Oswald Pohl

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Oswald Pohl during the Nuremberg Trial (1947).

Oswald Ludwig Pohl (born June 30, 1892 in Duisburg , † June 7, 1951 in Landsberg ) was a German SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS . As head of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), Pohl was instrumental in carrying out the Holocaust . As a war criminal , Pohl was sentenced to death during the Nuremberg trial against the SS Economic and Administrative Office and executed in 1951 .

Origin and career

Oswald Pohl was born in Duisburg as the son of master toolmaker Hermann Otto Emil Pohl and his wife Auguste Seifert. He attended high school and graduated from high school in 1912. From the beginning of April 1912, Pohl embarked on an administrative career with the Imperial Navy .

During his participation in the First World War as a ship officer, he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class in 1914. After the war, Pohl closed briefly a volunteer corps to. He stayed with the Navy and was also a member of the newly founded Imperial Navy . At the end of January 1934 he resigned from the naval service as naval staff paymaster and with the rank of first lieutenant at sea.

Pohl joined the NSDAP again in 1922 and after the interim party ban in 1926 ( membership number 30.842). The Sturmabteilung (SA) had joined it already 1925th From 1925 to 1927 he was NSDAP local group leader and at times also worked as SA leader in Swinoujscie . He then worked in the development and management of Kiel SA marine departments. In addition, he held management positions in the Hitler Youth (HJ) in Kiel and was a city councilor there from 1933.

Due to his organizational talent, Pohl caught the attention of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , who now tried to poach him from the SA. On September 9, 1933 he was appointed SS-Oberführer . In early February In 1934 Pohl finally by the SA to the SS (SS no. 147614), was in the bar RFSS used and got there quickly to the administrative head of the SS Main Office on. On June 1, 1935, he was appointed SS Brigade Leader . As early as 1936, Pohl tried to derive economic benefits for the SS from the forced labor of prisoners. In 1936 he became a member of the Reich Committee for the Protection of German Blood . In 1938 he became head of the SS operations and chairman of the administrative board of the German Red Cross . At the end of January 1937, Pohl was promoted to SS group leader. In April 1939, Pohl's office, the head of administration of the SS, was transformed into the SS main office for administration and business . In addition, Pohl was appointed head of the main office for budget and buildings in the Reich Ministry of the Interior with the rank of ministerial director and took over Office II (buildings) there. From the late 1930s, Pohl was a member of the Friends of the Reichsführer SS and was commissioned by Himmler to manage the Lebensborn eV.

Second World War

In April 1942 Pohl was appointed SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen SS. In addition, from February 1942 he took over the management of the newly created SS Economic Administrative Main Office and at the same time headed Office Group W (Economic Enterprises). Pohl exercised these functions until the end of the war . In this position from July 1943 he held the title of "Head of Administration of the Reichsführung SS".

This office gave Pohl a key position in the Holocaust structure, as the “General Inspection of the Concentration Camps”, ie the concentration camps as such, were now subordinate to him. In the summer of 1942, Pohl replaced almost a third of all concentration camp commanders . He intended to use the labor of the concentration camp prisoners more intensively for arms production. In an order of April 30, 1942, he ordered:

“The camp commandant alone is responsible for deploying the workforce. This work effort must be exhaustive in the true sense of the word in order to achieve the highest level of performance. [...] The working hours are not tied to any limits. [...] Time-consuming marches and lunch breaks just for eating are prohibited. "

This arrangement led to a strong expansion of the sub-camps , worsened the living conditions of the prisoners and increased their death rate. Productivity was only slightly increased and the lives of many of the concentration camp prisoners who were forced to do forced labor were bought at a high price, in line with the principle of extermination through work . In 1943, Pohl founded Ostindustrie GmbH as an instrument for robbing Jewish assets and for further exploiting prisoners. From July 1942 to March 1943 he was a member of the National Socialist Reichstag . Pohl, who had moved up to replace Reinhard Heydrich in the Reichstag, had to give up his seat in the Reichstag. The background was his managerial economic activities, which were not compatible with a Reichstag mandate.

