Every office chief was isolated from everything that went on outside his four walls.
Having established these "facts", they then fall fack on the Fuehrer Order to show why they could not possibly have known what was taking place next door.
"Globocnik lived in a veil of secrecy", testified Frank, "he never discussed these things with anybody." Baier testified:
"We didn't know about the things and now, whenever I look at the documents, and I look at what happened within a short distance from my place of work, I can only think that probably these things were kept secret by virtue of the Fuehrer's order."
The defendants frequently insisted that the only unifying force, the only connecting link in the entire WVHA existed in the person of Oswald Pohl. He was the only one, they say, who know what the whole picture was and how the activities of the organization were connected with the concentration camp system and the Reinhardt action. The rest of us were just little men who sat at our desks and did our own unimportant jobs without having any notion of the implication or effects of what we were doing. Pohl kept us absolutely in the dark. This is a corollary of part of the defendants' strategy which has already been described. We have mentioned that they have apparently concluded to throw Pohl to themselves. By depicting him as the only coordinating clement in the whole WVHA, they are seeking to ring the most out of this sacrifice.
The only difficulty is that this description of the WVHA flies into the teeth of all the evidence concerning its history and reason for being, and indeed into the teeth of all human experience. The whole purpose of creating an Economic and Administrative Main Office in the SS was to have one central agency to handle all matters in these spheres which affected any of the thousands of SS agencies, units, institutions and industries.
Instead of having a series of separate agencies handling different matters without reference to each other, all the agencies were merged into one and put under the command of one man. When a matter which affected affairs that were administered by four of five offices was discussed, enough copies of the memo announcing the decision were made for all the offices concerned and was simply distributed within the building. When a problem arose in one office whose solution could be expedited by another, it was a simple matter for the heads of the offices involved to arrange for a conference or even to settle the matter over the telephone.
That a close liaison between all the offices did exist is shown by document after document. The case of the Stutthof concentration camp, whose affairs were rather entangled, bears this out very clearly. Practically every office of the WVHA was concerned. In February 1940 Pohl and Heydrich, Chief of the RSHA, recommended to Himmler that the civilian internment camp at Stutthof near Dantzig be converted into a concentration camp.
In February 1942, the WVHA took over the camp and Pohl immediately ordered that it be expanded so that it could accommodate 25,000 inmates. Prior to Pohl's acquisition of the camp, however, an important conference and inspection took place at Stutthof in January 1942. It was to be determined how the SS industries would fit into the picture. Pauly, the commandant, a representative of the Higher SS and Police Leader, the Chief of the Amtsgruppe for Construction; the Inspector of the W offices, Maurer; defendant Volk representing Staff W; and three other representatives from Staff W participated. The results of the conference are contained in a report to Pohl signed by the participants including Volk. The report states that the concentration camp is to house 25,000 inmates including prisoners of war. The report also refers to "special camp for free labor for the running of the factories." This was a reference to Polish workers. These camps, the report states, contain "evicted Polish families" totaling about 11,500 individuals. These entire families were to be kept in confinement for at least another two or three years. The report sets out in detail all of the machinery for taking over the concentration camp by the WVHA and for operating the concentration camp enterprises.
A few days after the conference, Volk wrote Hohberg a memorandum, the contents of which show the importance of Volk's participation in the conference and inspection at Stutthof.
In describing the brick works at the Concentration Camp, which were to be taken over by DEST, Volk says that the works have a production capacity of eight million bricks, and the stones cost 135 RM per thousand, and that since there are only 29 employees the works "must be lucrative". Of course nothing is included in his calculation for the cost of labor to be furnished by inmates of the camp. That is why the industry would be particularly "lucrative". In the memorandum, Volk goes on to propose methods by which the brick works may be brought under the Reichsfuehrer-SS.
