Fritz Sauckel

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Fritz Sauckel
Minister-President of Thuringia
In office
26 August 1932 – 8 May 1933
Preceded byErwin Baum
Succeeded byWilly Marschler
Additional positions
1935—1937Acting Reichsstatthalter of the Free State of Anhalt
1935–1937Acting Reichsstatthalter of the Free State of Brunswick
1933—1945Member of the Greater German Reichstag
1929—1934Member of the Landtag of Thuringia
Personal details
Born(1894-10-27)27 October 1894
War crimes
Crimes against humanity
TrialNuremberg trials
Criminal penaltyDeath

Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel (27 October 1894 – 16 October 1946) was a German

war crimes and crimes against humanity
, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging.

Early years

Born in

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 (able seaman). 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.[1]

When released, he returned to Germany and found factory work for the next few years in Schweinfurt as an apprentice

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[2]
from 1922 to 1923, but was expelled for his political activities.[3][need quotation to verify]

Nazi career

Sauckel joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in January 1923 (member 1,395) and cofounded an Ortsgruppe (Local Group) 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 active in political activities, 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 (District Leader) 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 (old fighter) with whom Hitler always retained strong bonds of loyalty. In 1924 he married Elisabeth Wetzel, with whom he had ten children.[4]

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.[5]

On

Minister-President) as well as the interior minister from which portfolio he controlled all the State police and security apparatus.[7]

Following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Sauckel was appointed to the new position of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) 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.[8] On 9 November 1933 Sauckel was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer and on 12 November he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 12 (Thuringia).[9]

Sauckel in his Gauleiter uniform, 1937

On 9 September 1934, Sauckel joined the

SA-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1937.[8]

World War II

At the start of

Wehrkreis (Military District) 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.[12] A member of the SS since 1934, he was promoted to honorary SS-Obergruppenführer on 30 January 1942.[10] 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 (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz) on the recommendation of Martin Bormann.[13]

Identity document issued to a Polish forced labourer in 1942, together with a letter "P" patch that Poles were required to wear.

Sauckel worked directly under

round-up of random civilians in Warsaw's Żoliborz
district, 1941

The majority of the acquired workers originated from the Eastern territories, especially in

Auschwitz

Final months of the war

On 1 July 1944, following the division of the Prussian

Oberursel and, finally, in Nuremberg.[18]

Trial and execution

Sauckel's body after execution, October 16, 1946

On 20 November 1945, Sauckel was put on trial before the

International Military Tribunal as a major war criminal. He was indicted on all four charges of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes and crimes against humanity. He defended the Arbeitseinsatz
as "nothing to do with exploitation. It is an economic process for supplying labour". He denied that it was slave labour or that it was common to deliberately work people to death (extermination by labour) or to mistreat them. Yet, documents put into evidence showed that he was complicit in exploiting the labourers:

All the men [prisoners of war and foreign civilian workers] must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.

— Letter from Fritz Sauckel to Alfred Rosenberg, 20 April 1942, Report on Labor Mobilization Program[19]

Robert Servatius, Sauckel's counsel, portrayed Sauckel as a representative of the labour classes of Germany; an earnest and unpretentious party man assiduously committed to promoting the collective utility of the working class. This portrait was contrary to that of Speer, whom Servatius juxtaposed against Sauckel as a technical genius and entrepreneurial administrator. Sauckel surmised that Speer bore greater legal and moral responsibility by virtue of the fact that the former merely met the demands of the latter, in accordance with protocol. This strategy did not yield to his favour, however, as the ratio in the final judgement against the respective defendants outlined that Speer's tasks were numerous, with the forced labour program comprising only one facet of his ministerial responsibilities, while Sauckel was singularly responsible for his office as General Plenipotentiary. Sauckel was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was hanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946, 11 days before his 52nd birthday after receiving Communion.

Spandau prison, one of the most controversial verdicts of the Nuremberg trials. The discrepancy of an effective subordinate facing death with the superior facing a prison sentence has faced much attention and criticism in historical analysis, including by Gitta Sereny, who later interviewed Speer concerning his responsibility for slave labour.[23]

Sauckel's body, as were those of the other nine executed men and the corpse of Hermann Göring, was cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar.[24][25][26]

Portrayal in popular culture

Fritz Sauckel has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theatre productions;

See also

Literature

  • Steffen Raßloff: Fritz Sauckel. Hitler "Muster-Gauleiter" (Thüringen. Blätter zur Landeskunde 36). Erfurt 2004. (PDF) (translation into English)
  • Steffen Raßloff: Fritz Sauckel. Hitlers "Muster-Gauleiter" und "Sklavenhalter" (Schriften der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen. Bd. 29). 3. Auflage, Erfurt 2008.
    ISBN 978-3-937967-18-9 (PDF
    )

References

  1. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 11–12.
  2. ^ Greve, Swantje (26 June 2017). "Der Generalbevollmächtigte für den Arbeitseinsatz und das Reichsarbeitsministerium". In Nützenadel, Alexander (ed.). Das Reichsarbeitsministerium im Nationalsozialismus: Verwaltung – Politik – Verbrechen. Geschichte des Reichsarbeitsministeriums im Nationalsozialismus (in German). Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. p. 389.
    ISBN 9783835340817
    . Retrieved 6 January 2023. Nach der Entlassung arbeitete er als Hilsarbeiter in Schweinfurt, begann eine Lehre als Metallarbeiter und besuchte seit 1921 das Technikum in Ilmenau, das er jedoch ohne Abschluss 1924 wieder verließ.
  3. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 12–14.
  4. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 14.
  5. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 14–15.
  6. ISBN 978-0-854-96517-5
    .
  7. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 16.
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-398114834-3
    .
  9. ISBN 3-87847-163-7
    .
  10. ^ a b Williams 2017, p. 116.
  11. ISBN 978-3-451-80892-0
    .
  12. ISBN 0-582-49200-9
  13. ISBN 3-87847-163-7
    .
  14. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 27–29.
  15. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 44.
  16. ^ "Trials of the War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Volume II: The Milch Case, p. 374" (PDF). United States Printing Office. 1950. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  17. ISBN 0-306-80793-9
    .
  18. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 39–41.
  19. ^ Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals. Vol. II. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. 1950. p. 407 (doc. 016-PS). Online edition, Internet Archive.
  20. ^ "The Strange Story of the American Pastor Who Ministered to Nazis". 24 August 2014.
  21. ^ Railton, Nicholas M. “Henry Gerecke and the Saints of Nuremberg.” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, vol. 13, no. 1, 2000, pp. 112–137. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43750887. Accessed 8 Feb. 2021.
  22. ^ Kern, Erich (1963). Deutschland im Abgrund: das falsche Gericht (in German). p. 264.
  23. ^ "Gitta Sereny 1995 Interview with Charlie Rose about her book 'Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth'". YouTube.
  24. ^ Darnstädt, Thomas (2005). "Ein Glücksfall der Geschichte". Der Spiegel (in German). No. 14 - 13 September. p. 128.
  25. ISBN 978-1-61608-109-6
    .
  26. ISBN 978-0-670-03008-8
    .

Bibliography

External links
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