THE SS
ECONOMIC ADMINISTRATION, 1934-1945:
AN
INTRODUCTION
R. Boyd Murphree
Florida State University
Historians studying the totalitarian regimes of
the twentieth century must inevitably deal with the complex administrative and
bureaucratic organizations created by those governments. No history of the Soviet Union, for example,
can neglect the importance of institutions such as the Communist Party,
GOSPLAN, and the KGB. Likewise, no
history of Nazi Germany can fail to investigate the role of the Nazi Party, the
Four Year Plan, and the Schutzstaffel
(SS).
While the purpose of the SS was not bureaucratic
but ideological, its growing responsibilities created a vast bureaucracy. By 1942, the SS bureaucracy contained twelve
main offices. Each had specific
functions such as security, operations, race and resettlement, and economics
and administration. Most research on
the SS has concentrated on the first three areas. The Reich's Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshaupamt, RSHA) has received much attention from
historians, because it controlled the SS's political terror apparatus through
the Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei,
Gestapo) and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst,
SD). Operations came under the
direction of the SS Operations Main Office (SS-Fuehrungshauptamt, SSFHA) which ran several SS departments,
including the Waffen SS (Military SS)
and long has been a popular area of study.
The Race and Resettlement Central Office (Rasse- und Sidlungshauptamt, RuSHA) has received historical
scrutiny for its role in the SS's murderous "Germanization" policies
in Eastern Europe.(1)
Surprisingly, the Economic and Administrative Main
Office (Wirtschafts- und
Verwaltunshauptamt, WVHA) has not undergone the same detailed historical
analysis as the above organizations. As
the office responsible for administration and economic activity within the SS,
the WVHA was one of the largest and most powerful of all the SS agencies. It had financial and administrative
responsibility over the entire SS, including the concentration camp
system. The WVHA managed all the SS's
industrial and business ventures, which by the end of the war totaled dozens of
different enterprises. It provided
slave labor from its pool of concentration camp inmates to work in many sectors
of German industry. Finally, the WVHA's
management of the concentration camps meant that it was intimately involved in
running the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."(2)
The forerunner of the WVHA was the SS
Administrative Office (Verwaltungsamt)
headed by the future chief of the WVHA, Oswald Pohl. A former naval disbursing officer, Pohl joined the Nazi Party in
1926. Three years later he entered the
ranks of the Sturmabtelilungen (SA),
but in 1934 he decided to accept a position in the SS.
In 1934, the SS was still in its formative stages
and its leader, Heinrich Himmler, wanted to fill the SS leadership with a cadre
of competent, hard working, and loyal professionals. He noticed Pohl's financial and administrative background in the
navy and asked him to join the SS in the position of deputy to the chief of the
SS Administrative Office. Pohl,
however, was not to remain second-in-command for long. His superior died in February 1934, and Pohl
advanced to the top position. At that
time, Pohl's office was one of many departments within the SS Main office. The Administrative Office's tasks were
restricted to the administration of the Allgemeine
SS (General SS).
On April 20, 1939, Himmler reorganized the SS
Administrative Office and expanded Pohl's responsibilities. The former Administrative Office became a
separate SS Main Office responsible for both administrative matters and economic
affairs. Himmler also created a Main
Office for Budget and Buildings; he put Pohl in charge of both. The overlapping duties of these main offices
created bureaucratic confusion. On
February 1, 1942, therefore, Himmler ordered another reorganization, and both
main offices were fused into one large SS Economic and Administrative Main
Office (WVHA) under Pohl's direction.(3)
The WVHA's role in the German economy increased
dramatically as a result of the military setbacks suffered by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the
winter battles of 1941 and 1942. Heavy
material losses led to Hitler's decision to increase armaments production. Always ready to increase the influence of
the SS, Himmler received the Fuehrer's permission to begin the building of
armaments plants on the site of some of the SS's concentration camps. Himmler ordered Richard Gluecks, the
Inspector of Concentration Camps, to provide thousands of slave laborers for
the new armament projects. Because the
armament plants came under the jurisdiction of the WVHA's responsibilities for
all SS economic affairs, and because these plants required the use of Glueck's
concentration camp inmates, there was a great potential for bureaucratic
confusion and infighting. Himmler,
therefore, ordered yet another reorganization of the WVHA. In March 1942, Himmler put Gluecks' office
of the Inspector of Concentration Camps under the authority of Pohl's WVHA.
