Central Planning Board
The Central Planning Board was a high level governmental production planning agency set up in Nazi Germany, which was active between 1942 and 1945. Its main aim was to make more efficient use of raw materials and manpower in directing the German war economy.
Establishment
The Board was formally established on 22 April 1942 by a decree of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring in his capacity as Representative of the Four Year Plan. The Board initially was composed of: Albert Speer, the Reich Minister of Armaments and Munitions, as well as the General Plenipotentiary for Armament Tasks in the Four Year Plan, Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch, the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation, and Paul Körner, the State Secretary for the Four Year Plan and a close associate of Göring. In September 1943, Walther Funk, the Reich Minister of Economics, as well as the General Plenipotentiary for the Economy, was added as a fourth member.According to Speer, he and Milch jointly brought the idea for a central planning agency within the Four Year Plan to Göring on 2 April 1942 and Goring approved it, with the caveat that his close associate Körner be included. About its creation, Speer stated:
This “Central Planning” soon became the most important institution in our war economy. Actually, it was incomprehensible that a top board of this sort to direct the various programs and priorities had not been established long ago.
Functions and results
The Board had supreme authority over procurement and allocation of raw materials and scheduling of production for the German war economy, and sought to achieve consolidation of all controls over German war production in a single agency. It determined the labor requirements of industry, agriculture and all other components of the German war economy, and made requisitions for and allocations of that labor. In this, it made use of conscripted foreign forced laborers and prisoners of war by requisitioning labor from Fritz Sauckel, the General Plenipotentiary for the Allocation of Labor. The Board determined the total number of laborers needed for German industry and required Sauckel to produce them, usually by deportation from occupied territories. The Board requisitioned labor with the full knowledge that their demands would be supplied by foreign forced labor. It has been estimated that over 12 million such laborers eventually were brought forcibly to Germany to work, often by brutal coercion.The Board held its first meeting on 27 April 1942. War crimes proceedings after the war documented some 58 meetings of the Central Planning Board between its establishment in April 1942 and May 1944, the period of its peak activity.
The Board's efforts had a dramatic effect on German industrial output. From 1942 to 1943, ammunition production more than doubled, aircraft production increased from about 14,000 to over 25,000 and production of tanks rose from 5,500 to 12,000. Production continued to rise the following year, reaching a peak in the second half of 1944.