I’ve never really thought about it before, but just wondering if there were additional incentives besides exploiting antisemitism to gain power and control.

I know there was forced labor at the camps, but was there also anything similar to a private prison incentive like we see in the U.S.? Government contracts are provided, and the more people you hold in your prison (or at least process as entering the prison) the bigger the government contract, and higher the profits.

What about transportation companies that owned the trains that transported people to the camps? Was everything already purchased (or confiscated) and owned by the government when they used it to imprison people, or did they contract out to private businesses?

If everything was property of the government rather than privately held, who decided where money would be allocated, and how were the decisions made?

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    1·
    16 days ago

    Private sector participation in Nazi crimes

    So this is more along the lines of what I was looking for, and it’s depressing as fuck to think about every individual that played some seemingly run of the mill role in making the fucking Holocaust possible. Even down to the companies that made the ventilation systems and produced the gas that was used to execute victims. There are no small acts of compliance in genocide.

    The genocide of Jews and others was facilitated by technologies sold by German companies. Degesch, a subsidiary of IG Farben and Degussa, produced Zyklon B gas, marketed by Tesch & Stabenow. Although it was mostly used for the killing of lice and other pests, about 3 percent of the gas was used for mass killing of prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other Nazi concentration camps. The directors of the companies were well aware that the gas was used for mass murder of humans. Topf and Sons built the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other concentration camps, and also built ventilation systems for the gas chambers so that prisoners could be murdered more efficiently.[7]

    Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch railway company, was paid the equivalent of 3 million euros (2019) for transporting more than 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands to concentration and extermination camps.[8]