Q Was it only because of the Central Planning Board that Speer went to see Hitler?
A No; that was one very small portion of all the other discussions, because Hitler was interested, to an extraordinary degree, in army armament, and even right down to the most minute detail. He himself decided, on his own initiative, the thickness of armor on armored fighting vehicles he decided upon the caliber and type of gun which should be fitted to tanks; he decided the thickness and the caliber of anti-tank defensive armor; he himself laid down, personally, the supply rate of ammunition for every type of gun. I had an awful lot of difficulty with him over anti-aircraft ammunition in that connection, since Hitler would never depart, during that time, from anything which he had once laid down. He had changed a groat deal from his pre-war days.
Q We shall come to speak about that at some other point.
Witness, a business statute of the Central Planning Board is available, dated 20 October 1942. I shall put this to you.
DR. BERGOLD: Your Honors, this is document R-124, Exhibit No. 48-A. It is contained in the German document book of the Prosecution, No. 3-B. On one occasion, during the examination of the witness Koerner, it has already played its part.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, have you found it?
JUDGE MUSMANNO: It is document book 3-B, at pages 2 and 3.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, you can see that there is a letter from a Mr. Schieber, which is attached to the Statute of the Central Planning Board, and which is dated 20 October 1942, which, according to your notes, must have been signed.
Will you please define your attitude towards the question as to whether you know this statute and whether you have signed it?
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, document R-124 comprises a whole volume. What page are you referring to? Perhaps Mr. Denney can tell us.
MR. DENNEY: Pages 2 and 5 of document book 3-B, Your Honor.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, will you continue?
A This statute was compiled by the armament industry in a one-sided manner. It did not come before me, nor did I sign it. The date appears to me to be peculiar, since Central Planning had been created at the end of march. And now on the 30th of October, we are faced with a statute; all this, of course, in 1942.
Q Witness, aren't you mistaken? Isn't it the 20th?
A Well, on one occasion it says "30". It says the 20th at the beginning, and then on one occasion, at the back it says the 30th. Perhaps it is supposed to be the 20th; probably it is a misprint.
Actually, what is correct is that the Central Planning Board had decided that it would not have any personnel of its own because, contrary to the General Plenipotentiary for Labor, the Central Planning Board did not represent any dependent department. For this reason, and following a suggestion of Speer's, we stated that every one of us would nominate a deputy. I, on my part, always detailed the respective chief of my planning department for this assignment. Speer too chose the chief of his planning department, and Koerner had one of his ministerial counsellors whom he detailed for that.
It is wrong, however, that the Central Planning Board had been created by the Fuehrer and the Reich Marshal for the purpose of the unified conduct of the armament and war economy. It had expressly only been created for the distribution of raw materials. It is equally wrong that these representatives, these deputies, had any supervisory authorities regarding decisions, with the exception, of course, of supervising the distribution of raw materials.
I think that is probably the most important part of what it contains.
Q. Thank you; may be that is enough.
A. May be I might add that under point seven dealing with the assignments, one of the tasks which is mentioned is that of increasing production for the purpose of improving raw material supplies, and also for the purpose of necessary alterations of the distribution. This means a listing of the actual tasks, namely, supply with raw materials and the necessary changes in the distribution, with reference to the distribution. The improvement cf raw material supplies, which is mentioned hero, was not a matter for the Central Planning Board, but a matter for the Armament Ministry, which was responsible for coal and steel production. The Central Planning Board could not by any means, however, interfere in Speer's jurisdiction. Speer would not have tolerated it either.
Q. Witness, thank you. I am now going to another part of the Document Book 111-B of the Prosecution which was put to you, namely, R-124, the minutes of the first meeting of the Central Planning Board on the 27th of April, 1942. Your Honors, you will find this listed in the index in Book III-A, on the last page of the index; it is the fifth item from the bottom, page 21 and page 22.
MR. DENNEY: Pages 21 and 22 , your Honor.
