 |
the conversion to exclusive war
production is enforced by very robust methods." |
| Yet, the testimony of defense witness Kraus indicates that, whatever
may have been true with respect to other industrialists, the officials of the
Gusstahlfabrik were not intimidated by the situation described by counsel.
During the war, Kraus was a “group chairman” and in December 1944 was
appointed a plant director in the Gusstahlfabrik. After having testified that a
“considerable peacetime production” was carried on during the early
years of the war, he was then examined about such production during the later
years. On this topic and with reference to the later years of the war, he was
asked and answered as follows: |
| |
“Q. Please tell us another
few branches of peacetime production.
“A. Well, we had our
appliances production Nos. 1 and 2; we produced chemical containers. We even
produced milk cans. Incidentally, whenever these investigation committees came
they always objected to that, and we always had great arguments when we had to
show what a number of different products we were manufacturing in the
Gusstahlfabrik. We were even blamed for producing locomotives, and that was
quite a considerable part of our total production.
“Q. What about
motor vehicles?
“A. Yes, we made them too. I know that one of the
inspecting commissions tried to close down some of the peacetime production in
order to release the workers for war production.” |
Whatever may be said with respect to the relation to wartime
production of the specific items mentioned by the witness, the fact
nevertheless remains that it appears from his testimony that the Gusstahlfabrik
in the later years of the war was engaged in what the witness said the
“nvestigating committees” considered peacetime production and, so far
as appears, nothing was done about it even though the "committees”
objected thereto.
The third instance relates to the sale of Reich bonds
by the Krupp firm. It was related by Schroeder, head of Krupp’s accounting
department and a witness for the defense. From his testimony it appears that in
1943 the Krupp officials became convinced that the war was lost and it was
necessary to adopt a new policy looking to the post war period. At that time,
the firm had accumulated government bonds in the amount of 200 million
Reichsmarks, Schroeder said that "we started to sell these gradually so that
when the war was nearly over we had only 68 million Reichsmarks in bonds. We
did not on purpose sell all of them because that would have been too noticeable
and it would have |
1447 |
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