English Translation

167 0 Mr S t a t s e k r e t a r e r 723/5 At the request of 22 January 1940. On 18 January 1940, a hearing was held at the Reichsarbeitsministerium, which was requested by Gau Sudetenland for the purpose of discussing the insulting of the wages of the Protectorate. The negotiations were attended by representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, the Finance Ministry, the Ministry for Labour, the Reich Commissioner for Prizes, the deputy director of Cologne's work and the deputy trustee of the Reich =/y+ Stucke; by the Reichsprotektor Ministerialrat Dr. Dennler and I. The meeting was chaired by the Ministerial Director Dr. Mansfeld of the Reichsarbeitsministerium. First, I gave an opinion on the current level of wages in the Protectorate. Then, the deputy head of Cologne represented the point of view of the Sudetengau. He explained that the daily reports were devastating to the popular Germans of the Protectorates. In the Protectorate there was a caste of Germans, the Reich Germans and the officials of the Reich Protector, while the People's Germans felt that they were second-class Germans. He presented a report from the local group Prag-Karolinental to the NSDAP, which claimed that lo2 members of the localgroup earned a large number below 40 RM per month, and that none of them earned more than 1 00 RM a month. He demanded that the wages of the Sudetenland be adjusted in general on 1 April, i.e. loo% to the level of the wages. This was necessary so that the protectorate did not reject exports to the Sudetengau, as was already the case with the textile and glass industry. Nor was it correct that the arms contracts all went to the Protectorate, while the Sudotengau went out empty.This, too, was due only to the low wages of the Protectorates. He went on to say that the Gau Sudetenland had to demand that the Czechs be placed in a worse position than the People's Germans,