[Kyrie]

Hi Folks,


Who had how much of what kind of authority in the occupied territories, and to what degree they could exercise it, is a real mess. Very generally speaking, the Allgemeine SS had control of security matters, the 'Ostminister' (loosely translated, 'General Commissar') had complete civil responsibility, and Reich's Foreign Ministry had responsibility for locating politically useful people in the occupied territories.


The Allgemeine SS spent any time not required in looting either deporting civilians to work and death camps or simply murdering anyone in the local population they considered potential troublemakers.


The Ostminister was responsible for supplying skilled workers to German industries and for employing local skilled workers in any local industry beneficial to the war effort.


The Reich's Foreign Ministry was responsible for bringing any useful people it could find back to Germany for indoctrination and deployment in unoccupied enemy territory to encourage separatist movements.


These three organizations were working completely at odds. As often as not the skilled workers (many Jewish) needed by the Ostminister to either work locally or to respond to labor drafts from Berlin were being deported or just murdered by the Allgemeine SS, as were the politically useful people required by the Reich's Foreign Ministry. An example of this occurred in Minsk in 1941, when the SS took 310 civilian prisoners from the local jail and shot them in a ditch (a ready made grave, and damn the drainage problems). In these 310 people were 23 skilled Polish workers supplied by the Poland Ostminister to the Minsk Ostminister to do needed local work, and who had simply been billeted in the local jail until better quarters could be found.


I mention all this to provide some rather grim context.


By and large, the Allgemeine SS had nothing to do with supplying workers to Germany - their job was security. "Guest workers" in Germany were, OTOH, under the join control of the local industrial managers (during working hours) and the SS (during off hours, or while being transported). The upshot of all of this is the SS had very little to do with manufacturing, and controlled manufacturing only in those instances where the local industrial managers had been chosen due to SS political influence, or where the local manager was afraid to cross the local Allgemeine SS security commander by denying any of his requests.


The SS controlled almost no manufacturing facilities in Germany, but had great influence in Czechoslovakia. Their influence elsewhere ranged from great to none, depending on how well politically connected (and hence how well protected) the local manufacturing managers were.


The upshot of all this is the Allgemeine SS had almost no control of the manufacture of P.38's, Lugers, or Kar98k rifles. In those relatively rare cases where they exercised some de facto (but not dejure) control, they avoided marking any weapons produced as SS so as not to give away the game.


Hope this helps to provide a little context.


Best regards,


Kyrie