The brick works were in fact successfully brought under the SS, and specifically under the operation of DEST and the defendant Mummenthey. In a letter from Volk to an official of the concentration camp, dated 25 April 1942, Volk states that the brick works were acquired by the Reich through SS-Obercharfuehrer Hoffmann of Staff W and that Hoffmann was "following my instructions". On the stand, Volk testified that his letter was "wrong to some extent, but not quite wrong". He said that Hoffmann was not at that time in the legal department of Staff W, but was in the legal department of DEST. However, Volk could not deny -- as his letter states -that he had instructed Hoffmann to acquire the brick works. Volk was obviously disturbed by the fact that the documents had shown 1) that he had given instructions in establishing a concentration camp enterprise and 2) that he had given instructions to an official of DEST. Both propositions he had previously denied.
In addition to DEST, two other SS industries under W IV and W V respectively, operated enterprises at Stutthof with concentration camp inmates.
W IV and WV rented the enterprises from the Reich. Rental was collected by Amtsgruppe B which was in charge of accommodations. The Reich had purchased the enterprises through office III (Legal Office) of Amtsgruppe A.
Upon Pohl's acquisition of the concentration camp he wrote to Himmler:
"I issued an order for the extension of the camp immediately after taking over."
Building plant for extension of the camp were drawn by Amtsgruppe C.
Kiefer's office C-II was also involved in negotiations since it was planned that the construction industries in connection with Stutt hof were to be placed under office C-II.
It was also of course necessary for the budget office under Hans Loerner and the auditing office under the defendant Vogt to take a part in the establishment of the concentration camps.
In September 1942 Hans Loerner gave his "opinion" to the accounting court on the Stutthof concentration camp as follows:
"The establishment of collecting camps for undesirable Polish elements in the territory of the City of Dantzig was already necessary in the August days of 1939 and even more so at the beginning and end of the Polish campaign."
The report by Hans Loerner goes on to detail the mechanics of budget and finance in connection with the concentration camps, and shows that the "Chief of the Budget Office" was required to have rather extensive knowledge of concentration camp affairs. Loerner relates that within a short time, seven collecting camps were established; that the construction of the Stutthof Concentration camp was begun on its present site; and that certain funds for building the camp were made available by the Dantzig Police treasury. Financing of the concentration camp is dealt with in detail in the report, which refers to the source of revenue for feeding, clothing and housing the prisoners and to the fact that the concentration camp enterprises became self supporting only after the WVHA took charge of the concentration camps. The report was prepared by Loerner after conferring with Vogt of office A-IV.
Hans Loerner issued an order, after conferring with Pohl that after the purchase of certain real estate by the Reich on behalf of the DWB, the amount of 300,000 RM would have to be paid back by the DWB to the Reich.
A memorandum from the Legal Department of Staff W, by Hoffmann to Baier and Volk, states "If necessary, detailed information relating to this subject may be obtained from SS-Obersturmfuehrer Vogt, Chief of the auditing Office."
Thus every Amtsgruppe played an essential part in setting up the concentration camp and getting it into operation. It is wrong to talk about Pohl running the concentration camps. This was a job which he could not perform by himself. It was rather a job which was carried out by the five Amtsgruppen of the WVHA.
The whole spirit of the organization was to cut out wasted motion caused by formalities and cut out red tape. The following letter by Georg Loerner illustrates this very clearly.
"Every employee of the Office I is herewith given the opportunity to inform himself about the organizational structure of his Office, the sphere of work, the basic rules of business procedure, etc. I expect every employee of the Office to thoroughly familiarize himself with these regulations in order that he may on his part contribute to the avoidance of any wasted effort and to the speeding up of the transaction of business.
*** *** I expect every employee of the Office to show pleasure in performing his duty with the utmost sense of responsibility, and not to find in my office any bureaucracy and red tape.
All employees of the Office are free to discuss their personnel worries and needs with me at any time. As far as possible I shall assist them by word and deed."
