Oswald Pohl

Oswald Pohl
Oswald Pohl as a defendant before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal
Born	30 June 1892 (1892-06-30) Duisburg-Ruhrort
Died	8 June 1951(1951-06-08) (aged 58) Landsberg am Lech
Cause	Execution
Conviction(s)	War crimes and crimes against humanity committed as the business administrator of the Nazi concentration camp system
Penalty	Death by hanging
Occupation	Naval paymaster, political operative, Nazi official

Oswald Pohl (30 June 1892 - 8 June 1951) was a Nazi official and member of the SS (with a rank of SS-Obergruppenführer), involved in the mass murders of Jews in concentration camps, the so-called Final Solution.

Early years

Pohl was born in Duisburg-Ruhrort as the son of blacksmith Hermann Otto Emil Pohl and his wife Auguste Pohl (née Seifert); he was the fifth of a total of eight children. After graduating from school in 1912, he became a full-time sailor in the Imperial Navy, being trained in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven as well as the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. During World War I, he served in the Baltic Sea region and the coast of Flanders. Pohl also attended a navy school, and became paymaster on 1 April 1918; most of his time in the navy from then on was spent in Kiel. On 30 October of the same year, he married.

After the end of the war, Pohl attended courses at a trade school, and began studying law and state theory at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel; he dropped out of university soon again though, and became paymaster for the Freikorps "Brigade Löwenfeld", working in Berlin, Upper Silesia and the Ruhr basin. In 1920, like many others involved in the Lüttwitz-Kapp Putsch, he was accepted into the Weimar Republic's new navy, the Reichsmarine. Pohl was transferred to Swinemünde (now in Poland) in 1924.

SS career

One year later, in 1925, Pohl became a member of the SA, then finally joined the re-founded Nazi party on 22 February 1926 as member #30842. He met Heinrich Himmler in 1933 and became his protégé; he was appointed chief of the administration department in the staff of the Reichsführer-SS ("Reich leader SS", RFSS) and given the rank of SS-Standartenführer on 1 February 1934 and began to influence the administration of the concentration camps.

His career continued when he was made Verwaltungschef (chief of administration) and Reichskassenverwalter ("Reich treasurer") for the SS on 1 June 1935, then initiated the Inspektion der Konzentrationslager ("Concentration Camps Inspectorate"), an organization to organize and oversee the administration of the concentration camps. He also founded the "Gesellschaft zur Förderung und Pflege deutscher Kulturdenkmäler" ("Society for the preservation and fostering of German cultural monuments"), which was primarily dedicated to restoring the Wewelsburg, an old castle that was supposed to be turned into a cultural and scientific headquarters of the SS at Himmler's request. The "society" soon became a part of Pohl's SS administration office. Pohl also left the Roman Catholic Church in 1935.

Concentration camp administrator

Oswald Pohl as a Nazi official.

In June 1939 Pohl became chief of both the "Hauptamt Verwaltung und Wirtschaft" ("main bureau [for] administration and economy", part of the SS) and the "Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten" ("main bureau [for] budget and construction", part of the Reich's ministry for the interior). On 1 February 1942, both institutions were combined into the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (SS-WVHA, "SS main bureau for economic administration") with Pohl in charge; among other things, the SS-WVHA was in charge of the organization of the concentration camps, deciding on the distribution of detainees to the various camps and the "rental" of detainees for slave labour until 1944.

Pohl was made SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS on 20 April 1942; on 12 December the same year, after divorcing his wife, he married Eleonore von Brüning, widow of Ernst Rüdiger von Brüning, who in turn was the son of one of the founders of the Hoechster Farbwerke which became part of the IG Farben in 1925.

In 1944, Pohl was put out of charge of the concentration camps, with the Rüstungsministerium (ministry of armament) overtaking; at the same time, the responsibility for construction was also taken away from the SS-WVHA. However, Pohl remained in charge of the administration of the Waffen-SS for the remainder of the war.

Postwar

Oswald Pohl receives his sentence of death by hanging.

After the end of World War II in 1945, Pohl first hid in Upper Bavaria, then near Bremen; nevertheless, he was captured by British troops on 27 May 1946 and sentenced to death on 3 November 1947 by an American military tribunal after the Nuremberg trials for crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a criminal organization as well as for mass murders and crimes committed in the concentration camps administered by the SS-WVHA he was in charge. However, Pohl was not executed right away.

Officially, Pohl never left the Catholic Church, but stopped visiting churches from 1935 on. When it 'suited him best' during the Nuremberg trials, the ex-SS man started to see a Roman Catholic priest again, as he ascertained the American prison psychiatrist Dr. Goldensohn in 1946. In 1950, Pohl's book Credo. Mein Weg zu Gott ("Credo. My way to God") was published with permission from the Catholic Church, which Pohl had rejoined. He was executed shortly after midnight on 8 June 1951 in Landsberg am Lech, where he was hanged after a long series of appeals. Pohl insisted on his innocence until his death, stating that he was only a "simple functionary".^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Pohl Trial
• Ernst Lerch
• Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe

Awards and decorations

• Iron Cross 2nd Class (World War I)
• Honor Cross for Combatants 1914-1918
• Turkish War Medal (World War I)
• Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross in Silver with Swords
• German Cross in Silver
• War Merit Cross 1st Class with Swords
• War Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords
• SS Honor Sword
• SS Honor Ring

Bibliography

• Jan Erik Schulte, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium der SS. Oswald Pohl und das SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933-1945, Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Schöningh, 2001

• Literatur Institute of Documentation Israel Tuviah Friedman ( Direktor ) spezial Collection Oswald Pohl 161 Documente

Persondata
Name	Pohl, Oswald
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	30 June 1892
Place of birth	Duisburg-Ruhrort
Date of death	8 June 1951
Place of death	Landsberg am Lech