THE PRESIDENT: What did you say, Mr. Denney?
MR. DENNEY: Page 21, page 22, Document Book III-B.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, we are here concerned with the records of the first meeting of the Central Planning Board, in which the part of the Central Planning Board Duties are once more defined, and I would like you to make a statement as to whether these minutes are correct, and whether it conforms with the so-called statute which you have just read , or whether it is in contradiction thereof.
A. First of all I want to say in connection with this that I had never known that the Central Planning Board was mentioned within the four year plan; according to what I had known, it had nothing to do with the four year plan; Goering's authority for the formation of the Central Planning Board, because of the contact I might mention that (previously the four year plan 1815 (a) had distributed raw materials on a high level) it had not been transferred as part of the organization of the four year plan.
This was a matter, this was an institution created by Hitler who had by-passed the four year plan and it was only Speer's tactfulness which brought about this conference with Goering. Goering, of course, never once interferred in the question of distributing raw materials; he left that entirely to Hitler. He would only have landed in a controversy with Hitler if he had done so. Speer, on the other hand, did mention this during that meeting, namely, that the Central Planning Board had the task of leading, that is to say, it wasn't going to deal with the details of the plan since special institutions were in existence for that purpose everywhere. For instance, it wasn't going to distribute orders to iron or steel concerns, let's say iron; it is only going to be done for the entire steel industry, and that is how you must understand the statement contained on page 2, under Roman numeral II, and the letter "c" for Charlie. The industry producing iron will be unified in the Reich. This wasn't by any means instructions coming from the Central Planning Hoard; this was an order from the Armament Ministry. This is merely mentioned there, here, because I don't know who prepared these minutes, but probably a certain Mr. Steffler, but I don't know his name; I don't know that name. It might be the Minister's counsel, Hermann, whose name is mentioned here; he was coal representative at the time; that is the type of representatives which I have said we all had.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you ask the witness whether he was present at this meeting?
DR. BERGoLD: Yes, I shall ask him.
Q. Were you present -- at this meeting?
A. Yes.
Q. Witness, it is your opinion that even this first record of the Central Planning Board meeting is inexact and does not correspond with the true discussions which took place.
A. May I state quite basically in connection with this that I hardly ever had my deputy with me when I went to the meetings; no had a- lot of other assignments and these meetings went on for several hours.
Koerner's deputy, the representative whom he brought along, always kept the minutes in the sense of observing Koerner's meaning. Sometimes I did read through these brief minutes, and I might say that I pointed out to Koerner and Speer that facts always seemed altered considerably, but all three of us used to laugh about consider it, and with a flick of the wrist we used to it quite unimportant to have these minutes altered afterwards because all of these minutes appeared of no importance whatsoever. What was important were decisions of the Central Planning Board, and they were taken down most exactly, and they contained to my knowledge only contingencies of raw materials such as we had distributed in the proportion of two large forms on the left side the armament, on the right side the civilian consumers. By means of the four year plan, which was previously mentioned, the Armament Industry was to limit civilian consumers and that distribution of non-metal materials and non-ferreous metal, or building materials also came in this sphere. This was all assigned by us, and it was always our own signature which was affixed to it every three months because, generally speaking, they went out every three months, so that those brief minutes which are taken, some small official, ministry of counsel, or whatever the matter may be, would always see to it in the first place that the reputation of his shop wouldn't be damaged. Apart from that, these men were not informed about our real intentions and purposes.
Q. Witness, on this occasion we might touch upon the value or lack of value of the so-called verbal minutes, now that we have come to this subject, don't you think.
These verbal minutes, which are very comprehensive, very voluminous, even with reference to one meeting, the whole volume it seems. Were they examined?