Document after document shows how the various officials of the WVHA had conferences together to settle matters which affected them all. Kammler had weekly meetings with Eirenschmalz and Kieffer. There were regular consultations of the W office chiefs. We quote from the minutes of one of them:
"The Amt Chiefs were asked to attend this meeting, not because a special point is up for discussion, but because it had been noticed that, lately, when evacuating certain Amts, regular cooperation between the staff and the offices is not always assured. Especially now, when the offices are very much dispersed, it is necessary more than ever before, to cooperate very closely with the Staff."
In other words, even after the Allied bombardment of Berlin had made it necessary for the various offices to be in different buildings, the same close liaison was maintained. Under such circumstances it is preposterous for those defendants to talk about the Fuehrer Order as a reason for their ignorance of what was happening. Yet this is one of the standard excuses. "I didn't know what was going on outside of my office. The reason I didn't know was Fuehrer Order # 1."
Another example of the complete integration of the entire Main Office is the matter of deputyship. One becomes a little dizzy trying to follow this: Frank and Georg Loerner were successively Pohl's deputies; Fanslau was Frank's deputy; Hans Loerner was Fanslau's deputy; Tschentscher was Georg Loerner's deputy; Kiefer and Eirenschmalz were Kammler's deputies; Maurer was Gluecks' deputy and Sommer was Maurer's deputy. Hobberg and Baier were Pohl's deputies in W, and Volk was Baier's deputy. Almost everyone in the dock, in addition to his own duties, had a deputyship to perform. This makes the claim that no one heard anything except what went on in his own office even more absurd.
But Frank explained that the WVHA was different from other agencies in Germany, because elsewhere the deputy was expected to know everything about his chief's work, whereas in the WVHA being a deputy was merely a "formality". Nobody else was able to devise a more likely explanation, so it was also incorporated into the manual of defense strategy and repeated by the other defendants.
Another standard defense is that what the defendant did was in accordance with German Law at the time.
August Frank used this, for instance, in defending his order that the property of deceased inmates "with the exception of Poles, Jews and Russians" was to be returned to their families: that is the property of Poles, Jews and Russians was to be confiscated.
The answer to this is simple enough. Pohl and most confederates here have used the phrase "seizure of power" to describe Hitler's becoming Reich-chancellor in 1933. From that time on, as the judgment in the I.M.T. trial shows, Hitler was the supreme power in the German Reich. Anything that Hitler wanted to become a law did become a law. Its incorporation into statutory or decretal form was merely a matter of phraseology. The German laws after 1933, were nothing except the expressions of Hitler's will. When, therefore, a defendant says that what he did cannot be a crime because it was authorized by German law, he is in effect saying that what he did cannot be considered a crime because Hitler wanted it done.
Another one of these stock narratives turns up in the testimony when the question of the attitude of a particular defendant toward the Jewish question is raised. To read these pages of the testimony alone, one would think that he had before him an extract from Voltaire's essay on Tolerance rather than the testimony of an ex-general in the Waffen-SS who was charged with the administration of part of the concentration camp system. When the question of the defendant's attitude toward the Jews was introduced in the course of his examination, the first effort he made was to clamber up his family tree until he found some Jewish or half-Jewish in-law.
If this search was fruitless, he fell back his childhood associations at school and at play with Jewish children and how friendly their relations had been. Next, he recalled the fact that during the First World War he had known some Jews in the Wehrmacht who had been excellent officers. Then he told about some Jewish family that he had taken under his wing after the seizure of power and personally protected as much as he could.
Finally, if possible, he produced a handful of affidavits from Jewish acquaintances to the effect that they always regarded him as a sterling character and that he had expressed his disapproval of the atrocities to them. The "proof" of each defendant's spotless record so far as anti-semitism is concerned was usually produced in exactly the order which has been stated.
We now pass on to another standard defense. The defendants had apparently heard by their lawyers that according to the I.M.T. judgment, if a man was drafted into a criminal organization, its crimes could not be laid at his door. Forthwith, several of the defendants became draftees. This is another defense which is so feeble that it is wearisome to have to answer it.
