At any rate, the main problem was coal.
Speer, anyhow, during one of our conferences, sent for the men representing the coal industry. Such a Reich Union, Coal, had existed for some considerable time. These people stated that there was enough coal in the mines but that human manpower was lacking to bring it up. Speer now asked them to tell him in writing in his capacity as armament minister as to what was needed. Now, these men apparently reported the figures regarding workers they had, and it was during those conferences with the coal representatives, always, of course, with reference to the question of steel. It was also stated that all efforts on the part of the Armament Ministry would have to fall down because of the labor shortage.
Speer, as he told me, mentioned this to Hitler dozens of times. It was here for the first time that various controversies arose between Speer and Sauckel.
DR. BERGOLD: Witness, I think it is going to take sometime in what you have to say. Perhaps at the point where you turned to Sauckel we can have the recess of the Tribunal.
THE MARSHALL: This Tribunal is in recess for fifteen minutes.
(A recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: Tribunal Number 2 is again in session.
Q. Witness, will you now continue to explain to the Tribunal what the Central Planning Board had to do with the labor question? You just stopped at Sauckel.
A. The first difficulties arose with Speer as armament minister and Sauckel. Speer said, "I'm short of workers." Sauckel said, "I have fulfilled all your demands", and as proof he submitted his figures. Between the figures which Speer had and those which Sauckel had no comparison was ever possible. They were based on different suppositions. Speer was unable to obtain the basis for the figures which were at Sauckel's disposal. In their conflict Hitler took the side of Sauckel. He wished to exercise pressure on Speer, thereby to increase armament. Speer was unable to do so because he did not have the workers who ha.d to produce coal.
This struggle went on through the years. At first Speer still hoped that Sauckel would still bring the workers into his factories until in the summer of 1943 he gave up this hope. In the Central Planning Board this, of course, was discussed, and it was also discussed how much steel we could obtain for the next three months and haw we could, distribute it. The contrast between the figures Hitler wishes to have 3.2 million tons of steely we can only distribute 2.6 millions because Speer is quite unable to produce more. The consequence was.again that Hitler reproached Speer for not producing more steel although Sauckel had supplied the workers. The Central Planning Board was not responsible for the quantity at his disposal. Speer asked me to give him my support in this question. I did so quite frequently in the meetings and also when I reported to Goering because we wished to convince Goering that we did not have the workers so that Goering would intervene with Hitler in that sense.
But I was unable to obtain Goering's support. Goering took Hitler's side, and he said, "The workers are there." All we could do now was i.e. Speer above all and we ourselves secondly in order to help him to attack Sauckel. Sauckel escaped all meetings for a long time. Sometimes he sent a representative, and in some cases he himself appeared.
but he and his representative pursued the some policy by giving us a lot of figures and alleging "we had fulfilled everything". Our doubts in these figures increased. Hitler became more and more impatient and the reproaches for Speer towards the end of 1943 became insufferable. Whereas Hitler supported Speer until roughly the middle of 1943 and regarded him as one of the first collaborators, the relations became much more cool later on, and I explained that mainly through this conflict I myself had the same annoyance both with Goering and with Hitler, who maintained vis a vis of myself; that I had been, given all of the workers.
Our mood wasn't very nice about this, obviously because although we had no personal ambition we did not wish to be blamed for something that we were not responsible for, bad armament, and for the reasons of bad armament the war had been lost. That reproach, of course, we could foresee, and it was obvious that we fought against it with every means within our disposal. We felt ourselves to be quite innocent in this field, but in order to prove our innocence, we were without one link in the chain. That was to show beyond doubt that Sauckel's figures were untrue. They were not wrong by accident; they were deliberately forged in cur opinion because Sauckel wished to impress Hitler with his own efficiency as he was able to fulfill all the demands of Hitler in the sphere of labor.
Sauckel pursued that policy up to 4 January 1944. Only when there was a conference with Hitler on 4 January 1944, of which I was a participant, did. he there say for the first time to Hitler, "Up to now I always fulfilled all your demands, my Fuehrer. Whether that will still be possible with the new demands of four million workers I can no longer guarantee."
Q. Witness, we will come later to this conference. Now, I ask you to go back and to answer the question. Did the Central Planning Board have authority to request labor and. to distribute it?
