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further construction of this plant was halted. An expansion plan for
Hibernia in the Ruhr was also canceled. There were some very unpleasant
arguments with the firms concerned, who had given out their orders and had made
part payment, and were suddenly faced with the fact that the construction of
the plant had been stopped.
I shall mention a third case; that was the
Blechhammer plant. The preparations for the construction of the plant were
finished, and construction was to begin in September 1939. The OKW suggested
that this construction be made on a war basis; that is to say, important
changes had to be made in spite of the urgency of the mineral oil program, thus
delaying the beginning of the construction by 6 months.
Of course,
plants built for war purposes were much more expensive, as plants built for
peacetime purposes.
Q. Now, will you very briefly go into the
reproaches which were made to you on your sole meeting with Hitler, from this
point of view?
A. In May 1944 I stood before Hitler for the first time
at a conference on the Obersalzberg. A number of people — I believe there
were 35 or 40 — were present at this conference. In the preceding weeks,
severe attacks by English and American forces had been made on the mineral oil
plants. The discussion began with an attack by Goering upon me personally. He
said it was entirely my fault that this difficult situation had arisen. He said
that in building these plants I had been guided by purely commercial reasons
and not by war considerations. And he went on in the same vein. After the
discussion was terminated, there was another discussion between Hitler and
Goering and myself, and Goering repeated his charges before Hitler. I answered
Goering by saying: “Yes, they were built for commercial reasons. The duty
that I had at the time was to create work for our unemployed in the shortest
possible time, and therefore I was interested only in building plants on a
purely commercial basis. Your charge is quite true, but the motives which I had
are obvious.” |
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