A. No, that wasn't possible. I might have examined one or the other minutes at the beginning, and I did on one occasion try to make improvements, but I found that it contained so many mistakes that at the time of reading and improving them would have amounted to fifty per cent more time than the actual meeting. These meetings often went on four or more hours or so, and I really did not have the time to sit down for something like six hours afterwards in order to put this right. I know that there wasn't any one who 1817(a) read through them, and I didn't really know why these records, these verbatim records, were prepared.
I thought perhaps it was a question of supervision for us, and I had no cause to state I an not going to allow myself to be supervised. If you went to the pains of having one stenographer who would do nothing but write, but who was stumped by the fact that we sometimes spoke too quickly or not too clearly; that stenographer often sat far away from the man who was speaking, or the stenographer didn't know the name of the man who was speaking, and there was a lot of muddle in that respect. He didn't know whether the man who was sitting on the left was talking or his neighbor on the right, and one mistake after another occurred. I gave it up pretty quickly after looking through these minutes. I once asked the others whether they were reading the minutes through and they just laughed at mo, and said that they had more and better jobs on hand, and I said so have I.
Q. Witness, you have just said that these stenographers who sat on the side could quite often not even distinguish between the speaker, whether it was he or his neighbor. What was the custom; did you remain seated while you were speaking, or did one always rise?
A. No, no, we all stayed seated; we all remained seated and the stenographer couldn't always see who was speaking because on certain occasions a lot of people were there. If you invited one man to a meeting in Germany, then possibly he always brought his entire staff along so that he could answer all the questions; and if you invited one, sometimes fifteen or twenty shewed up. I sometimes asked whether these men didn't have anything else to do because we were not really concerned with details, only with the basic, larger points, and they used to say, well, everybody is invited.
Q. Witness, did it happen that specific orders were given to stenographers for them to alter certain points or omit them? So that apart from accidental mistakes, deliberate mistakes were being made?
A. I have recollections of many occasions that Speer, who used to sit next to me, would shout to the stenographer across the room and say "leave that out what the Field Marshal just said."
Unfortunately, this is notorious before this Tribunal the expressions and words I used, which were not always too carefully chosen. I always have said during my entire life what came to my mind at that moment, and I, as a soldier, was never taught to hide my opinion. But sometimes, in order to refreshen sometimes boring meetings, I used rather forceful language to shake up the others a bit so that they would at last come out with their true opinions, because many of the people were only there as experts on individual points, and had perhaps too much respect for us. Quite often ministers were there; even in Germany a minister and a Field Marshal have a fairly high ranking position; and the German is rather more inclined to show too much respect than too little. Now, if they found that I too would use strong expressions on one occasion, or another, then they would loosen up a bit and they would start talking, and they would feel then that I can let go too. I was keen to have clarity, and that the cat wouldn't always run around the hot porridge, because, after all, we had to know the truth and the real background.
Since Speer was much more cautions and much more courteous, never having been a soldier, I could allow myself the exhibition of freedom, and unfortunately I did.
Q. Yes, unfortunately. So that statements of that kind of yours were either razed or they were altered?
A. They were only razed, or shall we say that opinion of Speer's only came into force if I stated my criticism of the higher leaders too severely. If, for instance, somewhere Hitler had given assignments or orders which, to my view, were wrong, or even coming from Goering or other people, the minister of the Interior or the minister of the Police or some other person, then I even here would state my frank criticism amongst these people. Usually I didn't have any other possibility to state my deviating opinion, and I had the inner urge, when I was deviating, to say it out aloud. Speer, in my interests, had this struck out, and he told me a few times afterward, "For heaven's sake, do be careful. They will hang you one day." But of course he was referring to the German source. Sometimes when I myself became aware of the fact that in my criticism of these high ranking gentlemen I had gone too far, I would say to this man, "Leave that out." And on one or two or three occasions I said, "Change it. Put some one else in there as having been referred to," because I myself discovered -- mind you, I wasn't always aware that I criticized too severely, but since Speer told me so a few times, I controlled myself a little more. I discovered that I had said too much and that was a mistake, and so I intervened myself.
