Inside of the Third Reich, there were huge networks of concentration camps established
by Nazi Germany.
Inside of the barbed wire fences, thousands of evil SS guards and members of staff committed
crimes against humanity at sites such as Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz and Ravensbruck.
After the Second World War came to an end, the focus switched on punishing those who
were responsible for the crimes of the concentration camps and the mass killings, and despite a
number of guards such as Irma Grese or Rudolf Hess being sentenced to death and executed,
there were many more who committed crimes who never faced justice.
The Nuremberg Trials took place which tried the remaining members of Hitler’s Inner
Circle and his Nazi Government, but there was one man who could have been brought in
front of the judges at Nuremberg, but was tried later separately.
Oswald Pohl was the Head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and with this he
became the Head Administrator of the concentration camps, meaning he was responsible for millions
of deaths.
Join us today as we look at ‘The JUSTIFIED Execution Of Oswald Pohl - The Head Administrator
of the Concentration Camps.
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Oswald Pohl was born on the 30th June 1892, his father was a blacksmith and he was one
of 8 children.
His family were well off and at school he studied classics such as Greek and Latin,
and he admitted he always wished to study science but he did not go university for this.
Instead, he went into the Navy and became a sailor and he served during the First World
War in the Baltic Sea and along the coast of Flanders.
He got married in 1918 but following the war like many soldiers he felt at a loose end,
and he attended a trade school and began to study law.
But he dropped out of University and then started to work as a paymaster for there Freikorp
in Berlin, Upper Silesia and the Ruhr Basin.
In this role, Pohl like many were unhappy with the Weimar Government and as a member
of the Freikorp, he was a militant part of the resistance to the German post WW1 government.
But like many other Freikorp members, Oswald Pohl would hear about the Nazis and the Nazi
party, and he was attracted to their right wing politics.
He joined the SA in 1925 the NAzi brownshirts, and then joined the Nazi Party in February
1926, but then 3 years later he joined the SS.
He would state that, ‘I was a National Socialist before National Socialism came into being,’
and in 1933 he met with Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler was impressed with Pohl and he described him as energetic and a dedicated Nazi, and
Pohl continued to impress Himmler following more meetings.
Pohl had experience in leadership and had already overseen 500 soldiers in the Navy
during wartime, but he was desperate to become an officer with the SS and to begin climbing
the ranks.
Pohl inside of the SS worked quickly and he gained plaudits for changing the SS accounting
systems and he gained lots of respect for this, and further promotions came.
He was seen as a skilled administrator, and Pohl was then appointed the Chief of the Administration
department in the staff of Himmler himself.
Pohl wrote that, ‘"Himmler became very insistent and wrote me one letter after another urging
that I take over the administrative organisation of the SS.
In December 1933 and January 1934, he invited me to Berlin and Munich, and showed me the
whole SS administrative set-up and the many complex problems that were involved.
It was only in February 1934, after I saw what a big job was in store for me, that I
finally accepted."He also founded the Society for the preservation and fostering of German
cultural monuments,’ which was based at Wewelsburg Castle, and was supposed to be
a centre of SS worship.
But over time, Oswald Pohl’s role in administrative proceedings would lead to him working in the
concentration camp system and overseeing it.
Pohl said when he joined Himmler’s personal staff that, ‘"When I took over my office,
the SS was a comparatively small organisation, like a union, with a group here and there
in various towns and cities.
I started by installing administrative commands in various key cities, and I selected personnel
who would be fit for their jobs.
I inaugurated schools that taught these administrative officials for a few weeks before they were
dispatched to take over my branch offices all over Germany.
I achieved a sound administration in the SS, with orderly bookkeeping and financial sections.”
Pohl inside of the concentration camp system realised that slave labour was needed for
economic purposes, and following the Austrian Anschluss, Pohl accompanied Himmler to Mauthausen
where it was decided that concentration camp prisoners and slave labourers would be forced
to work inside the quarries there with a camp being created.
The finances of the SS were controlled by Pohl, and he worked on budgeting building
projects of many concentration camps.
