Author | Michael Thad Allen |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Publication date | 2002 |
Publication place | University of North Carolina Press |
ISBN | 9780807826775 |
The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps is a book by Michael Thad Allen which focuses on the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and its role in the Nazi concentration camps and slave labor of Nazi Germany. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Theodor Eicke was a senior SS functionary and Waffen SS divisional commander during the Nazi era. He was one of the key figures in the development of Nazi concentration camps. Eicke served as the second commandant of the Dachau concentration camp from June 1933 to July 1934, and together with his adjutant Michael Lippert, was one of the executioners of SA Chief Ernst Röhm during the Night of the Long Knives purge of 1934. He continued to expand and develop the concentration camp system as the first Concentration Camps Inspector.
Oswald Ludwig Pohl was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps, he was a key figure in the Final Solution, the genocide of the European Jews. After the war, Pohl went into hiding; he was apprehended in 1946. Pohl stood trial in 1947, was convicted of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death. After repeatedly appealing his case, he was executed by hanging in 1951.
Hans Kammler was an SS-Obergruppenführer responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret V-weapons program. He oversaw the construction of various Nazi concentration camps before being put in charge of the V-2 rocket and Emergency Fighter Programs towards the end of World War II. Kammler disappeared in May 1945 during the final days of the war. There has been much conjecture regarding his fate.
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian and is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting the Final Solution, the behavior of those implementing Nazi policies, and the use of survivor testimony. He is the author of nine books, including Ordinary Men (1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution (2004).
Richard Glücks was a high-ranking German SS functionary during the Nazi era. From November 1939 until the end of World War II, he commanded the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D". As a direct subordinate of Heinrich Himmler, he was responsible for the forced labour of the camp inmates and was the supervisor for the medical practices in the camps, ranging from Nazi human experimentation to the implementation of the "Final Solution", in particular the mass murder of inmates with Zyklon B gas. After Germany capitulated, Glücks committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule.
Extermination through labour is a term that was adopted to describe forced labor in Nazi concentration camps whose inmates were held in inhumane conditions and suffered a high mortality rate; in some camps most prisoners died within a few months of incarceration. In the 21st century, research has questioned whether there was a general policy of extermination through labor in the Nazi concentration camp system because of widely varying conditions between camps. German historian Jens-Christian Wagner argues that the camp system involved the exploitation of forced labor of some prisoners and the systematic murder of others, especially Jews, with only limited overlap between these two groups.
The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the Allgemeine-SS. It also ran the concentration camps and was instrumental in the implementation of the Final Solution through such subsidiary offices as the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards.
August Franz Frank was a German SS functionary in the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, generally known by its German initials WVHA. The WVHA was, among other things, responsible for the administration of the Nazi concentration camps. After the war, the higher WVHA officials, including Frank, were tried and convicted of crimes against humanity.
The Concentration Camps Inspectorate (CCI) or in German, IKL was the central SS administrative and managerial authority for the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Created by Theodor Eicke, it was originally known as the "General Inspection of the Enhanced SS-Totenkopfstandarten", after Eicke's position in the SS. It was later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D".
The SS Medical Corps was a formation within the SS of professional doctors who provided medical services for the SS, including experiments on and the development of different methods of murdering prisoners. Members of the SS Medical Corps also served on the front with the Waffen-SS as support personnel practicing field expedient medicine on wounded members of the SS.
Wilhelm Gideon was a Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.
Anton Loibl GmbH was a company owned by the SS which was a funding source for the Ahnenerbe research branch and the Lebensborn eugenics programme. It was created to market a bicycle reflector invented by Anton Loibl, a chauffeur for Hitler. It employed slave labour.
SS-Junker Schools were leadership training facilities for officer candidates of the Schutzstaffel (SS). The term Junkerschulen was introduced by Nazi Germany in 1937, although the first facilities were established at Bad Tölz and Braunschweig in 1934 and 1935. Additional schools were founded at Klagenfurt and Posen-Treskau in 1943, and Prague in 1944. Unlike the Wehrmacht's "war schools", admission to the SS-Junker Schools did not require a secondary diploma. Training at these schools provided the groundwork for employment with the Sicherheitspolizei, the Sicherheitsdienst, and later for the Waffen-SS. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, intended for these schools to mold cadets for future service in the officer ranks of the SS.
Alon Confino was an Israeli cultural historian. He served as the Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies and a Professor of History and Judaic Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps is a book by German historian Marc Buggeln which deals with the forced labor that prisoners had to perform in Nazi concentration camps. The book, which primarily deals with Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps, was published in 2014 by Oxford University Press.
Forced labor was an important and ubiquitous aspect of the Nazi concentration camps which operated in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe between 1933 and 1945. It was the harshest and most inhumane part of a larger system of forced labor in Nazi Germany.
West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past is a book by American historian S. Jonathan Wiesen, published by University of North Carolina Press in 2001. It focuses on how West German industrialists whitewashed their participation in Nazi crimes during the ten years after the war.
Private sector participation in Nazi crimes was extensive and included widespread use of forced labor in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe, confiscation of property from Jews and other victims by banks and insurance companies, and the transportation of people to Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps by rail. After the war, companies sought to downplay their participation in crimes and claimed that they were also victims of Nazi totalitarianism. However, the role of the private sector in Nazi Germany has been described as an example of state-corporate crime.
Richard Friedrich Wetzell is an American historian specializing in German criminology and research fellow at the German Historical Institute.