A. A clear "no" to both questions. That request was only debated in the interest of Speer in the Central Planning Board because Speer needed help because he knew I would always give him my support. I had similar worries myself and because it was only possible even for Speer who, of course, had frequent discussions with Sauckel otherwise but Sauckel stated before this committee, that is, the Central Planning Board, in order to aid the iron association, and the coal association at times -- had them give us information. Speer could, as well as I could myself, answer to all of these sections but whether there was sufficient labor for coal for instance, the Reich Association Coal could tell us on the basis of their evidence down to the last man and that is how in these so-called -- those people of the Reich Association Coal or Iron.
Q. Could you give us a few names?
A. Herr Pleiger and Herr Reichling. The first coal and the second for iron and their staff. That's how these people spoke. These gentlemen were in a position after the meeting to inform Speer what Sauckel had misfigured.
Q. Witness, during these conferences, however, mention was made of agriculture and labor and we need so many workers for the mining industry and will you use prisoners-of-war for this job. This gives us the impression of the Central Planning Board after all had some decision -- made some decision with regard to labor especially in the direction of how many workers were to be distributed into the basic sectors. That is, agriculture, coal and mining industries.
A. By that I had to say that naturally it was very difficult for one man who had several tasks to look after to confine himself to one sphere only at all times if all his spheres of tasks are involved in one question and that is how Speer very frequently during the meetings of the Central Planning Board in his capacity as essential planner, he transformed himself into the armament Ministry or the Four-Year Plan and for Armament industry and then he transferred himself back into the Central Planner. Hardly at all and I don't think it is said anywhere even I put the armament demands of the Luftwaffe only in order to better understand matters I gave several impressions from my experience on those conferences for everybody's benefit.
The demands and the wishes which we had were only brought forward to support Speer and they are exclusively concerned with increasing steel production. The majority of the people requested were concerned with coal, whereas certain individuals especially were concerned with iron. It is, of course, obvious that I in my position and with the general survey which we had I insisted in a strong manner to increase the production. I had to concern myself with that; that Germany would emerge from this war as well as possible and my philosophy there was to a large extent armament. As a Field Marshal I could not confine myself to declare; I am not interested how raw materials are being obtained; I am only interested how they are being distributed. I did not regard myself as a waiter who tells the guest; "I am sorry. This is not my table." After all, a little more could be expected from me. The question that agriculture came into this had several reasons. Just before the agriculture was mentioned at all at the conference the extremely efficient Mr. Backe, who well knew his business, to find out together with him whether the workers who were to work in Germany could be looked after from the point of view of food because it would have been irresponsible to recruit workers who afterwards could not be fed properly in Germany. Secondly, agriculture had to surrender a great many people to the army. Perhaps the highest percentage of all after perhaps the forest economy. Conditions in agriculture from the point of view, of food, are always better in towns than in the cities. That applied also to German workers. Of course, the result was that we were very keen for agriculture to feed as many workers of the industry as possible. The workers did not have the opportunity to make up for lack of food from former times, even by high rations, of course taking into consideration that the food is always better than in the town, this applies also definately to the German worker in the industry and I know that Russian prisoners-of-war when they arrived in Germany, all this happened in 1941 - the summer of 1941 - went through a very bad period of eating. These men had persisted in their bunkers up to the last moment. They did not surrender one moment before it was no longer possible to fight back. These bunkers in cut-off areas arc very often without food for very long periods and once they are taken prisoners difficulties to supply them with sufficient food arose.
As prisoners-of-war they are taken in such quantities and the army had not been prepared for that. I myself went through the same thing; when the big numbers of German prisoners-of-war arrived in 1945 it was not possible for about ten days to give us any food at all and I know that wasn't due to bad-will but we at that time had not been tried by the bunkers. Therefore, these ton days of privation didn't finish us off but the Russians arrived in a starved condition out of the bunker battles and they needed a period of recovery so to speak, and that would only have been possible by employing them in agriculture. For that reason we contacted Backe in order to see whether we couldn't have Germans in exchange. Unfortunately, that wasn't arrived at but agriculture every now and then helped out a little bit especially in the winter of 1943 and 1944 because during the winter agriculture is not so much dependent upon people at all. Although the agriculture Ad not Ash to part with the people. They wished to feed their own people during the winter in order to have them back in the Spring. On those occasions Backe, at our request, would give us a general report on the European nutrition system. It was very interesting to all of us because that was always one of the more important points. If production had broken down that alone would have lead to the conclusion of the war as it did in 1918. That was the only reason why Backe turned up at the Central Planning Board meeting but Backe as far as those visits were concerned joined, so to speak, at his own. wishes, as he had not obtained enough steel. Too much bad been taken away from him for the armament program. If I recalled right he needed per month 40,000 tons of steel for his agriculture machines as a minimum stipulation. In all of the time ho had. never complained his agriculture didn't receive enough artificial fertilizer. The question of sufficient fertilizing on German soil -you elevate 30% more or less under the same conditions, Hitler's orders were to the effect to take the necessary material for fertilizer into the manufacture of 1877 explosives and as the demand for explosives went up the weight of fertilizer in agriculture become smaller and smaller and Backe, who held his own responsibilities strongly, that made him feel very dependent and so he tried to got us to support him as well as we could in the fertilizing problem.
