Fritz Sauckel – Plenipotentiary General for the Deployment of Labour
Born in Hassfurt, Franconia, in 1894, Fritz Sauckel was an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). He became politically radicalised during the First World War and became a committed antisemite. In the early 1920s, he took up leading positions in right-wing extremist organisations such as the antisemitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation). He joined the Nazi Party in 1923.
Sauckel played a major role in the early success of the Nazi Party in the state of Thuringia. He was Gauleiter (regional leader) of Thuringia from 1927, which put him in charge of the Nazi Party there. He became the state’s chief minister in 1932 and Reichsstatthalter (“Reich governor”) in 1933.
Positions of Power
Sauckel made many efforts to consolidate his own power and that of the party in Thuringia. Using assets confiscated from Jewish-owned companies such as Simson in Suhl, he set up the Wilhelm Gustloff Foundation. This party-owned foundation was designed to increase his influence in the heavy engineering and armaments industries. In 1937, work began on the construction of a Gauforum, a large Nazi administrative centre in the heart of Weimar, and on the construction of Buchenwald concentration camp near the city. Sauckel was able to use the construction of a concentration camp in his fiefdom to strengthen his position within the structure of the Nazi system. His collaboration with the SS also demonstrated how well connected he was within the regime.
Plenipotentiary General for the Deployment of Labour
On 21 March 1942, Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler appointed Sauckel General Plenipotentiary for the Deployment of Labour (GBA). This special office was created when the Nazi regime realised that the war could not be continued without the use of forced labour.
Sauckel’s promotion from Gauleiter to GBA made him one of the most influential and powerful figures as the war progressed. The entire labour administration in the German Reich and the occupied territories was under his control. Sauckel’s powers extended beyond the borders of the German Reich. His office determined how many workers were to be brought into Germany from the occupied countries. His local staff, working closely with the civil and military occupation authorities, were responsible for ensuring that the recruitment quotas were met.
As GBA, Sauckel was responsible for the deportation of millions of people to Germany as forced labourers. His actions resulted in the mass forced abduction of women, men and, increasingly, children, mainly from the occupied Soviet Union and Poland, to Germany. The deportations ordered by Sauckel were accompanied by manhunts and draconian punishments. His name even entered common language – a Telefunken manager wrote in 1943 that the company was trying to “sauckel” workers out of France. Sauckel was thus a central figure in the crime of forced labour.
Nuremberg Trial and death sentence
Sauckel was arrested by American soldiers shortly after Germany’s capitulation. He was tried at the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals and sentenced to death for crimes that included being chiefly responsible for the deportation of forced labourers. Chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said in sentencing Sauckel that he had been “the greatest and cruelest slaver since the Pharaohs”. Sauckel reacted blankly to the verdict and wept on his return to his cell. In prison, he had written a biography justifying his actions, in which he showed no sign of remorse. He was executed on 16 October 1946.
