. NMT05-T0969
Volume VI · Page 969
| And then I told him our reasons. I pointed out to him that were
afraid that the same situation would come about as in the previous year, when
Mr. Pleiger needed urgently a soft coal basis, and now we would have the same
situation all over again. Lorraine and Luxembourg, after all, brought with them
a large number of coal consumers in the German district. But in practice they
did not bring coal. Consequently there was the danger that again coal would be
looked for and they would see which of the plants had some coal available,
particularly coking coal, and then this whole problem would again stick with
Mr. Flick. As another reason — Q. Mr. Burkart, I don't quite understand that. Where did you see the danger? A. I pointed out that in Lorraine and Luxembourg there were a number of steel works which would now come into the German industrial and economic district, which were very large coal and coke consumers, but had no coal. Since the coal production was rather low in the Ruhr the danger existed that these new owners of the Lorraine and Luxembourg plants, that is, particularly the Reichswerke, would again come running to the Ministry of Economics or to the Four Year Plan Office and say, "We need coal." In that case a similar situation would come about as happened in 1939 when the whole Harpen transaction came about because of Pleiger's demand for his own soft coal basis for his steel works in Salzgitter. Q. Your anticipation was therefore, that Flick would lose more coal if they did not increase the production? A. Yes, that's correct. We had the proverb as our leading motto — "Once bitten, twice shy." Q. There is another reason pointed out in this note in front of us. A. Well, the other consideration was that we had been told repeatedly by official agencies that the Flick group was based one-sidedly on a scrap iron basis. You have to expand in the direction of ores, but in Germany, in the German Reich, the ore possessions were distributed and therefore the occasion to participate in steel works with an ore foundation was a good opportunity. Q. Were there not also questions of rivalry of importance, particularly as far as Maxhuette was concerned? A. Another reason which was of great importance to us, perhaps it was one of the decisive factors, was the idea of the Reichswerke. Your Honors, you know by now the position of the Maxhuette, I mean on the map. The Maxhuette plants are not very far from Nuernberg. There is another one near Saalfeld, about 160 kilometers north of Nuernberg. Previously Maxhuette |
