The D. E. S. T. is not an acronym known to most today outside of Holocaust Studies and Education, but was perhaps the greatest reason and force behind slave labor in the Shoah. From before Hitler and his men took office, they had a grandiose dream: to replace the defeated Germany of the post World War I and the anemic Weimar Republic, with a grand new Proud Germany; a Germany of the Days of heroes and warriors in utter nationalistic hubris. They had many avenues in mind to bring this about: endlosung, or the "Final Solution" of the genocide of the Jews of Europe was one (they thought this would cure unemployment woes,); others included Lebensraum, and a repopulation of Europe by Aryans; a complete re-definition of the arts and aesthetics, another was the redefinition of Culture in a return to Volkische Roots, including nordic and volkish mysticism; and yet another was the complete remodeling of the buildings and architecture of Germany which would create a virtual 'Asgard' of National Identity of force, strength and Power. To a defeated German populace these were noble causes.

In order to rebuild Germany following a depression, though, was an expensive project. While initially there was economic recovery, Germany was just becoming solvent; there were not large revenues to build expensive, massive edifices to 'honor' the new chancellor in 1933. Still, Speer, the Architect of the Third Reich was given the directive to begin city planning and building which he did.

Slave Labor

Labor in any building effort is one of the greatest expenses. The hierarchy of the Third Reich reasoned that cheap or free labor, or in other words, enforced labor [slavery] would accomplish their purposes and allow them to begin to build the Germany of their bloated dreams. Prisoners were forced into labor, followed by racial prisoners, including the Jews, Roma-Sinti, and others. The intial German Concentration Camps of Flossenberg, Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen and later Mauthausen-Melk-Guzen, were built near quarries to facilitate the mining of stone, marble and minerals need for the Reich's Building Plan. The procurement of materials, organization and management of slave labor and quarry operations, all fell under the D.E.S.T. {Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH } or German Stone & Earth works Company, which was administrated by the SS Authority.

Founded on April 29,1938, the D.E.S.T was widely successful in the exploitation of slave labor, usually Jewish in the quarries, using human labor in such an incredibly cruel way that it became one of the main tenets of war crime charges in the Nuremberg Trials. The director of the program, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Oswald Pohl, located in Berlin, was sentenced in 1947 at Nuremburg and executed in 1951 for war crimes.⁵ Workers were fed very little, worked between 12 and 16 hour days, in back-breaking work with no recompense, and often beat, shot or hung for slacking at the work. Workers received little or no medical attention, and were virtually 'used up': in other words, they were worked in almost impossible labor till they could work no more, and when they became incapacitated through starvation, weakness or disease, the ones who did not die on their own, were then killed. Daily, new prisoners arrived at the major Atrocity and Killing centers, and the physically fit took the place of the ones who had died.

The plans of Hitler, Speer and the D.E.S.T. were begun but not fully met by the war's end. Initially, much building went on and the grand, neo-baroque edifices rose according to the 'Fuhrer's' visions, but as the war progressed there were two main deterents: one was the need to redirect resources toward the war effort instead of domestic concerns, and the other was the lack of wisdom in building programs as bombing raids began to occur all over Europe, including in Germany. Hitler's plans were never fully realized. The hundreds of thousands of lives that perished mining stone, marble, and making brick for the "Fuhrer Buildings" left not buildings but their suffering as legacy.

Footnotes & References

von Jochen, et alEichmann Interrogated

Encylcopaedia of the Holocaust, published by Gale Corporation;

Living Under the Shadow of Mauthausen

D.E.S.T

German Earth Works for the Third Reich

Slave Labor

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