Transport Corps Speer

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The Speer Transport Corps was a sub-organization of the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) operating under this name from 1944 and was subordinate to Albert Speer during the National Socialist era . At its heyday in November 1942, it had almost 50,000 vehicles and around 70,000 men.

history

Transport Brigade Speer

After the NSKK, or the NSKK-Transport-Gruppe Todt formed for this purpose , had gradually been given responsibility for the entire haulage during the construction of the western wall from the summer of 1938 , the NSKK construction staff Speer was created soon afterwards to supply the To ensure construction sites for Speer's planned conversion of Berlin into the world capital Germania . From August 1939, when the construction activity was increasingly adapted to the requirements of warfare, the transport task concentrated primarily on building materials for the armaments structures (including aircraft factories in Wiener Neustadt and Brünn ) taken over by the Speer Construction Staff (subdivision of the General Building Inspection for the Reich Capital / GBI ) Buildings of the Luftwaffe (airfields and bunkers) in the Reich territory. In May 1940, the association was renamed NSKK-Transportstandarte Speer and then commissioned with the delivery of all supplies for all front-line units of the Luftwaffe, an early example of privately organized war support services. At the beginning of the Russian campaign in June 1941, the standard, which had meanwhile grown to three regiments, was renamed the NSKK Transport Brigade Speer . She followed the advancing German troops to secure the infrastructure of the supplies.

In contrast to the flexible Todt Organization , the Speer Transport Brigade was organized according to military principles and divided into regiments , divisions , companies and platoons . Over time it grew to a total of 10 NSKK motor vehicle transport regiments (Speer) . Seven regiments (nos. 1-6 and 10) transported ammunition from Speer's ammunition factories for the Air Force, three (nos. 7-9) for the army . Regiments 1, 2, 3, 8 and 9 served on the Eastern Front , the 5th and 6th in Croatia , the 7th in Italy , the 10th in Finland and the 4th in North Africa . The members of the Speer Transport Brigade wore the gray-blue uniform of the Luftwaffe or the brown uniform of the Speer construction staff. The brigade also included the NSKK Transport Departments 496 to 500, formed in 1941, which were later assigned to regiments 5, 6 and 10, the South Motor Vehicle Section with four departments formed in Northern Italy in March 1944, and the OT-, which was set up in 1942 for construction tasks in the Ruhr area . Spear Regiment.

Legion spear

In view of the shortage of drivers during the war and because the NSKK, as a branch of the NSDAP, could only employ Germans, the Speer Legion was founded in September 1942 to recruit foreign drivers, mechanics and other transport personnel. The commander of the Speer Legion was appointed General Captain of the NSKK group leader Martin Jost . The staff consisted of volunteers from European countries who had to swear a personal oath on Hitler ; Russian prisoners of war , volunteers and forced laborers made up the largest proportion , but there were also a considerable number of volunteers from the ranks of Russian emigrants in France . After all, only the command posts of the Legion were in the hands of Germans. The uniform was originally black, from April 1943 it was olive green; because supplies were inadequate, there was a mix of uniforms in 1944. Only the “Legion Speer” armband was uniform.

In the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , the forced recruitment of civilians in the occupied territories to the paramilitary Speer Legion was charged as a war crime .

Transport Corps Speer

On July 22, 1942, all truck transport organizations of the Todt Organization - the NSKK Transport Brigade Todt, the NSKK Transport Brigade Speer and the Legion Speer - were combined and placed under the name NSKK Transport Group Todt under the NSKK group leader Wilhelm Nagel . Nagel had previously headed the transport department of General Building Inspector Speer within the GBI , and he led the new organization until the end of the war. In June 1944, Nagel's organization was given the name “Speer Transport Command” or “Speer Transport Corps”. In October 1942 it had almost 50,000 vehicles and about 70,000 men.

