12 Dec.
45
rear area military commandant to the district commissar
at Kasatin, dated the 25th of December 1943. 1 quote from Page 3 of the
English text at Paragraph 1. In the German text it appears at Page 12,
Paragraph 1.
"The able-bodied male population
between 15 and 65 years of age and the live stock are to be shipped
back from the district east of the line Belilovka-Berditchev-Zhitomir
(exclusive of these places)."
This program, which we have been describing, and the brutal measures
that it employed were not limited to Poland and the Occupied Eastern
Territories but covered and cursed Western Europe as well. Frenchmen,
Dutchmen, Belgians, Italians, all came to know the yoke of slavery and
the brutality of their slavemasters.
In France these slavemasters intensified their program in the early
part of 1943, pursuant to instructions which the Defendant Speer
telephoned to the Defendant Sauckel at 8 o'clock in the evening on the
4th day of January 1943 from Hitler's headquarters. I now refer to
Document Number 556(13)-PS, which is Exhibit USA-194. This document,
incidentally, is a note for his own files, signed by the Defendant
Sauckel, dated the 5th of January 1943. I wish to quote from Page 1 of
the English text, Paragraph I as follows:
"On 4 January 1943 at 8 p.m. Minister
Speer telephones from the Führer's headquarters and communicates
that on the basis of the Führer's decision, it is no longer
necessary to give special consideration to Frenchmen in the further
recruiting of specialists and helpers in France. The recruiting can
proceed with vigor and with sharpened measures."
To overcome resistance to his slave labor program, the Defendant Sauckel
improvised new impressment measures which were applied to both France
and Italy by his own agents and which he himself labelled as grotesque.
I now refer to Document Number R-124, which is Exhibit USA-179, and
particularly Page 2 and Paragraph 2 of the English text; in the German
text it appears at Page 8, Paragraph 1. Quoting directly from that page
and that paragraph a statement made by Sauckel on 1 March 1944 at a
meeting of the Central Planning Board:
"The most abominable point against
which I have to fight is the claim that there is no organization in
these districts properly to recruit Frenchmen, Belgians, and Italians
and to dispatch them to work. So I have even proceeded to employ and
train a whole staff of French and Italian agents of both sexes who for
good pay, just as was done in olden times for 'shanghaiing,' go
hunting for men and dupe them, using