Now although a man can be drafted and forced at the point of a gun, if need be, to chop wood or carry water, no one can force him to display the energy and administrative skill which was necessary in order for him to become a legal advisor, business executive, colonel or general in one of the most important main offices of the entire SS.
The contention on the part of any of these defendants that their service in the SS was a kind of involuntary servitude is symptomatic of more desperation than good judgment. Some of them have been connected with concentration camp affairs ever since such institutions existed in Germany. Indeed, an affiliation with concentration camps was evidently regarded as a laurel and a badge of merit. Among the documents are letters recommending promotions for various defendants. Time after time, one of the reasons given in support of the recommendation is that the candidate has been active in the administration of the concentration camps for a long time. This is proof enough of the esteem in which such activity was held. Another proof is that the SS administrative officers who survived the test of time and rose to the top were all men who had extensive experience in administrative affairs of the concentration camps.
Within the higher echelons of the SS, connection with the concentration camp system was evidently analogous to having been editor of a law review or a fellow in All Souls College. Experience with the concentration camps carried with it a prestige which was almost unique.
The change in attitude which has taken place between the time the defendants were walking around in their black boots and stylishlytailored uniforms in the WVHA office and they time they took the stand before this Tribunal is startling. It now appears, if one is to believe them, that they deliberately avoided these very tasks which appear in their personal service record as marks of high commendation. Even when they are compelled to admit that they were involved in the administration of the concentration camp system to some extent, they now say that this was only an incidental job and they did not approve of their having been forced to assume it in the first place.
These defendants were the indispensable men of the SS. It is not difficult to find a person with sufficient training and experience to qualify him to fling a can full of Zyklon B gas crystals into a room and slam a door, but it would have been quite a problem to replace a man who was in charge of an SS industry which 500 brockworks or to find a capable successor for men like Vogt and Volk who were apparently walking abstracts of title to the real estate and fixtures of the concentration camps. To say that these men were drafted to do their jobs is utterly fantastic. They did their work with efficiency because they liked it, because they were devoted to the SS, because they were blotched and infected by this same weird, mad fanaticism. They performed their jobs so well in fact that as time went on they passed from glory to glory and received promotions in recognition of their work.
It is perhaps laboring a point to rebut further the argument that these men were drafted to their kind of work, but a corollary to the argument is the question that so many of the defendants have asked: "What could I do? I was already in the midst of this organization by the time I discovered its connection with these frightful things." The implication is that, short of committing suicide, it was impossible for them to disassociate themselves from these sinister deeds.
We know, however, that nothing so dramatic would have been required. It was not necessary, in order for one of these defendants to terminate his affiliations with the WVHA, for him to walk into the office of the Reichsfuehrer SS, click his heels, salute, and announce in bold, clear tones that he disapproved of the slave labor system, the concentration camp system, and the extermination program. All that he had to do, in order to be quickly relegated to Limbo, was to be guilty of a few lapses of memory, a few exercises of bad judgment, a few administrative blunders. After that, he would not have been burdened with the care of administering an important function in the WVHA. Vogt himself testified that when he tried to retire on a pension, he was told that resignations were only allowed for inefficiency.
We now pass on to another standard defense or explanation. Hoess, it will be remembered, was the commandant of Auschwitz and later Chief of Amt D-I, Kammler was the Chief of Amtsgruppe C, and Gluecks was Chief of Amtsgruppe D, Lolling was Chief of Amt D-III. All of these men are now presumably dead, and as has been point out, the defendants have sought to strew as many of these crimes as possible on their hearses. But to do this is not enough. If, for example, the defendants merely say that Kammler was responsible for this and that atrocity, the fact still remains that there were regular Saturday conferences between Kammler, Kiefer, Eirenschmalz and the other Amt Chiefs of Amtsgruppe C; and if Kammler was such an evil genius, then his subordinates could not have avoided being tarred with the same brush.
