... Speer's superior organization skills had been demonstrated to Hitler in 1938 with the construction of the New Chancellery, in which Speer had six different building firms all building different sections at the one time. Four years on, Speer was required to mobilize Germany's munitions workers. The mobilization of the work force was crucial for factories to operate efficiently and to keep the Nazi war machine alive. In late February 1942 Speer gave a speech to all Gauleiters demanding that they relinquish control over workers who were building projects that were unnecessary for German armament production. However, many Gauleiters were able to by-pass Speer by a `special status' given to their buildings by Hitler. Thus, Speer began to realize by mid 1942 that it would be beneficial to use labour from occupied territories, concentration camps and prisoners of war. Speer's decision was carried out by his subordinate Sauckel, and endorsed by the terror policies of "sub-human" conditions. This decision also adhered to the racial policies of Nazi ideology, which referred to any Jew, POW or foreign civilian as untemenschen (inferior). Therefore this allowed the Nazis to justify the conditions of slave labour and workers being worked to death. The slave workers (Jews, POWs and foreign civilians) operated in appalling conditions wit the constant pressure from Nazi terror policies. Their treatment was described at Nuremberg as "mass enslavement...carried out by force, fraud, terror...(which was also) a policy of underfeeding and overworking." This is exemplified at the Dora munitions factory where of the 60,000 workers that went there, over 30,000 died. In December 1943 Speer went to the factory and demanded that the workers receive better living conditions, but said nothing of the terror polices that the SS were using to subordinate the workers. The terror policies that were used intrinsically linked with the racial polices as they violently forced "workers who were Jews, POWs and foreign civilians (to work) as slave labour for the benefit of the mighty German Empire." (Speer, Inside the Third Reich") Speer made demands on the premise that the slave labourers could work for longer and therefore achieve a greater output. Also in 1943 Hitler's `final solution' was in implemented upon Jewish workers who were sent to extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka and Chelma. ...
