WVHA Killed Far More Jews than RSHA

SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA – created on February 1, 1942 – right after Wannsee Conference) is far less known than Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and WVHA CEO Oswald Pohl – than RSHA boss Reinhard Heydrich.

In reality, WVHA (which executed the “Holocaust by Gas” and “Extermination through Labor” projects) was far more murderous than RSHA that was responsible for “Holocaust by Bullets” (the former accounted for 78% of Holocaust victims).

Also, WVHA was a far, far bigger monster; in fact, “a state within a state within a state” because it managed the finances, supply systems and business and construction projects of the SS.

WVHA ran all concentration (labor) camps of the SS and thus (via the supply of vital slave labor) essentially controlled the whole German wartime economy. After absorbing Concentration Camps Inspectorate and SS-Totenkopfverb;nde (SS Camp Guards), WVHA became the lead agency in implementing the “Holocaust by Gas” – the key component of the “final solution to the Jewish question”.

WVHA became a “one-stop-shop” for the “Holocaust by Gas”: it built and operated death factories (Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor) and killing centers at labor camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek); utilized Jewish slave labor to the maximum extent possible (via “Extermination through Labor”) – and filled German financial coffers with valuables stolen from murdered Jews.

WVHA boss Oswald Pohl (who got well-deserved noose in Nuremberg in 1951) worked with Walther Funk, Reich Minister of Economics on “financial aspects of the Holocaust”. Grand theft on a colossal scale, to put it mildly.

Valuables such as gold watches, coins, rings, even tooth fillings, glasses, and currency were taken from the inmates on arrival at the death camps. Even after death, their corpses were carefully examined for any concealed items such as gold or jewelry as well as gold teeth, which had to be removed forcibly before being passed on to the Reichsbank.

These items were then sent to Berlin in WVHA-marked crates for processing at the Reichsbank, under its director Emil Puhl. The latter got essentially a “slap on the wrist” – at the “Ministries Trial”, one of the last of the twelve Nuremberg trials held in 1948-49, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to… just five years in jail.

He was released several months early due to good behavior. It is especially strange because Reichsminister of Economics Walther Funk (who was guilty essentially of the same crimes) got life in prison and served 12 years.