As we ourselves were all armament people as the second profession, so to speak, such as myself, we asked State Secretary Koerner to look after the agricultural concerns when Backe wasn't there himself, which was usually the case. That, perhaps, was the only function which Koerner fulfilled, that he always reminded us, "don't forget agriculture", for Koerner was not concerned with any questions of armament.
I understand that through these conferences we did not always remain on the strict basis of the Central Planning Board, but everybody who was there with us, who knew about these things, could quite follow the proceedings. Nobody ever had any doubts as to what the Central Planning Board had to do and what it didn't have to do. Everybody understood also that these worries of Speer's, which we shared, all of us, had to be balanced off against each other somehow.
Q Witness, perhaps in this connection we could, in order to clarify the situation, explain what the GL -- that is, the Air Ordnance master General -- had to do with the question of labor, in order to get a picture of your special sector and to show how the Central Planning Board was connected with it. How did you, coming from the GL, have the task to work on labor questions? Did you make requests, or did you only supervise the distribution of labor?
A The GL, already in peace-time, was in charge of statistics as to the number of workers within the aircraft industry or aviation industry. We needed that for several purposes, namely, in peace-time, to supervise balance sheets and accounts as to our demands to the industries. It was not always possible to quote fixed prices for new aircraft. For that reason, our contracts with industrial works, in all those cases where the prices were not quite fixed, were such as to make the industry submit all their costs and expenses to us. We then would tell the industry that we would guarantee, as far as the industry was concerned, profits and expenses.
In these accounts the wages were a very important point. In order to supervise that, there were trustee companies who were in charge of these things. We had to quote the figure of workers to those offices, because we were responsible for the tax money with which we paid for our armaments; and we had to exercise all possible controls, even when we had no suspicions that our industry would give us wrong figures.
However, I think that is probably the same in all countries.
This department looked after, so to speak, statistical figures in peace-time, and that was a part of the armament industry which went far beyond the expenses incurred by the aviation industry. In that time there was no Minister of Armaments; there was no Central Office in Charge of Armament. Therefore, the OKW had all factories on one list which were producing or would produce armament material at some time. That list consisted, in peace-time, of roughly just over five million workers. The OKW did not have any department for armament, apart from a higher staff; the OKW distributed these workers to the three branches of the Wehrmacht. I believe the Army got about two million and a half; the Navy about half a million or three-quarters of a million; and the Luftwaffe received two million. Many of the factories were involved in this which had never had anything to do with the Luftwaffe.
Now, in a very stupid manner, this figure was carried on all the time and was revised month after month. As this had been ordered by the OKW and I was not very interested in the matter, I did not change this, but I always found it interesting to get the figure once a month to see whether it had become bigger or not. Throughout the period in which I was in GL, from peace-time onwards, the figures always kept to the two million limit and, if anything, it became less, or more. That was statistical fluctuation which one could supervise quite easily.
I may add here, perhaps, that the whole of the aviation industry, which was part of our command--to whom we gave commercial orders and with whom we made commercial contracts--the whole of that industry consisted at the most of five hundred thousand people, the actual figure in which we were interested. That figure could only be arrived at by special measures I took, and if I wanted to revise it from time to time I had to get going at a special statistical machine, although that was the figure in which I was interested.
