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adequate accommodations, food, and decent treatment; he issued
instructions to that effect, and he saw to it, as far as that was humanly
possible, that these instructions were carried out. We shall, moreover, show
that everything was done to make the foreign workers feel at home. I have no
intention of going into details, or of dealing with all the points raised in
the evidence. As far as the treatment of the foreign workers is concerned, all
those who were on the spot and who had for those foreign workers feelings
stronger than mere sympathy, are unanimously agreed that Dr. Wurster's attitude
to those men was one of decency, understanding, and helpfulness: it was, in
short, a humane attitude.
Let the prosecution accuse Dr. Wurster of any
crime they choose: it is absolutely impossible that he ever committed an action
which would discredit him in the eyes of honest men of any nationality. It is
one of the most remarkable facts in the case of Dr. Wurster that all sections
of the population who knew him as the head of the great Ludwigshafen plant, and
all the workers and employees, irrespective of their political opinions or
religious convictions or social position in the plant, respect, honor, and love
him. That I shall prove. When Dr. Wurster, who had been lying seriously ill in
the Ludwigshafen hospital, was at last transferred in an ambulance to Nuernberg
as a result of the inexorable pressure brought to bear upon him by the
prosecution, the official representative of the employees of the plant
presented him with flowers and formed a guard of honor. More than 19,000
employees and workers of the factory went on strike like one man for one hour
in sympathy with him. We shall submit to the Court the relevant documents. I do
not think that I am saying too much when I claim that it would be difficult to
find, not only in Germany but in any country (relationships between employers
and employees being what they are), the staff of a factory supporting a
director as unanimously and voluntarily as they supported Dr. Wurster. I doubt
whether I have met any man in my very eventful and full life of whom it could
be said that he had no enemies. I have met such a man here, in the person of
Dr. Wurster. I am almost inclined to think that the representatives of the
prosecution are his only enemies; and even they would change their opinion if
they paid heed to the words of the Rev. Marshall, and provided they studied the
man, and not only the documents in the case. When the American Armed Forces
occupied the Ludwigshafen-Oppau plant in March 1945, after the collapse of the
German Army but prior to the cessation of hostilities in Germany, they soon
formed a similar opinion of Dr. Wurster and left him in charge of the
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