He became the chief for the budget and construction of these camps, and Himmler later brought
all of the SS’ admin into one office, called the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office
with Pohl being the head of this.
He was the third most powerful figure in the SS behind Himmler and Heydrich, and it was
said that ‘he controlled the 20 concentration camps and 165 labour camps, he directed all
SS and Police building projects and was in charge of all SS economic enterprises.’
He would take the profits of the slave labour and then reinvest it in building larger and
bigger camps which eventually became death camps, fitted with gas chambers and execution
sits.
Pohl even complained that the death rate of prisoners inside of the camps was leading
to a dent in the economic output of the camps.
He became incredibly powerful, and was the chairman of the board of directors for the
Eastern Territories Industried.
He expanded the SS economics industries and created even more camps and sub camps, and
many of his policies were driven by money but they caused such death.
For example, Pohl refused to allow any increase in rations for starving prisoners who were
working themselves to death in the Granite Works at the Gross-Rosen camp, and with this
he was also having a role in the racial extermination of the camps, working people to death.
Pohl oversaw the organisation of the concentration camps until 1944 and his ideas were based
on extermination through labour, and to exploit prisoners as much as they could to maximise
financial profit from the work.
Pohl was obsessive in this profit, and he even tried to predict the average life expectancy
and value of the prisoners, which he equated for being 9 months and a value of 1630 marks.
He also oversaw the task of collecting gold fillings from Jewish people who had died,
along with their heir, clothing jewellery and possessions, with these stolen from the
prisoners and then sold on.
It was under his plan that Auschwitz grew into a huge killing complex, and that Majdanek
and Stutthof became huge killing sites.
His organisation funded the creation of these death camps, and the expansion of the killing
of the Holocaust was funded by Pohl’s office.
He would butt heads with Albert Speer the Minister of Armaments about production saying,
‘Reichsminister Speer appears not to know that we have 160,000 inmates at present and
are fighting continually against epidemics and a high death-rate because of the billeting
of the prisoners and the sanitary arrangements are totally inadequate.”
It was all about production, and as the war was turning against the Germans, there was
a distinct need to increase armaments production.
New facilities were made by the SS for arms production, and further camps created wonder
weapons such as the V2.
All of these areas were funded by Pohl’s work.
But by summer 1944, Pohl’s control of the concentration camps was given to local offices,
and at the end of the war, Oswald Pohl went on the run.
He hid in Upper Bavaria, then then tried to pass himself off as a farmworker, before he
was arrested by the British in May 1946.
He was placed on trial in the Pohl Trial and was the main defendant, along with 17 other
SS officers employed by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office that he oversaw.
He was accused of 4 crimes, participating in a common plan to commit war crimes and
crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership of a criminal
organisation the SS.
He didn’t deny the mass killing of Jews and other prisoners, and witnesses told of
the horror inside of the camps, but Pohl said he was just an executive or an office worker,
with people above him calling the shots.
He accused the prosecution of being guided by their own personal hatred and by revenge,
but was sentenced to death being found guilty of all 4 charges.
Despite appealing his death sentence, Pohl would go to the gallows shortly after Midnight
on the 7th June 1951.
He would have been led out of his cell under the cover of darkness and taken into a courtyard
where the gallows stood.
The gallows at Landsberg was where hundreds of Nazi war criminals were executed.
Accompanied to his execution by scores of military police and guards, Pohl was also
joined by a Catholic priest who stayed with him until he was handed over to the executioner.
He was taken up to the gallows and his identity was confirmed before he was then led up the
stairs and handed over to the executioner.
His arms and legs had been secured, before the executioner placed a black hood over his
head, and then the noose.
As he was placed over the trapdoor, the lever was quickly pushed at Oswald Pohl plunged
to his death.
Oswald Pohl was one of the main administrators of the concentration camp, and he had accompanied
Himmler on many visits to built new camps and sites where horrific crimes took place.
He was linked to the slave labour element in the camps that killed thousands, and his
office would be the ones funding expansion inside of camps such as Auschwitz, where their
killing capabilities were increased heavily.
He was a despicable man, who’s work led to millions being killed.
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