have them allocated by the Higher SS and Police Leaders. This procedure might have had certain advantages during the last few years. Under the current conditions, however, when again many thousands of resettlers have come to the Reich it is, in my opinion, too clumsy to be practicable, not to speak of the immense paper work that it entails.

"The following, in my views, might be an expedient solution Since today we can anyway no longer speak of a settlement according to plan, but are — if for no other reason than due to the housing shortage — concerned only with a temporary wartime placement of the resettlers to be handled still now, the allocation should be made directly by my office. From my subordinate offices, I know that in agriculture alone we could place tens of thousands of resettler and at the same time this would be of immense importance from an ethnological viewpoint, since we thus could proceed with deportations in villages which today have an alien population of 60, 70, and 80 percent."

"Therefore, your purely local order must necessarily lead to confusion and uncertainty, especially since it does not take into account the thoroughly incorporated existing plan of procedure. For example, you also overlook the fact that the labor allocation of Slovenes not suitable for re-Germanization and other similar groups of evacuees is entirely my job. The fact that I am not dependent upon a single Gau in the allocation of these cases, but can execute relocation measures into other Gaus according to economic necessities, guarantees speedy completion of these labor allocation measures.

"I request of you, with respect to these facts, to retract the order issued by you on the 18th of this month. It is not in accordance with the Reich Leader's orders and therefore cannot be recognized by me. Furthermore, it leads to unnecessary difficulties which especially at the present moment must be termed undesirable.

"Since I am aware of the efficient cooperation between you and the local allocation headquarters of the repatriation office for ethnic Germans in Breslau, I am somewhat amazed how such an order ever came into being at all without my having been consulted. Therefore, I am returning to you your letter of 18 August of this year and request, contrary to the intentions