Yet what did my wife know about all that lay so heavily on my mind? She has never been told.
When, on Pohl’s suggestion, Auschwitz was divided up, he gave me the choice of being commandant of Sachsenhausen or head of DI.[85]
It was something quite exceptional for Pohl to allow any officer a choice of jobs. He gave me twenty-four hours in which to decide. It was really a kindly gesture in good will, a recompense, as he saw it, for the task I had been given at Auschwitz.
At first I felt unhappy at the prospect of uprooting myself, for I had become deeply involved with Auschwitz as a result of all the difficulties and troubles and the many heavy tasks that had been assigned to me there.
But then I was glad to be free from it all.
On no account did I wish to have another camp. I had truly had enough of the life, after a total of nine years in camp service, of which three and a half years had been spent at Auschwitz.
So I chose the position of chief of DI. There was nothing else for me to do. I was not allowed to go to the front. The Reichsführer SS had twice and firmly forbidden this.
I did not at all care for an office job, but Pohl had told me that I could organize the department as I saw best.
When I took up my post, on December 1, 1943, Glücks also gave me a completely free hand. Glücks was not pleased with my appointment, which brought me, of all people, so closely in contact with himself. Nevertheless, he bowed to the inevitable, since this was Pohl’s wish.
I had to regard my job, if I were not to look upon it as a nice, easy billet, as one in which I was primarily concerned to assist the commandants, and I saw all my functions from the point of view of the camps themselves. In fact I intended that the activities of the DI should be precisely the reverse of what they had hitherto been.
Above all I wanted my office to be in close and permanent contact with the camps and by personal visits I intended to form a firsthand judgment of their difficulties and grievances, so that I would be in a position to exert pressure on the higher authorities concerning what could and should be done for them.
In my new office I could now, thanks to the documents, orders, and entire correspondence filed there, follow the development of all the camps since Eicke’s inspectorate and obtain a complete picture.
There were many camps of which I had no personal knowledge at all. The entire correspondence between the Inspector of Concentration Camps and the camps themselves, unless solely concerned with the distribution of labor or with matters of health or administration, was filed in the DI offices. It was thus possible to gain a bird’s-eye view of all the camps. But no more than that. What actually happened in the camps, what they looked like was not to be found in the documents and archives. That could only be discovered by walking through the camps oneself and keeping one’s eyes open. And this was what I proposed to do.
I spent a lot of time traveling on duty. This was usually at Pohl’s request, for he regarded me as an expert on what went on inside the camps.
I was thus able to see the reality in the camps, the hidden defects, and shortcomings. Maurer of DII[86] was Glucks’s deputy and virtually the Inspector, and he and I were able to put right much that was wrong. But by 1944 it was too late for drastic change. The camps became increasingly overcrowded, with all the usual by-products that followed this state of affairs.
It is true that tens of thousands of Jews were moved from Auschwitz for the new armaments project, but this was only a question of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Knocked together with great speed and under unbelievably difficult conditions, the buildings, constructed by officials exactly in accordance with the principles laid down in the manuals, presented a picture of unrelieved squalor. In addition there was the heavy work to which the prisoners were unaccustomed and the ever diminishing scale of rations. The prisoners would have been spared a great deal of misery if they had been taken straight into the gas chambers at Auschwitz. They soon died, without making any substantial contribution to the war effort and often without having done any work at all.
I drafted numerous reports on the subject, but pressure on the part of the Reichsführer SS (“more prisoners for armaments”) was too strong. He was intoxicated by the weekly rise in the figures of prisoners employed. And he no longer looked at the mortality rate. In past years a rise in the death rate had always infuriated him. Now he said nothing.
If Auschwitz,had followed my constantly repeated advice, and had only selected the most healthy and vigorous Jews, then the camp would have produced a really useful labor force and one that would have lasted, although it is true that it would have been numerically smaller. As it was, the numbers on paper were high, but a majority percentage had to be subtracted to obtain a true picture. The sick cluttered up the camps, depriving the able-bodied of food and living space and doing no work, and in fact their presence made many of those who could work incapable of it.
No slide rule was necessary to calculate what the final result would be. But I have already said enough about this, and have written a detailed account in my descriptions of the various persons concerned.[87]
By reason of my appointment I was now in more immediate and direct contact with the Reich Security Head Office. I got to know all the influential officials in the various departments responsible for the concentration camps.
Their views, however, varied from office to office. I have already given a detailed account of the chief of Amt IV[88], but I was never able to discover his own real opinions, since he hid behind the Reichsführer SS.
Subsection IVb (Protective Custody) was still bogged down in its old, prewar routine.[89]
A great deal of energy was devoted to fighting the paper war and far too little to the actual requirements of the real war. Many officials in this subsection should have been dismissed from their posts.
In my opinion, the arrest, on the outbreak of the war, of those public officials who had hitherto been antagonistic to the regime was a mistake. It only served to create more enemies for the state. Those who were considered untrustworthy could have been arrested much earlier, for there was plenty of time during the years of peace. But the protective custody subsection was bound by the reports of the controlling offices.
I had many struggles with this subsection, despite the fact that I was personally on good terms with its chief.
The subsection that was concerned with the Western and Northern territories, including special prisoners from these areas, was very difficult to deal with, because these territories were of direct interest to the Reichsführer SS. The greatest caution was needed here. The prisoners were to be given special consideration and employed so far as possible on lighter work, etc.
The subsection concerned with the Eastern territories was less troublesome. Eastern prisoners, apart from the Jews, formed the majority in all the camps. It was therefore they who provided the main labor force for use in the armaments program.
Execution orders came in an unending stream. Today I can see more clearly. My requests for help in remedying the deficiencies of Auschwitz by putting a stop to new deliveries were shelved by the Reich Security Head Office, since they would not, or perhaps did not wish to, show any consideration for the Poles. All that mattered was that the actions of the Security Police should be completed. What happened to the prisoners afterward was a matter of indifference to the Reich Security Head Office, since the Reichsführer SS attached no particular importance to it.
85
Hoess’s predecessor as head of Department DI in the Economic Administration Head Office was Arthur Liebehenschel. He became commandant of Auschwitz I. He proved, incidentally, a considerably less cruel and brutal commandant than Hoess had been.
89
Hoess is, inexplicably enough, confused about the organization in which he worked. According to an organization plan of the Reich Security Head Office dated October 1, 1943, there was no Subsection