It was explained here that Russia had not become a member of the Geneva Convention, and that Russia also had resigned from The Hague Land Warfare Regulation which deals with the prisoner of war question. It had resigned after the First World War, so that the decrees of the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention were not applicable to Russian prisoners of war nor to their civilian population. That had to be understood in the sense that they had been well treated, of course. Of course I must assume that as a basis because that was our conviction. The Geneva Convention should not be suspended in order to treat them badly, mistreat them or let them starve or insult their feeling, their sense of honor, but only to the effect that they should be at the disposal for work in Germany, because the Russian and civilian population, according to the Geneva Convention, could only have been used in Russia and do there all sort of work on behalf of the Wehrmacht, but they should not have been brought to Germany, but as Russia was not a signatory to the Convention, the work of the civilians was also permissible in Germany herself.
Similarly as in France, conditions were in Holland and Belgium, although I never saw myself any Dutch workers in the Luftwaffe industry, and Belgians only in very few cases. What we really had were mainly Frenchmen and a relatively small contingent of Russians. As far as the civilian Russians were concerned, they were mainly girls from the Ukraine. That is what I learned at the time.
About a year later, in the early summer of 1942, I think I once saw the chief of my planning office, General Von Gablenz, and I gave him the order to report to me closely on that situation, for the whole question of the Geneva Convention, etc., was well known to soldiers. The recital of his examin ation was, and it is in the same fundamental situation.
I also heard from other sides that the same results had been given. I was therefore convinced that employment both of French and Russian prisoners of war and of the civilian workers from France, Belgium, etc., also Russia, was justified, but I want to emphasize here that I myself was under the impression that the voluntary nature as far as civilians are concerned, and as far as it applied to Germany, was said to be present and existed, whereas we in Germany did not feel ourselves to be responsible what the French or Belgian Government might order. I heard that the highest authority in our country was of the opinion that the French would be compensated later on at the peace treaty for the way in which they collaborated with us now. The French also had supplied air squadrons and anti-aircraft batteries in their own country, and they shot quite gaily at British aircraft without us having given the order. The French Government had been prepared under its own initiative to do this. I regard this type of relationship in the same manner as the relations between the allies and the Italians who after the collapse of Lussolini's system went over to the Allies, at least some of them, whereas the rest fought with us and worked with us.
JUDGE PHILLIPS: The Tribunal understands you to say that Polish prisoners of war were changed into civilian workers and that you no longer considered them to be prisoners of war. How were they changed into civilian workers from prisoners of war?
A. Personally I can not give you many details about this because that happened as early as 1939, and at that time I was not connected with the armament question or with the labor question. How it was worked I do not know. All I can imagine is that there was no longer a Polish Government and that the Governor General gave such order, that he interrogated Polish authorities on the point. It was only here that I saw that there was a polish Consul or somebody, but I cannot give you anymore clear details.
DR. BERGOLD: May it please the Tribunal, perhaps I can clarify the matter.
THE PRESIDENT: Let's let the witness clarify it.
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q. Witness, you are an old soldier. You have been a soldier for many years. How do you transfer a prisoner of war into a civilian, by discharging him?
A. Yes, he must be released from being a prisoner of war, and then there are various possibilities. One possibility would be--and this was resorted to b Germany--to make him. a free worker and tell him that "You are being released, but you must do some work. That is the conditions which we put to you. You are being paid properly, and otherwise you live as a free man."
There is also another possibility, which was the way chosen by the Americans, by which a prisoner of war is released and them locked up as an internee. I think that that procedure is not quite so favorable for the man concerned.
Q. You just transposed them from prisoners of war to civil prisoners, then?
A. No, they were no prisoners. They were properly released, but they signed a document which obliged them to do some work for Germany.
Q. You imprisoned them by a document instead of in a stockade?
A. They were no longer locked up, sir. The polish workers--I saw them 1941A in the country, for instance, lived quite freely.
