Commandant of Auschwitz

APPENDIX 5 Pohl

Pohl was a native of Kiel and a paymaster in the navy. He was a veteran member of the Party and belonged to the naval SA. The Reichsführer SS removed him from there in 1934 and installed him as administrative chief of the SS.

Although this office played only a small part in affairs under the guidance of his predecessors, Pohl managed in a very short time to make himself indispensable to the Reichsführer SS and to make his office feared and all-powerful. For example his auditors, who were selected by himself and received his support and were responsible only to him, were held in terror by the administrative heads of every department. PohPs methods did, however, instill order and accuracy into the administration of the SS and resulted in the dismissal of any administrative official whom he found careless or unreliable.

Under Pohl’s predecessors, the more senior officers were fairly independent in money matters and did much as they pleased. Pohl got the Reichsführer SS to issue instructions that permission had to be obtained for all payments made by the General SS and that such payments would be audited by him. This caused a lot of ill-feeling and irritation, but with characteristic energy Pohl succeeded in getting his way and, as a result, obtained for himself an enormous influence over the affairs of every SS unit. Even the most obstinate cranks among the senior SS officers, such as Sepp Dietrich and Eicke, had to draw in their horns and ask Pohl when they wanted money for some extrabudgetary expenditure.

Each SS unit had an exactly calculated annual budget, which had to be observed with the most scrupulous accuracy. Pohl’s bloodhounds, the auditors, would unearth every penny that had been over- or underspent.

Pohl’s main objective from the beginning, however, was gradually to make the SS financially Independent of the state and the Party, by means of its own business undertakings and thus to guarantee the Reichsführer SS the necessary freedom of action in his planning. It was a task with a far-reaching objective, which Pohl was convinced could be accomplished and for which he labored unremittingly. He was the guiding spirit behind almost all of the business undertakings of the SS. To start with there were the German Armaments Works (DAW), the porcelain factory (Allach), the quarries, slag-works, brickyards, and cement factories forming the German Mineral and Stone Works (Dest), and the clothing factories. There was the WIII German Provisions Combine, incorporating bakeries, butchers, retail grocers, and canteens, the numerous spas, the agricultural and forestry undertakings, the printing works and publishing companies, all of which already represented a considerable economic strength. Yet this was only a beginning.

Pohl had already made plans for industrial undertakings of great magnitude, which would put even the IG Farben Industrie in the shade. Pohl also had the necessary energy to bring these schemes to completion.

The Reichsführer SS needed an enormous amount of money for his research and experimental establishments alone, and Pohl had always produced it. The Reichsführer SS was very liberal in allowing money to be spent for exceptional purposes, and Pohl financed everything. He was easily able to do this, since the business undertakings of the SS, in spite of the large capital investment they required, produced an immense amount of money.

The Waffen SS, the concentration camps, the Reich Security Head Office, the police, and later some other service departments, were financed by the state. Budgetary discussions were conducted on Pohl’s behalf by Gruppenführer Frank, his ad latus and general factotum.

The negotiations with the Treasury over the budget were veritable trials of strength, for without money provided by the state, not one new company of the Waffen SS could be formed. Frank was clever and tenacious and managed to get all that he wanted, often after negotiations lasting for weeks on end. He had been trained by Pohl, and Pohl stood behind his shoulder. Later on Frank reorganized the administration of the entire police force, which had become completely fossilized. After the attempt on the Führer’s life, Frank became administrative chief of the army. Pohl stood in the background and directed.

The headquarters and administration of the SS were situated in Munich during the first few years after the assumption of power. During the same period, Pohl lived in Dachau in the immediate neighborhood of the camp. He therefore came into contact with the concentration camp and the prisoners from the start, and was able to acquire a thorough knowledge of their needs. Because of his intense interest in the construction of industrial undertakings in Dachau concentration camp, he spent much time in the camp and on Sundays enjoyed making a tour of inspection of the entire camp area. He deliberately avoided entering the actual protective custody camp, so as not to give the Inspector of Concentration Camps, Eicke, any possible ground for complaining to the Reichsführer SS. Pohl and Eicke were both powerful personalities, and there was constant friction between them which often developed into violent quarrels. They held contrary opinions on almost every question that came within their competence. This was the case in questions concerning the treatment of prisoners, so far as they affected Pohl, on matters such as their accommodation, provisioning and clothing, and their employment in the industrial undertakings. During the whole time that I knew Pohl, up to the final collapse, he always showed the same approach to all questions concerning the prisoners. It was his opinion that a prisoner who was given good and warm living quarters and was sufficiently well fed and clothed, would work industriously on his own account, and that punishment was only necessary as a last resort.

