Oswald Pohl
Oswald Ludwig Pohl (30 June 1892-7 June 1951) was an important member of the Nazi Party and one of the chief perpetrators of The Holocaust.
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| “ | I don't hold it against the men who beat me because undoubtedly there are some ruffians of every nationality and the English are not exceptions. | „ |
| ~ Oswald Pohl |
Pohl joined the Sturmabteilung (Adolf Hitler's private army) in 1925, joining the party itself the following year. Heinrich Himmler personally commissioned him as an officer in the Schutzstaffel in 1933, and he rose to become chief of the Reichsfuhrer SS administrative department, then administrative chief of the SD and Race and Settlement offices. In 1942, Pohl and Himmler merged the SD office and the Race and Settlement office. into the SS Economic and Administrative office, leaving Pohl in charge and making him the third most powerful man in the SS after Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.
Soon after, Pohl became chairman of Nazi-owned corporation Eastern Territories Incorporated, a position in which he denied rations to starving prisoners forced to work for the company. He later became head administrator of concentration camps, putting him in direct conflict with Theodor Eicke, director of the concentration camp inspectorate. Pohl solved the problem of Eicke by incorporating the CCI into his jurisdiction, forcing Eicke to serve under him. In this position, Pohl was able to impose exhausting forced labour and decreased rations onto inmates in all concentration camps.
Pohl went into hiding at the end of the war, but was captured in Bremen disguised as a farmhand in 1946. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged on the 7th of June in 1951.