We from the Luftwaffe gave the industries which worked for us contracts. We asked them, to give an example, whether they could, in their work, produce 200 aircraft of the type fighter 109 for a month. The industry answered back, perhaps, "No, not at the moment. The can, however, produce 150, but if we can build another factory which can be done in six months, then in a year from now we can easily produce 200." Then the price was discussed. When agreement had been reached there, the industry would say,"But of course we depend on the material, whether we can get it or not; and secondly, whether we can also get another 500 workers", to continue with my example, and so forth. "Then, as soon as the new construction is finished, we shall need another 2,000 new workers."
We told them that as far as the material was concerned we would make allocations in accordance with the requirements, however, we had found that for one aircraft they had asked for 1.5 tons of aluminum, but from our comparative figures we thought that that could be done with 1.1 tons. In other words, for 150 aircraft they would only be given 165 tons of aluminum and not 225, as they had asked for. The industry would object and they told us that. We said not one more word but, "Please go to the factory of so and so and just see how these people are working, and you will then be able to do it yourselves", and that was that.
As far as the workers were concerned, we told then that they sould go and see the labor offices about their demands and also the Inspectorate for Armaments. And we ourselves-as far as we had their figures and those of other factories-at the end of the month we would go to Speer's armament office, where the figures from factores were derived altogether. Once we had checked up their figures before-hand, there was no sense in asking for more than was really necessary. And it was eq ually wrong if up to now I had asked for 100 workers because I needed then but I only obtained 20, that next time when I needed 100 I would ask to 500 in order to say that I only get my workers in the proportion of one to five.
These unnecessarily inflated figures were checked up by the man in charge of my statistics, together with my production man. They were compared and decreased as much as possible.
Q Just a moment. Will you please indicate some names? who worked in the statistics sector, and who was the man in charge of production questions?
A The statistical nan in the planning office was in the planning office, and at the moment I an afraid I can't give you the name, me probably changed quite often. It was not an important position in our department; he never reported to me directly, he was under the chief of the planning office.
The other man who was in charge of production was engineer Harertel, who has been here as a witness, and he was a very good export. He said at once the demands put out by industry are much too high. If they ask for five hundred, they can only really account for about eighty, for he saw how many aircraft could be produced by how many workers every where. He had practical figures to compare those things with. The department that worked on statistics, as far as I know, reported once a month, the figures to be compared with the figures with Spoor's armament office. There we found only the highest demands of the industry which came to Speer via the armament inspection, and my man said, we don't need that. From those figures, to call an example, which might have came from all sectors, let us say it was twenty thousand. Then he said we can answer for and support only seven thousand four hundred and thirty-one. Then the armament inspectorate struck not the surplus demands of the industry, for every body was only too pleased if he could put up lessor demands, because even the necessary lesser demands were not easy of fulfillment; that is to say, practically speaking, were never fulfilled at all. That is what the GL had to do officially with that whole question. Unofficially, it was a matter of course that each one of us who went to a factory would there talk to the workers, and saw whether help was necessary any where, which we could not give directly ourselves, but which we could apply for. Even in my period at the German Lufthansa I liked to talk to workers. Apart from that, a man like myself could only learn from these specialists. It was always a joy to me to talk to simple and sensible men with clear minds, who had no intention to get anything for themselves, who had no ambitions as far as I was concerned, who, as was usual with the Germans, would give their opinion of everything in a clear and frank manner. Uhnt I knew of politics, which wasn't much, I really learned from these talks with workers. Before 1933 half of my workers wore communists, that is to say, a large number of there later on became National Socialists before 1933, and the others were social democrats, trade unionists, etc.; and I heard quite different opinions than in my own circles.
Therefore, I always talked to these men during the war, and I also discussed politics with them, and that automatically went for me to the foreign workers. I speak a little French; I could make myself understood with these people, and I had an interpreter along when I talked to Russian workers, but these were present everywhere I went. That was the unofficial way in which I contacted the workers, and when I had conferences at the GL I always told these people that it was my wish for them to talk to the workers, and show an interest in them whenever they went in to a factory. As men in higher position, we could not overlook a wish which, or in case of difficulty, in which a man who worked in a factory might find himself, and that is the way I really think quite a number of questions were settled. I made claim, for instance, myself that throughout my activities, any way shortly after the beginning of the war, that is to say, on 9th November, there were about sixty production managers of factories; they are men of trust, elected by workers; these men came to me and I found out they wanted to ask me to get their rations increased. At that time the whole nutrition was based upon lower rations; these people in our high industries were not entitled to the supplementary rations for heavy workers, and these people explained to me that now that there is or was a war, and they were forced to work in different factories from peace time, for that reason their housing was much further away from their places of work, and in the morning and at night they had to travel longer; and, therefore, their food was insufficient. That gave me the idea to apply for a new supplementary ration and as we became very set in this question, it became possible to achieve that supplementary ration which was now for the benefit of all workers. And I have now gotten hold of documentary evidence that supplementary rations were also given to foreign workers; that was a supplementary ration for foreign workers working long hours. As this documentary evidence shows, it is an affidavit actually, that food of German and foreign workers was the same. But I also wanted to say that it is quite possible that there are cases where this principle was not observed. but that was against the will of the German government if it happened.