Pohl also intervened when the great extermination campaign stalled, in which around 350,000 of 458,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by poison gas immediately after their arrival in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . The first transport trains reached Auschwitz on April 15, 1944. In May 1944, the three commanders of Auschwitz I , Auschwitz III Monowitz and the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp were relieved of their offices and replaced by others. Pohl, who six months earlier had brought Rudolf Höß to head office D1 at the head office of his authority, sent him to Auschwitz as the site elder from May 1944 to July 1944 in order to organize the smooth execution of the extermination campaign.

In addition to the deadly work done by concentration camp inmates, Pohl, as the “master of hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates”, was primarily responsible for “the radical exploitation and utilization of the prisoners, from withholding their valuables to removing their gold seals and hair”. The goods stolen in the course of the deportations and mass murders included, for example, clothing, jewelry and other assets such as foreign currency or gold. What has been received is a letter to Heinrich Himmler with an inventory of over 100,000 watches as well as thousands of fountain pens and the like, which were designated as "Jewish stolen property" for camouflage.

Pohl was the holder of the golden party badge of the NSDAP . He also received the German Cross in Silver and on October 10, 1944 the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords.

After he divorced his first wife in March 1940, he married Eleonore von Brüning (née Holtz) on December 12, 1942. She was the widow of Ernst Rüdiger von Brüning , son of Adolf von Brüning , a co-founder of the Hoechst paintworks (part of IG Farben from 1925 ). Pohl became the stepfather of Eleonore's daughters. Later they had their own mentally handicapped daughter.

Capture

Closing remarks by the defendant Oswald Pohl on September 22, 1947 at the trial. On the dock are shown here (from left to right), front row: August Frank , Heinz Fanslau , Hans Lörner ; back row: Franz Eirenschmalz , Karl Sommer , Hermann Pook .

In the last days of the war, Oswald Pohl first fled to Flensburg via the Rattenlinie Nord . On May 27, 1946, he was tracked down near Verden (Aller) and transported to the War Crime Head Quarter in Bad Nenndorf . In a detailed private letter dated June 1, 1948, Pohl complained that he had to wear handcuffs there all the time, that he had been kicked and beaten and that he had lost two teeth in the process. The interrogator was outraged and stopped further abuse. Shortly afterwards he was transported to Nuremberg and had to endure more than 50 interrogations there by December; He was not subjected to physical abuse there. In the said letter, Pohl also complained that he was unable to correct some of the statements he had made earlier in the final compilation of his statements into an affidavit . This, his own account, later relativizes rumors of extreme torture and forced confessions.

process

In the trial against the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, which was carried out as Case IV of the Nuremberg follow- up trials from January 13 to November 3, 1947, Oswald Pohl was the main suspect. He and his 17 co-defendants were charged with membership in a criminal organization, crimes against humanity and conspiracy to commit war crimes. Pohl was sentenced to death. The death penalty was also imposed on three other defendants (Georg Lörner, Franz Eirenschmalz, Karl Sommer), but they were later pardoned.

Pohl accused the prosecution of being dominated by Jewish representatives and filled with vindictiveness and blind hatred. Pohl did not deny his complicity in the Holocaust. However, not a single Jew was deported or exterminated on his own initiative . He was only convicted on a representative basis because others had evaded the trial by suicide or - as a key witness incriminating him - had bought themselves free through treason. He had served his fatherland flawlessly for 33 years and was not aware of any crime. The court did not follow the defense strategy of portraying Pohl as an innocent administrative specialist and an overburdened head of authorities who acted in the knowledge that he had to fulfill his duties, but instead condemned him as a convinced ideological perpetrator and one of the main responsible for the murderous conditions in the concentration camps.

Public reaction

This one-sided view of Pohl was adopted by many contemporaries: Like other parts of the punishment of National Socialist crimes, the judgment was often regarded as a “ victorious justice ” and even referred to as a “disgraceful judgment”.