In order to disengage themselves from the honrs of this dilemma, it was necessary to divide Kammler into two separate parts. There had to be a Jekyll and a Hyde. This dichotomy was accomplished by saying that Kammler acted in two different capacities. First, he was Chief of Amtsgruppe C. In this role he was Jekyll. His acts were morally pure as the driven snow.
But he was also, the defendants say, commissioned by Himmler to carry out the armament program. In this role he was Hyde. His actions in one capacity were completely divorced from what he did in the other. The defendants knew Kammler only as Jekyll. They were not even aware that Hyde existed.
In this ingenious way, it could be explained how a man could be in constant contact with one of the directing spirits of the crimes which form the basis of the indictment in this case without ever having known that such crimes were committed. We have given Kammler as one example of this Jekyll-Hyde treatment. It was also applied to Hoess, Lolling and Gluecks. All of them are also said to have received special commissions from Himmler, and their acts in carrying out their assignment under these commissions we are told, were absolutely unrelated to their acts in carrying out their duties as officials in the WVHA. Although Hoess was under me at the time, Pohl said, he was acting not as Concentration camp commandant in exterminating the Jews, but as Himmler's special commissioner. This is, as we have said, a uniform plea, but it is to be admired more for its ingenuity than for its plausibility.
Another standard argument is that the SS industries were not SS industries. Pohl was the first defendant who took the stand. In the course of his testimony he mentioned the phrase "SS enterprises" time after time, just as he always had in his correspondence when he was directing them. The strategy had not been perfected apparently at that time, but when the other defendants were questioned on this subject, they had ready an involved explanation that this phrase was inaccurate and misleading.
Volk is an example.
After he made such an explanation, he was asked how he could reconcile it with a letter which he had written in 1942 to the Reich Minister of Justice in which he said that since the purpose of these industries was to employ concentration camp inmates and since they were headed by SS officers they "therefore are actually establishments of the SS." His answer was that he had given a good deal of thought to this matter since his arrest and that he had concluded he must have been mistaken about the nature of these enterprises at the time the letter was written.
Volk was asked to define what, in his opinion, an SS enterprise was. He then read such a definition and pointed out that the W industries did not fall within its terms. It then appeared, however, that he himself was the author of the definition and that the type of business organization which it envisaged had never in fact existed anywhere. In other words he was saying while I was in jail, "I composed a description of an imaginary business concern which corresponded to my conception of what an SS industry would have been if such a thing had existed. These industries which did exist did not fulfill the requirements of my definition so, therefore, they were not SS industries although the SS controlled them, named their director, operated them, furnished concentration camp inmates for their labor supply, obtained the funds for their operation, and controlled the disposition of their profits". This convincing explanation apparently won Pohl over. When he took the stand the second time, he was asked whether the W industries were SS industries and he replied that they were not.
So much then for the common defenses and explanation. They are so feeble and grotesque that it is a little insulting to the Court's intelligence to waste time in rebutting them.
We have not mentioned them here because we feel they need to be answered so much as because the fact that they were so uniformly adhered to be so many of the defendants shows how the close liaison and spirit of cooperation which existed among them while they had adjoining offices in the big building on Unter den Eichen is still being carried on in the Palace of Justice here at Nurnberg. If anything, the coordination is closer now than it was then.
Everything that has been said, of course has a direct bearing on the credibility of the defendants. There are so many examples of contradictory statements made by the same defendant and of testimony squarely at loggerheads with documents which the defendant admitted to be correct that an enumeration of all these inconsistencies would almost amount to the abstract of the entire record.
The defendant Frank, for example, testified that he left the WVHA because he became troubled in conscience by the close connection between Amtsgruppe D and the rest of the organization and because he was upset by his connection with the Reinhardt Action. The truth of the matter is that the job of Administrator of the Police which Frank took over after he left the WVHA was actually higher and more desirable than the position he held under Pohl. It put him in a position where, when the office of Administrative Chief of the Army was open in 1944, he was able to squeeze Pohl out and obtain the job for himself. The Tribunal will remember his saying that relations between him and Pohl became rather strained as a result of this. The real reason Frank left the WVHA was that he was promoted to a more important job in recognition of the excellent record which he had made as Deputy Chief there.