Q. Could they go where they liked?
A. They could not change their places of work without permission. For instance, they were allocated to a farmer, and then they stayed with that farmer. Only if there were special reasons could they change their place of work. Then they were transferred.
Q. That is what you call freeing them?
A. It was not complete freedom, but it was a better status than previously when they would have remained prisoners of war.
Q. What would happen to one of these free workers if he walked away from his place of employment?
A. Sir, that is what I do not know myself. But may I say something else? A German worker was not allowed to change his place of work either. Freedom for a German was not any bigger than freedom for a Pole, as long as the war lasted.
Q. The German went home to his family every night, did he not?
A. These Polish soldiers--I can not speak comprehensively because I am not particularly well informed here--but what I saw were young people, and they lived with the farmer's family.
Q. Witness, you don't mean to tell this Tribunal seriously that the Polish worker, the former prisoner of war, had the same freedom of movement that the German civilian had?
A. I can not speak on all fields of life because I do not know. All I do know was that he was under the obligation to remain with his employer, but, as I said before, the German worker had to remain with his employer.
Q. Oh, well, we had that in the United States, for that matter. I still don't remember your answering my question: What would happen to a Polish worker who chose to walk away from his place of employment?
A. I am unable to answer that. I know of no such cases, nor was I told about one.
DR. BERGOLD: May it please the Tribunal, the defendant can not know, because he was a soldier, what the Polish worker had to do. Like the German 1942A worker, the polish worker would have been punished and brought before a tribunal because he broke his contract, and he would have received a small punishment.
Thousands of German workers have been punished for the same reason, and I have defended many a German worker for the same charge. That would have happened-- nothing else.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you, Dr. Bergold. Did you over defend a Polish worker for walking away from his employment?
DR. BERGOLD: Yes, I did.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have no inclination to dispute you.
DR. BERGOLD: I defended quite a few foreign workers in war time, not only Poles, but Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, maybe Belgians, maybe Dutchmen, but Poles --?
DR. BERGOLD: Yes, definitely. I am prepared to make that statement on oath, sir.
THE DEFENDANT: May I supply an observation of my own on the Polish question? Shortly before I was taken prisoner, I was in the country in Sleswig-Holstein. In that region the only foreigners there were Poles. Those Poles on the estate where I was, perhaps 30 or 40 of them, said that they did not wish to return home, that they would ask to be allowed to remain on the estate just as did their colleagues in the neighborhood. These people were wearing a splendid suit on Sundays. They looked very clean and healthy. They could not be told from any German in the neighborhood there except for certain racial distinctions. All of them had bicycles. On that bicycle they went on Sundays to the nearest pub and met their girl friends and danced, and they told me themselves that never before had they been so happy as they were in Germany. That was at a time when the British were 50 kilometers away from their village.
BY THE PRESIDENT:
Q Perhaps that is why they were so happy.
A No, they said that they did not want to leave there now. They wished to remain.
Q I think you misunderstood my point. Perhaps their happiness arose from the fact that the British were only 50 kilometers away.
A No, I understood what you were trying to say, sir, out I also talked to the German employers there. I was there in a totally private capacity, I had no official functions, and I knew those people quite well.
They were friends of mine, end they told me that they were quite satisfied with their Poles, and they also said 1944A that the Poles had done very good work and that the Poles had asked to be allowed to remain after the collapse, because in those days they did not wish to return to Poland and they were quite well looked after here.
May I ask the Court to believe me that we in Germany were not all of us hangmen and people who delighted in other people's misery. I may say here that I think that the majority of the German people are goodhearted and that they treat other people well and that these people did not know that in some isolated places there were isolated criminals who polluted our good name for a. long time to come. The people are suffering from that now, and they will also suffer in future. That is what depresses all of us the most. Otherwise, one has to take the point of view that all Germans are criminals and then it might be justified to hang the lot. Then, please start on me.
Q I am interested in your use of the word "isolated". I don't know just what you mean by that, but I won't enter into any controversy with you about it. How many scores or hundreds of cases must there be before they cease to be isolated? Well, let's stop the discussion. This is time-consuming. I started it, and I'll stop it.
