Opposing programmes

Even before El Alamem, the failure to take Moscow before winter set in, in 1941, had altered the character of the war. The German High Command saw that it would not be so simple a matter after all. This was evident in the decision taken on 30 April 1942 to establish a new organization, the SS-WVHA, headquartered at Berlin-Lichterfelde, with overall responsibility for the KL. Its command went to SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, and his decisions were hereafter enforced on every KL commandant by SS-Brigadeführer Richard Glücks who, as head of Amt D, served as inspector-general of the camps. ¹ On the day of his appointment, Pohl wrote to Himmler: 'The war has quite clearly changed the purpose of the KZ. Our task is now to redirect its functions towards the economic side.' To the camp commandants, Pohl wrote:

The camp commandant is the sole person responsible for the employment of the work-force. This employment must be total in the true sense of the word, in order to obtain the maximum output. There are to be no limits to working hours. The limits are to depend upon the type of work, and the hours are to be fixed by the commandant. All factors tending to reduce the work schedule must be limited to the maximum. The break for food at noon must be reduced to the very shortest period possible.

The industrialization programme of the WVHA accelerated a development already under way: the creation of a constellation of subsidiary camps, known as Nebenlager. ² In the case of Mauthausen, the Nebenlager extended throughout all of Austria except the Tyrol, and even into Germany (at Passau) and Slovenia. These subsidiary camps, still administered by the mother camp (Hauptlager, Stammlager, or Mutterlager), were attached to one or other of the major industrial groups. In order to make these factories invulnerable to Allied bombing, the prisoners were put to work excavating hundreds of subterranean tunnels. The result was that most prisoners arriving in Mauthausen stayed there only for the quarantine period and what the SS called basic education. They would then be sent to any of the Nebenlager: the quarries at Gusen and Ebensee, the mines at Eisenerz, the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, the agricultural factory at St Lambrecht, the SS school at Klagenfurt, the construction of dikes at Gross-Raming, the building of a tunnel into Yugoslavia at Loibl-Pass, and above all, to the arms factories. These included the Hermann Goering Werke in Linz, the Messerschmitt factory at Gusen (the largest in Austria), ³ the Siemens plant at Ebensee, the Heinkel aircraft factories at Floridsdorf and Schwechat, the Daimler factory at Steyr, the Florians factory at Peggau, the Nibelungenwerke tank factories at St Valentin, ⁴ and the missile experimental centre at Schlier. ⁵