General representative for work

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Decree of the Fiihrer on a general agent for labor deployment dated March 21, 1942
Fritz Sauckel as a defendant at the Nuremberg trial

General representative for labor was a function under which the Thuringian Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel was responsible from March 21, 1942, in particular for the deployment of so-called foreign and eastern workers in the German Reich and in the areas occupied by the German Wehrmacht during World War II .

Position in the Nazi bureaucracy

The minister for armament and ammunition Fritz Todt had already in 1940 Paul Budin appointed Special Representative for the pre-establishment of Soviet POWs and civilians as forced labor in the German armaments industry. As the high command of the armed forces in late 1941 called for a stronger labor of Russians dispensable to German factory workers and making it available for military service received at the agency Hermann Goering for the four-year plan is a "business group shift" powers for the "Russians use" under the Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Labor Werner Mansfeld . He was given the designation "Reich Commissioner for Labor Operations. His powers were limited and because of the unfavorable course of the war he was unable to report any short-term successes, but only to initiate a tightening of the forced labor regime. The death of Todt and the accumulation of power by his successor Albert Speer accelerated the situation Decisions in labor market policy. In March 1942, Adolf Hitler appointed the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter Fritz Sauckel with far-reaching powers as a plenipotentiary for labor. The responsibility of the Labor Minister Franz Seldte was largely restricted. The need for labor was put under the direction of "Central Planning" by Hans Kehrl .

The general representative for the work assignment was subordinate to the agent for the four-year plan Hermann Göring , later also to the agent for the total war effort Joseph Goebbels . Sauckel maintained close personal contact with Adolf Hitler.

Importance for the war economy

In the Reich territory, Sauckel relied on the central and regional authorities of the Reich Labor Ministry , and from April 6, 1942 also on the Gauleiter , whom he appointed as plenipotentiaries for work in the Gau . Sauckel's personal advisor was Walter Stothfang .

On July 27, 1943, the boundaries of the previous state labor offices were adapted to the Nazi Gaue. As trustee of the work , Sauckel was also given responsibility for tariff policy. The success of the General Manager in mobilizing German workers through shutdowns in trade, the redeployment of workers and service obligations remained limited at first. In January 1943, all German men between the ages of 16 and 65 and all German women between the ages of 17 and 45 were recorded for “tasks in the defense of the Reich”. Although the number of industrial employees rose by 1.05 million to 11 million in the first year, the result was mainly due to the deployment of foreign slave labor .

For recruitment, the Plenipotentiary General in the occupied territories brought together members of the employment offices to form mobile task forces, which in the Government General and in the USSR with the help of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories , the Plenipotentiary for the Armaments Industry Albert Speer and the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler around 5 million Deported people to work in Germany . A total of around 12 million people were recorded by the office. Service obligations were also introduced in the western occupation areas. At the end of 1944, around 7.6 million foreign workers were working in the German Reich: 2.8 million Soviet Russians, 1.7 million Poles, 1.3 million French, 590,000 Italians, 280,000 Czechs, 270,000 Dutch and 250,000 Belgians. Almost half of all workers in agriculture were foreigners, and around a third in the armaments industry. Almost two million were prisoners of war, the other civil workers. The "Eastern workers" were treated and fed much worse than the "Western workers". Other forced laborers were concentration camp prisoners who were to be " exterminated through work ".

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939–1945 . Saur 1999, ISBN 3-598-11428-1 , p. 75.
  2. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939–1945 . P. 200 f.
  3. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939–1945 . P. 75.
  4. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939–1945 . P. 202.
  5. ↑ Ute Vergin: The National Socialist Labor Administration and its functions in the deployment of foreign workers during the Second World War . Osnabrück, Univ.-Diss., 2008, p. 107 ff.
  6. ^ The Nuremberg Trial. 144th day. Saturday, June 1, 1946, morning session, testimony from Max Timm . Zeno.org , accessed October 8, 2017.
  7. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939-1945 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-096489-9 , pp. 204 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. ^ Fritz Sauckel's program of work (April 20, 1942) German history in documents and images (DGDB), accessed on October 8, 2017.
  9. ↑ The "General Regulations" on workers from the occupied territories in the east from 1942 Website of the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" , accessed on October 8, 2017.
  10. ↑ Norbert Frei : The Führer State. National Socialist rule 1933 to 1945 , Munich 2001, pp. 195f.