German Equipment Works (, ) was a
Nazi German
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
defense contractor with headquarters in
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
during World War II, owned and operated by the ''
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.
It beg ...
'' (SS). It consisted of a network of requisitioned factories and camp workshops across
German-occupied Europe
German-occupied Europe, or Nazi-occupied Europe, refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly military occupation, militarily occupied and civil-occupied, including puppet states, by the (armed forces) and the governmen ...
exploiting the
prisoner slave labour from
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...
and the
Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. DAW outfitted the German military with boots, uniforms and materials on the eastern front at a windfall profit,
and provided wood and metal supplies, as well as reconstruction work on railway lines and freight trains.
History
The business enterprise was founded in
May 1939 and was in operation
until 1943. About 15,500 concentration camp prisoners died at DAW due to heavy work loads imposed by the contractor and the inhuman working conditions "calculated not just to cripple their bodies but also to plunge them into a state of perpetual terror."
DAW operated several businesses in the
Dachau,
Sachsenhausen,
Buchenwald, and
Auschwitz concentration camps, where forced labor was used. Work was later expanded to
Majdanek,
Janowska,
Stutthof, and other concentration camps.
''Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke'' (DAW) was the first SS enterprise established in the
Lublin reservation territory of
occupied Poland
' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...
, sometime between late 1940 and early 1941. DAW took over the
Lipowa ''Zwangsarbeiterlager'', with prisoners of the
Lublin Ghetto,
and soon expanded to include
Lublin airfield camp, and the
Majdanek concentration camp labour force in October 1941.
DAW was subordinate to the
SS-WVHA.
The Lublin Airfield was a location of several of its plants, including a subsidiary of the
Waffen SS clothing workshops, the SS garrison, a glass factory, a truck and SS troop supply depot, and a prisoner lab producing pharmaceuticals.
By mid-1942, all death camps of
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard or Operation Reinhardt ( or ; also or ) was the codename of the secret Nazi Germany, German plan in World War II to exterminate History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied ...
were already supplying trainloads of goods from the victims of gassing for further processing:
Bełżec
Belzec (English: or , Polish: , approximately ) was a Nazi German extermination camp in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. It was built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to ...
from March 1942,
Sobibór from May 1942, and
Treblinka from July 1942.
The remaining Jews in the
General Government
The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
supplied DAW with slave labour.
Odilo Globočnik directed the operation of DAW plants in Lublin and at the Old Airfield camp, the Waffen SS ''Standortverwaltung'' workshops and SS Clothing Works, and the police ''Truppenwirtschaftlager'' Supply Depot of the HSSPF. All labourers and guards were supplied by Globočnik.
Elizabeth B. White wrote, "The prime example of cooperation between the WVHA and Globočnik was the East Industries Inc. (''
Ostindustrie'' GmbH, or Osti), which was founded in March 1943 for the express purpose of using Jewish labor and also exploiting machinery and raw materials formerly owned by Jews in industrial workshops." Therefore, the equipment used by DAW was not German to begin with, but Polish. Osti took over DAW factories in 1943.
See also
*
Organisation Todt
Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a Civil engineering, civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisation was responsible ...
(OT) civil and military engineering group from Nazi Germany
*
SS Main Economic and Administrative Office part of the SS in charge of DAW
Notes
References
* The Simon Wiesenthal Center (1997)
''Cornerstone of Himmler's SS Empire in the East'' by Elizabeth B. White.Annual 7; Chapter 1.
* Jan Erik Schulte: ''Forced labor and extermination. The business empire of the SS
Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office from 1933 to 1945.'' Paderborn 2001, .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deutsche Ausrustungswerke
Economy of Nazi Germany
1939 in Germany
Nazi SS
Nazi forced labour