Oswald Ludwig Pohl was born on June 30, 1892, in Duisburg, then part of the German Empire. He was the fifth of eight children of a blacksmith. After graduating from school in 1912, he became a full-time soldier in the German Navy, training in Germany as well as the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.
During World War I, which began on July 28, 1914, Pohl served in the Baltic Sea region and along the coast of Flanders. He earned the Iron Cross Second Class for his service. In April 1918 he attended Naval school and became a paymaster, and later that year he married Margarete Lohn.
World War I ended with Germany's defeat on November 11, 1918. Pohl then attended courses at a trade school and began studying law and state theory at a university in Kiel. He dropped out and briefly joined the Freikorps, right-wing paramilitary militias that fought against Communists and other groups they blamed for Germany's defeat.
In 1920, Pohl took part in the failed Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin on March 13, 1920. The goal was to overturn the German Revolution of 1918 to 1919, overthrow the democratic Weimar Republic, and establish an autocratic government.
In 1922, Pohl joined the Nazi Party and, after it was temporarily banned, rejoined it four years later. His commitment to the movement was unwavering. He later stated, "I was a national socialist before national socialism came into being."
In 1925, Pohl became a member of the SA, the Nazi paramilitary force also known as the Storm Troopers or Brownshirts. From 1925 to 1927 he served as the local Nazi Party group leader and was also active as an SA leader in the city of Spandau. He later contributed to the establishment and leadership of SA Marine units in Kiel.
Pohl also held leadership positions in the Hitler Youth there and became a city councillor in the early 1930s. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.
Pohl's organizational talent caught the attention of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, who sought to recruit him from the SA. In early February 1934, Pohl transferred to the SS, pledging to always serve Himmler, and quickly rose through the ranks due to his ruthlessness and unwavering loyalty.
Assigned to Himmler's staff, he soon became the chief of administration in the SS Main Office. Over time, Pohl's sphere of responsibility expanded to include the concentration camp system, as he lived near the Dachau camp and inspected the camps periodically.
In January 1937, Himmler placed Pohl in charge of all SS construction projects, further expanding his responsibilities. During the mid-1930s, as the concentration camp system took shape, Pohl had already recognized the economic potential of forced labor, which the Nazis exploited for economic gain.
Shortly after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, he accompanied Himmler to the small town of Mauthausen. There it was decided that the SS-operated German Earth and Stone Works Corporation, or DEST, would begin extracting granite using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers.
The catalyst for the expansion of SS construction initiatives stemmed from Hitler's megalomania, namely his plans to erect massive German cities and monuments as the Reich expanded. World War II started on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
In January 1942, Pohl became head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, making him responsible for all concentration camps, their construction facilities, prisoners, and the economic exploitation of forced labor. In April 1942 he was promoted to SS Obergruppenführer, a rank equivalent to lieutenant general in the US Army.
Pohl additionally became a general of the Waffen-SS, the military branch of the SS. Behind Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Nazi secret police, he eventually became the third most powerful figure in the SS.
While Himmler never had complete control over Heydrich, who was intelligent and independent, Pohl accepted Himmler's leadership unconditionally. Though Pohl was aggressive and demanding toward his subordinates and officials of party and government, he considered every wish of Himmler an order and would not allow any criticism to be voiced about his boss.
Pohl's authority extended over the entire administration and supply network of the Waffen-SS. He controlled 20 concentration camps and 165 labor camps, directed all SS and police construction projects, and oversaw all SS economic enterprises.
Through this role, Pohl secured a key position in the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, as he also became responsible for the inspection of concentration camps, overseeing the entire camp system. In the summer of 1942 he replaced nearly one-third of all concentration camp commandants, aiming to further exploit prisoners for armament production under the principle of extermination through labor.
In an order dated April 30, 1942, Pohl issued a directive stating that the camp commandant alone was responsible for the deployment of labor. This labor, he wrote, must be exhausting in the truest sense of the word to achieve the highest possible output. Working hours were not subject to any limits, and time-consuming marches and lunch breaks for eating alone were prohibited.
Despite the apparent goal of using concentration camp prisoners for production in the expanding SS economic industry, Pohl's role was also shaped by the ideological mandates of exploitation and racial extermination. For example, Pohl refused to increase rations for starving prisoners working in the granite works at Gross-Rosen concentration camp, even when administrative complaints argued for providing them with more food.
Despite his ruthless commitment to extermination through labor, Pohl paradoxically complained about the death of some 7,610 out of 136,870 new concentration camp inmates between June and November 1942, insisting that these losses were hindering productivity in the armaments factories.
From July 1942 to March 1943, Pohl served as a member of the Nazi Reichstag, the German Parliament under Hitler's dictatorship, after taking over Heydrich's seat following his assassination in June 1942. However, he later had to relinquish his mandate due to his extensive economic responsibilities, which were deemed incompatible with parliamentary duties.
In December 1942, six years after he divorced his first wife Margarete, Pohl married Eleonore von Brüning, an ardent Nazi and the bankrupted widow of a German industrialist who was 29 years her senior. Pohl adopted her two children, and the family lived in the Brüning family estate in Bavaria, where concentration camp prisoners with experience in manual labor had to renovate the house several times until 1945.
In 1943, Pohl established Eastern Territories Industries Incorporated, a company designed to plunder Jewish assets and further exploit concentration camp prisoners for forced labor. His influence extended beyond economic administration and directly into the implementation of mass extermination policies.
In spring 1944, Pohl intervened when the extermination of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau stalled, primarily due to logistical constraints, leadership changes, and internal SS power struggles. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, approximately 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary on 147 trains, and about 420,000 of them were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.
This rapid mass deportation overwhelmed the transport and extermination infrastructure. Railway congestion, exacerbated by Allied bombings and competing military priorities, caused delays in the deportation process. Additionally, internal debates within the Nazi leadership, particularly regarding whether to continue full-scale extermination or shift toward exploiting Jewish prisoners as forced labor, temporarily slowed operations.
In May 1944, Heinrich Himmler dismissed the Auschwitz commandant Arthur Liebehenschel, further disrupting the camp's administration. To restore efficiency, Pohl, who had brought Rudolf Höss to the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office half a year earlier, sent Höss back to Auschwitz from May to July 1944 as the senior camp commandant to oversee the smooth execution of the extermination operation. During this period, approximately 330,000 out of 420,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by poison gas immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Beyond the deadly forced labor of concentration camp prisoners, Pohl, as the master over hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates, was primarily responsible for the radical exploitation and utilization of prisoners, from the confiscation of their valuables to the removal of their gold teeth and hair. Human material was to be efficiently and fully exploited.
In the process, Pohl even calculated the value of slave laborers. In total, the average concentration camp inmate had a life expectancy of nine months or less and was valued at 1,630 Reichsmarks, an equivalent to 15,650 United States dollars today.
The goods plundered during the deportations and mass murders included clothing, jewelry, and other assets such as foreign currency and gold. A letter to Heinrich Himmler has been preserved listing an inventory of over 100,000 watches along with thousands of fountain pens and similar items, which were deliberately labeled as "Jewish contraband" to conceal their origins.
After World War II ended in 1945, Oswald Pohl initially went into hiding, first in Upper Bavaria and later near Bremen disguised as a farmhand. He was eventually captured by British troops in May 1946.
Shortly after, Pohl was transferred to Nuremberg, where he faced more than 50 interrogations until December. From January 13, 1947, Oswald Pohl was tried at the eponymous Pohl Trial, the fourth of 12 military tribunals known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany after the end of World War II.
The Pohl Trial was held at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg against Oswald Pohl and 17 other SS officers employed by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. The main charge against them was their active involvement in and the administration of the Final Solution.
During the proceedings, Pohl accused the prosecution of being dominated by Jewish representatives and driven by revenge and blind hatred. While he did not deny his awareness of the Holocaust, he insisted that the deportation and extermination of Jews had never been his own initiative.
According to him, he was merely a scapegoat, convicted because others had either evaded justice through suicide or had secured their freedom by acting as informants against him. He also claimed to have served his Fatherland honorably for 33 years and maintained that he was unaware of committing any crimes.
His defense sought to portray him as an innocent bureaucrat, an overburdened administrator who had simply followed orders. His lies, however, did not help him escape justice. When the US military court handed down its sentences on November 3, 1947, Oswald Pohl was sentenced to death by hanging.
In a private letter dated June 1, 1948, Pohl detailed his treatment in captivity. He claimed that he had been forced to wear handcuffs at all times, that he was kicked and beaten by the guards, and had lost two teeth as a result. According to him, one of his interrogators was outraged by the mistreatment and put an end to the abuse.
Pohl asked for clemency, but his request was rejected. At the request of the judges, the court reconvened on July 14, 1948, to consider additional material presented by the defense. On August 11, 1948, the tribunal issued its final sentences, confirming most of its earlier rulings, including Pohl's death sentence, while slightly reducing some of the prison sentences of other defendants.
During the trial, Oswald Pohl began meeting with a Roman Catholic priest and ultimately recommitted himself to the Catholic faith. In 1950, his reconversion led to the publication of his book, "Credo: My Way to God," which was released with the permission of the Catholic Church.
In his book, Pohl acknowledged that as an SS general he had become guilty and professed a sincere acceptance of all guilt and all sins. He added that the collapse of his political and ideological beliefs had created an inner void, one that ultimately led him to faith in Jesus Christ.
Yet one can only wonder why his path to Jesus came only after he had facilitated the systematic murder of millions of people through forced labor, starvation, and extermination in concentration camps.
When Pohl was hanged on June 7, 1951, at Landsberg Prison in West Germany, he was 58 years old. His last words were, "I have spent more than 30 years as a military man. I have always carried out orders and remained true to my oath of allegiance. I am ready."
There were no tears shed for Oswald Pohl.