Q. That is enough. Witness, I shall now put before you with reference to the Central Planning Board one other decree from Document book 2-A, No. 150, Exh. 58. Document Book 2-A, Document No. 150, Exh. No. 58.
MR. DENNEY: It is on page 32 of Book 2-A.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, this document is listed in the index by the Prosecution as the founding decree for the Central Planning Board, is that correct, or what does this document represent?
A. That has nothing to do with the Central Planning Board.
MR. DENNEY: At the time that exhibit was offered we made a correction on the record and said that it referred to the Central Planning Office, not to the Central Planning Board, and if Your Honors wish, I can bring in the page in the record and show where it appears. We called it to Dr. Bergold's attention at the time.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold didn't hear your comment, Mr. Denney.
MR. DENNEY: That is in the record, and you know it. I spoke to you about it prior to the time I made the correction, and there is no sense in misleading the Court.
THE WITNESS: So we are concerned with the Planning Department of the Armament Ministry. The word "Planning" crops up everywhere and might be the cause of such misunderstanding. I should never the less like to draw your attention to one matter in this connection on Page 6. We are here concerned with Speer's entire ministry and its organization, not only the Planning Department. And on Page 6 under "Technical Department" it says the head of Army Defense Districts. And under the following number the reference is to the Armament Supply Department, and the leaders of the armament trustees. Therefore witnesses, including Gen. Vorwald, have drawn your attention to the fact that the entire leadership of the armament industry out in the country -- of the armament business out in the country right from the beginning was in Speer's hands, and that includes the sphere of air armament. Later on in this same document there is a reference to the tasks which those armament commissioner and armament trustees had. That shows clearly that the entire organization of the armament business, both in the military as well the civilian field -- and I mean in this connection military organizations such as the Armament inspectorate as well as civilian March-13-M-4-3-HD-Feldt (Frank-JP sources -- that all that was entirely under Speer.
The organizations in the industrial firms, too, namely, the so-called rings and chief committees, even the chief committees and rings for the production of aircraft, aircraft engines, and instruments were under Speer, so that the final equipment of the airforce which has always been mentioned up to then to the effect that it was in the hands of tne air ministry had, right from the beginning, been subject to that restriction.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. But something appears in this document with reference to this Planning Bureau -- Planning Department. Speer has given testimony to the effect that this Planning Office under President Kohl did have some dealings with the Central Planning Board.
A. Yes.
Q. To what extent did this happen, and were these connections to the Central Planning Board the only sphere of work of this Planning Office under President Kehl?
A. May I perhaps add in connection with this that Speer had a planning office in his Armament Ministry; the GL had the same in his Air ministry. The Central Planning Board, however, had no personnel of its own. And Speer had said, as far as I am concerned, the chief of my planning office Kehl will also become my representative on the Central Planning Board. I had the corresponding man in my planning office and I, too, detailed him to be my representative. Now then, Speer had suggested that the meetings, since they would have to be prepared, would entail the sending out of invitations. There would have to be an order or a program for the meetings, and for these purposes all these gentlemen jointly were to have President Kehl make such preparations. That means that apart from his assignment in the Armament Ministry, President Kehl would also have a small auxilliary assignment on behalf of the Central Planning Board.
If you were to subdivide this work approximately according to its volume, then Kehl would work for the Armament Ministry 99% of his time and just loss than 1% of his time would be devoted to the Central Planning Board.
Q. Thank you. Witness, this document No. 1510PS contains, at the end of the document, a decree dated September 16, 1943, which deals exclusively with this planning office. Five main points are referred to. The first begins with the statement that the Planning Office would prepare the decisions to be made by the Central Planning Board, and under this large heading I there follow seven further subparagraphs numbered 1 to 7. Let me put this before you once again and will you tell me whether the reference made under 1 deals exclusively with tasks of the Central Manning Board such as this Central Planning Office was meant to prepare.
