Oskar Gabel

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Oskar Gabel as a witness at the Nuremberg trials.

Oskar Gabel (born February 11, 1901 in Annen bei Witten , † December 19, 1988 in Langen (Hessen) ) was a German civil servant and economic functionary. He was a member of the NSDAP and the SS, most recently as Obersturmbannführer .

Live and act

School, training and early career

Oskar Gabel was the son of the Prussian railway chief inspector Oskar Gabel and his wife Adele, nee. Kattwinkel. He attended the Humboldt secondary school in Essen and then completed training as a mountain assessor in the civil service. From 1921 to 1926 he studied at the Bergakademie Clausthal ; In 1927 he was appointed mountain trainee and in 1930 mountain assessor. However, he was not accepted into the Prussian civil service. From 1930 to mid-1932, Gabel was largely unemployed - interrupted by a brief job at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden. It was not until the summer of 1932 that he was given a permanent position as an assistant to the works management of the Zeche Victoria (Lünen) .

Employment in the party organization after joining the NSDAP and SS

Gabel belonged to the right camp early on. In 1919 he was a member of a volunteer corps . In 1932 he committed himself to the German National People's Party . Under the influence of the ongoing economic crisis and his own unemployment, he first elected the NSDAP in January 1933. He joined her on April 1, 1933. In November 1933 he became a member of the SS (membership number 246.770), where he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer (equivalent to a lieutenant colonel) in 1942. In March 1934 Paul Pleiger , the Gau economic advisor for the Gaues Westfalen-Süd , brought him to the NSDAP district leadership in Bochum as a clerk for mining issues . In December 1934 Hitler's economic representative, Wilhelm Keppler , brought him in to work on the “Special Task for German Raw Materials” that Hitler had entrusted to Keppler in November 1934. After Keppler's office was closed, Paul Pleiger made sure that Gabel found work in the newly established Office for German Raw Materials , which - in disregard of the Reich Ministry of Economics (RWM) actually responsible - enforced the state-ordered arming of the Wehrmacht against the private sector. From October 1936, Gabel worked as a consultant for ore mining in Paul Pleiger's main department for metals, which put the German coal and steel industry under massive pressure to increase domestic iron ore production considerably as part of the four-year plan preparing for war.

Steep rise in the Reich Ministry of Economics

After serious conflicts of competence with the representative for the four-year plan , Hermann Göring , at the end of 1937 Reich Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht and the head of the mining department in the Reich Ministry of Economics (RWM), Chief Mining Captain Heinrich Schlattmann , resigned. Schacht's successor, Göring , dissolved the raw materials office in February 1938 and merged its competencies with the RWM. In essence, this was a takeover of the RWM by the party. The head of the mining department of the RWM was given to Oskar Gabel, who was also promoted to ministerial councilor. The Oberbergrat Dr. Alfred Stahl later stated that his own promotion had been delayed by two years “because the position approved for me was initially assigned to an active partisan.” It was only Gabel's promotion to ministerial conductor in 1939 that made Stahl's rise possible. In 1941, Gabel received the title of chief miner. However, the powers of the head of the highest mining authority in the German Reich were curtailed in 1938. Gabel did not head a main department like his predecessors, but he was subordinate to Hermann von Hanneken , the head of main department II (mining, iron and steel production, energy industry) at RWM. In addition, Gabel had to come to terms with competing claims to power by others, such as the Pleigers as chairman of the Reich Coal Association or that of the Armaments Minister Albert Speer . As the highest mining official, the chief miner was a member of the supervisory boards of numerous state mining companies, such as the Reichswerke Hermann Göring . From 1944, Gabel was part of one of the darkest chapters of German history: he was a permanent member of the workforce for the underground relocation of the German armaments industry, in which thousands of SS prisoners perished.

