12 Dec.
45
best available Allied and German data reveal that, as
of January 1945, approximately 4,795,000 foreign civilian workers had
been put to work for the German war effort in the Old Reich; and among
them were forced laborers of more than 14 different nationalities. I now
refer to Document Number 2520-PS, Exhibit USA-197, which is an affidavit
executed by Edward L. Douss, an economic analyst.
At the top of the first page there are tables setting forth the
nationality and then the numbers of the various nationals and other
groupings or prisoners of war and politicals, so-called. The workers
alone total, according to Mr. Deuss who is an expert in the field, the
4,795,000 figure to which I have just referred. In the second paragraph
of this statement of Deuss, I should like to read for the record and
quote directly:
"I, Edward L. Deuss, for 3 years
employed by the Foreign Economic Administration, Washington, as an
economic analyst in London, Paris, and Germany, specializing in labor
and population problems of Germany during the war, do hereby certify
that the figures of foreign labor employed in the Old Reich have been
compiled on the basis of the best available German and Allied sources
of material. The accompanying table represents a combination of German
official estimates of foreigners working in Germany in January 1945,
and of American, British, and French figures of the number of
foreigners actually discovered in the Old Reich since 10 May 1945."
Only a very small proportion of these imported laborers came to Germany
on a voluntary basis. At the March 1, 1944 meeting of this same Central
Planning Board, to which we have made reference before, the Defendant
Sauckel himself made clear the vast scale on which free men had been
forced into this labor slavery. He made the statement, and I quote from
Document Number R-124, which is in evidence as Exhibit USA-179 and from
which I have quoted earlier this morning. I wish to refer to Page 11 of
that document, the middle paragraph, Paragraph 3. In the German text it
appears at Page 4, Paragraph 2 — the Defendant Sauckel speaking —
and I quote directly from that document:
"Out of 5 million foreign workers who
arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily."
The Nazi conspirators were not satisfied just to tear 5 million odd
persons from their children, from their homes, from their native land.
But in addition, these defendants, who sit today in this courtroom,
insisted that this vast number of wretched human beings who were in the
so-called Old Reich as forced laborers must