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[con…] cerning your letter to State Secretary Brinkmann in
October 1938, with respect to the location of Buna Works III, you explained a
reference to not locating such plants in Upper Silesia because of troop
deployments; and you said, I believe, that you had first heard of this
objection from Dr. Eckell, who, in a conversation with you and Dr. Ambros had
mentioned that no Four Year Plan plants were to be erected there because this
terrain was needed for military purposes; and that you had then brought this
matter up in your discussion with Dr. Brinkmann. Can you tell us about when
this conversation with Dr. Eckell took place, and what else, if anything, he
told you about this matter?
A. I cannot give you the date, of course.
Q. Approximately.
A. No, not even approximately. I have already
explained this matter in my testimony. I have said that we no doubt received
this information when the Reich Office required us to build a third buna plant,
or rather the second, at that time in Fuerstenberg. In the opinion of Dr.
Ambros and myself this was an unfavorable location. We always said at the time
why not nearer to coal and limestone, include shipping on a river which is
frozen over for several months a year and has so little water in summer that
ships cannot be fully loaded. On that occasion Dr. Eckell, I think, mentioned
Fuerstenberg for the first time in spring 1937, and he said to us that Four
Year Plan plants could not be built in this zone. That zone was approximately
the Province of Silesia, but I cannot tell you exactly without a map. The zone
was far beyond Breslau, down the Oder [River].
Q. On the basis of what
Dr. Eckell told you, you made these comments at the meeting with Dr. Brinkmann;
is that right?
A. From my knowledge that up to that time there was this
prohibition I took advantage of this discussion with Mr. Brinkmann (always from
the point of view of our private economic consideration to build a factory in
the right location) to influence him; first of all, that we shouldn't be pushed
too much because we were planning better processes — that is in the
letter, too — and, second, since peace had been concluded at Munich (and I
certainly believed in that peace, otherwise I wouldn't have made that
suggestion) that we should now be given permission to build a plant in
Sudetenland or in Upper Silesia, in a place which Mr. Eckell had already said
was impossible.
Q. Let me show you Prosecution Exhibit 563, the one we
are discussing, Document NI-4717.* It's in book
29 at page 11, and I want to ask you just one or two more questions, Dr. ter
Meer. |
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* Reproduced in subsection
O 5.
1579 |
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