Georg Meindl

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Georg Meindl (born March 1, 1899 in Uttendorf , † probably May 10, 1945 near Steyr ) was an Austrian entrepreneur as well as military economics and SS leader . Until the end of the Second World War he was General Director of Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG and was one of the key figures in the war industry in the Danube and Alpine regions of the Greater German Reich .

Life

Youth and First World War

Meindl was the son of a postmaster. He attended an elementary school and a grammar school in Salzburg . As a war volunteer , he joined the Salzburg rifle in 1915 and took part in the First World War with the Austro-Hungarian Army . He was deployed on the Italian front and in Serbia. After the end of the war, he received several awards and was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant .

Training and career entry

In the inter-war period , Meindl completed economic and political studies in Vienna and Innsbruck . During his studies in 1919 he became a member of the Landsmannschaft der Salzburger Wien . He received his doctorate by its own account with the thesis "profit sharing and social reconciliation." After completing his studies, he was initially secretary to the mayor of Linz , Karl Sadleder (1883–1930). Afterwards he worked in several Austrian companies in a leading position, for example, he was the central director of the electricity works Stern & Hafferl Aktiengesellschaft and was involved in the development of the Österreichische Kraftwerk AG. From spring 1936 he was a member of the board of the Austrian Alpine Mining Society .

NS and company career

Meindl was already acquainted with Hermann Göring in the 1920s and from 1922 worked as an “ old fighter ” in the Austrian DNSAP . From 1934 he was a member of the NSDAP (membership number 6,390,578).

After the annexation of Austria, Meindl was transferred to the general SS in April 1938 with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (SS-Nr. 308.208) and rose there in November 1944 to SS- Brigadführer . Meindl became Göring's confidante in 1938 and became a member of the Reich Chamber of Labor and, as military economic leader, also head of the armaments department in Military District XVII (Vienna).

On March 15, 1938, Meindl was appointed General Director and later Chairman of the Board of Management of Steyr Daimler Puch AG . From 1943 General Director Meindl was also acting head of the aero engine works in Ostmark . In parallel to these functions, Meindl also worked as a member of the supervisory board of key companies such as Reichswerke Hermann Göring and Dresdner Bank AG and as head of the special committees “ Raupenschlepper Ost ” and “LKW 1,5 t” in the Reich Ministry of Armaments and Ammunition .

Meindl has been employing prisoners from Mauthausen concentration camp at the Steyr site since the beginning of 1942 . From March 1943, Meindl also succeeded in establishing a major arms production facility with around 1,300 prisoners at the Gusen concentration camp in a joint venture with SS-owned Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH (DEST) .

At the beginning of 1944, Meindl tried to compete with Messerschmitt GmbH to get large parts of the underground production space there for his production. However, since he was unable to assert himself in this process, he pushed his own project for underground production in Roggendorf near Melk under the code name "Quarz" .

After he was able to secure additional underground production areas in Gusen as a result of the commissioning of B8 Bergkristall , Meindl was able to guarantee SS-Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner the start of limited weapons production in the alpine fortress favored by Kaltenbrunner in March 1945 .

Unexplained circumstances of death

At the end of the war, Meindl had left his place of work. He was detained for a few days by soldiers of the US Army , but then released due to his unexplored SS membership. Meindl is said to have burned in a woodshed near Steyr on May 10, 1945. A document made out to Meindl was found on the corpse in the burned down shed, but even an autopsy could not provide any reliable information as to whether Meindl was the dead person. Suicide is suspected as the cause of death , but murder and arson are also possible.

literature

  • Peter Black: Ernst Kaltenbrunner: Vasall Himmler: An SS career : Schöningh, Paderborn, 1991. P. 259. ISBN 3-506-77483-2
  • Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Hermagoras-Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 .
  • Bertrand Perz : Project Quarz - Steyr-Daimler-Puch and the Melk concentration camp : Industry, forced labor and concentration camps in Austria. Volume 3. Publishing house for social criticism. Vienna, 1991. pp. 36-40. ISBN 3-85115-115-1
  • Silvia Rief: Arms Production and Forced Labor - The Steyrer Works and the Gusen Concentration Camp . In: National Socialism and its Consequences, Volume 2. Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2005. ISBN 3-7065-1530-X

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 367
  2. ^ Berthold Ohm and Alfred Philipp (eds.): Directory of addresses of the old men of the German Landsmannschaft. Part 1. Hamburg 1932, p. 414.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 368
  4. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 369
  5. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 372
personal data
SURNAME Meindl, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian entrepreneur as well as military economy and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Uttendorf
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: May 10, 1945
Place of death at Steyr