13.

At around 9 a.m. on December 12, 1943, a train belonging to the SS leader Heinrich Himmler pulled into Hochwald station in East Prussia’s Masurian forest. Aboard were Richard Kaselowsky, Friedrich Flick, and thirty-six other members of Himmler’s Circle of Friends. The group had left Berlin the night before. After a thirteen-hour journey in the sleeper train, the men had finally arrived at their destination. Himmler had invited them to visit his command post, code-named Black Lair, fifteen miles east of Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair. From the train station, the men took a bus to Himmler’s war headquarters, where, after a breakfast of white sausages, the guests took a guided tour of the bunker. Himmler joined them for one hour at noon and gave a short speech. After lunch, there was a film screening and a concert presented by an SS choir. The visit ended with a light supper: over a cup of tea, Himmler once again joined his “friends” for an hour. Afterward, the participants returned to Berlin by train.

Some members later called the visit an “immense disappointment” and “dull . . . despite the white sausages which tasted good.” As it turned out, Himmler hadn’t divulged any inside information about how Hitler was going to turn the tide of the war. Flick wondered whether he had visited Himmler’s headquarters or an insane asylum. But for the CEO of Dr. Oetker, Richard Kaselowsky, the tour had served its purpose. He drew inner strength from Himmler’s speech. “According to the Reichsführer SS we still have a time of hard battles and trials ahead of us, in which we must all keep our chin up. But the Reichsführer has the firm belief that at the end of the struggle there will also be a German victory, which will secure our future. We want to plant this faith in our hearts and not let it be destroyed by the many difficulties of daily life,” Kaselowsky wrote to a relative after the visit.

The pudding boss from Bielefeld had reason to be optimistic. Business at Dr. Oetker was booming because of the war.

More than half a billion packages of the firm’s famous baking powder and pudding mixes were being sold in Nazi Germany by 1942, more than twice the amount before the start of the war. Dr. Oetker had an official baking-powder monopoly in the German Reich and was one of Hitler’s frontline suppliers. The company’s baking products were being shipped to German soldiers fighting across Europe. Dr. Oetker also participated in a nutritional joint venture with the Wehrmacht to send nourishing dried fruits and vegetables to German troops.

Kaselowsky’s membership in Himmler’s Circle of Friends provided him with even more business opportunities. Through the group, Kaselowsky had become acquainted with the SS general Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA). Pohl oversaw all concentration and labor camps run by the SS, the organization’s myriad business endeavors, and the supplying of slave labor to German firms.

Poster showing boxes of Dr. Oetker Pudding Powder for the Wehrmacht.

Courtesy of Dr. August Oetker KG, Company Archives

Kaselowsky’s connection with Pohl came in handy in early March 1943. In a joint venture between Dr. Oetker and Phrix, a chemical fiber firm, factories for the production of yeast were being built. The two companies needed more slave labor for the bitterly difficult construction work. Management was dissatisfied with the work performed by weakened prisoners. After a visit to the building site in Wittenberge, Pohl promptly sent hundreds more captives from Neuengamme to a subcamp there. Kaselowsky found it “quite gratifying” that Pohl had lobbied Himmler to guarantee that the yeast factory would be completed. Ironically, Phrix yeast would later be sent to Neuengamme’s main camp near Hamburg. It made its way to the sick bay there, where some of the starved prisoners who had built the yeast factories convalesced, if they were lucky.

Of course, no favor from the SS came without a catch. There was always a quid pro quo. In exchange for more slaves to build the factories, Kaselowsky agreed to Pohl’s request that the SS be dealt into Dr. Oetker and Phrix’s next yeast venture. In April 1943, Kaselowsky’s stepson, Rudolf-August Oetker, joined the advisory board of this new endeavor. A few months earlier, Rudolf-August had started training as a Waffen-SS officer with an administrative leadership course at the SS-Führerschule in Dachau concentration camp, near Munich. He later falsely claimed that the school had been “shielded” from the neighboring prisoner camp, as if they were separate entities, and that he had “noticed nothing . . . of the ordeals” at Dachau. In truth, the school was an integral part of the larger complex. During his training at Dachau, the prisoners would clean the students’ quarters, Rudolf-August later wrote. The twenty-six-year-old spoke to the captives who were forced to attend to his room and noted that they seemed “not badly fed.” He concluded: “I suspect that it was done intentionally, so that the people who came into contact with them would say that the concentration camps weren’t that bad.”

In addition to combat and military training, Rudolf-August received ideological instruction at SS schools, which included courses with titles such as “Race Studies,” “Tasks of Racial Policy,” and “Population Politics.” At his grandmother’s wish, Rudolf-August was supposed to join Dr. Oetker’s management board when he turned twenty-seven, the age of his biological father when he was killed at Verdun. But by the time of Rudolf-August’s birthday in September 1943, he was still busy with his Waffen-SS officer training. A year later, however, a twist of fate would force him to abandon his paramilitary ambitions and take over as head of the family firm.