 |
| c. Testimony of Defendant Haefliger |
| |
EXTRACT FROM THE TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT HAEFLIGER,
17 MARCH 1948,¹ |
| |
| REDIRECT EXAMINATION |
| |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| |
DR. VON METZLER (counsel for defendant Haefliger) : Mr. Haefliger,
the prosecution, in the course of its cross-examination, has submitted to you a
number of documents about which I want to examine you. Now, have you got these
documents before you?
DEFENDANT HAEFLIGER: Yes.
Q. I shall
start with Prosecution Exhibit 1996, 1997, and 1998.² This is a
correspondence between you and Director Ziegler, Bitterfeld, in which the
question of the trustee administration and further management of Russian light
metal plants is being discussed. First of all I want to ask you this: Were you
informed about the situation of the Russian light metal plants after the
outbreak of war against Russia?
A. No; rather, this was the position:
When I learned that the Reich Ministry of Economics intended to create trustee
companies for the trustee administration of the chemical industry in the
Occupied Eastern Territories, I was also informed that a similar procedure was
being considered in the light metal field. I transmitted this information to
the competent electronmetal departments at Bitterfeld, and on 8 August 1941
(that is Exhibit 1998), I received information from the director, Dr. Ziegler,
from which it was apparent that the inquiry which was sent to the Reich Air
Ministry about 2 months before the commencement of hostilities, was not sent to
me. The allusion in this letter, and I quote, “we expect a certain
recognition for the extraordinarily troublesome negotiations with the Russians
at the end of last year and the beginning of this,” refers to difficult
licensing negotiations, which at that time were carried on with the Russian
Trade Delegation in Berlin, to give the Russians a license for our magnesium
manufacturing process and application process. We gave the Russian experts full
insight into our plants and we afforded them all opportunity to study the
production there, although the contract had not as yet been signed.
Q.
Pardon me if I interrupt you; when was that?
A. That was at the end of
1940 and the beginning of 1941.
Q. Thank you.
A. A trustee
management of the light metal industry in the Occupied Eastern Territories was
never actually realized, as far as I know. |
__________
¹ Further extracts are
reproduced earlier in section VII C 5a, I 7f, N 5a, and O
7b, in volume VII, this series.
² Documents
NI-14530, NI-14529,
and NI-14531, respectively, all three of which
are reproduced in subsection E 2 above.
299 |
. 
