rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

852 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHfront lines and even in manning antiaircraft guns in further disregard of theinternational conventions which Germany had signed. ∗In the massive deportations of slave labor to the Reich, wives were torn awayfrom their husbands, and children from their parents, and assigned to widelyseparated parts of Germany. The young, if they were old enough to work at all,were not spared. Even top generals of the Army co-operated in the kidnapingof children, who were carted off to the homeland to perform slave labor. Amemorandum from Rosenberg’s files of June 12, 1944, reveals this practice inoccupied Russia.Army Group Center intends to apprehend forty to fifty thousandyouths from the age of 10 to 14 . . . and transport them to theReich. The measure was originally proposed by the Ninth Army. . . It is intended to allot these juveniles primarily to the Germantrades as apprentices. . . . This action is being greatly welcomedby the German trade since it represents a decisive measure for thealleviation of the shortage of apprentices.This action is not only aimed at preventing a direct reinforcementof the enemy’s strength but also as a reduction of his biologicalpotentialities.The kidnaping operation had a code name: ”Hay Action.” It was also beingcarried out, the memorandum added, by Field Marshal Model’s Army GroupUkraine-North. 1170Increasing terrorization was used to round up the victims. At first, comparativelymild methods were used. Persons coming out of church or the movieswere nabbed. In the West especially, S.S. units merely blocked off a section ofa town and seized all able-bodied men and women. Villages were surroundedand searched for the same purposes. In the East, when there was resistance tothe forced-labor order, villages were simply burned down and their inhabitantscarted off. Rosenberg’s captured files are replete with German reports of suchhappenings. In Poland, at least one German official thought things were goinga little too far.The wild and ruthless man hunt [he wrote to Governor Frank], asexercised everywhere in towns and country, in streets, squares, stations,even in churches, at night in homes, has badly shaken thefeeling of security of the inhabitants. Everybody is exposed to thedanger of being seized anywhere and at any time by the police, suddenlyand unexpectedly, and of being sent to an assembly camp.None of his relatives knows what has happened to him. 1171But rounding up the slave workers was only the first step. † The conditionof their transport to Germany left something to be desired. A certain∗ A captured record shows Field Marshal Milch of the Air Force in 1943 demanding 50,000more Russian war prisoners to be added to the 30,000 already manning antiaircraft artillery.”It is amusing,” Milch laughed, ”that Russians must work the guns.” 1169† The entire slave labor program was put in charge of Fritz Sauckel, who was given thetitle of Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor. A second-string Nazi, he hadbeen Gauleiter and Governor of Thuringia. A pig-eyed little man, rude and tough, he was, asGoebbels mentioned in his diary, ”one of the dullest of the dull.” In the dock at Nuremberg,he struck this writer as being a complete nonentity, the sort of German who in other times