In his self-chosen role as a “martyr”, Pohl gained further supporters. The demands for a line to end did not stop; According to a saying by Robert Kempner , Germany was in "mercy fever" at the time. On January 9, 1951, a delegation of the German Bundestag visited the American High Commissioner John Jay McCloy : Bundestag President Hermann Ehlers (CDU), Peter Altmeier (CDU, Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate), Carlo Schmid (SPD) and Walter Strauss (CDU) , State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Justice). Her request for an amnesty was unsuccessful.

From John Jay McCloy's press release on January 31, 1951:

“It was established that Oswald Pohl was personally responsible for managing the camps. The extermination of the Jews in the Auschwitz camp, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the plundering of the Jews in the east as part of the well-known ' Aktion Reinhardt ' are some of the crimes of which this organization is guilty. According to the verdict, Pohl was not only at the head of this administrative apparatus, but he personally directed and supervised the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, and he himself selected prisoners for medical experiments . Understandably, in this case I could not find any justification for a grace . The Advisory Committee did not recommend any modification of the judgment either. "

Conversion and death

Pohl converted to the Catholic Church on February 12, 1950 , under the supervision of the Landsberg chaplain, Karl Morgenschweis . Morgenschweis also organized the publication of Pohl's confessional document Credo - Mein Weg zu Gott , in which he described his alleged purification and turn to faith. In it he describes National Socialism as a “political ideology” with “devastating effects on the individual and society” (p. 42); he admits that as an SS general he was “guilty” and “sincerely confesses to all guilt and to all sins ”(p. 68). The collapse of his political and ideological ideals of life caused a vacuum inside him, which finally brought him to believe in Jesus Christ and led him into the Catholic Church. Before his execution, Pohl asked the Pope for an “ apostolic blessing ”, which the Pope donated to him without associating a political evaluation of the case with it.

Oswald Pohl was born on June 7, 1951 executed .

Fifty years after the execution, in 2001, the management of the Landsberg prison had the grave crosses in the Spöttingen cemetery, where Pohl is buried, overhauled, provided with copper roofs and provided uniform flower decorations. Through the publication of the Landsberg Citizens' Association in the 20th century and the critical homeland researcher Anton Posset on the war criminals in special issue 1 From Hitler's fortress detention to war criminal prison N ° 1: The Landsberg detention center in the mirror of history also moved the cemetery where u. a. the war criminals hanged in prison and Jewish victims of the Nazi regime were buried. For many years, the grave of Oswald Pohl in particular was used as a pilgrimage site by right-wing extremists. The laying of flowers and wreaths always took place on April 20th, Adolf Hitler's birthday . In countless newspaper articles and letters to the editor, the citizens' association sparked a discussion about how to deal with this “pilgrimage site”, which could have been closed 50 years later. Instead, the graves were maintained by the state. In 2002 Lutz Hachmeister made a documentary around this emotionally much discussed topic and the historical significance of the prison. Due to strong protests, the cemetery was deedicated in 2003 and the nameplates removed from the graves.

