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 The SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (; SS-WVHA) was a Nazi organization responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects of the (a main branch of the ; SS). It also ran the concentration camps and was instru ...

(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 Oswald Ludwig Pohl (; 30 June 1892 – 7 June 1951) was a German high-ranking SS official during the Nazi era. As the head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camps, he was a ke ...

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 Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...

(1937), Flossenbürg (1938), Mauthausen (1938),

Natzweiler-Struthof Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a basis in 1940. It operated from 21 Ma ...

(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 #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...

. The director of the program, ''SS-Obergruppenführer''

, 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 The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is a monoplane fighter aircraft that was designed and initially produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (BFW). Together with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the Bf 109 formed the backbone of the ...

, Me 262), carbines and machine guns to companies like BFW,

Messerschmitt Messerschmitt AG () was a German share-ownership limited, aircraft manufacturing corporation named after its chief designer Willy Messerschmitt from mid-July 1938 onwards, and known primarily for its World War II fighter aircraft, in parti ...

and

Steyr-Daimler-Puch Steyr-Daimler-Puch () was a large manufacturing conglomerate based in Steyr, Austria, which was broken up in stages between 1987 and 2001. The component parts and operations continued to exist under separate ownership and new names. History Th ...

. 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

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

History

See also

References

External links