. NMT06-T0219
Volume VI · Page 219
| of their sphere of influence did result in
considerable sacrifices on my part. I had to give up a very important position
in the Siegerland. I had to hand it over to the Ruhr concern in question —
these measures which had already been agreed on for the preparation of our own
coal base for my own company I could not then achieve any longer, and I was
glad in this way and with so little sacrifice to fight my own way again and to
have won back at least the independence of my own company. That was in 1919 or
1920, and after matters took this course I looked to Upper Silesia and central
Germany. In the year 1920 I purchased the Upper Silesian Bismarckhuette. Bismarckhuette was an enterprise of medium volume. It was an enterprise of quality, but without its own coal. In the year after that, in 1921, I used an opportunity to provide for the Bismarckhuette what it had lacked, its own coal base. The occasion came when the owner of the majority of the shares of the Kattowitzer Aktiengesellschaft, Winkler, had adopted a skeptical attitude as to the further political and economic development in Upper Silesia. He could not judge matters very well, and he decided to sell his property so that I, on the ground of my own political and economic judgment of the future development, could purchase them. In the same year I interested myself in another company, the Oberschlesische Eisenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft [Upper Silesian Iron Works A.G.]. The year 1922 was of decisive importance for the whole Upper Silesian industry and also for my own plants. In the spring of 1922, through the decision of the League of Nations in Geneva, the larger part of the whole Upper Silesian industrial district went to Poland and only a small part remained in Germany. By this, difficult situations came into existence. The larger part of coal went to Poland, almost the whole zinc production, and approximately three-quarters of the steel production, but the worst blow was that the new border line went through the plants, in part at least, and plants were on this side and the other side of the border, and it became very difficult to work. |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| [The testimony here omitted deals principally with general,
political, and economic developments and Flick's relations with various
political personalities. Some of this testimony is reproduced in section V G.]
Q. Now I would like to go back from this illustrious society to the development of the economy. You should still show us how the period from 1926 to 1933 developed. Would you please give us some details concerning your own personality during that period and tell the Tribunal about it? |
