The Himmler's SS (23 page)

In wartime Germany itself, an equally great range and even greater ambition of SS economic activity was apparent. Just as the SS achieved a fair measure of independence in the sphere of military supply, so it sought and attained independence in the more general production field. The concentration camp system gave the SS a virtually inexhaustible source of cheap expendable labour, and where it was not expedient in any given case to set up an SS enterprise the camp workers could be farmed out to private firms or used on sub-contract work, for which the SS received payment. The projects thus directly or indirectly carried out by the SS ranged from tailoring to armaments and from quarrying to aircraft construction, and nearly 2 million labourers of both sexes were ‘employed' on Himmler's business. By 1944, the SS had developed its own comprehensive and widespread economic system in which was found the raw materials, the factories which processed them, the workers who handled them, and finally the consumers who absorbed them. It ultimately controlled more than 500 manufacturing plants, and produced 75 per cent of Germany's nonalcoholic beverages and practically all of the country's furniture. Moreover, by virtue of this economic activity, the SS maintained influential representatives and contacts at many points throughout normal German industrial life. Indeed, Hitler often joked that Himmler was Germany's biggest industrialist!

For his part, the Reichsführer attached supreme importance to making the best possible use of all available concentration camp labour. It was planned that the building projects of the SS after the war would be on such a large scale that the creation of a camp reserve of 5,000 stonemasons and 10,000 bricklayers was ordered in 1942. These workers would be employed to deliver to the state at least 100,000 cubic metres of granite per year, more than was ever produced by all the quarries in the old Reich. Since there were only 4,000 skilled stonemasons in the whole of Germany before the war, an extensive training programme was instigated. Camp commandants were directed to ensure that the efficiency of prisoners selected for training was increased through the provision of suitable food and clothing, and willing trainees were given rewards as an example to the indifferent. One of the biggest incentives was that inmates successfully undergoing training were exempt from transfer to other less humane camps – or to extermination camps.

The munitions factory within the confines of Dachau concentration camp, showing inmates working on the production of rifle components for the Waffen-SS and police.

Rifle grenades, signals flares and other explosives were manufactured in large numbers by prisoners at Dachau. Trusted inmates were employed by the SS as inspectors, to ensure that quality control was maintained. There was an automatic death sentence for any inmate found sabotaging production.

For construction and building purposes, Germany was subsequently divided into four great SS Work Inspectorates, the SS-Bauinspektion Reich, with headquarters at Berlin, Dachau, Posen and Wiesbaden. The wartime activities carried out by their workers included road making and the building of barracks and training grounds. Plans to lay the foundations of a large SS town, the so-called ‘SS-Stadt', around Wewelsburg Castle had to be shelved until after the war. Instead, SS construction brigades, or SS-Baubrigaden, drawn from unskilled concentration camp inmates assisted in clearing up bombed areas. A large number of prisoners were detailed to build the extermination camps, to construct various experimental rocket sites and to transfer vital war production plant to secret underground locations in Germany, before being ‘permanently silenced'. In occupied territories it was customary to use for general construction purposes formations known as SS Front Labour Units, or SS-Fro ntarbeiterunternehmen, composed chiefly of foreign workers, while building equipment stores, or SS-Bauhöfe, holding reserve stocks of equipment, were maintained in most large towns.

All this industry was co-ordinated and directed by the SS Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt or WVHA, the SS Economic and Administrative Department. Commanded by SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, the WVHA was formed in March 1942 by amalgamating three existing offices:

1.
the old Verwaltungsamt (Administrative Office) of the SS Hauptamt

2.
the Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten (Department of Finance and Building)

3.
the office of the Inspekteur der Konzentrationslager (Inspectorate of Concentration Camps)

Its creation recognised the potential which the SS and police system had for generating its own income, and solved the problem of conflicting interests and divided authority over such questions as the allocation of prison and concentration camp labour.

