Fritz Sauckel

Germany state institutions Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces 1894–1946 ✕ Executed

Gauleiter of Thuringia who, as Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment from 1942 to 1945, deported millions for forced labour

Born in Haßfurt in Bavaria, the only child of a postman and a seamstress, he went to sea young and spent the First World War interned in France as an enemy alien. He joined the Nazi Party in 1923, made himself a leading party organiser in Thuringia and rejoined the re-founded party in 1925. Gauleiter of Thuringia from 1927 and its Reichsstatthalter from 1933, he held both posts until the regime fell. Appointed Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment under Göring’s Four Year Plan office in March 1942, he deported some five million workers from occupied territories, often by brutal coercion, for forced labour in German industry, and authorised the use of prisoners of war. Arrested by American troops in Salzburg, he was convicted at Nuremberg of war crimes and crimes against humanity and hanged in October 1946.

Also known as: Ernst Friedrich Christoph Sauckel