Unused envelope with the return address of Paul Pleiger of Reichswerke Hermann Göring

Unused envelope with the letterhead of Reichswerke Aktiengesellschaft für Erzbergbau und Eisenhütten "Hermann Göring", Paul Pleiger, Secretariat, in Linz, Austria. The Linz works were a government conglomerate established by Nazi Germany to process low grade iron ores which was too expensive for private concerns to undertake. Göring was the Reich Minister responsible for mobilizing the German economy for the war effort. He assumed control of industries and resources in occupied areas and the state holding company, Reickswerke Hermann Göring Berlin, was a chief tool in the process. Pleiger was put in charge of the Reichswerke HG in 1937 and, by 1942, was Reich Commissioner for the Whole Economy of the East. The Linz factory opened on May 13, 1938, and, by 1941, was comprised of five companies. Forced laborers from the occupied countries, primarily Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian workers, were essential to the operation of the plants, which also used prisoners of war and, by 1942, male concentration camp prisoners. Two subcamps of Mauthausen concentration camp were built on the factory grounds. Göring was tried and sentenced to death at the Major War Crimes trials of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg held after the war ended in May 1945. Pleiger was tried and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in Case #11, the Ministries Trial at Nuremberg, January 1948-April 1949.