Q Witness, that means that neither the labor office nor the armament inspectorate were under your supervision, as the GL.
1884a
A. Yes, that is quite correct.
Q But Speer has testified that until the very end you did not renounce the command of the air industry. What could you say to this effect?
A If Speer should mean that my personnel official, in the way I described before, talked with his, Speer's armament office, once a month, then it is quite correct; but my officials might have used those occasions, and how far he worked with my name on those occasions I do not know. I hope he did so in order to get his point through. I was never present. I never heard how these negotiations went on. Should Speer mean, however, that my work in that field was the same as he in his field, then he makes a mistake, for I did not have that organization nor did I have the task. My field was only comparatively small and very specialized compared to Speer's field.
Q Witness, -
A I might add perhaps, that Speer did not know my organization; of course he never discussed it. He knew, of course, that I had a technical office; he knew that I had a planning office, and he also know that I had an economic department for the contracts of industry. After all, he fought a battle to take the whole economic department into his sphere, and when I said he couldn't possibly do it, he waited until the whole armament industry came under his charge, as we two always settled everything in a friendly manner after that up to the last moment. Even if there wore a certain amount of conflicting interests which sometimes were quite considerable, particularly between our subordinate officers, there were quite severe battles between those subordinate officers at times, but we always poured oil on the troubled waters, Mr. Speer and I.
Q Witness, but couldn't it be, that a fine working of the Central Planning Board, you presented the labor demands of your industry, that is, you have talked for your own interests.
A I cannot recall, and I have read some of the records, but in not one of them, there is not one word said that I had any special demands for the Luftwaffe. Apart from the fact that once or twice I remarked that I was equally badly off, I don't get anything, with regards to Sauckel for instance, but that doesn't mean that I was looking after my interests in the GL. If I talked about workers at the Central Planning Board, I said so at Speer's request, to give him in the armament industry all the support. Speer was particularly pleased when I played the wild man and became a little strong. He once told mo you are much better at this than I am; I am only a civilian; I can't do it as well as you can. And some times he pepped me up and said speak a little stronger, please, which I was only too delighted to do for him. That was meant to achieve something which you may wish to ask me a little later on about how we can get Sauckel to speak clearly. How can we get rid of the suspicion that we through our inefficiency cannot bring to German industry up to the high level, to the right level.
Q Witness, did you at all in the framework of the Central Planning Board would you present it individually of your own office, the GL, that is to say, or of the air force as a whole; was it rather your task to be a buffer party.
A The latter applies. As I said before the Navy wanted a representative of their own,and that was imitated soon by other departments; everything was turned down; so we after all didn't wish to become a party to where everybody formed his own party. I had to make efforts to be very neutral because otherwise there would be attacks against me brought to Hitler. Therefore, when questions of the Luftwaffe had to be put, that was only when the question of distribution of raw materials was concerned, for that was always the bone of contention between all departments.Then, to my so-called chief representative, my chief of my planning office, I ordered him to attend, and I had him report the wishes of the Luftwaffe, and then I was there as a neutral agency as it wore and listened and in certain cases when I saw that the demands wore impossible I said at once, refused the Luftwaffe demand, so that the others could see I was fair with the parties.
Q. Witness, during these conferences of the Central Planning Board did it happen that the bulk of the workers was discussed, or was it rather a question of bringing new workers into Germany?
A. No, it only was concerned with the labor question as such, only inasmuch as it was important for the increase of raw materials in accordance with Hitler's order, always meant as an attack on Sauckel in order to get him either to give us the people or to say he cannot do it. As we knew he could not supply them, our main demand which we wished to achieve was an open statement by Sauckel, "I haven't got the workers whom you need."
