. NMT06-T0599
Volume VI · Page 599
| D. Testimony of Defendant Flick | |
| EXTRACTS FROM THE
TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT FLICK¹ |
|
| DIRECT EXAMINATION | |
| * * * * * * * * * * | |
| DR. DIX (counsel for defendant
Flick) : Now, the last: As a general introduction to the Petschek case, I must
ask you to give the Tribunal an explanation about the happenings which are
connected with the foundation of the Hermann Goering Works. I may say to the
Tribunal that this is very important and relevant, because the knowledge and
the connection in these events within the Petschek question, the exchange of
soft coal for brown coal, were of considerable importance, because what happens
now after this cannot be understood if one does not know this affair. And I
should like to ask him to tell us what he remembers of it. And I should like to
ask the Tribunal to allow me to ask him questions as to this affair.
DEFENDANT FLICK: The reasons which led to the foundation of the Hermann Goering Works I have already touched upon. I mentioned the large meeting of industrialists, in December 1936,² at which Hitler spoke, and at which all these matters were touched upon, self-sufficiency, especially in this case, and it was aimed that Germany should be made independent of the import of Swedish ore as far as possible. Parallel to this were the efforts of the economic adviser of Hitler — that was Keppler, who founded the Keppler Circle. Keppler was a specialist and expert on the question of the examination of German ore deposits, and when later he lost his office as economic adviser to Hitler he dedicated himself to this activity of the discovery of German ore deposits and their exploitation — he became the president of the Reich Institute for German Soil Research. And one has to know these matters in order to know how this came about. Keppler and his collaborators, to whom Pleiger belonged, maintained--Keppler "as of the opinion, also Pleiger, that there was enough ore in Germany. It is not very rich ore, but it is just possible to make use of this ore economically, and they thought they found an example in an English company, Corby, in which by the process I have already mentioned, by the help of this man Brassert, a |
¹ Complete testimony is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 2, 3, 7-11, 14, 17 July 1947; Pages 3150-3915, 10329. Farther extracts from the testimony of defendant Flick are reproduced above in sections IV H and V G and below in sections VII E and VIII D.
² Extracts from the report on this meeting of 17 December 1936, Document NI-051, Prosecution Exhibit 509, are reproduced above in section V C.
