12 Dec.
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signed by Hitler, Lammers, and the Defendant Keitel —
and it is dated 21 March 1942 — appointing the Defendant Sauckel
the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor. I ask that the
Court take judicial notice of the original decree, which is published at
Page 179, Part I, of the 1942 Reichsgesetzblatt; referring to
the English text starting at Paragraph 1, as follows, and quoting
directly:
"In order to secure the manpower
requisite for war industries as a whole and particularly for
armaments, it is necessary that the utilization of all available
manpower, including that of workers recruited abroad and of prisoners
of war, should be subject to a uniform control directed in a manner
appropriate to the requirements of war industry, and further that all
still incompletely utilized manpower in the Greater German Reich,
including the Protectorate as well as in the Government General and in
the Occupied Territories, should be mobilized. Reichsstatthalter and
Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel will carry out this task within the framework
of the Four Year Plan, as Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation
of Labor. In that capacity he will be directly responsible to the
Delegate for the Four Year Plan. Section III (Wages) and Section V
(Utilization of Labor) of the Reich Labor Ministry together with their
subordinate authorities, will be placed at the disposal of the
Plenipotentiary General for the accomplishment of his task."
Sauckel's success can be measured from a letter which he himself wrote
to Hitler on 15 April 1943 and which contained his report on 1 year of
his activities. We refer to the Document as Number 407(VI)-PS, which
bears Exhibit Number USA-209. I wish to quote from Paragraphs 6 and 9 on
Page 1 of the English text; in the German text it appears at Page 2,
Paragraphs 1 and 2:
"After 1 year's activity as
Plenipotentiary for the Allocation of Labor, I can report that
3,638,056 new foreign workers were given to the German war economy
from 1 April of last year to 31 March of this year . . . .
"The 3,638,056 are distributed amongst the following branches of
the German war economy: Armament, 1,568,801 . . . . "
Still
further evidence of this steady use of enslaved foreign labor is found
again in a report of the Central Planning Board, to which we have
referred so many times this morning and yesterday. Another meeting of
this Central Planning Board was held on the 16th day of February 1944;
and I refer to our Document Number R-124, which contains the minutes of
this meeting of the Central Planning Board and which has been offered in
evidence already as Exhibit Number USA-179. And I want to refer
particularly to