6. Witness, but if your air force industry, for instance, either the labor offices or the armament inspectorates had made requests to Speer, and when your Planning Office had checked these demands in order to find out what was really necessary and what was unnecessary in these general requests, was it a matter of proposing what kind of workers you wanted to have and what kind of workers should be distributed into these different production programs? Was it a question of deciding whether you needed German workers or rather more foreigners?
A. We did that in one sense, that for certain factories we simply had to have skilled workers, which we asked for, but never did we ask, "Give us foreigners; give us prisoners of war," and so forth. Our wishes were to the effect to have Germans, but it was quite clear to us that there weren't enough German workers to fulfill the demands. Had they been available, one needn't have used prisoners of war or recruited foreign workers or sent the prisoners of war to work unless they volunteered for it.
Q. Several persons of your office have testified to this Tribunal that you made great efforts in order to receive German workers by rejecting and protecting them from being drafted into the armed forces. Was that in connection with the general requests by the factories, or was that a special general measure you took for the benefit of production of airplanes?
A. The industry simply asked for workers, and of course they preferred to keep their own skilled workers or obtain more.
The action was taken quite independently of that. Each month at least once I saw the representative of the OKW or the army, for these tasks were looked after by the reserve army for the OKW, and I fought with this man to suspend the drafts into the Wehrmacht and to take the armament into consideration. Hitler's orders were so sharp that the men of the army entirely saw my reasons because the army worked under similar conditions, and they had to turn me down. But in some cases it was possible to persuade Hitler himself, either through Speer alone or perhaps I was there myself with him, that certain actions were taken to get soldiers back. All these people were specialists. As we went very cautiously and only demanded small figures, we asked for instance for 2,000 once or 4,000, and the maximum case was 12,000. And we told Hitler, only if we can got these people can we build the new gun or the new aircraft, or whatever it may have been. Then Hitler became so interested in the new gun or the new aircraft and he put that above his normal line of soldiers, more soldiers, and more soldiers. That was how the Luftwaffe got a few thousand workers back from the army. It was colossal work to do that. Everybody had to be applied for by name and address. The bulk of the people had been killed anyway; others were in hospitals, wounded; others were missing. In other words, we only obtained a fraction of the original demands, but as they were particularly good people, it was extremely valuable to us.
Q Witness, it has been testified to this Tribunal that at some time large numbers of workers were requested.
A That was an extremely exhausting and tiring work at that time and the people which we got back in this way were not given to us for the duration. They could be taken away from us any month, and new actions became again necessary to preserve these people. That, of course, gave us ideals in the course of events which were no longer to be answered for from the point of view of normal government. The biggest parcel of people which I ever achieved amounted to 40,000, and they were people who had been called up at Hitler's orders. But that was Luftwaffe replacements. The troops had asked for quite a number of people.
The restrictions which we had in the industry were unknown to the troops, and thereafter I had talked to Goering for a long time, the chief of staff and the army office -- that is an office in the Luftwaffe for reserve men. It was under Foerster. It was my own arrangement, actually, but I told Foerster that he must look after his own interests. That is how I had quite a struggle with Foerster on that point, and when he won all other points, on this one I won the day and I kept my 40,000. That,in relationship to the 500,000 workers, as we would put it vulgarly, was just a drop in the ocean. But I could not see how, without these people, I could keep the armament going. Then there was another big parcel of people. They were perhaps 15,000 men. Those I got from our intelligence chief - I must almost call it "by cheating." At the point of a gun I told him that I would not build one single equipment for him unless he would give me those 15,000 men. As he, for his signal corps, had 500,000 soldiers without women, I had no compunction to press him. Had I been C-in-C he would have given me more, even. But those were the methods without which it wouldn't have been possible, and which really could get one down. Col. Eschenauer who wrote on those matters in the General Staff, quoted 70,000 as the total figure, and Gen. Vorwald, I think, also quoted a similar figure, which would, have contained the 40,000. That, anyway, is how I understood him. And one thing is quite certain. Never was there a bigger figure than 40,000, unfortunately.
Q That is sufficient. Witness, only briefly now, what was the bulk, the mass of the workers which Germany could receive?
A They were German workers. They were -- I think these figures become quite clear from the record of the meeting of 16 February, I think it was.
DR. BERGOLD: May it please the Tribunal, before I start a larger theme, it is only two minutes now, and I would propose that we take a recess now.