German Earth and Stone Works (, ) was an
SS-owned company created to procure and manufacture building materials for state construction projects in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
. DEST was a subsidiary company of ''Amtsgruppe W'' (''Amt. W'') of
SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA). Both ''Amt. W'' and the WVHA were headed by
Waffen-SS
The (; ) was the military branch, combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscr ...
generals
Oswald Pohl and
Georg Lörner.
The headquarters for DEST were located in
Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, a small town in
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
where Gusen II, a subcamp of Mauthausen, was built in 1944.
History
''DEST'', founded on April 29, 1938, in
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, was administered by the ''WHVA'' for the purpose of procuring building materials and organizing slave labor and overseeing quarry operations.
The
Sachsenhausen (1936),
Buchenwald (1937),
Flossenbürg (1938),
Mauthausen (1938),
Natzweiler-Struthof (1939),
Gross Rosen (1940) and
Neuengamme (1940) concentration camp sites were chosen because of their proximity to soil suitable for making bricks, or due to the close proximity of a brickworks factory or stone quarry.
''DEST'' was widely successful in the exploitation of slave labor, most of whom were Jews, in the quarries. Human labor was used cruelly, becoming one of the main tenets of
war crime
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostage ...
charges in the
Nuremberg Trials. The director of the program, ''SS-Obergruppenführer''
Oswald Pohl, who was stationed in Berlin, was sentenced to death for war crimes in 1947 in Nuremberg, and executed in 1951.
In 1943, ''DEST'' changed its focus from stone industry to armaments. From this time the organization played a key role, helping the SS to enter some key war industries. This was underlined by its industrial park at
St. Georgen and
Gusen that made the SS a key supplier of aircraft fuselages (
Bf 109,
Me 262), carbines and machine guns to companies like
BFW,
Messerschmitt and
Steyr-Daimler-Puch. To run its business with the inmates of the Gusen and Mauthausen concentration camps, ''DEST'' operated its headquarters of ''
Granitwerke Mauthausen'' between 1940 and 1945 in the town of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen which was its biggest and most important "Werkgruppe" (industry group).
[St. Georgen – Gusen – Mauthausen: Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered By Rudolf Language: English ]
See also
*
Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe
References
External links
The St. Georgen/Gusen headquarters of Granitwerke Mauthausen
{{Authority control
Defunct companies of Germany
Companies of Nazi Germany
The Holocaust in Austria
1938 establishments in Germany
Construction and civil engineering companies established in 1938
Companies involved in the Holocaust
SS Main Economic and Administrative Office