The Nuremberg Interviews (38 page)

“The Versailles Treaty was an international violation of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Even the very people who devised the Versailles Treaty later recognized the error of their ways. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France was mainly responsible. Britain’s Lloyd George was against the Versailles agreement. It is my impression that President Wilson, who was also present, likewise opposed it.”

We talked of many other things. But I asked him about his own case, and what he thought of his defense. He seemed satisfied with it and apparently was under the impression that he had given a good account of himself in court. I said that I thought that his references to the inaccuracy of the Russian translation, a charge he made several times while on the witness stand, was rather puzzling psychologically since it seemed so far beside the point at the time. Rosenberg smiled wisely and said, “Anything I can say against the Russians I shall always say. I was listening with one ear to the German words and I had my earphones tuned to the Russian translation. They made many mistakes and although I knew that it did very little good to call attention to them, I did it nevertheless because I wanted those Russians to know that I understood their language
and I wanted the American, British, and French judges to know that these Russians were trying to place the worst possible light on my words.” I asked him to give me some specific examples of the inaccuracies which he heard in the Russian translation. He seemed uninterested and pushed the inquiry aside by saying, “I can’t remember. It didn’t make any difference anyway except that it showed up those Russians to the other translators in the courtroom.”

Fritz Sauckel
1894–1946

Fritz Sauckel was general plenipotentiary for labor mobilization from 1942 to 1945. Found guilty at Nuremberg of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he was hanged on October 16, 1946.

I had a long interview today with this man, former minister of labor, with the aid of the interpreter, Triest. Sauckel spoke some English and seemed to comprehend more. He was a short man, probably five nine, stocky, with a bulldog-shaped head, closely cropped hair with some central baldness, and a thick neck. He wore a small Charlie Chaplin/Hitler–type mustache. He appeared tense but controlled, smiled often and nervously. His hands fluttered a bit toward the beginning of the interview, but this ceased once he began to talk freely. He had been a Nazi since 1925 or 1926. He considered himself a laboring man, a seaman, “with the workingman’s point of view.” Many of his utterances today seemed almost automatic responses, as if he had used the phrases, clauses, and sentences so often in the past, both in private and public speeches, that they came effortlessly to him. His clichés and platitudes were those heard again and again from the rationalizing postwar Nazis of the Nuremberg prison. The main stream of thought which he presented today consisted of the following currents:

True, he had 5 million foreign workers under him in Germany — but 2 million of these were volunteers.
¹
And France, which had its own government (Vichy), sent Frenchmen to work in Germany, though “some” were not volunteers. Of the 3 million nonvoluntary workers, “All were treated well, all had insurance benefits just as German workers, had good food and clothing.” That will all be “proven with documentary evidence in court” when his defense arises. Besides, what would you do, he asked, if your country was at war and its welfare depended on the importation of foreign workers?

He was born in Hassfurt, near Schweinfurt, on October 27, 1894. His father was a postman of limited education and income. His mother had heart trouble as a result of his birth, and she was never well as long as he could recall. He described his father as “diligent and conscientious,” his mother as “loving and kind.” He said that despite his parents’ poverty he was encouraged to attend school, but that after five years of schooling, he decided to go to sea because it would lighten the family financial burdens, especially in view of his mother’s invalidism. His mother descended from a seafaring family, and he felt that his mother’s blood influenced his decision. His father, on the other hand, was descended from a line of farmers.

At the age of fifteen, he shipped out of Hamburg, with his parents’ permission, as cabin boy on a Norwegian three-masted schooner. He sailed to Montreal, Dublin, Oslo, Haiti, the West Indies, and Le Havre. Next he worked on a Swedish three-master, mostly in the Baltic and North Seas. In January 1912 he was shipwrecked off the Scottish coast. Soon after, he sailed on the largest German sailboat, from Hamburg to Philadelphia, thence to the Cape of Good Hope, Japan, and across the Pacific to Portland, Oregon. During a storm off Portland, he struck the top of his head and was treated in an American hospital in Portland by an American doctor. In 1914 he was seized with the rest of the crew from a ship en route to Australia. He was interned in France as a prisoner of war for five years, until 1919. He feels that this was tragic in that he had just saved sufficient money for furthering his nautical education, and had completed his seaman’s apprenticeship. During his years in France he took certain courses in mathematics and national economy offered by a Swiss educational service set up for the POWs. He was treated poorly during the first three years, better the last two years of internment.

Upon returning to Germany in 1919 he found that there was no longer opportunity for German navigation and that his savings were worthless because of the monetary inflation. He became a laborer in a ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt. In the factory there were “many divisions of thought, such as Communists, Social Democrats, Nationalists, Syndicalists.” He felt “unhappy because of the poor conditions of the German people, and almost left Germany.”