The WVHA had become a "super organization"
within the overall SS bureaucracy which now consisted of five main
offices: Main Office A under Obergruppenfuehrer August Frank
controlled the finance and administration of the SS; Main Office B under Gruppenfuehrer Georg Loerner controlled
the SS's food supply, uniforms, billeting, and equipment; Main Office C under Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Kammler
controlled the construction tasks of the SS, including the building of gas
chambers and crematoria; Main Office D under Obergruppenfuehrer Richard Gluecks administered the concentration
camps; and Main Office W under Obergruppenfuehrer
Oswald Pohl ran the WVHA's economic enterprises.(4)
In its role as the administrative department of
the SS, the WVHA had an important function in both the Allgemeine SS and the Waffen
SS. During the pre-war years Pohl's Verwaltungsamt handled the
administrative functions of the Allgemeine
SS, including controlling the funds raised from members of the Allgemeine SS, developing an
administrative organization for all the branches of the Allgemeine SS, and training the personnel for this administrative
system.
However, administration of the SS in the midst of
a world war obviously entailed more duties and more work for Pohl's office than
had been required in the pre-war period.
The WVHA continued his old job of administering the Allgemeine SS, though during the war the latter organization had
little work to keep it busy. As few as
twenty WVHA men administered the Allgemeine
SS during the war years. Their Allgemeine SS duties consisted of paying
the salaries of the few remaining full time employees, overseeing property,
creating a new payroll system, and directing the Allgemeine SS's social welfare programs.
While the war years decreased the WVHA's
administrative work in the Allgemeine
SS, the period brought a tremendous increase in its administration of the Waffen SS. The Verwaltungsamt was
responsible for all supply and administrative affairs of the Waffen SS before February 1942. After the February reorganization of Pohl's
offices, his new WVHA continued his old responsibilities for the Waffen SS by procuring or manufacturing
certain supplies for Waffen SS units,
managing supply depots, administering disbursements to Waffen SS personnel, and acquiring land and buildings for Waffen SS use. These duties meant that WVHA personnel served in the field with Waffen SS units or were assigned to
Death's Head Units (Totenkopfverbaende)
guarding the concentration camps.
Closely related to the Waffen
SS, the latter both guarded the camps and fought as military units. The WVHA administered these elements as it
did those of the Waffen SS. Moreover, many Waffen SS men also served as officials of the WVHA, and many
members of the WVHA were transferred to the Waffen
SS to avoid their being drafted into the Wehrmacht.(5)
As a result of German conquests in the Second
World War, the SS came to play a crucial part in Germany's occupation policies. On a general level the WVHA was an important
component of German occupation forces in that it directed the administration
and supply functions of the entire SS.
It has already been noted that the WVHA was inextricably linked to the Waffen SS, formations of which were
directly involved in occupation operations.
The WVHA's administrative and supply responsibilities also extended to
the personnel of such SS organizations as the Gestapo, SD, the Criminal Police
(Kriminalpolizei, Kripo), and the
Regular Police (Ordnungspolizei,
Orpo). These agencies performed most of
the terror, imprisonment, and extermination policies of the German occupation
authorities.
Other WVHA men functioned as Wirtschafter (economic specialists) on the staffs of the Higher SS
and Police Leaders (Hoehere SS- und
Polizeifuehrers, HSSPFs). The HSSPFs
were charged with the supervision and conduct of all economic, supply, and
administrative activities of SS and police forces.(6)
In addition to these administrative
responsibilities within the occupied territories, the WVHA also ran the various
SS economic enterprises located throughout Nazi occupied Europe. One of the more notorious of these enterprises
was the Eastern Industries Limited Liability Company (Ostindustrie, Osti). The
WVHA formed this company in March 1943 as a result of the SS's campaign of
slave labor and eventual extermination against the remaining Jews in
German-occupied Poland. According to
the Nuremberg Military Tribunal the purposes of Osti were:
(1) to utilize the working capacity of the Jews by
erecting industrial plants in connection with Jewish labor camps.
(2) to take over commercial enterprises which had
been maintained by the Higher SS and Police Leaders in Poland.
