“Almost five years ago to a day, from the height of this rostrum, the most illustrious in Europe, a man spoke to other men dressed in field grey. His name was Alfred Rosenberg. I can testify to the exact date. It was 25 November 1940.
“Rosenberg leaned his elbows on this rostrum, where the voices of Jaurès and of Albert De Mun were once heard and where, on 11 November 1918, Clemenceau nearly died of joy. Here are his words:
“ ‘In one gigantic revolutionary burst’—he said—‘the German nation has reaped such a harvest as never before in its history. The French will admit one day, if they are honest, that Germany has freed them from the parasites of which they could not rid themselves unaided.’
“And the Nazi philosopher”—continues Mauriac—“then proclaimed the victory of blood. He meant”—writes Mauriac—“the victory of race; but it happens that a man may utter prophetic words unwittingly and without realizing the full import of the words which God places upon his lips. As Rosenberg predicted at the Palais Bourbon on 25 November 1940, it was indeed blood that won the victory. It was the blood of the martyrs which in the end choked the executioners.”
M. President, with the approval of the Court, and with the same brevity as heretofore—and I hope the Tribunal will appreciate the care I am taking not to abuse its patience—I should like to say a few words on the individual charge against the Defendant Fritz Sauckel.
Your Honors, the Tribunal is already acquainted with the really remarkable work, the genuinely positive work, presented to it some time ago by my colleague and friend, M. Jacques Bernard Herzog. This is why, with your permission, I shall pass over the facts themselves, which are known to you, and limit myself to the part beginning on Page 3 of my brief; and we shall examine together, if it please the Tribunal, the grounds for the pleas advanced up to now by the Defendant Fritz Sauckel.
One question must be asked first of all: Was Fritz Sauckel acting under orders when he carried out this recruiting—so-called voluntary in part but compulsory in most cases—this recruiting of laborers destined to supply the needs of the German Reich?
According to Sauckel, when he was appointed Plenipotentiary for the Allocation of Labor on 27 March 1942, his initial program did not include the conscription of foreign workers; and it is supposed to have been Hitler who intervened then. For it is striking, Your Honors, when you read the minutes of the interrogations and also, I am sure, when the defendants speak before the Tribunal, you will see that most of them take refuge behind two great shadows; the shadow of the former Führer and the shadow of his accursed second, Himmler. Here we can see Hitler intervening to tell Sauckel, according to the latter, that the use of foreign workers in the occupied territories is not contrary to the Hague Convention for two reasons; firstly, the countries involved surrendered unconditionally and consequently we can impose any kind of labor conditions on them, and secondly because Russia has not signed this convention. If, therefore, we use Russian workers on compulsory labor and make them work to death, we are not violating the Hague Convention.
This, Your Honors, is the reasoning of the Defendant Sauckel on this point, without the addition of a single word. Hitler is supposed to have ordered him to recruit workers, at first using persuasion and then all the means of compulsion which you already know; suppression of ration cards, for instance, which compelled men, who saw their wives and children starving, to volunteer for work which would be used against their own fellow citizens and against the soldiers of the Allied armies with whom all their sympathies lay.
The Tribunal will know how to deal with such an excuse for, in the first place, Sauckel, by virtue of the powers conferred upon him by his office, enjoyed full authority in regard to everything to do with the labor necessary for the execution of the Four Year Plan. On the other hand, on taking up his appointment as Plenipotentiary for Labor Allocation, Sauckel knew that he would be unable to carry out his mission without resorting sooner or later to means of coercion. In any case, Sauckel, as well as most of the defendants who are before you, enjoyed the most extensive powers, indeed autonomous powers. Consequently, he cannot shelter behind orders received.
THE PRESIDENT: M. Mounier, you must forgive me if I interrupt you; but as I pointed out yesterday, I think, we have already had an opening statement which contained argument from the United States, from Great Britain, and from M. De Menthon on behalf of France, and we have, in the past, confined other counsel. . . .
Do you hear me? I was saying that after having heard the opening statement from the United States, from Great Britain, and from France, we have in the past, confined the counsel who have followed them to a presentation of evidence and have not permitted them to go into an argument.
I am not sure that that rule has been strictly carried out in all cases because it is, perhaps, somewhat difficult to confine the matter; but we have, on several occasions, pointed out to counsel who have followed the counsel who made the leading statement that they ought to confine themselves to a presentation of the evidence. I think the Tribunal would wish you, if possible, to adhere to that rule and, therefore, not to argue the case but to present the evidence, that is to say, to refer us to the evidence insofar as it has already been put in evidence; to refer us to it by its number, possibly stating what the substance of the evidence is; and, in reference to any document which has not yet been put in evidence, to read such parts of that document as you think necessary.
M. MOUNIER: Very well, Mr. President, to meet the wishes of the Tribunal, I shall limit myself, as concerns the Defendant Sauckel, to referring to figures which, it seems to me, do not admit of argument, since they are the figures given by the Defendant Sauckel himself under interrogation. This does not seem to me to infringe upon the rule which the President has just drawn to my attention.
The figures stated are the following: In 1942 there were already a million foreign workers in Germany. In one year Sauckel incorporated into the economy of the Reich some 1,600,000 war prisoners to meet the needs of war economy.
I beg to refer the Tribunal to Exhibit Number RF-1411 in my document book. This is an interrogation of the Defendant Speer under the date of 18 October 1945, which has already been submitted by the United States Prosecution on 12 December 1945, under Exhibit Number USA-220 (Document Number 3720-PS). In this interrogation the Defendant Speer states that 40 percent of all prisoners of war were employed in the production of arms and munitions and in related industries.
I likewise offer under Exhibit Number RF-1412 (Document Number 1292-PS) of 13 December 1945, a memorandum signed by Lammers, Secretary of the Reich Chancellery, giving an account of the discussion which occurred at a conference held on 4 January 1944. On that date, 4 January 1944, in the course of a conference, at which, in addition to the Defendant Sauckel, the Führer himself, Himmler, Speer, Keitel, Field Marshal Milch, and others were present, the number of new workers to be furnished by Sauckel was fixed at four million.
I must mention in this connection that in the course of this meeting, Sauckel expressed doubts as to the possibility of furnishing this number of workers unless he were given sufficient police forces. Himmler replied that he would try to help Sauckel to achieve this objective by means of increased pressure.
Consequently, when the Defendant Sauckel claims, as he probably will do, that he had absolutely nothing to do with the institution now spurned by everyone, known as the Gestapo, we may answer him by official German documents showing that for the recruitment of labor he really did employ the police with all the more or less condemned means already pointed out to you.
As for France alone, the demand for workers at the beginning of 1944 amounted to one million; and this figure was over and above the number of men and women workers already sent to Germany, who in June 1944 numbered one million to one and a half million.
The Defendant Sauckel, therefore, committed the offenses already known to the Court. We have an old adage,