Allgemeine-SS Agencies--Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA)

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Figure 1.--

This was the Economic and Administration Main Office which among other functions administered the concentration camp system. The SS-WVHA was responsible for managing the Allgemeine-SS's finances, supply, and business operations. It was also given responsibility for the concentration camps. The SS-WVHA had a role in implementing the Holocaust Final Solution through its Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards (Totenkopfverbände). The great bulk of the killing was done by RSHA units in the death camps and the Einsatzgruppen, also RSHA formations. There were, however, economic aspects to the Holocaust. Property was stolen from Jews under various guises until ultimately they were forced to turn over their last personal belongings before being shot or gassed. Even after death gold fillings were extracted. SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl worked with Reichswirtschaftsminister Walter Funk concerning financial aspects of the Holocaust. These items were transported from occupied Poland to Berlin in WVHA-marked crates for processing at the Reichsbank, the German central bank. The Reichbank director was Emil Puhl. Some 76 WVHA transports reached Berlin (August 1942-January 1945). This was some of the most vissible property. The SS-WVHA also managed slave labor which they in some cases rented to out to German corporations involved in the war economy.

Origins

Hitler's seizure of power meant that huge opportunities for profit opened up to the SS (January 1933). Himmler immediately opened up economic bureaus (February 1933). They were the Hauptamt Verwaltung und Wirtschaft (Main Office Administration and Economy) and the Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten (Main Office Budget and Construction). Largely because it controlled the concentratiion camps with prisoners which could be used for slave labor, these units began acquiring a wide range of businesses. The two original units were merged in 1942 Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt (SS-WVHA). After the failure of Barbarossa and the survival of the Red army along with Hitler's declaration of war on America, NAZI Germanyb faced a long war of attrition against a growing coalitiion of enemies with enormouus manpower, industrial, an raw material resources. The creation of the WVHA was an effort to harness the potential resources of the occupied powers.

SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl (1942-45)

SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl developed a close relationship witgh SS-Ruich Führer Himmler and was given a wide range of administrative assisnments. Pohl was one of the faceless beaureacrats that made the Allgemeine-SS such an effective killing machine. Pohl's most important was Chief of the SS-WVHA (1942-45). Pohl was born in Duisburg-Ruhrort (1892). His father was Hermann Otto Emil Pohl, a blacksmith. His mother was born Auguste Seifert). He was in the middle of a large family, the fifth of a eight children. He graduated from school (1912). He decided to pursue a career in the expanfing German navy. He was trained in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and went on cruises to the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. During World War I (1914-18), he served with the Baltic Sea Fkleet and of the coast of Belgium. He attended a Navy school. He became a paymaster (1918). He was then most in Kiel until the War ended. He married just befor Germany asked fir an Armistice. Pohl after the War enrolled at a trade school and also began studying law and state theory at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel. He soon dropped out of the University and became paymaster for the Freikorps Brigade Löwenfeld which operated in Berlin, Upper Silesia and the Ruhr basin. Along with others involved in the Lüttwitz-Kapp Putsch (1920), he was accepted into the Weimar Republic's new navy, the Reichsmarine. The Treaty of Versailles limited the Army and Navy, so this was a real boon. He was posted to Swinemünde, a Baltic Sea port (1924). He like many veterans was attracted to the right-wing groups like the NAZI Party and joined the SA (1925) and then the NAZI Party which was reorganized after Beer Hall Putch and Hitler's release from jail (1926). He became member No. #30842. He first met SS-Reichführe aftter Hitler and the NAZIs seized power (1933). It was a time of rapid expansion for the SS. Himmler saw something in Pohl, we are not sure just what, but certainly tghey included both loyakty Abnd organizatiional talent. Himmler first made him a kind of protége. Himmler appointed him chief of the administration department in his personal staff (Reichsführer-SS). This was the fuirst of several overlapping assignments given to Pohl. He was awarded the rank of SS-Standartenführer (1934). From an early point, Pohl began to play an important role in the administration of the new concentration camps that the SS was establishing. Himmler was pleased with Pohl's work. He made Pohl Verwaltungschef (chief of administration) and Reichskassenverwalter (SS Reich treasurer) (1935). Himmler then created the Inspektion der Konzentrationslager (Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps) to oversee the operation of the camps and supervise the camp commanders. Himmler alsiob chose him to head the Gesellschaft zur Förderung und Pflege deutscher Kulturdenkmäler ("Society for the Preservation and Fostering of German Cultural Monuments). This did not real decribe the units objective. It was actually to carry out one of Himmler's pet projects, restoring the Wewelsburg, an feudal castle that was supposed to be turned into a cultural and scientific headquarters of the SS. The Society and its Wewelsburg project became a part of Pohl's SS administration office.

