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69-719: In June 1939 SS- Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl became chief of both the Verwaltung und Wirtschaft Hauptamt (VuWHA) and the Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten ("main bureau [for] budget and construction", part of the Reich 's Ministry of the Interior). He oversaw all SS "construction projects and building enterprises" through these offices. Pohl also worked with Walther Funk , Reich Minister of Economics ( German : Reichswirtschaftsminister) , to oversee financial aspects of

138-547: A "vertically integrated construction and building supply enterprise" under the administrative oversight of the WVHA. Expansion of the concentration camps and the satellite network was so rapid over such a vast area—with camps hastily opening and closing—that even the WVHA had a difficult time keeping count of them. The catalyst for the expansion of SS construction initiatives stemmed from Hitler's megalomania, namely, his plans to erect massive German cities and monuments (masterminded by

207-565: A British military court and executed for knowingly providing Zyklon B to the SS for use on humans. Gerhard Peters, who served as principal operating officer of Degesch and Heli and also held posts in the Nazi government, served two years and eight months in prison as an accessory before being released due to amendments to the penal code. Use of hydrogen cyanide as a pesticide or cleaner has been banned or restricted in some countries. Most hydrogen cyanide

276-477: A cautionary agent from Schering AG to form the final product, which was packaged using equipment, labels, and canisters provided by Degesch. The finished goods were sent to Degesch, who forwarded the product to two companies that acted as distributors: Heerdt-Linger GmbH (Heli) of Frankfurt and Tesch & Stabenow (Testa) of Hamburg . Their territory was split along the Elbe river, with Heli handling clients to

345-468: A cautionary eye irritant and adsorbent stabilizers such as diatomaceous earth . The new product was also labelled as Zyklon, but it became known as Zyklon B to distinguish it from the earlier version. Heerdt was named the inventor of Zyklon B in the Degesch patent application (number DE 438818) dated 20 June 1922. The Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt awarded the patent on 27 December 1926. Beginning in

414-542: A human being weighing 68 kilograms (150 lb) within two minutes of inhaling 70 mg of hydrogen cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide, discovered in the late 18th century, was used in the 1880s for the fumigation of citrus trees in California. Its use spread to other countries for the fumigation of silos, goods wagons , ships, and mills. Its light weight and rapid dispersal meant its application had to take place under tents or in enclosed areas. Research by Fritz Haber of

483-569: A killing factory by installing gas-tight doors, vents for the Zyklon B to be dropped into the chamber, and ventilation equipment to remove the gas afterwards. Crematorium III was built using the same design. Crematoria IV and V, designed from the beginning as gassing centers, were also constructed that spring. By June 1943, all four crematoria were operational. Most of the victims were murdered using these four structures. The Nazis began shipping large numbers of Jews from all over Europe to Auschwitz in

552-454: A method of packaging hydrogen cyanide in sealed canisters along with a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth . The new product was also named Zyklon, but it became known as Zyklon B to distinguish it from the earlier version. Uses included delousing clothing and fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains. The Nazis started using Zyklon B in extermination camps in early 1942 to murder prisoners during

621-441: A more stabilized compound through metal-to-ligand pi bonding . As a result of the formation of this new iron–cyanide complex , the electrons that would situate themselves on the heme a3 group can no longer do so. Instead, these electrons destabilize the compound; thus, the heme group no longer accepts them. Consequently, electron transport is halted, and cells can no longer produce the energy needed to synthesize ATP. Death occurs in

690-448: A non-issue after a common ground was found amongst SS leaders in their general hatred of the SA. Udo von Woyrsch and Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger were promoted to SS- Obergruppenführer in 1935 while Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont , and Max Amann received the rank a year later along with Karl von Eberstein and Philipp Bouhler . The year 1936 saw several promotions to

759-525: A poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration , was first used as a pesticide in California in the 1880s. Research at Degesch of Germany led to the development of Zyklon (later known as Zyklon A ), a pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water and heat. It was banned after World War I, when Germany used a similar product as a chemical weapon . Degussa purchased Degesch in 1922. Their team of chemists, which included Walter Heerdt  [ de ] and Bruno Tesch , devised

