Fritz Sauckel
Ernst Friedrich Christoph Sauckel was a German Nazi politician and convicted war criminal. As General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment from March 1942 until the end of the Second World War, he oversaw the mobilization of forced labour for the benefit of the German war effort.
Born in Haßfurt in Bavaria, Sauckel worked as a seaman from a young age. During the First World War, he was interned in France as an enemy alien. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and established himself as a leading party organiser in Thuringia. He was appointed Gauleiter of Thuringia in 1927 and, following Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Reichsstatthalter in 1933; he would retain both positions until the end of the Nazi regime.
During the Second World War, Sauckel was responsible for regional defense until 1942, when he was appointed General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, working directly under Hermann Göring's Four Year Plan office. In this capacity, he deported some five million workers from occupied territories for forced labour in German industries, often by brutal coercion. In addition, he authorized the use of prisoners of war in response to ever-increasing demands.
At the end of the war, Sauckel was arrested by American troops in Salzburg. He was among the 24 major war criminals accused in the Nuremberg trials before the International Military Tribunal. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging in October 1946.
Early years
Born in Haßfurt, as the only child of a postman and a seamstress, Sauckel attended the local volksschule and the gymnasium in Schweinfurt, leaving in 1909 without graduating when his mother fell ill. He joined the merchant marine of Norway and Sweden when he was 15, first on a Norwegian three-masted schooner, and later on Swedish and German vessels. Starting off as a cabin boy, he went on to sail throughout the world, rising to the rank of Vollmatrose. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was on a German vessel en route to Australia when the vessel was captured by French naval forces. He was subsequently interned as an enemy alien in France from August 1914 until 20 October 1919. While interned, he studied mathematics, languages and economics.When released, he returned to Germany and found factory work for the next few years in Schweinfurt as an apprentice locksmith and toolmaker in the ball-bearing works. In 1919 he joined the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest and most influential anti-Semitic organization in Weimar Germany. He served as its local manager for Lower Franconia until 1921. Moving to Thuringia, he studied engineering at a technical school in Ilmenau from 1922 to 1923, but was expelled for his political activities.
Nazi career
Sauckel joined the Nazi Party in January 1923 and cofounded an Ortsgruppe in Ilmenau, serving as its Ortsgruppenführer. He also enrolled in the SA, the party’s paramilitary organization. He planned a "March on Berlin" with about 80 followers in conjunction with Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 9 November 1923. However, he and 22 followers were arrested and briefly detained in Coburg before the march could get under way. Despite the forced dissolution of the party in the wake of the failed putsch, Sauckel remained politically active, establishing a right wing organization called Bund Teja, giving speeches, founding an SA front organization in Thuringia named Deutscher Wanderverein and serving as the Bezirksleiter for Thuringian Forest. He also became in 1924 the publisher of a small newspaper in Ilmenau, which in 1925 would merge with another paper and develop into the official organ of the Party in Thuringia, Der Nationalsozialist. Published in Weimar, he would serve as its editor from 1927 until 1945. Sauckel thus established his credentials as an Alter Kämpfer with whom Hitler always retained strong bonds of loyalty. In 1924 he married Elisabeth Wetzel, with whom he had ten children.After the ban on the party was lifted, Sauckel became the business manager for Gau Thuringia under Gauleiter Artur Dinter in March 1925 and formally rejoined the party on 6 April. On 6 February 1927, he was also named Deputy Gauleiter and Gau Organisationsleiter, in charge of personnel issues. Sauckel succeeded Dinter as Gauleiter of Thuringia on 30 September 1927 and would retain this position until the end of the Nazi regime.
On 8 December 1929, Sauckel was elected to the Landtag of Thuringia as one of six Nazi deputies that would hold the balance of power there between the leftist and center-right parties. On 23 January 1930, a coalition government took office in Thuringia which for the first time in Germany included Nazi ministers, Wilhelm Frick and Willy Marschler. Sauckel, though not included as a State cabinet minister, became the leader of the Nazi faction in the Landtag. Following the 31 July 1932 election, the Nazis captured 42.5% of the votes and 26 seats, and Sauckel became the new Leading Minister of State as well as the interior minister from which portfolio he controlled all the State police and security apparatus.