(3) to confiscate all Jewish machinery and raw
materials.
(4) and to utilize all former Jewish machines,
tools, and merchandise which had been transferred to non-Jewish ownership.(7)
These confiscations of Jewish property led to Osti
control of eighteen manufacturing establishments, employing some 52,000 slave
laborers. These businesses included a
glass works, a textile mill, a peat cutting factory, an iron foundry, a brush
manufacturing plant, a stone quarry, and a pharmaceutical laboratory. Osti is just one example of the involvement
of the WVHA in economic enterprises throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.(8)
What were the characteristics of the WVHA's other
economic enterprises? The SS developed
economic enterprises as early as 1933.
Supposedly, the reason for these enterprises was ideological. The SS claimed to be carrying out the tenets
of National Socialism which held that "the State does not exist for the
benefit of the economy; but the economy exists for the benefit of the
State."(9) Himmler, however, did
not want the SS economy to be subordinate to the State. He wanted the SS to be economically
independent of both the State and the Party.
By the end of the war the SS, working through the WVHA, controlled over
fifty large economic enterprises.
Ostensibly private firms under a parent holding company, Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe (German
Economic Enterprises, Ltd., DWB), they were actually State monopolies which the
WVHA managed under the cover of DWB.
The DWB umbrella covered several WVHA industries, some examples of which
were the German Earth and Stone Works, Ltd., the Bohemian Ceramic Works, Ltd.,
Public Utility Dwelling and Homestead, Ltd., House and Real Estate, Ltd.,
German Medicines, Ltd., Berlin Furniture Factory, Ltd., the German Equipment
Works, Ltd., and Nordland Publishing House.
These firms and other WVHA industries received the bulk of their labor
force from the concentration camps. In
fact many of the firms were located on the very sites of the camps.(10)
One of the more interesting aspects of the WVHA's
economic enterprises was an attempt, under Himmler's direction, to create an SS
armaments industry based on concentration camp labor. This episode provides a good example of the confusion and infighting
prevalent in the management of Nazi Germany's war economy.
In 1942, several individuals and agencies
exercised influence in the German economy:
Herman Goering was the nominal head of the economy as the director of
the Four Year Plan; Albert Speer was Plenipotentiary General for Armaments and
Munitions; Walter Funk was Reichsminister
for Economics; and Fritiz Sauckel was Plenipotentiary General for Labor
Allocation. While these men competed
for control of economic power, they also had to contend with the machinations
of Himmler and the officials of the WVHA.
During the winter of 1941-42, the Wehrmacht suffered huge losses of men
and material on the Eastern Front.
These losses called for large increases in armaments production. An increase in armaments production entailed
a corresponding expansion of the labor force.
Himmler used this emergency situation to strengthen the role of the SS
in Germany's war economy. He convinced
Hitler to allow the SS to produce armaments using concentration camp labor and
entrusted this new SS enterprise to Pohl and the WVHA.(11)
This venture was never very large or successful
because of SS mismanagement, the poor quality of work performed by slave
laborers, and infighting between the SS and those State agencies--such as Speer's Ministry of Armaments--responsible
for armaments production. However, in
one area--the production of V-2 rockets--WVHA's involvement in the armaments
sector did meet with some real success.
The WVHA's activities in the A-4 program (the code
name for rocket development) began in August 1943, when Hitler authorized
Himmler to take charge of the development and manufacturing of the V-2. Himmler assured Hitler that the SS, unlike
the private sector, could ensure the secrecy and security needed for the A-4
program by using concentration camp labor.
The SS chief then assigned responsibility for the program to Pohl, whose
WVHA was responsible for all SS armament matters, and to Hans Kammler, one of
the WVHA's leading economic officials.
Under WVHA direction the A-4 program produced the
V-2 rockets which eventually pounded London and Antwerp, causing thousands of
civilian casualties. Some 80,000 slave
laborers produced these weapons in the inhuman conditions of the WVHA's
Nordhausen-Dora complex, where thousands of concentration camp inmates perished
from disease, starvation, and execution.(12)
The WVHA also had a strong relationship with
private German industry, and during the war the WVHA provided hundreds of
thousands of slave laborers for work principally in the private German
armaments sector. Many prisoners also
labored in private consumer firms and on private farms.