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828-478: A shower. They were stripped of their belongings and herded into the gas chamber. A special SS bureau known as the Hygienic Institute delivered the Zyklon B to the crematoria by ambulance. The actual delivery of the gas to the victims was always handled by the SS, on the order of the supervising SS doctor. After the doors were shut, SS men dropped Zyklon B pellets through vents in the roof or holes in

897-577: A year later. All five promotions were honorary SS ranks with the first promotion of an active SS officer occurring in September 1941 when the rank was granted to Reinhard Heydrich . The Waffen-SS commander, Paul Hausser was promoted to the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer on 1 October 1941. Waffen-SS commander Theodor Eicke was promoted to SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS on 20 April 1942. Sepp Dietrich remained senior, having served as General der SS-VT ( SS-Verfügungstruppe ) upon

966-415: Is a poisonous gas that interferes with cellular respiration . Cyanide prevents the cell from producing adenosine triphosphate (ATP) by binding to one of the proteins involved in the electron transport chain . This protein, cytochrome c oxidase , contains several subunits and has ligands containing iron groups. The cyanide component of Zyklon B can bind at one of these iron groups, heme a3, forming

1035-584: Is used in industrial processes, made by companies in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the US. Degesch resumed production of Zyklon B after the war. The product was sold as Cyanosil in Germany and Zyklon in other countries. It was still produced as of 2008. Degussa sold Degesch to Detia-Freyberg GmbH in 1986. The company is now called Detia-Degesch. Up until around 2015, a fumigation product similar to Zyklon B

1104-466: The Berlin Police . While holding SA membership, Helldorff was never actually an SS member although for administrative purposes he held SS rank and was ranked as the 15th most senior SS officer. A total of 107 men would eventually hold the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer with 97 such officers listed on the SS seniority list in 1944. Several men with the rank would die during World War II; some of

1173-668: The Final Solution , the most deadly phase of the Holocaust . Valuables such as gold watches, rings, even tooth fillings , glasses, and currency were taken from the inmates on arrival at the death camps . These items were then sent back to Berlin in WVHA-marked crates for processing at the Reichsbank , under its director Emil Puhl . Pohl's administrative staff at the WVHA even created evaluative tables that calculated

1242-509: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry led to the founding in 1919 of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH ( Degesch ), a state-controlled consortium formed to investigate military use of the chemical. Chemists at Degesch added a cautionary eye irritant to a less volatile cyanide compound which reacted with water in the presence of heat to become hydrogen cyanide. The new product

1311-781: The Night of the Long Knives in July 1934, Sepp Dietrich was promoted to the rank. On 9 September 1934, so as to prevent a power struggle within the SS, Hitler further promoted Kurt Daluege who commanded most of the SS in the Berlin region. Daluege's promotion was to avoid the SS splitting into two separate entities, one based in Northern Germany under Daluege and the other in Bavaria under Himmler. This early SS disunity became

1380-517: The SS had been increasingly engaged in since the mid-1930s. From the onset, many of the SS economic enterprises operated by the SS-WVHA were directly linked to the concentration camp system. Some of the commercial ventures and assets owned or operated by them included: Since the WVHA fell under the administrative jurisdiction of the SS, it was deemed part and parcel to the legal indictments levied against

1449-599: The United States Public Health Service used Zyklon B to fumigate freight trains and clothes of Mexican immigrants entering the United States. Uses in Germany included delousing clothing (often using a portable sealed chamber invented by Degesch in the 1930s) and fumigating ships, warehouses, and trains. By 1943, sales of Zyklon B accounted for 65 percent of Degesch's sales revenue and 70 percent of its gross profits. In early 1942,

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1518-499: The Waffen-SS , the rank of SS- Gruppenführer was equivalent to a Generalleutnant , and an SS- Obergruppenführer came to be considered the equivalent of a General ; holders were titled in full SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS . Zyklon B Zyklon B ( German: [tsyˈkloːn ˈbeː] ; translated Cyclone B ) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in

1587-466: The 1920s, Zyklon B was used at U.S. Customs facilities along the Mexican border to fumigate the clothing of border crossers. In 1930, Degussa ceded 42.5 percent ownership of Degesch to IG Farben and 15 percent to Th. Goldschmidt AG , in exchange for the right to market pesticide products of those two companies through Degesch. Degussa retained managerial control. While Degesch owned the rights to

