Chapter XXVIII: Book 2: Page 144, Document Number Raeder-77 (6)

Another document, RF-91, has been presented, which contains the medical report of Dr. Février of the French Delegation of the German Labor Front, which was compiled after the beginning of the invasion on 15 June 1944. Besides deficiencies it is intended to correct, the report also points out favorable aspects. It speaks with particular acknowledgement of leaders of youth camps, of the systematic X-ray examinations, and of the support given by district administrations, and similar things. A genuine over-all picture of conditions could only be obtained by the study of the medical reports of the health offices of the German Labor Front existing everywhere.

For the defense of the Defendant Sauckel it may be said here that from his remote post he could not obtain a clear picture of unsatisfactory details. Any sanctioning of such bad conditions would have been in striking contrast to the actions and declarations of Sauckel. The Defendant Sauckel did not acquiesce when, for instance, one Gauleiter said: “If anybody is going to be cold, then first of all let it be the Russians.” He intervened and publicly proclaimed his views in his official Handbook on the Allocation of Labor (Document Number Sauckel-19). The Defendant Sauckel also made efforts to improve the food, although this was outside his competence. That has been confirmed by several witnesses, among others the witness Goetz (Exhibit Number Sauckel-10). It is also shown by the record of the Central Planning Board (Document R-124, Page 1783). The Defendant Sauckel did not let matters slide, but established a personal staff of his own, whose members traveled around the camps and corrected bad conditions on the spot. He also endeavored to obtain clothing, and put factories to work to a large extent for the purpose of supplying Eastern Workers. All the witnesses heard regarding this problem have again and again unanimously confirmed that the Defendant Sauckel basically took great interest in the welfare of workers.

I would also refer to the announcements and speeches of the Defendant Sauckel, which always advocate good treatment. I do not wish to enumerate the documents in detail, and shall only mention in particular the “manifesto” on the allocation of labor, Document Number Sauckel-84, in which he refers to his binding basic principles, and demands that these be constantly kept in mind. I also refer to the speeches to the presidents of the provincial labor offices of 24 August 1943 (Document Number Sauckel-86), and of 17 January 1944 (Document Number Sauckel-88). The Defendant Sauckel finally got even Himmler, Goebbels, and Bormann to acknowledge his ideas as correct. That is shown by Document 205-PS of 5 May 1943, which is a memorandum regarding the general basic principles for the treatment of foreign workers. There the basic principles of a regulated mobilization of labor are accepted.

How do the statements of the Prosecution on ill-treatment of workers as slaves correspond with this? It will be necessary to examine closely whether the cases referred to involve real abuses affecting workers in the process of normal mobilization, or abuses incidental to the deportation of prisoners and to their work. Next, one should investigate exaggerations and distortions such as may be due to human weakness and foibles. In my opinion no adequate clarification of this subject has so far been obtained, and press reports have already begun to appear which are bound to increase doubts as to the accepted standard applying to the life of foreign workers.

The plan submitted as Exhibit Number Sauckel-3 displays the numerous offices for checking and inspection relative to the question of laborers. They did not report any particular abuses to the offices of the Defendant Sauckel. Perhaps the fact that these offices were so numerous constitutes a weakness: It is quite possible that each government department kept silent about whatever mistakes originated under its own jurisdiction and failed to bring them to the attention of the Defendant Sauckel, because as a rule the controlling agencies were on a higher level than the Defendant Sauckel. This should be considered particularly with regard to relations between the most important agency, the German Labor Front, under the leadership of Reichsleiter Dr. Ley, and Gauleiter Sauckel.

On closer examination of the document submitted as 1913-PS, an agreement on the creation of “central inspection offices for the care and welfare of foreign labor,” it appears to have been carefully designed as an instrument of defense against the Defendant Sauckel. The document was devised by Dr. Ley and signed on 2 June 1943, then submitted for his signature to the Defendant Sauckel who did not approve or publish it until 20 September 1943. It is quite possible that Dr. Ley did not wish to invite criticism. On the other hand, there is little likelihood that the abuses were general and manifested themselves openly. Otherwise they would obviously have become known to the Defendant Sauckel through his own control agencies.

In addition to his own staff, the Defendant Sauckel on 6 April 1942 appointed the Gauleiter as “Commissioners for the Mobilization of Labor,” impressing upon them as their foremost duty that of supervision with regard to the enforcement of his orders. This becomes apparent from Document Number Sauckel-9, Figure 5; the same applies to Document 633-PS of 14 March 1943. Several Gauleiter were examined by the Tribunal as witnesses, and they have confirmed the fact that the supervision was carried out as ordered and that Sauckel checked it through members of his staff. No abuses were reported.

