. NMT02-T0376
Volume II · Page 376
determined that 5,000,000 laborers were deported to Germany. Of these, 4,800,000 did not come voluntarily.
The evidence will show that the defendant's responsibility was as great, if not greater, than was Sauckel's. Erhard Milch raised his voice in demanding that foreign labor be procured by any methods and in advocating that cruel and repressive measures be taken by those in charge of these laborers. There is no record of any utterance by him, which can be offered as a mitigating circumstance to his complete complicity in the criminality of the slave-labor program.
The evidence on the altitude and freezing experiments will reveal him as a man completely without concern for the welfare and lives of the wretched, unwilling victims of the criminal tortures conducted for the benefit of the Luftwaffe.
The series of trials, of which this is one, if it is to serve its purpose in exposing and punishing the abuses of Nazidom, must strike hard at the cores of savage German militarism and its technical counterpart, industry for war. Erhard Milch is the foremost example of the union between German militarism and German heavy industry. What useful purpose is served by condemning these two and allowing their sponsors, men like Milch, to go unpunished?
We take it as a fundamental proposition that man is not the helpless product of his environment. Civilization is a lengthy chronicle of men who triumphed over difficulty. Its survival depends on the moral fibre of individuals who can use circumstance, not be determined by it. If society must answer for the actions of men, and not men for the course of society, then, indeed, governments are our masters and not our servants; then, indeed, law dictates but does not express justice. Erhard Milch lived during years of violence and in an evil environment but he was a man well able to overcome these factors and become a force for good. It was by his own free choice that he followed the line of least resistance and became one of the evil spirits who cast a dark shadow of war and crime over Germany and the world. He had a choice between the easy wrong and the hard right-he chose the former. Peace, order, and progress depend on men of sufficient courage to choose at times a hard, just path. Ours indeed is an exacting standard, but the rewards are great, and the alternative is chaos.
