. NMT02-T0361
Volume II · Page 361
| murders, cruelties, ill-treatment, and other
inhumane acts were committed against members of the armed forces of nations
then at war with the German Reich and who were in custody of the German Reich
in the exercise of belligerent control. 3. In the execution of the plans and enterprises charged in paragraphs 1 and 2 of this count, millions of persons were unlawfully subjected to forced labor under cruel and inhumane conditions which resulted in widespread suffering. At least 5,000,000 workers were deported to Germany. The conscription of labor was accomplished in many cases by drastic and violent methods. Workers destined for the Reich were sent under guard to Germany, often packed in trains without adequate heat, food, clothing, or sanitary facilities; other inhabitants of occupied countries were conscripted and compelled to work in their own countries to assist the German war economy and on fortifications and military installations. The resources and needs of the occupied countries were completely disregarded in the execution of the said plans and enterprises. Prisoners of war were assigned to work directly related to war operations, including work in munitions factories, loading bombers, carrying ammunition, and manning antiaircraft guns. The treatment of slave laborers and prisoners of war was based on the principle that they should be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the greatest possible extent at the lowest expenditure. 4. The defendant Milch from 1942 to 1945 was a member of the Central Planning Board which had supreme authority for the scheduling of production and the allocation and development of raw materials in the German war economy. The Central Planning Board determined the labor requirements of industry, agriculture, and all other phases of German war economy, and made requisitions for and allocations of such labor. The defendant Milch had full knowledge of the illegal manner in which foreign laborers were conscripted and prisoners of war utilized to meet such requisitions, and of the unlawful and inhumane conditions under which they were exploited. He attended the meetings of the Central Planning Board, participated in its decisions and in the formulation of basic policies with reference to the exploitation of such labor, advocated the increased use of forced labor and prisoners of war to expand war production, and urged that cruel and repressive measures be utilized to procure and exploit such labor. 5. During the years 1939-1945 the defendant Milch, as State Secretary in the Air Ministry, Inspector General of the Air Force, Deputy to the Commander in Chief of the Air Force, Field Mar-[...shal] |
