Die „Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH“ und ihre Wirtschaftstätigkeit in Gusen.

Abstract

This article explores the question of why the SS engaged in the business of brick and granite production, how it came to cooperate with the arms industry, and how economic objectives became connected to the political goals of repression and extermination. Initially, the SS-owned firm German Earth and Stone Works (DESt) took over building materials companies in order to supply the Nazis’ monumental building projects in Berlin and other ‘Fürher cities’. Later on, the company also supplied building materials to areas undergoing ‘Germanisation’. A secondary aspect lay in using financial surpluses for SS purposes. The production of granite in Mauthausen (from 1938) and Gusen (from 1940) was the largest and most profitable facility run by DESt. However, the quantity of ashlars produced fell considerably short of targets; the main products were paving stones and rubble.

As labour became increasingly scarce, from 1943 onwards more and more prisoners of the DESt were deployed in projects vital to the war economy, above all for the main arsenal in Vienna and for the firms Steyr-Daimler-Puch and Messerschmitt. In view of the Allied air raids, in early 1944 construction work began to create underground production facilities, including one for the assembly of Messerschmitt aircraft. Although economic targets were important to the SS leadership, as a rule the goals of repression and extermination took priority over economic gain in the daily life of the concentration camp. The lives of the concentration camp prisoners counted for little.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.57820/mm.comments.2022.01