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q. Witness, this question has been discussed after all and you said that you had received information that this deportation of foreign workers would be admissible. Could you tell me now what you knew already before, prior to that moment concerning this question.
A. I know that after the first war, the question of deportation of Belgium workers had been examined by a committee of the German Reichstag. I know that this parliamentary committee examined personalities like Hindenburg, Ludendorff, I think Mackensen and others; and that many questions were discussed, including that of Belgian civilian workers. As far as I can recall, that committee was presided over by a man who had been given the Nobel prize, Professor schuecking; I think that was his name. However, I was very interested in it, in this, and closely followed it because Hindenburg whom I worshipped, was put before a court; and as far as I can recall, no sentence was passed upon that score, and nobody had been reproached that international law had been-violated, because the Hague Convention and. also the first Geneva Conference believed that -- I am not very well informed, but I think that was so.
Q. Witness, I now pass on to the 42nd meeting of the 23rd of June 1943; this is document book III-A; it is the fourth document. A discussion arose there concerning the fact that for the coal mining industry the output of Soviet Russian workers should be increased by a bonus system, and that meant one mark, perhaps, a person, and per day. What can you tell us about this question?
A. Similar bonus-systems existed for German workers. The value of the bonus was not financial; one mark was roughly the wages for one hour, but that mark was not given as a piece of money, out in a sort of ration card; that ration card might be good for say twenty cigarettes, or perhaps ten cigars or fifteen cigars, I don't know; or, perhaps a visit to the cinema; or, a certain quantity of food, etc.;
that is to say, the man concerned could obtain something which was given him additionally, and he couldn't have obtained the same things just with money, at least as far as food and luxury goods were concerned. That was quite an inducement for the workers, because even a man with one million marks in his pocket could not buy anything beyond what was prescribed in his ration card.
Q. Thank you. I now pass on to the 53rd meeting, the meeting of the 16th of February, 1944, and I want to speak of several points of that meeting. This is the next document after the document which we just referred to. Witness, in this conference you speak of the following: It is quite impossible to exploit each foreign worker, each foreigner completely, otherwise it would have to be by piece work, and it is impossible to do anything against foreigners who do not do their work, but if the trusty starts to tackle a prisoner of war and gives him a beating, then we get hell:
the man is thrown into the prison. Witness, how can you, how could you explain this passage, and did you issue any directives to treat foreigners in this manner?
A The last portion of the question I can answer with a definite no. I was a bit excited, particularly on that occasion, because a case of that sort had occurred; somebody had been beaten by somebody else; the man was sent to prison, but it had not been taken into consideration, I thought, that the man who hit had been strongly provoked. I know that there on that day I spoke particularly strongly, and all my remarks were of a fairly violent nature; I do not wish to make excuses for that today after so many years. When I read it now, when I read it just now, I, myself, could not understand how I could possibly have said these things, oven when I say that a few days before I had been bombed out, and that the night before that half of my parents had been wiped out by bombs, which I must say affected me. But 1 was much more indignant about the over-all situation in which we found ourselves; I could see the collection drastically in front of my eyes; I knew that one's work had lost all sense, but I could not say so or show it, and I had to walk into defeat with open eyes. Other things which might have affected me that day I no longer recall; certain days I was particularly excitable, and that might have been the climax of those days; that is how it looks to me now.
Q Witness.
A May I add that I can't recall a large number cf things I said there, and some of it came back to me later, I know in a small way, when I saw the evidence and what was told about various things.
Q Witness, you said you had not issued any directive to that effect, but in this document there are a few lines that say during an occurrence in which a Frenchman had told the trusty, the manager, and the manager that he would be the first to hang, that you said to your engineer, that if you don't smack the man like that, then I will punish you; I will protect you if you do a thing like that, but didn't you after all issue a certain sort of directive at that occasion?
AAs far as I can still recall the case of the Frenchman saying something, saying so, all I said in reply I would have given him hell if he told me so. How I could have said the other things I cannot recall now.
