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SS Main Economic And Administrative Office
The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (; SS-WVHA) was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the (a main branch of the ; SS). It also ran the concentration camps and was instrumental in the implementation of the Final Solution through such subsidiary offices as the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS camp guards. Economics of the Holocaust In June 1939 SS-''Obergruppenführer'' Oswald Pohl became chief of both the ''Verwaltung und Wirtschaft Hauptamt'' (VuWHA) and the ''Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten'' ("main bureau or/nowiki> budget and construction", part of the ''Reich'''s Ministry of the Interior). He oversaw all SS "construction projects and building enterprises" through these offices. Pohl also worked with Walther Funk, Reich Minister of Economics (, to oversee financial aspects of the Final Solution, the most deadly phase of the Holocaust. Valuables such as gold watches, rings, even tooth filling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful people in Nazi Germany. He is primarily known for being one of the main architects of the Holocaust. After serving in a reserve battalion during World War I without seeing combat, Himmler went on to join the Nazi Party in 1923. In 1925, he joined the SS, a small paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party that served as a bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. Subsequently, Himmler rose steadily through the SS's ranks to become by 1929. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS grew from a 290-man battalion into one of the most powerful institutions within Nazi Germany. Over the course of his career, Himmler acquired a reputation for good organisational skills as well as for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich. From 1943 onwards, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reichsbank
The ''Reichsbank'' (; ) was the central bank of the German Empire from 1876 until the end of Nazi Germany in 1945. Background The monetary institutions in Germany had been unsuited for its economic development for several decades before unification. In the Kingdom of Prussia, the Bank of Prussia had been established in 1847 and, in the aftermath of the German revolutions of 1848–1849, revolution of 1848, five additional banks had been granted a note-issuance privilege (the , , , at Stettin, and ), but that was still insufficient to sustain adequate monetary conditions. By 1851, 9 banks in the whole of Germany (not including Austria) were chartered to issue banknotes, known as . In addition, most German states - with the only exceptions of Principality of Lippe, Lippe and the Hanseatic cities of Free City of Bremen, Bremen, Free City of Hamburg, Hamburg and Free City of Lübeck, Lübeck - issued government paper money without the intermediation of an issuing bank. Several pan- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zyklon B
Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consists of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth. The product is notorious for its use by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust to murder approximately 1.1 million people in gas chambers installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and other extermination camps. Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration, was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon (later known as Zyklon A), a pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water and heat. It was banned after World War I, when Germany used a similar product as a chemical weapon. Degussa purchased Degesch in 1922. Their team of chemists, which included and Bruno Tesch, devised a method of pack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IG Farben
I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German Chemical industry, chemical and Pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was formed on December 2, 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies: Agfa-Gevaert, Agfa, BASF, Bayer, :de:Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, Griesheim-Elektron, Hoechst AG, Hoechst, and Weiler-ter-Meer. It was seized by the Allies of World War II, Allies after World War II and split into its constituent companies; parts in East Germany were nationalized. IG Farben was once the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world. IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937, and three company scientists became List of Nobel laureates, Nobel laureates: Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contribution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinkel
Heinkel Flugzeugwerke () was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight, with the pioneering examples of a successful liquid-fueled rocket and a turbojet-powered aircraft in aviation history, with both Heinkel designs' first flights occurring shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. History Following the successful career of Ernst Heinkel as the chief designer for the Hansa-Brandenburg aviation firm in World War I, Heinkel's own firm was established at Warnemünde in 1922, after the restrictions on German aviation imposed by the Treaty of Versailles were relaxed. By 1929, the firm's compressed air-powered catapults were in use on the German Norddeutscher Lloyd ocean-liners and to launch short-range mail planes from the liners' decks. The company's first post-World War I aircraft design succe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dresdner Bank
Dresdner Bank AG () was a German bank, founded in 1872 in Dresden, then headquartered in Berlin from 1884 to 1945 and in Frankfurt from 1963 onwards after a postwar hiatus. Long Germany's second-largest bank behind Deutsche Bank, it was eventually acquired by Commerzbank in May 2009. 1872-1933 The Dresdner Bank was established on through the conversion of , a Dresden-based private bank founded in 1771, on the advice of banker Eugen Gutmann. The bank's founding consortium of investors consisted of (Leipzig), Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft (Berlin), (Frankfurt), (Frankfurt) and (Hamburg), with an initial capital of 8 million Thalers (24 million Marks) and 30 employees in Wilsdruffer Strasse in Dresden. Gutmann became chairman of the new entity's board and led it until his retirement in 1920. In the 1870s, the Dresdner Bank acquired smaller regional institutes and several banks. In 1881, it opened a branch in Berlin, whose activity quickly exceeded the nominal head office in Dr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emil Heinrich Meyer
Emil Heinrich Meyer (6 May 1886 in Wiesbaden – 9 May 1945 in Berlin) was a German business executive. Meyer was a board member at the ITT Corporation's Germany-based subsidiaries Standard Elektrik Lorenz and Mix & Genest as well as AEG (German company), AEG. Meyer was a cousin of the industrialist Wilhelm Keppler and became a member of the ''Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft'', a group of industrialists committed to Racialism (racial categorization), racialism and close to far right politics, led by Keppler. The group supported the Nazi Party, which Meyer joined in 1933.Ernst Klee, ''Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945'', Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 407. He was one of three directors of the Dresdner Bank, the others being Karl Rasche and Fritz Kranefuss, to belong to the exclusive ''Freunde des Reichsführer-SS'' circle, a development of Keppler's group.G.S. Graber, ''History of the SS'', Diamond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Speer
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close friend and ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that Nazi persecution of Jews, evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. In February 1942, Speer was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming Chancellor of Germany#Nazi Germany (1933–1945), the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and moved to German Empire, Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in the First World War, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stutthof Concentration Camp
Stutthof was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof (now Sztutowo) 34 km (21 mi) east of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. The camp was set up around existing structures after the invasion of Poland in World War II and initially used for the imprisonment of Polish leaders and intelligentsia. The actual barracks were built the following year by prisoners. Most of the infrastructure of the concentration camp was either destroyed or dismantled shortly after the war. In 1962, the former concentration camp with its remaining structures was turned into a memorial museum. Stutthof was the first German concentration camp set up outside German borders in World War II, in operation from 2 September 1939. It was also the last camp liberated by the Allies of World War II, Allies, on 9 May 1945. It is estimated that between 63,000 and 65,00 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Majdanek Concentration Camp
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had three gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder people an estimated 78,000 people during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes. The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjacent to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of #Auschwitz I, Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; #Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, #Auschwitz III, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a Arbeitslager, labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and List of subcamps of Auschwitz, dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution, Final Solution to the Jewish question. After Germany Causes of World War II#Invasion of Poland, initiated World War II by Invasion of Poland, invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
