted to me.
MR. DODD: Well, I suppose it could be truthful even though you didn’t
make it.
Let us move on here to the next to the last paragraph, and you will find
a sentence which says or suggests:
“They”—referring to the Russians—“will have to be handled so
roughly by the German administration in the East that they will
prefer to go to Germany rather than stay in Russia.”
Do you find that?
SAUCKEL: Will you tell me where that sentence is?
MR. DODD: Well, it is right after the sentence where you talk about your
negotiations with Himmler. Maybe that will help you.
Do you find where you say you had negotiations with the Reichsführer SS?
You succeeded in getting him to remove the barbed wire. Surely you have
read that.
Now you find the sentence, do you?
“They would have to be handled so roughly by the German
administration in the East that they would prefer to go to
Germany rather than stay in Russia.”
Do you remember saying that?
SAUCKEL: I cannot say that I used these specific words in speaking to
him, for, as I have already stated, it is a record of statements of a
problematical nature which I myself did not check, and I cannot be sure
how a third person came to write this record from memory. These are not
shorthand minutes; it is merely a record which is not signed by anyone
and in which...
MR. DODD: I don’t think you need to give us any long dissertation on the
fact that it is somebody else’s minutes. It is not offered to you as
being your own.
SAUCKEL: Yes, but I have the right and am obliged to say that.
MR. DODD: I wish you would wait a minute and let me put a question to
you once in a while. I have not suggested that these are your minutes. I
have merely put it to you for the purpose of determining whether or not
on seeing it you remember it. And do you, or do you not remember it?
SAUCKEL: I certainly do not remember that passage. I can merely read
here something written by a third person, and I do not know who it was.
This person may quite well have misunderstood me; that is possible...
MR. DODD: Well, you also find you did have some conversations with the
Reichsführer SS. Do you remember having said that, in the course of this
conversation or speech or whatever it was that you were making?
SAUCKEL: The Reichsführer SS put me off on several occasions, and I had
to insist to get the Reichsführer SS to remove the barbed wire fences. I
did that. From the very beginning of my term of office I moderated the
orders of the Reichsführer SS; and that, of course, caused vigorous
arguments between us.
MR. DODD: Then that part of the minutes of this meeting is correct,
isn’t it? The reporter, or whoever it was that took this down, correctly
reported what you said about your negotiations with the Reichsführer SS,
did he? You find no fault with that?
SAUCKEL: What he wrote down in detail about what I am supposed to have
said I have not yet read.
MR. DODD: Now, listen. You read back and look at that paper at which you
have just been looking. You find fault with the sentence that reports
that you said they were to be handled roughly in the East, but you do
not find any fault with the sentence ahead of it which says you had the
barbed wire taken down, isn’t that so?
You seem to be complaining about the fact that this was somebody else’s
report and not yours. Have you read it?
SAUCKEL: No.
MR. DODD: Well, it is the sentence just before the one we have just been
talking about.
Do you really mean you cannot find it? Do you want help?
SAUCKEL: Two pages appear in duplicate here.
MR. DODD: All I have asked you, Witness, is whether or not the sentence
about your meeting with Himmler is a fairly accurate report of what you
said. Is it?
SAUCKEL: That I cannot tell you from memory. I very seldom spoke to
Himmler and then only cursorily. It may have been negotiations carried
out by my office on my order. That I cannot tell you.
MR. DODD: Well, your answer to all of this is, then, that you don’t
remember what you said there; this doesn’t help you any to remember.
SAUCKEL: You cannot possibly expect me to remember exactly events which
lasted very briefly and took place so long ago.
MR. DODD: I am perfectly willing to let it rest there. There is the
written record against your failure of memory, and I will leave that
with the Tribunal...
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Dodd, I think you should put to him...
SAUCKEL: With which, however, I was not familiar before this.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you should put to him the next paragraph,
“Thirdly...” which follows after the sentence about handling them so
roughly.
MR. DODD: Yes, Sir.
[_Turning to the defendant._] Now, if you will keep your finger on that
place that you have there, you won’t lose it, and you will find the next
sentence is—begins:
“Thirdly, he termed intolerable the wage rates previously
decreed by the Reich Marshal, and has persuaded the Reich
Marshal that Russians should have the possibility of earning up
to one half of the wages of German workers.”
With reference to that statement, what had the Reich Marshal suggested,
by the way?
SAUCKEL: Before I took up my office—and I have talked about that at
length with my defense counsel—there existed decrees of the Ministerial
Council regarding wage regulations, and I continually improved those
wages—four times, in fact, as far as I could manage it, during my term
in office.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not an answer to the question. The question you
were asked was: What had the Reich Marshal suggested as wages for these
workers? You can answer that.
SAUCKEL: The Reich Marshal did not make any suggestions to me. When I
entered office I found regulations in existence which I considered
insufficient.
MR. DODD: Well, tell us a little more about it. What do you mean
insufficient? You used here the word intolerable. What was the situation
when you came into the office with respect to wages?
SAUCKEL: I already explained that yesterday, during the examination by
my defense counsel, and I gave as an example the fact that an Eastern
Worker, when I came into office, drew wages of about 60 pfennigs per
hour, which, after deductions for food and lodging, would leave him
about 4½ marks in cash. I altered that after I came into office and
doubled the cash payments. The purpose of the instructions which existed
before my service was probably to prevent too great a circulation of
money for reasons concerning currency. I do not know the details.
MR. DODD: This exhibit, Mr. President, becomes USA-881.