1656-499: The Holocaust. Tesch and his deputy executive, Karl Weinbacher , were executed in 1946 for knowingly selling the product to the SS for use on humans. Hydrogen cyanide is now rarely used as a pesticide but still has industrial applications. Firms in several countries continue to produce Zyklon B under alternative brand names, including Detia-Degesch, the successor to Degesch, who renamed the product Cyanosil in 1974. Hydrogen cyanide

1725-465: The Nazis began using Zyklon B as the preferred killing tool in extermination camps during the Holocaust . They used it to murder roughly 1.1 million people in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau , Majdanek , and elsewhere. Zyklon B was preferred because it was assumed to be a "humane" killing method, with the Nazis priding themselves as "civilized killers". Most of the victims were Jews, and by far

1794-622: The Reich. Estimates provided by Pohl indicate that during the second half of 1944, there were upwards of 250,000 slaves working for private firms, another 170,000 working in underground factories and an additional 15,000 clearing rubble from the Allied bombing raids. In 1947, a detailed description showing the scale of the operation was given at the WVHA trials at Nuremberg . Evidence outlined how property and cash worth hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks

1863-399: The SA, to which the SS was still subordinated. Although Himmler usually referred to himself as Reichsführer-SS , before the summer of 1934, this was simply a title for the SS commander, and not yet an actual rank. Shortly after Himmler's promotion, Hitler further promoted Franz Xaver Schwarz , with Himmler's date of rank backdated to 1 January 1933 in order to confirm his seniority as

1932-410: The SS and Speer's ministry. During the summer of 1944, control of the concentration camps was removed from Pohl's WVHA and executive power was instead given over to local HSSPF offices, which, according to Pohl, occurred for operational reasons. Speer's armaments ministry took over arms production without the intermediation of the WVHA in the application process for industrial firms seeking business with

2001-628: The SS and its subordinated entities were officially recognized as a criminal organization in 1946. Obergruppenf%C3%BChrer Obergruppenführer ( German: [ˈoːbɐˌɡʁʊpm̩fyːʁɐ] , lit.   ' senior group leader ' ) was a paramilitary rank in Nazi Germany that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and adopted by the Schutzstaffel (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it

2070-692: The Second World War, there were 88 promotions to the rank, of which 22 were considered regular officers of the Waffen-SS and the rest members of the Allgemeine SS . The first wartime promotions to SS- Obergruppenführer occurred in April 1940 when the rank was granted to Joachim von Ribbentrop , Martin Bormann and Hans Lammers ; Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Otto Dietrich were promoted

2139-544: The United States. (The firm was already using the name in Germany for one of their vacuum cleaners.) Protests were lodged by the Simon Wiesenthal Center after the trademark application was reported to BBC News Online by one of their readers. French company IPC's product names used "Cyclone" for degreasers and suffix "B" for biodegradable : "Cyclone B" was renamed "Cyclone Cap Vert" ("green cap") in 2013 after protests from Jewish groups. A rabbi said

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2208-626: The aide of Dr. Emil Meyer , an officer in the Allgemeine-SS and prominent figure within the Dresdner Bank . Slave labor for private companies, included Heinkel and BMW , firms that produced aircraft and aircraft engines; the chemical giant, IG Farben , which manufactured rubber, synthetic fuels, synthetic explosives, pharmaceuticals, and one of its subsidiaries even produced Zyklon B ; Junkers aircraft; Krupp steel; one of Germany's foremost aircraft manufacturers, Messerschmitt ;

2277-500: The ashes were buried, thrown in the river, or used as fertilizer. With the Soviet Red Army approaching through Poland, the last mass gassing at Auschwitz took place on 30 October 1944. In November 1944, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS, ordered gassing operations to cease throughout Nazi Germany. After World War II ended in 1945, Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher of Tesch & Stabenow were tried in

2346-444: The brand name Zyklon and the patent on the packaging system, the chemical formula was owned by Degussa. Schlempe GmbH, which was 52 percent owned by Degussa, owned the rights to a process to extract hydrogen cyanide from waste products of sugar beet processing. This process was performed under license by two companies, Dessauer Werke and Kaliwerke Kolin, who also combined the resulting hydrogen cyanide with stabilizer from IG Farben and