Interpretations

The trial against Pohl and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office failed at least partially to achieve its intended effect. The trial did not lead to the realization, neither among the accused themselves nor among large parts of the public, that henchmen and desk criminals were hardly less guilty than, for example, the murderers on site in Auschwitz. After all, the involvement of administrative heads, without whose services a terror regime would not be able to act, was punished for the first time by the Nuremberg follow-up trials and thus set a warning sign for the future.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Oswald Pohl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Johannes Tuchel: Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934-1938. Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 , p. 385.
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 467.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS economy and SS administration. Düsseldorf 1998, p. 352f.
  4. ^ Robert N. Proctor : Racial hygiene. Medicine under the Nazis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1988, ISBN 0-674-74578-7 , p. 135.
  5. ^ IMT: The Nuremberg Trial. Volume XXXVIII, p. 366 / docu. 129-R.
  6. ↑ See Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor. ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .
  7. ^ Dieter Pohl:  Pohl, Ludwig Oswald. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , pp. 584 f. ( Digitized version ).
  8. ^ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographisches Lexikon zum Third Reich , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 , pp. 355f.
  9. ↑ See web links: Document looted property (only the 1st page as a facsimile); Complete running text in: HG Adler , Hermann Langbein , Ella Lingens-Reiner (eds.): Auschwitz. Certificates and reports. 2nd rev. Ed. EVA, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-434-00411-4 , pp. 81-83.
    Höß writes about it in his memoirs: “The valuables found were mostly - especially the transports of Jews from the West - the most valuable things. Precious stones worth millions, watches set with diamonds, gold and platinum watches of immeasurable value, as well as rings, earrings, necklaces of considerable rarity, types of money from all over the world in millions. One person often found money in hundreds of thousands, mostly in $ 1000 bills ... A special department of the Reichsbank dealt only with these things from the Jewish actions. As I once heard from Eichmann , precious items and foreign exchange were negotiated in Switzerland , and in fact they dominated the entire Swiss precious item market. ... These Jewish valuables created enormous difficulties for the camp itself that could not be removed. Demoralizing for the SS members, who were not always strong enough to escape the temptation of easily accessible Jewish valuables. ”Ibid., P. 294 as a note on p. 88.
  10. ^ Dorothee Schmitz-Köster : Child L 364. A life-born family story. Rowohlt, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-87134-564-7 .
  11. ↑ Stephan Link: "Rattenlinie Nord". War criminals in Flensburg and the surrounding area in May 1945. In: Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Hrsg.): Mai '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 21.
  12. ^ Letter printed in: Peter-Ferdinand Koch: Himmlers Graue Eminenz - Oswald Pohl and the Main Economic Administration Office of the SS. Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-926827-01-7 .
  13. ^ Ilka Richter: SS elite in court. The death sentences against Oswald Pohl and Otto Ohlendorf . Tectum, Marburg 2011, p. 22ff., P. 33ff. u, pp. 61-69.
  14. ↑ Ernst Klee: Forgiveness without remorse: Secret help of the churches for mass murderers and desk criminals . In: The time . 9/1992 of February 21, 1992.
  15. ↑ Oswald Pohl: Credo - My way to God. Published by Karl Morgenschweis. Alois Girnth Verlag, Landshut 1950, pp. 69f.
  16. ↑ http://www.buergervereinigung-landsberg.de/kriegsverbrecher/kriegsverbrecher.htm
  17. ↑ Keep the crosses on the NS cemetery. In: Münchner Merkur . April 2, 2009, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  18. ^ Wolfgang Habel: 50 years of honor grave for Oswald Pohl. (PDF; 112 kB) Landsberg Citizens' Association, August 19, 2010, accessed on June 30, 2018 .
  19. ↑ The prison. Landsberg and the emergence of the republic. on-line
  20. ↑ Cf. Dirk Pöppmann: Robert Kempner and Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Wilhelmstrasse trial . For the discussion about the participation of the German functional elite in the Nazi crimes. In: Irmtrud Wojak, Susanne Meinl: In the labyrinth of guilt. Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-593-37373-4 , p. 175.
  21. ↑ Joachim Perels : Missed opportunities. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): The early post-war processes. Bremen 1997, ISBN 3-86108-322-1 , p. 31.
  22. ↑ on the appointment of camp commanders by Pohl.
  23. ↑ Overall presentation, including "Case 4".
  24. ↑ a journalistically prepared compilation of sources of very different relevance; there also the letter of June 1, 1948.
  25. ↑ Careers pp. 32–44, Flucht und Prozess pp. 426–434.
personal data
SURNAME Pohl, Oswald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pohl, Oswald Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, SS-Obergruppenführer and war criminal, significantly involved in the implementation of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Duisburg
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1951
Place of death Landsberg