The most audacious distortion made by any defendant on the witness stand was Frank's explanation for his ignorance of the Reinhardt Action until relatively late. After saying that "Himmler and Globocnik were real masters of cunning and deception", he went on to explain:
One has to understand further that there was another camouflage, that, for instance, the money, the cash, went in the treasuries of the Waffen-SS, and therefore to the Reich treasury; the gold and jewels went to the Reichsbank, and there they were stored for months -- if not years -- until they were examined, counted, and utilized. The watches were sent to Oranienburg, the eye glasses were sent to the medical inspectorate; the various things like towels, suitcases, rucksacks, were sent to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. Furthermore, napkins and towels were sent to the soldiers. Furs were sent to Ravensbruck; suits and clothes to the Reich Economy Ministry. There were ten, or perhaps a dozen, offices where these things were sent." (2278) Now what is so completely amazing about this testimony is that all of these articles were delivered to their respective destinations by Frank's own infamous "disposition order". Compare the testimony just quoted with the following excerpts from this order:
"(a) Cash money in German Reichsbank notes must be paid into the account WVHA 158/1488 (b) ...rare metals ...jewelry.
..must be delivered the the WVHA.
(c) Watches are exempt from sale. Their utilization rests with me.
(d) Spectacles and eyeglasses ..are to be handed into the medical office....
(f) Rucksacks and suitcases .. are to be delivered to the Volkdeutsche Mittelstelle.
(g) Towels, napkins ..can be furnished for the needs of troops.
(i) Furs..are to be delivered to ... Ravensbruck."
It can thus be seen that every item he enumerates was sent where it was because Frank had ordered it to be sent there. If, therefore, Frank was mystified by this "camouflage", he had achieved the supreme perfection of that art - he had succeeded in deceiving himself. We are reminded of Daedalus, the mythological inventive genius whose labyrinth on Crete was so complicated that when he had finished it, he could not find his own way out. Admittedly, it was a tangled web which August Frank wove, but we do not believe he lost himself in its meshes.
Another example is that of Fanslau and Tschentscher. The description of atrocities committed at Zclozow and Tarnopol, which were principally committed by members of the Viking Division, are so firmly established by the evidence that there can be no doubt about their occurrence. The official reports of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen would be enough to show the extent and ferocity with which these pogroms were carried out. According to the testimony and the documents, these things were happening at Zclozow almost at the very time that Tschentscher and Fanslau say they were there. Yet according to them they not only saw no sign of such a thing but never heard of any such matters the whole time they were in Poland and Russia. Einsatzgruppen documents show that in October 1941, 10,000 Jews were wiped out in the course of one or two days at Dnjoperpetrovsk. Tschentscher was in Dnjoperpetrovsk about a month later when according to the report the extermination was still according to the documents, in progress. But he still testified that he never heard of a Jew being harmed by a German the whole time he was attached to the Viking Division. The ability of these two men to remain ignorant of what was going on all around them is almost without parallel.
Similarly, the defendant Kiefer steadfastly denied that he or his office had ever had any connection with construction activities in concentration camps, until the prosecution produced two sets of blue prints bearing his own signature which he had furnished for buildings to be erected in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
Dozens of other examples of this kind could be given and are given in the briefs concerning the respective defendants. But we have already said enough to show that the testimony of these defendants is so replete with evasions, fantastic explanations and outright lies that it is devoid of any credibility.
