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for the direction of industrial production during wartime was created
several weeks after the war had broken out, by Walter Rathenau in Berlin. I
remember only too well from those days, since I already mentioned I remained in
the plant at Uerdingen. One day I was left behind with one chemical engineer
and colleague, in a factory in which several acids, nitro products, aniline,
and so forth were produced, and the two of us could do nothing but close down
several plants because the foremen and other craftsmen were recklessly pulled
out for wartime service. This negligence during the First World War probably
was in the minds of our military men when, after 1933, they thought of
correcting these mistakes that had been made during the First World War - and
all the more because during a new war, if such would ever break out, material
requirements would even be higher than during the First World War, since the
motorization of the Army, and mechanization, and the introduction of the Air
Force had increased extraordinarily more than it was in 1918. The initiative
for the so-called mobilization planning comprising all these fields of work
— deferment of employees, furnishing of raw materials, the definition of
production capacity of the plants — the initiative was taken by the Reich
Plenipotentiary for Chemistry [Reichsbeauftragter fuer Chemie], Dr. Ungewitter,
who was at the same time the manager of the Economic Group Chemical Industry.
Q. Did Dr. Ungewitter receive this mission from any other authority, or
how did he come to initiate this measure?
A. Dr. Ungewitter certainly
must have received directions from the authorities.
Q. You spoke about
production investigations repeatedly; mobilization plans; you talked about
“Belegungsplaene.” It might perhaps be interesting if you explained
the difference to us between these various concepts. A. Today, after I have
studied the extensive material presented by the prosecution, and after I
studied it and informed myself additionally by the plants in this entire field,
I believe that I am able to make a few comments about this. In our language,
production investigations were the statistical findings about production in the
past that were made by the Statistical Reich Office.
“Belegungsplaene” means the production plans ordered by Dr.
Ungewitter on the basis of the normal capacities of our works. The
Belegungsplaene are, so to speak, the forerunner of the so-called mobilization
tasks, which the plant was then assigned in the course of these preparatory
measures, as an order arising and issued by the government. The entire
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