Denazification as a follower

The US authorities arrested Gabel on August 23, 1945 and held him in detention in Dachau , Nuremberg , Darmstadt and Neustadt (Hesse) . In the Nuremberg trial he was questioned by Robert Kempner and testified as a witness. On February 13, 1948, the prosecution in its own court proceedings applied for him to be classified in the group of the main culprits , but in April 1948 withdrew from their demand "in the interests of German reconstruction". Gabel defended himself in front of the Neustadt (Hessen) camp judgment chamber with the assertion that "the party had no influence on my ascent". He also said that he had “not thought of self-sufficiency” in his work and merely looked for and found “sporting activity” with the SS. The Lower Saxony Finance Minister Georg Strickrodt (CDU), who himself until 1945 as Pleiger was right-hand man, relieved fork with the statement that this was "never to him as a man of the NSDAP or even the SS appeared, but as an idealist from the ranks of the youth movement . “The Spruchkammer willingly followed this questionable argument. In 1948, Gabel was classified as a follower mainly because of Strickrodt's testimony . All that is known about the rest of his life is that he was managing director of the Deutsche Schachtbau- und Tiefbohrgesellschaft GmbH in Lingen for several years.

Fonts

  • Coal on the Ruhr: a series of images with narrative text , 1936. (together with Max Burchartz , Walter Witzel and Edmund Stams)

literature

  • Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Making iron for the fighting army! - The Doggererz AG - a contribution of the Otto Wolff Group and the Saarland steel industry to the National Socialist autarky and armaments policy on the Baar in Baden. UVK Verlag Konstanz and Munich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86764-653-6 .
  • Matthias Riedel: Iron and coal for the Third Reich. Paul Pleiger's position in the Nazi economy . Musterschmidt Göttingen, 1973, ISBN 978-3-7881-1672-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All biographical data from: Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Creating iron for the fighting army! - The Doggererz AG - a contribution of the Otto Wolff Group and the Saarland steel industry to the National Socialist autarky and armaments policy on the Baar in Baden. UVK Verlag Konstanz and Munich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86764-653-6 , p. 420-421 .
  2. ↑ The public plaintiff's application to the Neustadt-Lager judicial chamber dated February 13, 1948, as well as the sheet "Dienstlaufbahn des Oskar Gabel" (undated, serial number 68) in the Oskar Gabel judicial chamber file in the Hessian main state archive, Dept. 520 Fulda-Zentral, No. A 11
  3. ↑ Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Making iron for the fighting army . S. 31 .
  4. ↑ Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Making iron for the fighting army . S. 31 .
  5. ↑ Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: "Making iron for the fighting army!" P.  87-95 .
  6. ↑ Affidavit Dr. Alfred Stahl of August 20, 1948 in his court proceedings. Quoted from: Wolf-Ingo Seidel man: "iron provide for the fighting army!" S.  31 .
  7. ^ Karl Heinz Roth: The Daimler-Benz AG 1916–1948: Key documents for the corporate history , Greno Verlag Nördlingen 1987, ISBN 978-3891909553 , p. 444.
  8. ↑ In addition, among others: Klaus Riexinger: Destruction through work - armaments in the mine , Silberburg Verlag Tübingen, ISBN 978-3874075565 .
  9. ^ Minutes of the interrogation of the witness Oskar Gabel by Dr. RMW Kempner on May 7, 1947, State Archives Nuremberg KV indictment Interrogations No. G-2.
  10. ↑ record of the public meeting of the Spruchkammer Neustadt-camp on April 20, 1948. Quoted from: Wolf-Ingo Seidel man: "iron provide for the fighting army!" S.  31 .
  11. ↑ So Gabel's verbal testimony according to the minutes of the public meeting of the Neustadt-Lager Spruchkammer on April 20, 1948. Quoted from: Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Creating iron for the fighting army! S. 31 .
  12. ↑ Declaration by Dr. Georg Strickrodt 1948. April 16 Quoted from: Wolf-Ingo Seidel man: "iron provide for the fighting army!" S.  31 .
  13. ^ German Society for Mineral Oil Science and Coal Chemistry: Petroleum & Coal, Natural Gas, Petrochemical , Vol. 34, p. 58.
personal data
SURNAME Fork, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil servant and economic functionary
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Annen near Witten
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1988
Place of death Langen (Hesse)