Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel was a German Nazi politician, Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia from 1927 and the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment from March 1942 until the end of the Second World War.
32 Facts About Fritz Sauckel
2.
Fritz Sauckel was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging.
3.
Fritz Sauckel attended the local volksschule and the gymnasium in Schweinfurt, leaving in 1909 without graduating when his mother fell ill.
4.
Fritz Sauckel joined the merchant marine of Norway and Sweden when he was 15, first on a Norwegian three-masted schooner, and later on Swedish and German vessels.
5.
Fritz Sauckel was interned as an enemy alien in France from August 1914 until 20 October 1919.
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Fritz Sauckel served as its local manager for Lower Franconia until 1921.
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Fritz Sauckel joined the Nazi Party in January 1923 and cofounded an Ortsgruppe in Ilmenau, serving as its Ortsgruppenfuhrer.
8.
Fritz Sauckel enrolled in the SA, the party's paramilitary organization.
9.
Fritz Sauckel became in 1924 the publisher of a small newspaper in Ilmenau, which in 1925 would merge with another paper and develop into the official organ of the Party in Thuringia, Der Nation zialist.
10.
Fritz Sauckel thus established his credentials as an Alter Kampfer with whom Hitler always retained strong bonds of loyalty.
11.
Fritz Sauckel succeeded Dinter as Gauleiter of Thuringia on 30 September 1927 and would retain this position until the end of the Nazi regime.
12.
On 8 December 1929, Fritz Sauckel was elected to the Landtag of Thuringia as one of six Nazi deputies that would hold the balance of power there between the leftist and center-right parties.
13.
On 9 November 1933 Fritz Sauckel was promoted to SA-Gruppenfuhrer and on 12 November he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 12.
14.
On 9 September 1934, Fritz Sauckel joined the SS as an SS-Gruppenfuhrer at the invitation of Heinrich Himmler and was assigned to SS-Oberabschnitte Mitte based in Weimar until 1 April 1936 when he was transferred to the staff of the Reichsfuhrer-SS.
15.
On 23 January 1937 Fritz Sauckel was made the head of the Main Office for the Four Year Plan in Thuringia.
16.
Fritz Sauckel was given an honorary rank of SA-Obergruppenfuhrer on 9 November 1937.
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At the start of World War II on 1 September 1939, Fritz Sauckel was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis IX headquartered in Kassel.
18.
Fritz Sauckel was a holder of the Golden Party Badge.
19.
On 21 March 1942, Fritz Sauckel was appointed to the position for which he would be forever linked in history, General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment on the recommendation of Martin Bormann.
20.
Fritz Sauckel worked directly under Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring within the Four Year Plan Office, obtaining and allocating labour for German industry and agriculture.
21.
Fritz Sauckel therefore met the ever-increasing requirement for manpower with people from the occupied territories.
22.
On 1 July 1944, following the division of the Prussian Province of Saxony, Fritz Sauckel was named Oberprasident of the Regierungsbezirk Erfurt, which became part of Thuringia.
23.
On 25 September 1944, Fritz Sauckel was named leader of the Volkssturm forces in his Gau.
24.
On 10 April 1945, only a day after declaring Weimar a fortress city and exhorting his Volkssturm forces to resist the approaching American Army, Fritz Sauckel fled the city by car.
25.
Fritz Sauckel was interned in the 7th Army Interrogation Center in Augsburg, Camp King in Oberursel and, finally, in Nuremberg.
26.
On 20 November 1945, Fritz Sauckel was put on trial before the International Military Tribunal as a major war criminal.
27.
Fritz Sauckel was indicted on all four charges of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes and crimes against humanity.
28.
Fritz Sauckel denied that it was slave labour or that it was common to deliberately work people to death or to mistreat them.
29.
Robert Servatius, Fritz Sauckel's counsel, portrayed Fritz Sauckel as a representative of the labour classes of Germany; an earnest and unpretentious party man assiduously committed to promoting the collective utility of the working class.
30.
Fritz Sauckel surmised that Speer bore greater legal and moral responsibility by virtue of the fact that the former merely met the demands of the latter, in accordance with protocol.
31.
Fritz Sauckel was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was hanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946,11 days before his 52nd birthday after receiving Communion.
32.
Fritz Sauckel has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theatre productions;.