2415-410: The buildings. Leuchter's negative control , a sample of gasket material taken from a different camp building, had no cyanide residue. In 1999, James Roth, the chemist who had analyzed Leuchter's samples, stated that the test was flawed because the material that was sent for testing included large chunks, and the chemical would only be within 10 microns of the surface. The surface that had been exposed to

2484-475: The camps was part of the effort to maximize economic utility. Expressing his sentiments regarding the use of prisoners for labour in a memo, Pohl wrote, "SS industries [ Unternehmen ] have the task...to organize a more businesslike (more productive) execution of punishment and adjust it to the overall development of the Reich." SS guards at the camps used murderous brutality to achieve higher quotas from forced labor in its punitive units . When it came to exploiting

2553-508: The chemical was not identified, and the large size of the specimens meant that any chemical present was diluted by an undeterminable amount. In 1994, the Institute for Forensic Research in Kraków re-examined Leuchter's claim, stating that formation of Prussian blue by exposure of bricks to cyanide is not a highly probable reaction. Using microdiffusion techniques, they tested 22 samples from

2622-406: The chemical, which meant they were able to use it without any further training or governmental oversight. Rudolf Höss , commandant of Auschwitz, said that the use of Zyklon-B to murder prisoners came about on the initiative of one of his subordinates, SS- Hauptsturmführer (captain) Karl Fritzsch , who had used it to murder some Russian POWs in late August 1941 in the basement of Block 11 in

2691-411: The early 1920s. It consists of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such as diatomaceous earth . The product is notorious for its use by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust to murder approximately 1.1 million people in gas chambers installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau , Majdanek , and other extermination camps . Hydrogen cyanide,

2760-633: The greater organization. This included the formal declaration of the Nuremberg Tribunal , which stated: "The SS was utilised for the purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labour programme and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war." To that end,

2829-464: The jurisdiction of the WVHA; it was designed to unify the massive business interests of Himmler's SS, taking in profits from the slave labour of concentration camp prisoners. Merging operations, the inspectorate of concentration camps was also incorporated into the WVHA on 13 March 1942. In 1942, the WVHA's main remit was to expand the SS's contribution to the war effort by using forced labor in armaments manufacture and construction projects. Slave labour at

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2898-483: The last days of the war. Approximately fifteen SS generals were ranked as SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei und Waffen-SS . SS- Obergruppenführer was considered the highest rank of the Allgemeine SS until April 1942; equivalent to a lieutenant general (three-star general) in the American and British armies. It was only outranked by Himmler's special rank of Reichsführer-SS . However, within

2967-404: The main camp. They repeated the experiment on more Russian POWs in September, with Höss watching. Block 11 proved unsuitable, as the basement was difficult to air out afterwards and the crematorium (Crematorium I, which operated until July 1942) was some distance away. The site of the murders was moved to Crematorium I, where more than 700 victims could be murdered at once. By the middle of 1942,

3036-499: The majority of murders using this method took place at Auschwitz. Distributor Heli supplied Zyklon B to Mauthausen , Dachau , and Buchenwald , and Testa supplied it to Auschwitz and Majdanek; camps also occasionally bought it directly from the manufacturers. Some 56 tonnes of the 729 tonnes sold in Germany in 1942–44 were sold to concentration camps, amounting to about 8 percent of domestic sales. Auschwitz received 23.8 tonnes, of which 6 tonnes were used for fumigation. The remainder

3105-459: The metal and tubing firm Salzgitter AG, which was part of Reichswerke Hermann Göring ; the electrical engineering company, Siemens-Schuckertwerke ; Apollinaris mineral water ; Allach porcelain ; and DEST (building material and armament) , among others. To facilitate this integration, the number of slave laborers the WVHA had available increased steadily from 21,400 in 1939, to upwards of 524,286 by August 1944. Another enterprise that fell under

3174-412: The middle of 1942. Those who were not selected for work crews were immediately gassed. Those selected to die generally comprised about three-quarters of the total and included almost all children, women with small children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be completely fit. The victims were told that they were to undergo delousing and

3243-510: The more notable being Heydrich, Eicke, and Artur Phleps . The last promotion was made in March 1945 to Hans Kammler . The rank of Obergruppenführer was used by four major paramilitary groups of the Nazi Party, these being the SA, SS, National Socialist Motor Corps , and National Socialist Flyers Corps . The rank would remain the highest SS general officer rank until April 1942, when

3312-558: The name "Zyklon", which had appeared since 1999 on the box for one of its trainers , after receiving complaints from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre . Also in 2002, Siemens withdrew its application for an American trademark of the word "Zyklon", which their subsidiary BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte had proposed to use for a new line of home appliances in

3381-451: The name was "horrible ignorance at best, and a Guinness record in evil and cynicism if the company did know the history of the name of its product." Holocaust deniers claim that Zyklon B gas was not used in the gas chambers, relying for evidence on the discredited research of Fred A. Leuchter , who found low levels of Prussian blue in samples of the gas chamber walls and ceilings. Leuchter attributed its presence to general delousing of

3450-426: The operation was moved to Auschwitz II–Birkenau, a nearby satellite camp that had been under construction since October 1941. The first gas chamber at Auschwitz II–Birkenau was the "red house" (called Bunker 1 by SS staff), a brick cottage converted to a gassing facility by tearing out the inside and bricking up the windows. It was operational by March 1942. A second brick cottage, called the "white house" or Bunker 2,

3519-492: The outbreak of World War II in 1939. Two SS officers would be demoted from the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer : Rudolf Hess and Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff . Hess was stripped of his rank and expelled from both the SS and Nazi Party after his abortive flight to Scotland in 1941. Helldorff was stricken from the SS rolls in 1944 after the 20 July plot against Hitler. Helldorff was a unique case, in that his SS rank had been bestowed for technical reasons in order to command

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3588-582: The purview of the WVHA—and one Albert Speer was keen on as well—was the construction works at Dora-Mittelbau, the underground complex where the V2 rockets were assembled. This enormous subterranean facility near Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains was completed in a mere two months using camp labor supplied by Pohl's WVHA. Work on the prestigious wonder-weapon V1 and V2 projects remained bitterly contested between

3657-501: The rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer was created. Standard practice for SS generals serving as an SS and police leader , as well as those senior SS personnel of the RSHA , was to hold dual police rank as SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei . SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS was the equivalent in the armed SS; in 1944, most active SS generals received this designation in order to command military troops during

3726-489: The rank, including Friedrich Jeckeln who would become one of the most infamous SS and police leaders on the Eastern Front during World War II . The last pre-war promotion to the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer was in April 1939 for Friedrich Graf von der Schulenburg who died the following month. Upon the outbreak of World War II, there were seventeen men who held the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer . During

3795-494: The side of the chamber. The victims were dead within 20 minutes. Johann Kremer , an SS doctor who oversaw gassings, testified that the "shouting and screaming of the victims could be heard through the opening and it was clear that they fought for their lives". Sonderkommandos (special work crews forced to work at the gas chambers) wearing gas masks then dragged the bodies from the chamber. The victims' glasses, artificial limbs, jewelry, and hair were removed, and any dental work

3864-448: The top officer within the SS. Shortly after Rudolf Hess was appointed as his deputy in April 1933, Hitler promoted him to SS- Obergruppenführer . However, in September, Hitler decreed that Hess should no longer use the title of Obergruppenführer but only use the title of Deputy Führer. A number of men were promoted to SS- Obergruppenführer in 1934, these being Fritz Weitzel , Richard Walther Darré and Walter Buch . After

3933-471: The value of concentration camp inmates as farmed-out wage earners (minus the depreciation of food and clothing), their profit intake from valuables remaining after their deaths (minus crematoria expenses), and any costs recovered from selling their bones and ashes; in total, the average concentration camp inmate had a life-expectancy of nine-months or less and was valued at 1,630 marks. The Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetrieb (German Industrial Concern; GmbH) fell under

4002-402: The west and south, and Testa those to the east. Degesch owned 51 percent of the shares of Heli, and until 1942 owned 55 percent of Testa. Prior to World War II Degesch derived most of its Zyklon B profits from overseas sales, particularly in the United States, where it was produced under license by Roessler & Hasslacher prior to 1931 and by American Cyanamid from 1931 to 1943. From 1929,