After due consideration of the matter, whom should one believe? Are we concerned here with exaggerated complaints, or do findings to the contrary command credibility? There is no testimony by those Frenchmen who, according to Document UK-783, Draft III, were taken to the real slave centers; there is no testimony by those Russians, who, according to Document USSR-51, were sold at 10 or 15 Reichsmark.

In any case one fact clearly speaks in favor of the Defendant Sauckel, one which has always been confirmed by competent witnesses, namely, that the workers were willing and industrious and that when the collapse came no uprising occurred in which they would have given vent to their natural wrath against the slaveholders.

I have summarized actual happenings and appraised them juridically. All this, however, must appear to be juridical quibbling when a higher responsibility is involved. It has been stated here that it would not do to let the insignificant works managers take the blame, and that the moral responsibility must go to the highest Reich Government offices: On their own initiative they ought to have introduced corrections on a larger scale to cope with the difficulties inherent in the circumstances of that time. This might have applied to offices which had the power and the means to bring about improvement. The Defendant Sauckel and his small personal staff had merely been incorporated in a ministry already in existence, and he had no such means at his disposal. His authority consisted of a narrowly defined power to give directives on the mobilization of labor, and he untiringly made use of this authority.

The works managers in the armament industry formed an independent administration and were secure from so-called bureaucrats. The duty of self-maintenance results from such a privilege of self-administration. Consequently, if something was to be done to improve the security of foreign workers, or their situation in armaments works, it was up to these establishments and to the armaments ministry, under whose supervision they operated, to deal with the matter. It was not the duty of the office of the Defendant Sauckel to intervene in these matters, since it was under the armaments ministry. That is clearly evident from Document 4006-PS, containing the decree of 22 June 1944, and is also borne out by the most intimate personal relations between the armaments minister and Hitler, which made him the most influential man in the economic sphere. If higher responsibility existed for mistakes made in the factories, such responsibility can be placed only at the door of those who had knowledge of such conditions and the power to correct them.

There is still another legal question to be considered with regard to the Indictment; namely, whether the position of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor is determined by Article 7 or Article 8, in other words, whether the Defendant Sauckel was an independent government official or whether he acted on orders. The requests for labor were placed from time to time on Hitler’s special orders, in the form of a general program, and only the subsequent distribution was left to Sauckel. This is also confirmed by the fact that the Defendant Sauckel always refers to Hitler’s “orders and instructions,” as in the manifestos of the Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor (Document Number Sauckel-84, in circulars to the Gauleiter, Figure 7, Document Number Sauckel-83 and others). From this also derives the fact that the Defendant Sauckel in every case specifically reports execution of the orders, as well as the beginning and end of his official journeys (Document 556-PS of 10 January 1944 and 28 July 1943).

Another argument against his working independently is that according to the nomination decree the Defendant Sauckel was immediately subordinate to the Four Year Plan and attached to the Reich Ministry for Labor, which had been preserved with its state secretaries; only two departments were placed at his disposal. If the form of responsibility is to be determined, it can thus only be within the limits of Article 8 of the Charter.

Herewith I conclude my exposition regarding the special field of labor allocation.

The Defendant Sauckel is accused on all Counts of the Indictment, in addition to labor mobilization; specific acts however are not charged against him. A closer characterization of the accusation has been effected in the course of the proceedings only with regard to the concentration camps. In this connection, however, it has been proved by a sworn statement by the witness Falkenhorst (Exhibit Number 23) and an affidavit by the witness Dieter Sauckel (Exhibit Number 9) that no order for the evacuation of the Buchenwald Camp upon the approach of American troops was given. Knowledge and approval of conditions at the camp cannot be deduced from two visits of the camp before 1939, because the excesses submitted by the Prosecution had not yet occurred. Nor did the geographical proximity of the camp to the Gauleitung of the Defendant Sauckel bring about any close connection with the SS staff, as they had their seat in Kassel and Magdeburg. Finally it must be remembered that the human convictions of the Defendant Sauckel, which were based on his earlier career, were irreconcilable with Himmler’s point of view.

What part can the Defendant Sauckel have played in the conspiracy? He was Gauleiter in Thuringia and did not rise above the rest of the Gauleiter. His activities and his aims can be deduced from his fighting speeches, which have been submitted as Document Number Sauckel-95. They consistently show the fight for “liberty and bread,” and a desire for real peace.

