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Volume V · Page 994
| bring up for discussion all matters of
general interest." Accordingly, Maurer issued an invitation to all the chiefs
of W offices to attend a meeting 17 November, "in order to discuss questions
and matters which concern all Amt chiefs and which can serve as suggestions for
them." Georg Loerner, Hohberg, and Volk were present, among others. Again, in
September 1943, Pohl called a meeting of W office chiefs, at which defendants
Georg Loerner, Baier, Bobermin, Mummenthey, Klein, and Volk were present with
others. Pohl announced that the meeting had been called because it had been
noticed that following the removal of some of the Amts from Berlin, "regular
cooperation between the staff and the offices is not always assured. * * * It
is necessary more than ever before to cooperate very closely with the staff."
The isolation for which the defendants contend was in the very nature of things, a myth, and every person in the organization must have known that the WVHA was charged with two tremendous and related tasks-the economic administration of the concentration camps and the operation of the W industries with the labor supply which the camps furnished. Had the various defendants been shrouded in the profound ignorance which each claims, Pohl never could have run the WVHA with anything near the outstanding success which he achieved. The whole organization would simply have fallen apart for lack of cohesion. What part, then, did the defendant Frank have in this industrial empire — an empire in which the chief problem of industry was adroitly solved by locking its labor supply behind barbed wire and paying it nothing? A man of more limited genius than Pohl could hardly have failed under those circumstances to show a profit. First of all, Frank must conclusively be convicted of knowledge of and active and direct participation in the slave labor program. It cannot be imagined that he believed that all the inmates of the 20 concentration camps and the 165 labor camps scattered throughout the entire 'continent of Europe were German nationals, composed of habitual criminals, anti-Nazi and asocial persons, and others whom the Reich for security purposes thought best to imprison. He could not have been ignorant, for example, of Pohl's letter of 26 June 1942, to all Amtsgruppen, stating that the head of every branch office which was provided with prisoners or prisoners of war for work was responsible for the prevention of escape, robbery, and sabotage. He could not have been ignorant (because he himself dictated it) of Pohl's letter of 28 July 1942, to Himmler, discussing the commanders of many of the concentration camps and their qualifications and making recommendations for reassignments, detachments, and promotions. As an in- […corporating] |