In addition to its many other tasks, the Speer transport corps was also responsible for the transport of art and cultural goods from the front line and from the occupied countries to Germany (see art theft ). Towards the end of the war it was also concerned with the resettlement of German Mennonites from the Soviet Union .

Transport fleet spear

As early as 1937, Speer formed the so-called Speer transport fleet in order to use its numerous inland transport ships to transport the granite stones delivered from Sweden and Norway to the German seaports for Germania via the German inland waterway network to Berlin. After the outbreak of the war, it was mainly used to supply Berlin with coal and other raw materials. During the preparation for the planned invasion of Great Britain in 1941, the staff of the transport fleet moved Speer to Groningen , because ship material and trained inland navigation personnel were available in the Netherlands . In mid-1942, the supply of the OT task force Wiking in Norway and thus the material supply and the transport of equipment for all OT construction sites in Denmark and Norway was transferred to her and she was incorporated into the OT. The head of operations was “Grand Captain” Erik Seyd, a shipowner . The Speer transport fleet grew to around 10,000 men, mostly Norwegian seafarers who were trained in the Speer School in Sandefjord . With the increasing bombing of road and rail junctions, transport by sea became more and more important: in July 1944 the Speer transport fleet managed more than 2000 ships with a total tonnage of around 500,000 GRT, the 31 sea and inland ports in France, Belgium , the Netherlands and Germany , Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Soviet Union , Romania and Italy.

Command flags

In the autumn of 1944 special command flags were introduced for the Speer transport corps and presumably from December 1944 onwards they came into force at the same time as a dressing order for the Speer transport corps. The flags were to be made of sheet metal and attached to the left fender of the vehicle. All stander or pennants had a size of 32 × 22 cm. The stand for the corps leader was quartered diagonally, black above, red below, and white on the left and right. In the lower quarter was the badge of the transport corps in black, consisting of the stylized letters "SP", which stood for the name "Speer". The replacement inspector received a pennant with black, white and red stripes of the same width, with the corps badge in black in the center. A stand was provided for regimental commanders or section leaders, dark blue-black-dark blue stripes with the corp symbol in the middle in white. Department leaders were assigned the same pennant model.

  • Corps leader

  • Substitute inspector

  • Regimental commander,
    section leader

  • Department head

literature

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Willi A. Boelcke (Ed.): Germany's armament in the Second World War. Hitler's conferences with Albert Speer 1942–1945. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 133 ff.
  2. ↑ The 1st Battalion of the 3rd Regiment was destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad .
  3. ^ Seidler: The National Socialist Motor Corps and the Todt Organization in World War II. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Vol. 32, No. 4, 1984, pp. 625-636, here p. 633.
  4. ^ Thomas, Jurado: Wehrmacht Auxiliary Forces. 1992, pp. 5-7.
  5. ^ Seidler: The National Socialist Motor Corps and the Todt Organization in World War II. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Vol. 32, No. 4, 1984, pp. 625-636, here p. 634.
  6. ↑ The Legion had five recruiting areas: West (Paris), Norway (Oslo), Southeast (Belgrade), East (Kiev) and Reich (Berlin-Nikolaussee).
  7. ^ Nuremberg Trial, Count 3 H , Zeno.org, accessed September 26, 2015.
  8. ^ Seidler: The National Socialist Motor Corps and the Todt Organization in World War II. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Vol. 32, No. 4, 1984, pp. 625-636, here p. 635.
  9. ^ Freighter shipping Erik Seyd.
  10. ^ Seidler: The National Socialist Motor Corps and the Todt Organization in World War II. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Vol. 32, No. 4, 1984, pp. 625-636, here p. 635.
  11. ^ Thomas, Jurado: Wehrmacht Auxiliary Forces. 1992, pp. 5-7.
  12. ↑ Andreas Herzfeld: The Rimann'sche collection German car flags and car Stander. Volume 1: Germany until 1945 (= contributions to German automobile history. 2). German Society for Flag Studies, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-935131-08-7 , pp. 239, 241.