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 showed that punishments of the most cruel kind
were inflicted on the workers. Theoretically at least the workers
were paid, housed, 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 unsanitary; 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 supervision by
the Gestapo and the SS, and if they attempted to leave their jobs
they were sent to correction camps or concentration camps. The
concentration camps were also used to increase the supply of labor.
Concentration camp commanders were ordered to work their prisoners to
the limits of their physical power. During the latter stages of the
war the concentration camps were so productive in certain types of
work that the Gestapo was actually instructed to arrest certain
classes of laborers so that they could be used in this way. Allied
prisoners of war were also regarded as a possible source of labor.
Pressure was exercised on non-commissioned officers to force them to
consent to work, by transferring to disciplinary camps those who did
not consent. Many of the prisoners of war were assigned to work
directly related to military operations, in violation of Article 31
of the Geneva Convention. They were put to work in munition factories
and even made to load bombers, to carry ammunition and to dig
trenches, often under the most hazardous conditions. This condition
applied particularly to the Soviet prisoners of war. On 16 February
1943, at a meeting of the Central Planning Board, at which the
Defendants Sauckel and Speer were present, Milch said
"We have made a request for an
order that a certain percentage of men in the Ack-Ack artillery must
be Russians; 50,000 will be taken altogether. Thirty thousand are
already employed as gunners. This is an amusing thing, that Russians
must work the guns."
And on 4 October 1943, at Posen, Himmler, speaking of
the Russian prisoners, captured in the early days of the war,
said:
"As that time we did not value the
mass of humanity as we value it today, as raw material, as labor.
What, after all,