During his activity, extending over many years in the Party, the Party program was authoritative for the Defendant Sauckel; the aims and plans contained therein required neither war nor the extermination of the Jews. The practical realization of the program alone could disclose the reality. For every convinced Party exponent, however, the official explanation of events was authoritative and met with no doubts. Up to his nomination as the Plenipotentiary General for Allocation of Labor in March 1942, the Defendant Sauckel did not belong to the narrow circle of those who had access to Hitler’s plans. He had to rely upon the press and the broadcasts like everybody else. He had no contact with the leading men. This is demonstrated somewhat tragically by his action, so often ridiculed, of boarding a submarine as an ordinary seaman for some mission. That is no way to participate in conspiracies.

As a faithful follower of Hitler, the Defendant Sauckel remained isolated in the circle of the initiated. It is understandable that the extremists should have shunned him owing to his well-known opinions. He was not initiated into the secrets of people who aspired to be Hitler’s friends and murderers at the same time, nor was he kept informed by the group of people who were Hitler’s enemies, but who kept their knowledge secret with a novel kind of courage. A believer to the end, the Defendant Sauckel cannot to this day understand what has happened. Must he, like a heretic, recant his error in order to find mercy? He lacks the contact with reality, which would make understanding possible.

Does his sentence depend on his having unknowingly served a good or a bad cause? Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. One thing, however, is always and under all circumstances good, and that is a good intention. This good intention was shown by the Defendant Sauckel. Therefore, I ask that he be acquitted.

THE PRESIDENT: I call on Dr. Exner for the Defendant Jodl.

PROFESSOR DR. FRANZ EXNER (Counsel for Defendant Jodl): May it please the Tribunal, in this unique Trial the discovery of the truth is faced with difficulties of an exceptional nature. At a time when the wounds of the war are still bleeding, when the excitement of the events of the last few years is still felt, at a time when the archives of one side are still closed, it is asked that a just verdict be given with dispassionate neutrality. Material for the Trial has been spread out before us covering a quarter of a century of world history and events from the four corners of the globe.

On the grounds of this tremendous amount of material we see 22 men being accused simultaneously. That makes it immensely difficult to gain a clear picture of the guilt and responsibility of each individual, for inhumanities of an almost unimaginable vastness have come to light here, and there exists a danger that the deep shadow which falls upon some of the defendants may also darken the others. Some of them, I fear, appear in a different light because of the company in which they now sit than they would if they were alone in the dock.

The Prosecution has promoted this danger by repeatedly making joint accusations, thereby mixing legal and moral reproaches. They have said that all the defendants had enriched themselves from the occupied territories, that there was not one who did not shout, “Perish, Judah!” and so forth. No attempt to prove this in the case of any single individual was made, but the statement in itself creates an atmosphere hostile toward all of them.

Another fact brought about by the Prosecution which renders elucidation of the question of individual guilt still more difficult is that the Defendants Keitel and Jodl are treated as inseparable twins: One common plea against them by the British prosecutor, one common trial brief by the French Prosecution; the Russian Prosecution indeed spoke very little about the individual defendants but preferred to heap reproach after reproach upon all of them.

All of this is presumably intended to shorten the Trial, but it hardly serves to clear up the question of individual responsibility. Indeed, the Indictment goes still further. It reaches beyond these 22 defendants and affects the fate of millions through a prosecution of certain organizations, which, taken in conjunction with Law Number 10, leads to the result that one can be punished for the guilt of other persons.

Something that is more important at the moment is a further form of summary treatment of the defendants. The Prosecution is bringing in the conception of a “conspiracy” in order once more to obtain the result that persons may be made individually responsible for some wrong that others committed. I must deal with this point in greater detail, since it also concerns my client.

It is actually clear, I think, from the previous speakers’ statements that a conspiracy to commit Crimes against Peace and the laws of war and humanity did not in fact exist. Therefore, I shall demonstrate only that, if such a conspiracy did actually exist, Jodl at least did not belong to it.

The Prosecution has admitted that Jodl’s participation in the conspiracy before 1933 could not be proved. In fact, anyone whose attitude toward the whole National Socialist movement was so full of distrust and who spoke with such skepticism about its seizure of power did not conspire to help Hitler take over the reins of Government. But the Prosecution seems to think that Jodl joined the alleged conspiracy in the period before 1939. In truth, during this time, too, nothing essential changed as far as he was concerned. True, his attitude toward Hitler was now an entirely loyal one. But it was Jodl’s respected Field Marshal Von Hindenburg who had called Hitler into the Government, and the German people had confirmed this decision with more than 90 percent of its votes. Added to this was the fact that in Jodl’s eyes—and not only in his—Hitler’s authority was bound to rise by leaps and bounds in view of his remarkable successes at home and abroad, which now followed one after another in quick succession; yet personally Jodl remained without any connection with Hitler. He did not participate in any of the big meetings at which Hitler developed his program. He had only read extracts of Hitler’s book _Mein Kampf_, the bible of National Socialism. Jodl remained just an unpolitical man, quite in line with his personal inclinations, which were far removed from Party politics and in accordance with the traditions of the old family of officers from which he sprang. Of liberal leanings, he had little sympathy for National Socialism; as an officer he was forbidden to belong to the Party, and he had no right to vote or be politically active.

