Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement sur la Shoah à l'Est

H-NET BOOK REVIEWPublished by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (February 2007)
Hermann Kaienburg. _Die Wirtschaft der SS_. Berlin: Metropol, 2003.1,200 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. EUR 49.00 (cloth), ISBN3-936411-04-2.
Reviewed for H-German by Alex J. Kay, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut fürKriegsfolgen-Forschung
An Economic Empire built on Forced Labor

Long before Hermann Kaienburg explicitly points out, on page 1,035 of hismammoth study on the SS economy, that the work of concentration campprisoners constituted the SS's "most important asset," it becomes clearto the reader that the economic empire of the SS was one built on forcedlabor. By 1944/45, approximately 700,000 concentration camp inmateswere imprisoned in a total of more than one thousand (KZ) satellitecamps dotted over Germany, Austria and the bordering territories stillunderGerman rule (pp. 391, 431). The exploitation of this form of laborbelonged to the "basic principles" of the SS economy (p. 1,017). Thementality of abuse so evident in the terror and security tasks of the SSfor which it is best known also flowed into the establishment and growthof its economic enterprises.
In the introduction to his book, Kaienburg convincingly argues the casefor writing a work of this nature by pointing to the many gaps in theexisting literature on SS economic concerns. The author does make clearthat he was only able to take into consideration new publications up to1998 (p. 35). It would certainly have been interesting, however, to knowhow Jan Erik Schulte's work on Oswald Pohl and the SS's Economy andAdministration Main Office (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, WVHA), mighthave influenced Kaienburg's results.[1] The goal of Kaienburg's work istodescribe the aims and developments of the SS economy by surveyingindividual periods and various sub-divisions. Furthermore, the authorrecognizes that the exhaustive amount of source material he has consultedallows for the development of a more complete overall picture of thetopicthan has been available (p. 32). In the realization of these aims,Kaienburg is successful. Following the introduction, the book is brokendown into four main sections, which are in turn divided into chapters andsub-chapters. The first examines the pre-1933/1934 history of the SS ingeneral; the second focuses on the economic ventures of the SS during theperiod 1933 to 1939; the third examines the years 1938/1939 to 1945; andthe fourth and final section is devoted to analyzing the aims and resultsof the SS economy.
Any SS interest in the field of economics is barely detectable before1934. This attitude changed with the events of June and July 1934 and thedemise of the SA, which allowed the SS to move into the foreground andassert itself as the most important instrument for the consolidation ofHitler's power (p. 83). With the transfer of control over concentrationcamps to the SS in 1934, economic concerns and workshops were set up atthe camps to take care of the personal requirements of the campsthemselves and those SS members employed in them, namely the Death's HeadUnits (p. 114). The economic complex at Dachau was the first to beestablished. Kaienburg postulates that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmlerenvisaged at a very early stage that the SS should profit from themanpower of the concentration camp inmates and in this way establish anatleast partial economic autonomy (p. 117). Indeed, the SS leadership madeplans long before the outbreak of war for an increase in the number ofprisoners in the camps as soon as war broke out. Likewise, the expansionof the KZ workshops into large SS concerns was by no means an improvisedreaction to unforeseen developments (pp. 858-859 and 1,091). As Kaienburgconsistently makes clear, their aim from the beginning was to achieve themost extensive supply of SS units possible by means of exploiting theprisoners (pp. 463, 857 and 1,000-1,006).
Himmler played a very hands-on role in economic matters. All fundamentaldecisions crossed his desk (p. 229). Usually the varied economicconcerns,associations and trusts controlled, and in some cases owned, by the SSemerged as a result of Himmler's direct involvement, sometimes at hispersonal instigation (p. 234). Economic enterprises had become soimportant to Himmler by the late 1930s that the establishment of newconcentration camps was dependent on the location of the enterprises,which had already been determined, and not vice versa (p. 457). Hitler'sdecision to entrust Himmler with control of settlement policy in October1939 constituted "in the following years the most important reason fortheacquisition of countless economic concerns" (p. 464). Furthermore, thesymbolic value of this policy area was so high that the SS portrayed manyof its economic activities as though they directly and significantlyrelated to settlement policy, even when this was not the case (p. 464).Itwas Himmler, and not one of his subordinates, who was the driving forcebehind SS expansion in the production of mineral water, an area in whichfew would have expected the SS to be interested. Himmler's involvement inthe drinks industry was justified by Oswald Pohl, who cited Himmler'sstruggle, as Chief of the German Police, against alcohol abuse and theunwillingness of private firms to equalize the prices of alcohol andnon-alcoholic beverages (p. 465). By late 1943, the SS supplied aroundthree-quarters of the German mineral water market (p. 476).
