Wilhelm Peter Lillig

Wilhelm Peter Lillig (born September 19, 1900 in Landsweiler / Saar; † May 24, 1945 in Hinterzarten ) was a German mining engineer and senior economic functionary at the time of National Socialism .

As a close collaborator of Paul Pleiger in the Office for German Raw Materials , he participated in the implementation of the National Socialist four-year plan against the German steel industry in 1936/37 . From 1938 to 1945 he was head of the Salzgitter mining group of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring . After the attack on Poland and later on the USSR , he took on special tasks to exploit the heavy industrial areas that had been conquered . As deputy head of the central office for special mining tasks, he was responsible for the underground relocation of the German armaments industry in 1943/44 , in which numerous concentration camp prisoners were killed. In 1945 Lillig died while clearing ammunition in the Black Forest.

Life

School, training and early career

Wilhelm Peter Lillig was born as the son of the builder Wilhelm Lillig in Landsweiler / Saar. He attended the Ludwigsgymnasium Saarbrücken , where he passed the Abitur in 1919 . He then worked in mining on various coal and ore mines in Saarland and in the Rhine and Dill area. From 1920 Lillig studied at the Clausthal Mining Academy , where he passed his diploma examination at the end of 1924. In Clausthal he joined the Corps Montania Clausthal student union . From 1925 to 1928 Lillig worked as a mining engineer or as a mining and processing engineer on tin and lead-silver-zinc ore mines in Bolivia . Between 1929 and 1931 he was the technical director of the ore trading company Bicker & Cia, Bilbao (Spain); then he took over the post of director of the Skaland graphite plant in Senjen (Norway). In 1932 he received his doctorate in engineering. at the Technical University of Berlin . Politically, Lillig was already part of the right-wing extremist camp as a student : According to his own statements, he had already turned to National Socialism in 1922/23 .

Professional failure

In 1933 Lillig looked around for a job in Germany. His professional experience and his political preferences were a strong recommendation for a post that the right-wing extremist Saar industrialist Hermann Röchling had to fill . At the beginning of 1934, Lillig was hired by Röchling as managing director of a new mining company in southern Baden . The Baden Prime Minister Walter Köhler drew a rather benevolent picture of Lillig in his memoirs: According to this, Röchling had hired him “a warrior who broke into the peaceful Black Forest idyll like a guy from another planet. Part driver, part buddy, but always with full commitment, he was the man to set up a company [...] on the green meadow, and on the other hand to pound the plaster with his bunch at the miners' parties in such a way that the honest Black Forests fear and fear has been. Since he was also eager to unravel the Black Forest blood, he made himself unpopular with the parents of his chosen ones, so that complaints about complaints reached me. I held the bar for him. "

Lillig ran his mining company, Doggererz-Bergbau GmbH , in a way that openly scorned the ideal of a national community , which was propagated by party officials . The working and living conditions were so unsocial that protests broke out among the workforce. For a long time, the Baden government prevented the situation from improving and rigorously fended off unpleasant controls by the German Labor Front . In the autumn of 1935, Lillig himself even asked the Gestapo to carry out drastic cleanups in his company. That it did not come about was mainly due to the Villingen employment office, which came to the conclusion: “To be honest, the workers make such a broken impression that it must be surprising that the work is still being carried out and that there is still no open revolt The Gestapo also found that the miners were exposed to working conditions “which should be impossible in a National Socialist Germany.” After the Baden government moved away from him at the end of 1935, Lillig lost his position as managing director. As a result of business incompetence, he had significantly exceeded his budget and made numerous incorrect dispositions. His employer later had Lillig's activities examined by external experts and was certified that the former managing director had “irresponsibly exceeded his powers”, “personally usurped rights and added funds”, which was to be seen as behavior “which was hard on them The limits of business and personal morality are touching. ”Professional colleagues admitted that Lillig had failed because of his ambition and inexperience.