Operation Reinhard (1941-43)

The SS-WVHA had a role in implementing the Holocaust Final Solution through its Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards (Totenkopfverbände). The killing was done by the WVHA SS-TV in the the death camps and Auschwitz and just as Operation Reinhard was beginning, the RSHA Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. There were also economic aspects to the Holocaust. Property was stolen from Jews under various guises until ultimately they were forced to turn over their last personal belongings before being shot or gassed. Even after death gold fillings were extracted. SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl worked with Reichswirtschaftsminister Walter Funk concerning financial aspects of the Holocaust. These items were transported from occupied Poland to Berlin in WVHA-marked crates for processing at the Reichsbank, the German central bank. The Reichbank director was Emil Puhl. Some 76 WVHA transports reached Berlin (August 1942-January 1945). This was some of the most vissible property. The SS-WVHA also managed slave labor which they in some cases rented to out to German corporations involved in the war economy.

Organizational Units

The SS-WVHA as it was organized in 1942 under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl had five principal Ämter or Amtsgruppe (Departments). Amt. D and E played an important role in the Holocaust and in the forced labor that supported the NAZI war economy.

Amt A, Finance, Law and Administration


Amt B, Supply, Administration and Equipment


Amt C, Buildings and Works


Amt D, Concentration Camps

It is unclear why the camp ststem was not put in the habds of the Reich Security Office (RHSA), another makor SS unit. Presumably it was because it was seen at an early point that the the camp system had economic potential whih is presumably why Himmler placed it in the WVHA. The NAZIs opened the first concentration camp within a few days of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. The occasion was the buring of the Reichstag. Hitler activated Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution into effect. This gave the Government (meaning the NAZIs) the authority to take away the civic rights of German citizens. The first victms were not the Jews, but the political opposition, especially the Socialists and Communists. The first concentration camp was established a Dachau for those arrested after the burning of the Reichstag and for commiting other serious crimes threatening the state, meaning aanyone who had irritated Hitler and other NAZIs or who posed a political threat. [Berenbaum, p. 18.] The only segment of Germany society at the time that was imune was the military. The SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death'shead Units--SS-TV) were created to run the camps. SS-Oberführer Theodor Eicke was appointed the commander of Dachau which became the blueprint for the Gernman concentration camp system. With the outbreak of World War II, Eike was put in charge of forming a TV-SS military unit ( 939). It eventually became the 3. SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf They earned a formidable combat record and committed numerous attrocities. Himmler then turned to SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, from Eike's staff, to head Amt D: Konzentrationslagerwesen . This made him the highest-ranking SS Concentration Camp Inspector. He was personally close to Reichsführer-SS Himmler. Through control of the camps, Glückswas played a major role in expanding forced labor to support the war egffort. He also supervised the medical practices in the camps, ranging from human experimentation to thecarrying out the Final Solution", especially the mass murder of Jews usingb Zyklon-B gas.

Amt W, Economics

The WVHA as structured was to expand the SSs contribution to the German war effort by using forced labor available in concentratiion camps to expand armaments manufacture and construction projects. The Germans had been killing Jews and Polish and Soviet POWS rather than using them for labor. They did not stop killing Jews, with a few exceptuions, but did begin to somewhat improve conditions for Soviet POWS in Arbeitslager (work camps). Amt W was given responsibility for this undertaking. It proved to be largest and most lucrative WVHA division. As the War continued to go against Germany, Amt began demanding higher work outputs from its slave workers, but did not provide improved food rations or better living conditions. Instead they began brutaklizing the prisoners even more. Besides the inhumnity of this operation, it probably actually disrupted production. The workers were not left in oopen field to starve as was done duing thw winter of 1941-42, but their food rations were not adequate for hard labor in Strafkompanies.

Business Operations

The SS-WVHA operated a range of business ventures that the SS began acquiring in the mid-1930s. Some were busineeses seized from Jewish owners. Others were labor-intensive operations for which slave labor could be used to good effect like stone quaries, brick making, and forestry. By 1945 the SS-WVHA controlled more than 500 business throughout the Reich, Some were major commercial enterprises. , The numbers and ecionomic value would have been much larger as this not inclue thev many commercial operations seized by the SS in the occupied East.






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Created: 5:11 AM 8/4/2013
Last updated: 5:20 PM 8/4/2013