 |
| 4. TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT AMBROS |
| |
EXTRACTS FROM TESTIMONY OF
DEFENDANT AMBROS* |
| |
| DIRECT EXAMINATION |
| |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| |
DR. HOFFMANN (Counsel for Defendant Ambros): Mr. Ambros, we left off
yesterday at the Rattwitz plant. Would you please, quite briefly, explain once
more what brought the construction of this plant about and why it was stopped?
A. I said that the requirements for rubber in Germany in 1938 amounted
to approximately 100 to 120 thousand tons. I also said that the production of
buna had been projected to an amount of 70 thousand tons, so that a deficit of
at least 30 thousand tons existed. When the war had broken out, the Reich
Government decided, approximately in October 1939, to produce this deficit of
approximately 30 thousand tons in a third plant and that third plant was
Rattwitz.
Q. What happened to Rattwitz? Was the construction concluded?
A. The construction of Rattwitz, which began about in April of 1940,
was stopped on 7 July 1940, after the French campaign had been closed.
Q. Did you yourself stop construction of this plant? Did you get a
government order to do it, or how was it done?
A. The instruction to
stop construction could not be given by us as the private entrepreneur. This
regulation had to come, in the final analysis, from the person responsible for
all building construction in Germany, and that was Mr. Todt. He had a picture
of the strength and the possibilities of the construction industry in Germany
and he could determine whether a certain building should be concluded and he
also determined, as was the case at Rattwitz, that it should be terminated on 7
July 1940. |
| |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| |
Q. Now. Mr. Ambros, please tell me, after Rattwitz had been stopped,
did that conclude the construction of a third buna plant or was that matter
taken up again later?
A. No. Three months later, we were again called
to Berlin so as to start constructing the third plant then. It seemed
contradictory to us that in July, a buna plant should be stopped, and in
September |
__________
* Further extracts from the
testimony of defendant Ambros are reproduced in sections V B4, VII G7b, K6 ,
vol. VII, this series, and in sections
VIII D4, E4, IX F4.
731 |
. 