On Pohl’s initiative a garden of medicinal herbs was started in Dachau. Pohl was an enthusiastic believer in diet reform. Spices and medicinal herbs of all kinds were bred and cultivated in this garden, with the object of weaning the German people from the foreign spices that were a danger to health, and from the synthetic medicines, and of accustoming them instead to the use of unharmful, pleasant-tasting German spices and natural, medicinal herbs for all kinds of bodily infirmities. The use of these spices was made obligatory for all SS and police formations. Later on, during the war, almost the entire army received these spices from Dachau. Pohl found many opportunities in this herb garden of discussing with the prisoners the reasons for their arrest, and of hearing about their life in the carnp. In this way he was always in the know about what was going on in Dachau concentration camp. Even in later years he visited the herb garden almost every month, and always lived there when he was in Munich or when he had some business to transact in the neighborhood.

Pohl persistently supported requests for the release of prisoners who were known to him, when he believed that they had been wrongly imprisoned, or when he considered that the length of their sentences was unjustifiable. This brought him into irreconcilable hostility with Eicke and the Reich Security Head Office, and later on with Kaltenbrunner. Pohl was never afraid to make a complaint, and in especially bad cases he would go to the Reichsführer SS himself, which he otherwise avoided doing. But he met with little success, for in matters relating to releases the Reichsführer SS deferred on principle to the opinions of the Reich Security Head Office.

In 1941 the concentration camps were incorporated in Department D of the Economic Administration Head Office, and placed under Pohl’s authority.

Through his contacts with the industrial undertakings which were concerned with all the camps, and through the heads of those undertakings and their temporary inspector Maurer, and also through the chiefs of the department groups and of departments A, B, C, and W, Pohl was kept well informed about all the camps.

After he had taken over the concentration camps, Pohl immediately started to reform them in accordance with his ideas. First of all, some of the camp commandants had to go, either because they failed to comply with Pohl’s new instructions, or because, like Loritz, they were (in Pohl’s opinion) no longer tolerable for service in a concentration camp.

Pohl’s main demands were: decent treatment of the prisoners, elimination of all arbitrary handling of the prisoners by subordinate members of the SS, improvements in the system of provisioning, the supply of warmer clothing for the winter, sufficient accommodation, and improvement of the sanitary arrangements. All of these improvements were proposed with the object of keeping the prisoners sufficiently fit to do the work demanded of them!

Pohl constantly inspected all the concentration camps and also a large proportion of the labor camps. He saw the deficiencies and tried whenever he could to remedy them. If he discovered somewhere that an officer or a junior officer was at fault, he would deal ruthlessly with him, without regard to his person or position. His inspections were mostly unheralded and very thorough. He would not let himself be taken around, but insisted on seeing everything for himself. Regardless of time, or people, or meals, he rushed from one place to another. He had a prodigious memory. Figures, which he had been told only once, he never forgot. He was always on the lookout for things which he had seen and to which he had objected on previous inspections.

Next to Dachau, Auschwitz received his special attention. He spent a great deal of energy in connection with the construction and development of the camp. Kammler often said to me that Pohl began every building conference in Berlin by first asking how matters were going at Auschwitz. The SS department concerned with raw materials had a voluminous file of demands, memorandums, and angry letters from Pohl regarding Auschwitz. I must have been the only SS officer in the whole SS who possessed such a comprehensive blanket authority for procuring everything that was needed in Auschwitz.

Later on as DI he was; perpetually harrying me about defects that he had found in the concentration camps and labor camps, which he had not been able to clear up, and demanding that the culprits be discovered and the worst of the abuses be rectified.

But so long as Himmler’s basic attitude remained unchanged, any attempts to improve the conditions were hopeless from the start.

Anyone who had distinguished himself by his proficiency could come to Pohl at any time with requests or wishes, and he would give him all the help that he could.

Pohl was very capricious and often went from one extreme to the other. It was inadvisable to contradict him when he was in a bad humor, for this would result in a snub. But when he was in a good humor, even the most disagreeable and unpleasant things could be told him and he would not take them amiss. It was not easy to work with, him in his immediate presence for any length of time, and his adjutants were changed frequently and often with startling suddenness.

Pohl liked to show his position and his power. His uniform was deliberately simple and he wore no decorations, although Himmler forced him to wear the German Cross and the Knight’s Cross to the War Service Cross, with which he was later decorated.

In spite of his age (he was over fifty) he was exceptionally brisk and active, and tremendously tough. To accompany him on a duty journey was not an unmixed blessing.

Pohl’s behavior toward the Reichsführer SS was peculiar. He did everything through Himmler. Every letter and every teletype message was dispatched under Himmler’s name, and yet Pohl only went to him in person when he was summoned.

For Pohl every wish expressed by the Reichsführer SS, and they were not few in number, was a command. I have never known of an occasion when Pohl criticized or even expressed disapproval of an order from Himmler. An order from the Reichsführer SS was something that was settled and fixed, and had to be carried out exactly as it stood. Nor did he like there to be any discussion as to the interpretation or impracticability of these orders, which were often very obscure. This was especially so with regard to Kammler and Glücks, both of whom were very talkative; they were often bluntly reproved in this connection, although in other respects Pohl allowed them to take many liberties. In spite of his commanding personality Pohl was the most willing and obedient executive of all the wishes and plans of the Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler.