Oswald Pohl
Oswald Pohl (1892-1951) rose to high Nazi rank principally through financial and administrative management skill, eventually heading the Schutzstaffel's (SS) economic administration, the WVHA, whose responsibilities included the actual operation of the concentration camp system. A protege of Heinrich Himmler, he was identified with the part of The Holocaust that wanted maximum economic exploitation of the Jews, as opposed to the security side that wanted them destroyed as soon as possible. Tried in the Pohl Case of the Nuremberge Military Tribunals, he was executed by hanging.
Pohl converted to Catholicism before his execution, and published his confession. [1]
What motivated him? Some have seen him largely as a technocrat. Allen, however, sees him as driven by a "plexus of ideologies", following Heinrich Himmler's dual goal of producing the SS-State and making it efficient. [2]
References
- ↑ Bjorn Krondorfer (June 2008), "A Perpetrator’s Confession: Gender and Religion in Oswald Pohl’s Conversion Narrative", Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality 2 (2)
- ↑ L. M. Stallbaumer-Beishline (July 2003), The Ideology of SS Bureaucrats: book review of Michael Thad Allen. The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps., H-Net