4071-467: The working potential of the Jews, this eventually amounted to "annihilation through labour," according to historian David Cesarani. As a commodity of the WVHA, inmates were deliberately worked to death, even when it conflicted with production. This practice was a compromise between Nazi ideological imperatives and the practical needs of a militant Nazi state. Concentration camps were constructed at Auschwitz , Lublin (Majdanek) , and Stutthof to facilitate

4140-694: The young architect Albert Speer ) as the Reich subsumed more and more territory. Himmler was likewise inspired by these plans, which were designed to expand SS production and "boost the status of the SS". To accomplish the job of carrying out the Führer's vision, Pohl expanded the WVHA, creating the East German Building Supply Works ( Ost-Deutsche Baustoffwerke GmbH ; ODBS) along with the German Noble Furniture Corporation ( Deutsche Edelmöbel GmbH ) with

4209-399: Was converted some weeks later. According to Höss, Bunker 1 held 800 victims and Bunker 2 held 1,200 victims. These structures were in use for mass-murder until early 1943. At that point, the Nazis decided to greatly increase the gassing capacity of Birkenau. Crematorium II was originally designed as a mortuary with morgues in the basement and ground-level incinerators; they converted it into

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4278-645: Was created in 1932 by Ernst Röhm and was intended as a seniormost rank of the Nazi stormtroopers for use by Röhm and his top SA generals. In its initial concept, the rank was intended to be held by members of the Oberste SA-Führung (Supreme SA Command) and also by veteran commanders of certain SA-Gruppen (SA groups). Some of the early promotions to the rank included Ernst Röhm , Viktor Lutze , Edmund Heines , August Schneidhuber , and Fritz Ritter von Kraußer . The rank of SA- Obergruppenführer

4347-400: Was extracted so the gold could be melted down. If the gas chamber was crowded, which they typically were, the corpses were found half-squatting, their skin discolored pink with red and green spots, with some foaming at the mouth or bleeding from their ears. Others were covered in excrement, vomit, menstrual fluid and suffered nose bleeds. The corpses were burned in the nearby incinerators, and

4416-697: Was in production by Lučební závody Draslovka of the Czech Republic , under the trade name Uragan D2. Uragan means "hurricane" or "cyclone" in Czech. Subsequent use of the word "Zyklon" in trade names has prompted angry reactions in English-speaking countries. The name "Zyklon" on portable roller coasters made since 1965 by Pinfari provoked protests among Jewish groups in the U.S. in 1993 and 1999. In 2002, British sportswear and football equipment supplier Umbro issued an apology and stopped using

4485-495: Was marketed as the pesticide Zyklon (cyclone). As a similar formula had been used as a weapon by the Germans during World War I, Zyklon was soon banned. Deutsche Gold- und Silber-Scheideanstalt (German Gold and Silver Refinery; Degussa ) became sole owners of Degesch in 1922. There, beginning in 1922, Walter Heerdt  [ de ] , Bruno Tesch , and others worked on packaging hydrogen cyanide in sealed canisters along with

4554-514: Was taken from the victims of Aktion Reinhard . It was collected from the detailed notes that had passed between SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler during the operation to kill most of the Jews in the General Government . Organizationally, the WVHA was made up of five main departments ( German : Ämter or Amtsgruppe ): The WVHA was also put in charge of numerous commercial ventures that

4623-475: Was the highest commissioned SS rank after only Reichsführer-SS . Translated as "senior group leader", the rank of Obergruppenführer was senior to Gruppenführer . A similarly named rank of Untergruppenführer existed in the SA from 1929 to 1930 and as a title until 1933. In April 1942, the new rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer was created which was above Obergruppenführer and below Reichsführer-SS . The rank of Obergruppenführer

4692-473: Was the most senior rank of the Sturmabteilung until the spring of 1933, when Röhm made the title position of Stabschef (SA Chief of Staff) into a rank and promoted himself accordingly. Also in the summer of 1933, Heinrich Himmler was promoted by Adolf Hitler to the newly created rank of SS- Obergruppenführer with the intent being to make Himmler the equivalent of the senior commanders of

4761-517: Was used in the gas chambers or lost to spoilage (the product had a stated shelf life of only three months). Testa conducted fumigations for the Wehrmacht and supplied them with Zyklon B. They also offered courses to the SS in the safe handling and use of the material for fumigation purposes. In April 1941, the German agriculture and interior ministries designated the SS as an authorized applier of

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