miRS-tonpon - Sturmpanzer.com

The Poliere and Schachtmeister became, during the workinghours, the nucleus of the irreducible minimum of GermanNCO supervisory personnel over foreign manpower. Controlduring working hours, therefore, remained entirely German,The problem of obtaining sufficient German Poliere wasmet by lowering the requirement standards to the pointwhere the designation 'Polier 1 no longer guaranteed aminimum of skill and experience; by the selection ofelderly men including septuagenarians; by giving thePoliere assistants in the form of foreign 'Hilfs poliere 1(Assistant Foremen), see para.118, vi. below. ThePolier, in turn, was also called upon to assume semeresponsibilities in camp in addition to his normalresponsibility on the construction Job.ii.Foreigners were deputised to positions of trust andresponsibility in the camp, usually over groups of theirown countrymen. Final control, however, rested withGerman personnel. Lagerftthrer (camp supervisors), forexample, formed the nucleus of German control in theCamp. Even in their case, though rarely, collaborationistscame to be entrusted in 1944 with the running ofcamps. Those instances, relatively few in number, cameabout through the insistence of Ant Bau-OTZ, which, inits efforts to obtain effective foreign collaboration inoccupied Europe, had embarked on a conciliatory policy.This policy generally met opposition from local OTofficials and in the last analysis was effectivelysabotaged by German personnel in the various camps.Hilfslagerfuhrer (Assistant Camp Supervisors), on theother hand, tvere all foreigners. Incidentally, many ofthe Hilfslagerfubrer also acted as Assistant Foremenduring working hours on the construction job.iii.Inasmuch as the main part of the above-mentioned reorganisation(March 1944) in personnel administration,involved the transfer of a good deal of responsibilityin this respect from the QBL Frontfuhrung to theindividual OT-firms operating within the OBL sector, anew post was created within each OT-firm to take thisresponsibility. The post is that of Mannschaftsftthrer(OT-firm personnel officer), and is discussed below(para.118, iii) .118. The New Chain of Comnand in the Supervision of Labour.The effect of the re-arrangement of personnel administrationin the spring of 1944 was to make the OT-f irm, for all practicalpurposes, a self-contained operational unit, and as such a lowerechelon of the QBL. The OT-f irm remained essentially statio withinthe limits of its operational sector (at least such was the hopeof the higher administration). Yet inasmuch as relations betweenfirm personnel ami worker detachaents had become closely integrated,the OT-f irm was capable of reverting to a mobile status on startorder. The characteristic of the new arrangement was the investmentof one individual with dual and even triple functions with correspondinglydual or even triple responsibility, a characteristicalready familiar to us in German political and military organisationsas a whole. The new chain of command in the supervision oflabour, as a result of these modifications in the spring of 1944,is as follows:£. The Einheitsfdhrer (Firm Executive) is responsible to theOberpauleiter ancTto the Frontftihrer, to the first in mattersconcerning construction, to the second in matters concerningpersonnel.-124­