A We are here concerned with tasks of the Armament Ministry and the Central Planning Board having got mixed up.
Q Would you concern yourself with paragraphs 1 to 7? In these paragraphs the Arabic figures 1 to 7--a number of tasks are dealt with.
A Yes; figure 1, the preparation of meetings, of decisions of the Central Planning Board. That is all right; that had been arranged. And this, most of all, the distribution of basic war materials: coal, mineral oils, and such materials. That is all right. But it says, of course, "preparation" because the actual distribution was carried out by the Central Planning Board.
Then, under Figure 3, there is the Planning Office, and it states, 'for the entire war economy, production, and distribution a plan was to be made." This had nothing to do with the Central Planning Board, nor did it ever take place in the Central Planning Board. It was sent entirely a task for the Armament Industry.
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, I think we are wasting time here. Mr. Denney has conceded that this has no reference to the Central Planning Board, but only to the Central Planning Office of the Armament Industry.
MR. DENNEY: No, Your Honor; I said that the index where it says "decree establishing the Central Planning Board" should change to read, "decree establishing the Central Planning Office." Now, as this office is concerned with the Central Planning Board, we certainly maintain that it has a bearing. The only point that I wish to make at the time the document was offered was the fact that it was improperly listed in the index, as is obvious from the date, 1943. It was carried as a decree establishing the Central Planning Board. The Board was founded several months prior to this time, and we don't for a moment withdraw out contention that the Planning Office was concerned with the Central Planning Board.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you do concede however that this is not a decree establishing the Central Planning Board? That is obvious.
MR. DENNEY: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: But you do claim it has some reference to the Central Planning Board.
MR. DENNEY: Certainly, your Honor.
BY DR. BERGOLD (Counsel for the defendant, Erhard Milch):
Q Witness, please, will you continue? This is a technical, a legal discussion.
A Well, I would like to say that this entire publication is only concerned with Speer's task in his capacity of general plenipotentiary of armament problems in the Four Year Plan. This assignment of the general plenipotentiary shares work on Speer's part in his capacity as Armament Minister, has nothing whatever to do with the Central Planning Board. It was a special affair which he had Goering give him the order for. And he says in fact in the document that the Reichmarshal had come to him, Speer, as a man of the Four Year Plan, and had created a planning office. In other words, this plan ning office has now got a third task:
One, it is the Armament Ministry.
Secondly, it had to deal with the preparations for the meetings of the Central Planning Board. That is, when Speer created his working staff for this task. And then, in September 1943, it received an additional task on behalf of the general plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan for armament questions.
Q Will you go on, please.
A. Consequently, there are three tasks here which seem to get mixed up. If any staff had put a thing like this before me, then the gentleman--including his piece of paper--would have sailed through the door. It is the climax of lack of clarity of the bureaucrat and everything being muddled up. So, I would like to repeat:
Point 1 is okay.
Point 2 is all right, also.
Point 3 has nothing whatever to do with the Central Planning Board but deals with tasks of the Four Year Plan, the plenipotentiary for armament tasks. And I, of course, never had much to do with such armament work.
Point 4. No connection with the Central Planning Board, and deals with questions handled by the Armament Ministry.
Point 5 has no connections with the Central Planning Board.
Point 6. No connections with the Central Planning Board. These are questions of exports and imports, and the Central Planning Board had only one contact with export and import questions; namely, that certain raw materials were partly being exported. For instance, Sweden received coal from us; and Switzerland received coal and steel, and if we were making distributions, then these requirements for exports of raw materials had also to be taken into consideration. Therefore, otherwise apart from that, we had nothing to do with exports, etc. The question, for instance: Which imports were important for war economy was something that only interested the Central Planning Board to the extent that ores and bauxite were being imported from foreign countries. And, even there it only touched us, since it was mostly a matter for the Armament Ministry, and all we wanted to know was whether enough bauxite and enough ore was being imported since a certain number of months afterwards we had to distribute steel and aluminum.