Career in the state-controlled arms sector

Walter Köhler kept the terminated Lillig afloat economically with a state contract until he found a post in the Berlin four-year plan organization: in 1936 he became a consultant in the office for German raw materials , which pushed the state-ordered armament against the private sector. As an ore expert , Lillig put not only his previous employers but also the entire German coal and steel industry under pressure to significantly increase the production of domestic iron ores . Lillig's mentor was Paul Pleiger , who later became the initiator and chairman of the board of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring . In 1938, Pleiger appointed Lillig head of the Salzgitter mining group of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring. After the start of the war, Lillig took on a number of special tasks on a part-time basis, including the functions of Reich Commissioner for Coal Mining in the Olsa Region (1939) and that of Special Representative for Ore Mining in Ukraine (1941). In these positions he was responsible for securing German armaments by quickly restarting mining in the conquered eastern regions.

Management function in the underground relocation of the German arms industry up to accidental death

In 1944 Lillig was appointed deputy head of the central office for special mining tasks. This association was set up at the instigation of Paul Pleiger to control the withdrawal of miners from mining operations in the Reich and to coordinate their use in the underground relocations of German armaments companies. Lillig was extremely responsible for numerous projects in which thousands of concentration camp prisoners were tortured and died. His personal presence on site is documented in the projects “A 8 / Goldfisch” (relocation of the Daimler-Benz aircraft engine plant in Genshagen to Obrigheim), “Hochhausen”, “Steinbutt” and “Kiebitz”. At war's end the led Lillig as special envoy Reich SS and the Army High Command - Chief H Rüst u BdE an office in Hinterzarten. In April 1945 he was captured by French troops and used to clear ammunition by the occupying forces, who probably used Nazi officials specifically for dangerous work. According to reports from contemporary witnesses, a shot from a recovered pistol was released, fatally injuring Lillig.

Entanglement in the Nazi system

As a functionary in the Berlin raw materials office and as mining chief of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring , Wilhelm Peter Lillig was deeply involved in the war preparations of the Nazi state. His high level of responsibility as a senior construction functionary in the underground relocation of armaments factories, his permanent presence in projects, the realization of which cost numerous SS prisoners their lives, “casts a deep, dark shadow on his life. One will have to place Lillig in the category of the considerate and moral-free technocrats of the “ Third Reich ” who were able to live out their inferior personality parts unrestrained. ”Whether Lillig was a member of the NSDAP or the SS is uncertain. In the Federal Archives , no such documents exist. Lillig himself stated in 1940 that he was “active in the party in 1922/23”, but the documents later disappeared.

literature

• 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 .
• Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Blumberg - The forced industrialization of a farming village . In: Municipalities under National Socialism. Administration, party and elites in southwest Germany . Jahn Thorbecke Verlag Ostfildern, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7995-7843-1 , p. 189-215 .
• Matthias Riedel: Mining and iron and steel industry in Ukraine under German occupation (1941–1944). In Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 21 (1973) pp. 225–284 .
• 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. ↑ Lillig's curriculum vitae in his dissertation, published in 1937, investigations into the enrichment possibilities of poor red iron ores that have grown together with quartz and quartzites by means of flotation, carrying out comparative tests on ores from Krivoi-Rog, South Russia, and Melilla-Rif, North Africa , Triltsch-Verlag, Würzburg 1937
2. ↑ Walter Köhler, unpublished memoirs [1976], pp. 203 f.
3. ↑ Villingen employment office at Bad. Ministry of Finance and Economics of October 24, 1935. Quoted from: Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Blumberg - The forced industrialization of a farming village . In: Municipalities under National Socialism. Administration, party and elites in southwest Germany . Jahn Thorbecke Verlag Ostfildern, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7995-7843-1 , p. 189–215, here: 196 .
4. ↑ So in retrospect the report of the Gestapo commissioner Dennecke of December 15, 1938. Quoted from: Wolf-Ingo Seidelmann: Blumberg - The forced industrialization of a farming village . In: Municipalities under National Socialism . S. 197 .
5. ↑ 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 , p. 71 .
6. ↑ 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. S. 87-95 .
7. ↑ So Lillig in his letter of April 22, 1940 to Wilhelm Meinberg , Lower Saxony Economic Archives Braunschweig NWA 2/10540.
8. ↑ Further: Matthias Riedel: Mining and iron and steel industry in Ukraine under German occupation (1941-1944). In Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 21 (1973) pp. 225-284, here: 251-254 .
9. ↑ 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. S. 396-397 .
10. ↑ 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. S. 396-397 .
11. ↑ So Lillig in his letter of April 22, 1940 to Wilhelm Meinberg , Lower Saxony Economic Archives Braunschweig NWA 2/10540.