He married in 1923. He had known his wife since 1913, when he met her while on shore leave. He neither saw nor heard from her until his return from France in 1919. It was another four years before they married. There were religious differences, for one thing, in that she was Catholic and he was Lutheran. His family objected on those grounds, but his wife’s “charm” finally overcame these objections. Her father, he found out sometime after he began courting her seriously, was a worker in the same factory as himself, and was “a confirmed Social Democrat.” His wife, prior to their marriage, held a good position in a paint factory and assisted in the support of her parents and younger siblings. She was about a year his junior, and he depicted her as a very brave, faithful woman, who suffered much during her life, enduring poverty and the bearing of his ten children.

His oldest child, a son, would have been twenty-one this year. He was killed when shot down as a fighter pilot. His next oldest son, the third child, he believed was in an American POW compound in northern France, according to a report someone transmitted to his wife. He seemed anxious about this, and hoped for some definite information about that son. In all he had two daughters and eight sons. His youngest child was a boy of six. He had a picture of his ten progeny standing in line, each a little taller than the next, which he displayed on his table in the cell. There was also a picture of his wife surrounded by his four oldest children.

After laboring for two and a half years in the factory at Schweinfurt, he attended five semesters of an engineering school in Thuringia. Things in Germany were “very bad.” There were many political parties, strikes, picket lines, and a lack of financial stability. “If someone had told me,” he said, “while I was a prisoner in France, or before, that someday I would engage in political activity, I would have said he was crazy. But I felt forced into such activity because of the bad conditions within Germany.”

His sister-in-law emigrated to America, as did many other Germans, but Sauckel felt this would have been “desertion.” In his spare time he read Marx, Bakunin, and Hitler’s speeches. He felt he must belong to some party. He rejected Marxism for three reasons, as follows: First, his personal religious upbringing and the fact that his wife had suffered because her father, a Social Democrat, was not religious. “And Marxism stated that religion is opium.” Second, he could not agree that “property is theft,” which is also a Marxian slogan. Third, mostly he objected to the idea of a class struggle, as it would lead to civil war. He decided finally to become a National Socialist because of Hitler’s ideas of national unity, his promise of improving social standards and unifying intellectuals and workers.

“After my two and a half years in the ball-bearing plant, while I studied in engineering school, came a time of poverty for myself and my family.” He had married in 1923, and although he was already a Nazi, he did not think in terms of holding a political position himself. He remained in Thuringia, which in 1922 had been known as Red Thuringia because of its leftist government. In 1923 Nationalists and National Socialists were elected in Thuringia for the first time, and soon it became a bulwark of National Socialism. In his spare time Sauckel did propaganda and organizational
work. In 1925, when Hitler was released from prison and reorganized his party, Sauckel resumed his membership. He felt Hitler was “the man chosen by fate to unite Germany.” Sauckel became district business leader of the Nazi Party that year at a salary of 150 marks monthly. He “never thought of war or the necessity for violence.” Hitler had said that he wanted to achieve unity through nonviolent methods. In 1927 Sauckel became district leader of Thuringia, and in 1929 faction leader in the Landtag. In 1932 he was elected on a popular ticket as minister-president of Thuringia. At several points in the interview he inconsistently reiterated that he “never thought of a political career.” He repeated this so often it became conspicuous: he admitted that he began to think of politics in 1920 or thereabouts and attended party meetings in 1923, after moments previously he had said that his thoughts turned to political action just when he returned to Germany from France.

This election in 1932 was his “only political activity,” Sauckel insisted. He meant that it was the only time he was elected to office. He described that election campaign and its aftermath, his successful election, as “one of the most difficult mental and physical strains” he ever experienced. In other words, all his previous and following positions were appointments, whereas in 1932 he was elected. “The way was paved in 1932” with all parties in Thuringia behind his candidacy (he ran on a combined ticket) except for the Communists.

The economic conditions in Thuringia upon his election were “very bad.” There were many closed factories and 500,000 unemployed; at another time he said one-third of the male population was unemployed. He inaugurated an emergency work program, financed a loan of 2 million marks from the Dresdner Bank through an old friend, who had been a fellow prisoner of his in France. He presented a report to Hindenburg on the needs of Thuringia.

While Sauckel did these things to help Thuringia, Hitler came to power a short time later, in 1933. In May 1933, Sauckel became governor of Thuringia through a document signed by Hindenburg (his calling attention to Hindenburg’s signature was of interest as he admitted he was really appointed by Hitler). He repeated in oratorical yet simple style, with clipped German, that he desired only to bring about happiness and economic prosperity to Thuringia. He said it was his desire to “preserve the cultural, artistic, and traditional values of the greater Germany.” During these efforts he “never thought of war,” and he assumed
that Hitler had the same aspirations. Sauckel disclaimed much contact with Berlin in those days or until much later. He did disagree with Himmler, Goebbels, and Bormann at times, but the nature or extent of the disagreements were vague, and apparently too unclear even in Sauckel’s own mind at this time. Hitler himself he saw rarely, and he regretted this, because he was always “a devout follower and obedient.”