Hanns Benkert (1899 - 1948)
Siemens – Increased Output through Forced Labour

Hanns Benkert was born 1899 in Würzburg. After his graduation from high school and a diploma in Mechanical Engineering, he worked his way up to become a factory manager and management board member at Siemens in Berlin. He joined the NSDAP in 1937. In 1940 he was appointed “Wehrwirtschaftsführer” (Chairman of the Reich’s Association of Industry) by the “Rüstungsinspektion III” (Section III of the Reich’s Armament Services).

Due to the increased draft of German skilled workers by the Wehrmacht, Benkert became a proponent of the use of forced labour from 1940 on. The Siemens’ Berlin branch made us of the Jewish population of Berlin by applying the so-called “Geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz” (servitude), as well as foreign forced labourers and concentration camp inmates (from 1944 on).

After the liberation, Hanns Benkert was facing a denazification-trial. He was not pardoned, since the tribunal in Berlin-Spandau came to the conclusion that a “very rigid use of penalties” was to be found inside the Siemes-Schuckert-factory, after evaluating personnel- files of Jewish forced labourers.  Benkert was personally involved in reporting a female Jewish forced laborer to the Gestapo. Hanns Benkert died in Berlin in 1948. His wife appealed the tribunal’s decision after his death, during which Benkert was acquitted by another tribunal in Berlin.