The attainment of dominant, monopoly-like positions in the mineral waterindustry and in publishing, where the Nordland-Verlag, acquired by theSS at the end of 1934, became the third largest German publishing house,was, however, an exception (p. 1,087). In fact, the SS embarked on manyeconomic ventures that must be considered outright failures. In theannexed Slovenian territories, for example, it proved impossible for theSS to exert control over building materials concerns located there, dueto the ongoing and decisive influence of the local Gauleiter (pp.564-582).The same applies to unilateral attempts to take over economic concerns inthe occupied Soviet territories following the invasion of June 1941, inspiteof the appointment of the Chief of the Reich Security Main Office,ReinhardHeydrich,[2] as liaison officer to the Reich Ministry for the OccupiedEastern Territories (pp. 582-588, 1,037). Despite having constructed thebuildings, SS efforts at the beginning of 1942 to bring armamentsconcernsunder their control failed due to stiff opposition within privateindustry(pp. 498-500). These examples demonstrate that the SS was in economicterms"powerful, but not all-powerful" (pp. 219, 234).
Throughout the 1930s, the SS was in the enviable position of not beingobliged to pay anything for the benefit of having a labor reservoir atits disposal in the form of many tens, and later hundreds of thousands ofconcentration camp inmates, because the concentration camps were financedout of public funds (p. 99). In June 1940, protests had grownsufficientlyvocal for Pohl to make the symbolic payment of 30 pfennig per inmate perworking day to the Reich Finance Ministry (p. 421). This token amount didnot alter the fact that the SS could supply very large numbers oflaborersat a far cheaper price than any other economic organization. Until thesecond half of 1942, it had been almost exclusively the SS that hadbenefited from the work of these prisoners, but the objections of privateindustry to the perquisites enjoyed by the SS and shortages in the wareconomy made it increasingly difficult for the SS to retain the prisonersfor its own purposes. As a result, from 1943 onwards the majority ofconcentration camp inmates were recruited to work in various areas of thewar economy (pp. 1,010, 1,063). Due to their treatment and the terribleconditions in which they were forced to work, the performance of theprisoners compared for the most part veryunfavorably with that of voluntary workers (pp. 672, 1,062-1,063). Thisresult was offset by the deployment of massive numbers of prisoners.In the case of the German Armaments Works PLC (Deutsche AusrüstungswerkeGmbH, DAW), the largest of all the SS concerns, the substantial rise inprofits experienced between 1940 and 1944 corresponded to the rise in thenumber of prisoners employed by them (p. 935).
One issue that occupies Kaienburg a great deal is how the SS leadershipsought to reconcile, in the treatment of concentration camp prisoners,thepolitical aim of repression and annihilation on the one hand and economicgain on the other. He concludes that terror, the political aim, alwaysretained priority in the concentration camp system (pp. 249, 704). Thatthe exercise of terror received priority over productivity considerationsis hardly surprising, given that the primacy of politics over economicswas acentral factor in National Socialist thinking. This approach prevailednot only in the treatment of prisoners. As political reliability countedformore than professional expertise in the appointment of personnel toimportantpositions in economic concerns, management errors were made repeatedly,some of which were grave (pp. 245, 351, 823, 1,043). In spite of the"invaluable economic potential" it had at its disposal in the form offorced labor (p. 1,091), the SS economic organization ultimately provedtobe "too inefficient" (p. 1,096) and never became an important factor inthe German war economy (p. 1,088). Even with regard to the long-held aimof achieving autarky in the supplying of its own organizations in ordertoconsolidate its political freedom of action, the SS never came close(pp. 1,088-1,090).
Readers are advised not to follow the example of this reviewer and readthe book from cover to cover, but rather to treat it as a referencework. In this capacity, the book's foremost asset, namely its scope andexhaustive detail, is of greatest benefit. On occasion, however, thelength and density of the study obscure the very pertinent questionsthe author has set himself. This problem is particularly apparent, forexample, in the sub-chapter on the German Earth and Stone Works PLC(Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH, DESt), which covers almost 170 pages.Analysis takes a back seat to the flood of dates, figures and otherparticulars and is limited to a handful of pages at the end of thesection. All in all, Kaienburg's tome constitutes both a laudableachievement and a valuable and welcome addition not only to scholarshiponthe activities of the SS, but also on National Socialist economicthinkingand practice. The volume also contains appendices and an extensive indexhelpfully broken down according to person, place and institution.
Notes
[1]. Jan Erik Schulte, _Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung. DasWirtschaftsimperium der SS. Oswald Pohl und dasSS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933-1945_ (Paderborn:Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001). Schulte's work does, however, feature inthe selected literature listed at the back of Kaienburg's book.
[2]. Kaienburg incorrectly refers to Heydrich as "Gestapochef Heydrich"(p. 802, n. 128). Heinrich Müller was Chief of the Gestapo.

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