Wehrwirtschaftsführer

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Civil pin of a WeWiFü
Albert Speer (right) congratulates military economist Edmund Geilenberg (left) on being awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross (May 1944), photo from the Federal Archives
Willy Messerschmitt (1958)

Wehrwirtschaftsführer (WeWiFü) was an honorary title in the National Socialist German Reich , which was awarded to the heads of armaments companies as part of the awards of the NSDAP .

The Wehrwirtschaftsführer were appointed from 1935 by the Defense Economics and Armaments Office in the OKW . The intention was to bind them to the Wehrmacht and to give them a quasi-military status. After 1938 the appointment was made by the Reich Ministry of Economics . From 1940, leading representatives of non-armaments companies were also awarded this title more and more often in order to document the conversion of the companies to the needs of the war economy. In the case of appointments made before 1940 in particular, the title hardly says anything about the owner's political proximity to the Nazi regime or the importance of his company in the armaments industry. An appointment as military economist made it easier to worsen labor law conditions for workers and employees in the company concerned.

Wehrwirtschaftsführer (selection)

A total of around 400 people were appointed military economic leaders, including:

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Erker and Toni Pierenkemper: German entrepreneurs between the war economy and reconstruction: Studies on the formation of experience by industrial elites , Oldenbourg, 1999, ISBN 978-3-486-56363-4 . P. 5.
  2. ^ Gustav-Hermann Seebold : A steel company in the Third Reich - The Bochumer Association 1927–1945. Peter Hammer Verlag Wuppertal 1981, p. 242.
  3. ^ Manfred Overesch: Bosch in Hildesheim 1937–1945: Free Entrepreneurship and National Socialist Armaments Policy . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-36754-4 .
  4. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 404.
  5. ^ Simon Reich: Ford's Research Efforts in Assessing the Activities of its Subsidiary in Nazi Germany . Pittsburgh PA 2001, p. 30.