Sauckel, Fritz

1894–1946

   Sauckel served as Nazi Plenipotentiary General for the Allocation of Labor from 1942 until the end of 1944. He organized the deportation of over five million people to Germany to maintain the war effort and himself estimated that perhaps only 200,000 of these came voluntarily. He had enormous problems after 1943 when all available manpower was used up and he resorted to bypassing local governments to kidnap labor off the streets. In one affair his men kidnapped 1000 French police officers in Marseilles while they were out on exercises. He encountered great resistance in which men in many occupied areas took to the hills and forests. Nonetheless Sauckel managed to produce enough labor to actually increase war production until 1944 when the German economy began its final collapse. He was tried at Nuremberg after the war and executed for crimes against humanity.