Zur Bedeutung nationalsozialistischer Statistiken und Statistiker nach dem Krieg: Rolf Wagenführ und der United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS)

Abstract

After the war, NS-statistics were put to manifold uses. Indeed, the industrial census of 1936 served both as a benchmark for the restrictions on German production imposed by the allied powers and as an indispensable input for the introduction of the planned economy in East Germany. In addition the NS-statisticians involved were also considered indispensable for interpreting and implementing these statistics. In order to assess the economic effects of allied bombing during the war, John Kenneth Galbraith oversaw the Overall Economic Effects Division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Wagenführ and other German statisticians were interrogated in order to elucidate the statistical files of Speer’s Planning Office (Planungsamt), the command centre of the German war economy. As the chief statistician in Speer’s Ministry for Armaments, Wagenführ had been in charge of the statistical information system for running the war economy. The article focuses on a recently detected file on the kidnapping of Rolf Wagenführ by US-officers from Berlin to Bad Homburg in the summer of 1945. At that time, Wagenführ was working for the central command of the Soviet military administration of Germany. I found the report on the kidnapping and the ensuing interrogation which Wagenführ wrote for his Soviet command officer. It is part of the archival files of the German Democratic Republic hosted by the German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) in Berlin-Lichterfelde. The article here concludes with both a brief presentation of those German production statistics (Statistische Schnellberichte) which had been compiled on a monthly basis for the inner political circle around Hitler during the war, and with some results from the USSBS.