Q In the same connection you said then that you had ordered two Russian officers to be shot; did you ever issue such an order?
A No, never.
Q And how do you explain these minutes then?
A. Hero I am convinced that the records are wrong. First of all, the passage is hardly suitable in this context. Apart from that, I must have said something else, because if you read the next sentence you will see that. I can hardly at all recall it, and a few weeks ago I did not recall anything at all that somebody told me that Hitler once had had such a measure carried out, and perhaps somewhere else I described that case, but I cannot imagine that it would have happened in the Central Planning Board; it might have taken place within the framework of the GL perhaps.
Q. But how could you explain that they have been entered into the minutes of the Central Planning Board?
A. Perhaps there was a stenographer stuck in the office who took down the minutes of GL meeting as well as the Central Planning Board meeting. I, myself, thought it once because I remembered darkly and dimly that I told somebody, "Omit Hitler's name here completely"; that was somewhere, I know, but I could not swear to it now where and when it happened.
Q. On this occasion you said at the end, after you had reported this, you will certainly get the hell out, somebody who will interfere on the part, or for the benefit of prisoners of war.
A. Yes, that it seems to me is true; that the text must have been quite different.
JUDGE MUSMANNO: Did I understand then that the witness says he did make this statement, but not at the Central Planning Board meeting; is that the result of the discussion?
Just that and no further.
DR. BERGOLD: No, that is not quite correct; the witness has as far as I understood him said he referred to that incident not in this form, in another form, nor did he refer to it at the General Planning Board, but in the GL meeting. He said the form cannot be correct. Witness, please correct me if I am wrong here.
A. No, that is quite correct; that is my assumption, which I have now reached when I saw the evidence; I know that on some occasion or another I said 1950A and I talked of Hitler, that Hitler had done this thing and that; I thereupon said, don't mention the name of Hitler here at all.
DR. BERGOLD: May I interrupt; that is not the point: your Honors wish to know what you testified to regarding the question whether you had spoken of the case at all and in what manner.
A. I said that my memory is very weak on the point, which is becoming a little clearer of late. I am still thinking of wether I didn't say all this in these GL meetings.
Q. In this form, or in another form?
A. No, no, in a different form, in the form that Hitler had ordered this or that, and that Hitler had these people shot and we were indignant, as they were prisoners of war. In that sense it is quite obvious that I said, "There will be trouble; somebody will look after this."
THE PRESIDENT: We will take a recess now.
(A recess was taken)
THE MARSHAL: The Tribunal is again in session.
DIRECT EXAMINATION (Cont'd.)
BY DR. BERGOLD:
Q Witness, you say, with reference to these Russians, that you do not remember their exact statement. However, you must know very clearly if you gave such an order or not, because the shooting of two prisoners is something that cannot be forgotten.
A That is quite correct. I certainly did not issue such an order. Neither did I have the right nor the possibility to give such an order. However, I never gave anybody the idea to do that. On the contrary, I know that I was very indignant about that, and I know exactly if I had done such a thing, then I would never have been able to forget it, because anyway that would have been the first murder I would have had on my conscience.
Q Witness, you know the case Sagan, don't you? What was your opinion about that case?
A We were not clearly informed about that. I only learned of the full truth when I was in British captivity. However, I know that at the time I was very indignant about that also. I was afraid that counter measures would be taken against it. In our eyes -
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Bergold, we don't identify this incident. What is it you call it, "Sigon incident"?
DR. BERGOLD: Sagan. Sagan is that famous case which played a certain part before the International Military Tribunal where British Air Corps officers escaped from a camp and then upon Hitler's order, for the larger part, were shot. Mr. Denney shortly asked the witness Foerster about it, not so long ago.
THE PRESIDENT: We didn't identify it by that name. We understand now. Go ahead, witness.
A (Cont'd.) I wanted to add to this that we all were very indignant about that case and that, for quite a few of us and even for myself, cut the last bonds between me and those who had given such orders.