Turning now to the criminal acts of the SS and WVHA for which these defendants must bear responsibility, we do not propose to weary the Court with a long repetition of what the whole world already knows. The conditions in the concentration camps which the Allies found in 1945 will stand as a perpetual monument to the obscene depths to which the human spirit is capable of descending. The scenes which met the eyes of the invading Allied troops at Buchenwald, BergenBelsen and Dachau will take their place in history beside the pyramids of human skulls erected by the Golden Horde of Tamerlane and the extermination of the Carthagenian populace by the Romans. But even these ancient butcheries do not furnish an adequate comparison. The slaughter of these people was at least accomplished in a quick and relatively painless manner, whereas before the victims of Mauthausen and Auschwitz were allowed the relief of death, they were frequently subjected to years of starvation, semi-nakesness and every kind of barbarous mistreatment that the sadistic minds of the guards commandant could devise. The concentration camp system stands in a class by itself.
The defendants now profess to share the same revulsion toward this murderous orgy as is felt by decent people everywhere. But they have chanted over and again the official chorus that the first time they had any inkling of such things was after the war was over, and that even then they could not believe what they heard. The only dissonant note was sounded by Hohberg.
We have shown the Tribunal that concentration camp inmates were used all over Germany. The existence of the concentration camps was no secret, and it was impossible in the nature of things to conceal the physical condition and the high death rate that prevailed among the inmates. Too many families in Germany received these notices that one of their members, whom they had last seen when the Gestapo took him into "protective custody", was no longer among the living, along with a can labeled as the ashes of the deceased. In some cases, the Teutonic passion for method led to the practice of registering the deaths of the inmates with the local vital statistics bureau where everyone could see them.
We have already said that among these defendants are men who could proudly point to as long a record of association with concentration camp affairs as anyone in Germany. Himmler made Pohl Chief of the Administrative Office of the SS in February of 1934. Georg Loerner and August Frank were there when Pohl arrived. Frank was directing the administration of workshops in the concentration camp at Dachau in March 1933. This was only five weeks after Hitler's seizure of power. As early as 1936, Pohl's five Main Offices in the SS Administrative Office were an essential part of the concentration camp system. By 1939, ten of the defendants were working with Pohl. In other words, they were the architects and builders of this evil edifice. It is perfect nonsense to say that the men who were in charge of the supreme agency for administering the concentration camps did not even know what was common knowledge.
A distinction should be made, however, between the situation that existed in the concentration camps in Germany and what took place in the East at the official abattoirs at Auschwitz, Lublin, and Treblinka. The commandants and guard personnel of the camps in Germany were given a free hand to behave as they liked, and if it happened that one of these people sought his pleasure in bayonetting inmates or in hanging them by the thumbs for several hours, the officials of the WVHA simply shrugged it off as a matter of personal taste.
It was not that they either encouraged or disapproved such practices: they all explained that after they had chosen and assigned to his job the man who found his solace in such amusements, it was up to another agency to prevent his carrying them to excesses. True, they were not only responsible for the assignment, but also for the transfers and promotions of these interesting types. But technically, the matter of punishing inmates was one for another agency to regulate, or so they say.
We pass on now, however, to a matter which was not haphazard or governed by personal inclinations and which was so closely allied with the WVHA that the very mention of its name instantly connotes this organization. We refer to the Reinhardt Action. This was first set in motion, according to Pohl, in "1941 or 1942". The WVHA was associated with it from the beginning. It was in full swing at least as late as July 1944, and the job of managing the immense wealth which accrued to the credit of the WVHA as a result of it continued throughout the life of the organization. The action was commenced by Himmler's order under the direction of Globocnik, the SS and Police Leader at Lublin. In 1943 Globocnik, for some reason, was transferred from Poland to Trieste and the task of completing his work in the East was transferred to Pohl. But long before Globocnik left, Frank was issuing directives concerning the distribution of the confiscated property, asking Himmler what to do with the surplus dental gold, and Vogt was auditing the treasury at Lublin. Therefore, it can truthfully be said that the administration of the Action Reinhardt was one of the principal functions of the WVHA during its entire existence, and at least in its later phases it was exclusively directed by the Chief of the WVHA.
Globocnik seems to have been a sensitive man. He was afraid of being considered as a person of limited talents.