Following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Sauckel was appointed to the new position of Reichsstatthalter of Thuringia on 5 May 1933, a post he would retain until May 1945. The new post was created to provide more centralized control over the State governments. On 8 May he left the Thuringian cabinet and was succeeded by Willy Marschler. On 9 November 1933, Sauckel was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer and, on 12 November, he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 12, retaining this seat until the fall of the Nazi regime in May 1945.
On 9 September 1934, Sauckel joined the SS as an SS-Gruppenführer at the invitation of Heinrich Himmler and was assigned to SS-Oberabschnitt Mitte based in Weimar until 1 April 1936 when he was transferred to the staff of the Reichsführer-SS. Upon the death of Wilhelm Friedrich Loeper Sauckel was appointed to succeed him as the acting Reichsstatthalter of both Anhalt and Brunswick from 30 November 1935 to 20 April 1937. On 23 January 1937 Sauckel was made the head of the Main Office for the Four Year Plan in Thuringia. He was also given an honorary rank of SA-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1937.
World War II
At the start of World War II on 1 September 1939, Sauckel was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis IX headquartered in Kassel. This district comprised Gau Thuringia along with Gau Electoral Hesse, the eastern half of Gau Hesse-Nassau and smaller parts of four neighboring Gaue. In this position, he was entrusted with supervising civil defense measures over a large area, including air raid defenses and evacuations, as well as control over the war economy, rationing and suppression of the black market. On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and he remained Commissioner for only his Gau of Thuringia. A member of the SS since 1934, he was promoted to honorary SS-Obergruppenführer on 30 January 1942. He was a holder of the Golden Party Badge.General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment
On 21 March 1942, Sauckel was appointed to the position for which he would be forever linked in history, General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment on the recommendation of Martin Bormann.Sauckel worked directly under Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring within the Four Year Plan Office, obtaining and allocating labour for German industry and agriculture. On 27 March 1942, Göring issued a decree naming Sauckel the Leader of the Department of Labor Allocation within the Four Year Plan. In response to increased demands for labour from German war industries, Hitler issued a decree on 30 September 1942 granting Sauckel extraordinary powers over both civil and military authorities in the occupied territories. His agents were authorized “to issue directives to the competent military and civilian authorities” to ensure an adequate supply of labourers. Sauckel therefore met the ever-increasing requirement for manpower with people from the occupied territories. Voluntary numbers were insufficient and forced civilian labour was introduced within a few months. Of an estimated five million foreign workers brought to Germany, only around 200,000 came voluntarily, according to a March 1944 statement by Sauckel introduced as evidence at the Nuremberg trials.Image:Łapanka w Alei 3go Maja.jpg|left|thumb|upright|Street roundup of random civilians in Warsaw's Żoliborz district, 1941
The majority of the acquired workers originated from the Eastern territories, especially in Poland and the Soviet Union where the methods used to gain workers were very harsh. The Army was used to pressgang local people and most were taken by force to the Reich. In addition to forced civilian labourers, Sauckel authorized the use of prisoners of war. Conditions of work were extremely poor and discipline severe, especially for concentration camp prisoners. All the latter were unpaid and provided with starvation rations, barely keeping those workers alive. Such slave labour was widely used in many German industries, including coal mining, steel making, and armaments manufacture. The use of forced and slave labour continually increased throughout the war, especially after Albert Speer, the Reichsminister of Armaments and War Production, in April 1942 brought about the formation of the Central Planning Board, which determined the labor requirements of industry, agriculture and all other components of the German war economy, and requisitioned that labor through Sauckel’s office. It has been estimated that over 12 million such laborers eventually were brought forcibly to Germany to work, often by brutal coercion.File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2007-0074, IG-Farbenwerke Auschwitz.jpg|thumb|upright|Woman with Ostarbeiter badge in Auschwitz