The way we saw our tasks in the Central Planning Board was that we weren't going to meet every three months like newly born babes, and then would have the permission given to us how much raw material there was available and then would say, "Well, too bad we haven't got any more. Let's dish this stuff out." We were always making efforts to apply pressure to it that raw materials, too, such as were to be distributed under our program, would really be in existence. If we hadn't carried out that part of our work, then we would certainly only have had seventy per cent of the amount of the steel which we would actually have managed to distribute.
Point 7 has no connections with the Central Planning Board. It is purely a matter for the Armament Ministry and the armament tasks of the Four Year Plan. This thing was never brought to the knowledge of the Central Planning Board either, to the best of my knowledge. It was only here in the room that I saw this document for the first time; namely, when the prosecution presented it.
Q But under (Point) 4, with reference to which you just said that it had no connections with the Central Planning Board, this document states as follows: "The Planning Office is responsible for the allocation of all labor in the Greater Germany and its sphere of jurisdiction to the individual large main sectors of civilian war economy traffic; food, supplies, and so on and so forth, and will submit this to the Central Planning Board for its decision and it will also statistically deal with its carrying out."
A The only thing that is correct in connection with this is that I know that Speer's Planning Office also kept statistics or had a certain amount of statistics dealing with workers--if I am properly informed. And, of course, I don't know the details of Speer's organization.
Then these statistics in Speer's office were being compiled by the Armament Department, the highest department in the Armament Inspectorate. And Mr. Kehl used to have them supply him with the statistics documents. On one occasion or another, this question was discussed by the Central Planning Board; and, particularly if the question was to be ascertained whether the raw-material-producing industries did have the workers as Sauckel asserted, or whether they did not have them, as was stated by the industry themselves. Apart from this, everything which is contained in this paragraph was never carried through because the only occasion when tables about workers were submitted to the meeting of the Central Planning Board were concerned, we were concerned with tables which Sauckel had filled with his figures. And there we were concerned with utterly different purposes than those mentioned here; namely, this being the 53rd meeting of the Central Planning Board on the 16th of February, 1944, and about that, of course, we shall probably talk at the proper point, and it will be then that I shall explain to you what that meeting on that date was aiming at. It had nothing whatever to do with the task that is being laid down here. And, apart from that, Speer's Planning Office never brought this task to the knowledge of the Central Planning Board.
Q. Witness, you are saying that you didn't notice it. This would mean that you never approved this.
A. No, because it never had anything to do with me. It is a purely internal instruction in the Armament Ministry, and I am convinced that Speer did not read it either, even if he did sign it, because Speer would not have affixed his name to such a muddle.
Q. Witness, was Speer in his capacity as Reich Minister for Armament and War Production at all in the position to create a decree for the Central Planning Board, anything which would have been binding upon the Central Planning Beard.
A. He, he could not have done that. Occasionally - and I know of several instances; sometimes he would tell me and sometimes he would forget it -- Speer did issue some decrees. I knew that his ministry was particularly keen on publishing decrees. There were too many clever men there, and they had to issue many decrees. Maybe there were too many exports there, too and the lot of them always wanted to publish some decree each -- something which I never was interested in my sphere. I think I have never issued a decree. At any rate, insofar as these decrees touched upon the sphere of influence of the Central Planning Board, Speer alone used to sign these decrees, and he did not consider it necessary to inform us on the subject. You must consider that he too was terribly overburdened with work. Occasionally he said also to write Milch's and Koerner's name at the bottom, and this applies to the work regarding the Central Planning Board. It was put neither before me nor Koerner, as far as we know. Speer was a little generous in that respect, I would not have had any objections if he had told me, "I put your name at the bottom too, "but it is all right" because alter all, he had to know that."
Q. Well, maybe you did not quite understand my question. Was Speer in a position to publish decrees which would give tasks to the Central Planning Board which it did not originally have?
A. He, he could not.