If, as the Prosecution says, the Party held the conspiracy together and was the “instrument of cohesion” between the defendants, then one asks with wonder what cohesion actually existed between Jodl and, let us say, Sauckel, or between Jodl and Streicher. Of all the defendants, the only one he knew before the war, outside of the officers, was Frick, from one or two official conferences in the Ministry of the Interior. He kept clear of the NSDAP, and his attitude toward its organizations was even in a certain sense inimical. His greatest worry during these years, right up to the end, was the danger of Party influence in the Armed Forces.

Jodl did what lay in his power to prevent the SS from being puffed up into a subsidiary Wehrmacht, to prevent the transfer of the customs frontier guards to Himmler, and he notes triumphantly in his diary that after the withdrawal of General Von Fritsch, Hitler did not, as had been feared, make General Von Reichenau, who had Party ties, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, but the unpolitical General Von Brauchitsch, and so forth. If Jodl had conspired for National Socialism in any way, his attitude would have been the opposite on every one of these points.

Nor was Jodl present at any of the so-called meetings of the conspirators, as on 5 November 1937—Hitler’s testament was unknown to him—at Obersalzberg in February 1938, and at the meetings on 23 May 1939 and 22 August 1939.

No wonder; for Jodl was after all at that time still much too insignificant to be permitted to participate in conferences and meetings which were of such decisive importance to the State. People do not conspire with lieutenant colonels or colonels of the General Staff. They simply tell them what to do, and that settles the matter.

However, the most incontrovertible proof of the fact that Jodl can have belonged to no conspiracy to wage aggressive war is his absence for 10 months just before the beginning of the war. Jodl had left the OKW in October 1938 and was sent to Vienna as artillery commander. At that time there was in his mind so little probability of war that before leaving Berlin he drafted, on his own initiative, a plan of deployment in all directions for security purposes. In this he disposed the bulk of the German forces in the center of the Reich because he could not see any definite opponent against whom a deployment plan might have to be prepared.

Exactly a year before the beginning of the attack, this alleged conspirator for aggressive wars drew up a purely defensive General Staff plan, and, although he knew definitely that in case of war he would have to return to Berlin, this possibility seemed so remote that he moved to Vienna, taking along all his furniture.

Besides, since he wished to get away from office work again, he arranged to have the mountain division at Reichenhall promised him for 1 October 1939. Lastly, as late as July he obtained passage on a sea cruise planned to last several weeks, which was to have started in September—so sure was he of peaceful developments during these 10 months.

Up to the time he was called to Berlin shortly before the outbreak of the war, Jodl had no official or private connections with the OKW. The only letter he got from them at that time was the one which promised him his transfer to Reichenhall on 1 October.

Note that at the most critical time when the alleged conspirators were discussing and working out the Polish plan, Jodl was for 10 months out of all contact with the authoritative persons and knew no more of what was happening than one of his second lieutenants.

When the Führer came to Vienna during the summer, it did not even seem worth while to Keitel to introduce Jodl to him, although Jodl, as the Supreme Commander’s strategic adviser, was called upon in the event of war to carry out the allegedly common aggressive plan.

One can imagine how astonished Jodl was to read in the Indictment that he had been a member of the conspiracy to launch the war.

Mr. President, I have reached the end of a paragraph, and this perhaps might be an opportune moment to recess.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

[_The Tribunal adjourned until 19 July 1946 at 1000 hours._]

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Punctuation and spelling have been maintained except where obvious printer errors have occurred such as missing periods or commas for periods. English and American spellings occur throughout the document; however, American spellings are the rule, hence, “Defense” versus “Defence”. Unlike Blue Series volumes I and II, this volume includes French, German, Polish and Russian names and terms with diacriticals: hence Führer, Göring, etc. throughout.

Although some sentences may appear to have incorrect spellings or verb tenses, the original text has been maintained as it represents what the tribunal read into the record and reflects the actual translations between the German, English, French, and Russian documents presented in the trial.

An attempt has been made to produce this eBook in a format as close as possible to the original document presentation and layout.

[The end of _Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal Vol. 18_, by Various.]