As with the other SS Hauptämter, the province of the WVHA covered the whole SS. The Allgemeine-SS was, for the most part, an unpaid and only lightly equipped organisation, so the administration of both supply and finance for that branch did not require a very extensive or complicated machinery. Nevertheless, the employment of full-time Allgemeine-SS staff, the upkeep of Allgemeine-SS property and the supervision of stocks of weapons, uniforms and equipment at regional level all fell within the scope of the WVHA. The Waffen-SS and police imposed much larger claims upon it, including the overseeing of administrative units of the Waffen-SS, the provision of Waffen-SS clothing, and the undertaking of engineering and construction work. Moreover, a WVHA Wirtschaftsführer or Economics Official was attached to the HSSPf in each occupied territory to co-ordinate the joint administration of the SS and police. When the National HQ of the uniformed police was bombed out in February 1944, it moved most of its departments to the premises of the WVHA, which thereafter carried out services on behalf of the Ordnungspolizei not only in the occupied territories but also in the Reich proper. In addition to these activities, the WVHA was the supreme financial authority for the SS and ran the vast range of SS economic undertakings. To a large extent, the day-to-day work of the WVHA was decentralised and carried out by administrative departments of the various SS Hauptämter, the administrative officers attached to the HSSPfs, and administrative sections at Oberabschnitt and Abschnitt level. Even so, the WVHA remained in charge of the general supervision of all SS and police administration, and appointed administrative personnel. It had to approve the promotions of administrative officers in the SS and police, and acted in close liaison with the SS Führungshauptamt regarding administrative training courses, for which it maintained two specialist schools at Arolsen and Dachau. The SS Verwaltungsdienst, or Administrative Service, included for its enlisted ranks the posts of accountant, baker, billeting official, butcher, clerk, cook, paymaster and storekeeper, while officer grades specialised in agriculture, engineering, forestry and mining, as well as general administrative duties. The SS maintained its own system of supply distinct from that of the Wehrmacht, for which purpose a large network of depots and stores was built up in Germany and the occupied territories. Operationally, these came under the control of the SS Führungshauptamt, but the actual responsibility for supply was divided between the Führungshauptamt and the WVHA. Broadly speaking, the former dealt with arms, ammunition and other technical equipment, while the latter was responsible for rations, clothing, wood, coal, fodder and personal items. The WVHA also engaged in the bulk purchase of leather and textiles, although all other raw materials were acquired for the SS by a special Rohstoffamt (Raw Materials Office) attached to the Persönlicher Stab RfSS.

By 1945, the WVHA had developed to incorporate five distinct branches, or Amtsgruppen, with general allocation of functions as follows:

Pohl proved to be a very capable administrator of the entire system, and by the end of the war the WVHA had attained a nationwide economic imperium for the SS.

Amtsgruppe W was subdivided into eight distinct departments or ämter at the end of 1944. These are detailed in the table on p. 104, together with the main activities coming under their jurisdiction, to show the immense variety of SS enterprises being undertaken at that time. Due to its very nature, Amtsgruppe W was considerably decentralised, with each of its ämter located away from the WVHA headquarters.

The massive concentration camp industry was supervised on the ground by only a few junior SS officers and NCOs, assisted by a large number of foreign auxiliary troops and senior inmates known as ältesten. These inmates acted as works foremen or Kapos, and were free from all other camp duties. Political prisoners and hardened habitual criminals were usually entrusted with such jobs since they often wielded great influence over their comrades. Many clerical positions within the camps were also held by selected inmates, and there was a high degree of prisoner self-administration. Employment of inmates on desk work also provided the camp officials with an opportunity to play the prisoners against one another, and make them scapegoats for thefts and other petty crimes committed by some of the SS men. The permanent SS contingent at each camp was usually fairly small, Dachau, for example, having just 300 Totenkopf veterans, all over forty years of age, to oversee 17,000 inmates in 1943. However, most camps also had Waffen-SS training grounds sited nearby from which extra men were regularly drafted in on a rota basis, and from which emergency reinforcements could be summoned if required.

A
MTSGRUPPE
W –
THE
SS E
CONOMIC
E
NTERPRISES