Pohl told his Allied captors: "All the armament firms that were in
Germany came with their requests to us.
Whether it was the steel works down to the last factories, they came
with requests to us."(13) A few of
the important German industries to receive labor from the WVHA included
Heinkel, Messerschmitt, Salzgitter, Krupp, Siemens-Schuchert, and I.G. Farben
companies. Furthermore, the WVHA
supplied labor to the massive State-owned Hermann Goering Works. Pohl attached WVHA officials to the above
firms to oversee the huge slave labor force and to advise those industries on
labor matters. The intimacy of the WVHA
and the private industrial sector was further realized by Pohl's attendance at
meetings of Himmler's "Circle of Friends," an informal gathering of
SS economic officials with directors from private industry. These meetings were held at regular
intervals both before and during the war.
Perhaps no other Party or State agency worked in such close partnership
with private industry in Germany as did the WVHA.(14)
No other aspect of the WVHA has received as much
attention as its crucial part in carrying out "The Final Solution,"
Nazi extermination policies. With the
incorporation of the office of Inspector of Concentration Camps into the WVHA
in March 1942, Pohl's organization was inextricably tied to the operation of
both the concentration camps and the death camps of Eastern Europe. The WVHA administered the camps, directing
everything from such mundane chores as supply and sanitation to the grisly
accounting of the gold the SS procured from the teeth of its dead victims. Through its administration of the concentration
camps and extermination centers such as Auschwitz, direction of slave labor,
procurement of victims for medical experiments and the Nazi euthanasia program,
and managing the accounting of confiscated Jewish property, the WVHA was an
essential link in the chain of genocide.
After the collapse of Nazi Germany and the end of
the war in Europe, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared
that the SS was a criminal organization, and the Americans organized separate
war crimes trials for the personnel of various SS agencies. Because the WVHA played such a crucial role
in carrying out the SS's racial extermination policies, several WVHA officials
were tried as war criminals soon after the close of the war.
While some WVHA leaders like Kammler either disappeared
or escaped capture by the Allies, Pohl and seventeen other WVHA leaders were
not so lucky. The Americans tried these
men from January to November 1947.
Hundreds of documents and numerous eyewitnesses detailed the WVHA's
function in the Final Solution. All of
the defendants were found guilty of greater or lesser crimes and fourteen of
them received prison sentences of varying lengths. Pohl and three other defendants received the death penalty,
however, only Pohl was executed in the end.
The three other men, Georg Loerner, Franz Eirenschmalz, and Karl Sommer,
had their sentences commuted. Pohl was
executed along with four other SS criminals in June, 1951.(15)
***
Boyd Murphree is a PhD
candidate in history at Florida State University and is currently working on a
dissertation entitled, "The WVHA: A History of the SS Economic
Administration, 1934-1945."
ENDNOTES
1. For information on the
organization of the SS, see Martin Broszat, Anatomie
des SS-Staats (Olten und Freiburg: Walter-Verlag A.G., 1965) and Robert
Lewis Koehl, The Black Corps
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
2. For an overview of
WVHA operations, see Trials of War
Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals: "The Pohl Case,"
vol. 5 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1950).
3. Extracts from the
Testimony of Defendant Pohl, ibid.,
5: 319-26.
4. See the description of
the WVHA in ibid., 5: 215-20.
5. Trials of War Criminals, 5: 214-15.
6. The role of the HSSPFs
is covered extensively in Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Hoeheren SS- und
Polizeifuehrer: Himmler's Vertreter im Reich und in den Besetzten Gebieten
(Duesseldorf: Droste Verlag Gmbh, 1986).
7. Trials of War Criminals, 5: 259.
8. Ibid., 5: 260.
9. Ibid., 5: 309.
10. Ibid., 5: 243-45.
11. For aspects of SS
involvement in armaments production see, Albert Speer, Infiltration (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1981).
12. Trials of War Criminals, 5: 238.
13. Excerpts from Pohl's
testimony at Nuremberg, June 3, 1946 in Nazi
Criminality and Aggression, Sup. B. (Washington, DC: United States
Government Printing Office, 1946-48), 1594.
14. Ibid.
15. For the WVHA's role
in the Final Solution and the trial of various WVHA officials see, Trials of War Criminals, vol. 5.