Paul Pleiger

Paul Pleiger (28 September 1899 – 22 July 1985) was a German entrepreneur and corporate executive who was involved in managing the war economy of Nazi Germany. He was the managing director of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring from 1937 and became chairman of its supervisory board in 1942. From 1941, he served as the Reich Delegate for Coal Supply and the chairman of the Reich Coal Association. He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. Early life and career Pleiger, the son of a miner, was apprenticed as a locksmith and lathe operator between 1913 and 1917 and then attended an engineering technical school in Elberfeld. He then worked as an engineer at the Harpen Mining Company in Dortmund. In January 1925 he founded his own company in Sprockhövel, Paul Pleiger Maschinenfabrik, a factory that manufactured machinery and equipment for mining. In March 1932 he joined the Nazi Party and became the Ortsgruppenleiter (Local Group Leader) in Sprockhövel. He later would be awarded the Golden Party Badge. In 1933, he was admitted to the Party's paramilitary wing, theSturmabteilung (SA), with the rank of SA-Sturmfuhrer, and also became the Gau economic advisor in Gau Westphalia-South, headed by Gauleiter Josef Wagner. Career in Nazi Germany In November 1934, at the request of Wilhelm Keppler, Hitler's advisor for economic affairs, Pleiger went to work for him in Berlin, dealing with the promotion of ore mining. In October 1936, when the Four Year Plan was established under Hermann Göring, Pleiger headed its iron department in the office for raw materials. In July 1937, Göring made Pleiger the general director of the newly founded Reichswerke Hermann Göring, an ore mining and ironworks conglomerate. Under his leadership, it grew to be the largest such concern in Europe, expanding with the Anschluss with Austria and the takeover of Czechoslovakia and Poland. By 1940, it employed over 600,000 workers. Pleiger served on the Vorstand (management board) from 1939, becoming chairman in 1941. In May 1942, he succeeded Paul Körner as chairman of the Aufsichtsrat (supervisory board) and served until the fall of the Nazi regime in May 1945. In January 1938 he was named a Wehrwirtschaftsführer (War Economy Leader). After the conquest of France and Luxembourg, Pleiger was made Treuhänder (Trustee) for the iron ore regions of Lorraine and Luxembourg.