science

Wilhelm Simon

Wilhelm Simon is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wilhelm Simon rather than just read about it. In short: Wilhelm Simon (23 April 1900 – 27 September 1971) was a German SS-Hauptscharführer and concentration camp functionary. During World War II he held various administrative posts at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora.

Key takeaways

Wilhelm Simon belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wilhelm Simon to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wilhelm Simon from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wilhelm Simon (23 April 1900 – 27 September 1971) was a German SS-Hauptscharführer and concentration camp functionary. During World War II he held various administrative posts at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora. He was convicted of war crimes by the United States during the Dachau-Dora trial in 1947.

Biography Wilhelm Simon was born in Elberfeld on 23 April 1900. Between 1919 and 1935 he was employed as a clerk in a textile mill. Simon became a member of both the Nazi Party and the Schutzstaffel (SS) in August 1932 and served as head of the Accounting Department for the Medical Association of the Rhineland from 1935 to 1939. Following the outbreak of World War II he was assigned to the district branch of the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Wuppertal. In January 1941 Simon was placed on active duty by the SS and assigned to the SS-Totenkopfverbände. He was subsequently posted to the Buchenwald concentration camp as a member of its guard battalion. Simon rose in the camp administration and was promoted to the position of Assistant Labor Allocation Manager for Buchenwald in the summer of 1942. In this capacity, Simon both organized and directly supervised the provision of camp inmates as slave-laborers for various industries vital to the German war economy.

Mittelbau-Dora In December 1943 Simon was appointed Arbeitsdienstführer (Labor Service Leader) for the newly established Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. As camp Labor Leader he managed the large-scale assignment of the camp's prisoners to various forced labor details in the vast and subterranean Mittelwerk armaments facility, where they performed much of the dangerous construction and assembly work required to produce Germany's V-2 ballistic missiles. Among other things, Simon was responsible for the introduction of a bonus system used to reward productive prisoner laborers with special privileges and also accompanied the eminent German rocket-scientist Wernher von Braun on a trip to Buchenwald to select prisoners there for work at Dora. During his service as Labor Leader at Mittelbau-Dora Simon developed a reputation for extreme brutality among the inmates of the camp, who gave him the nickname "Simon Legree" after the character of the cruel slave-master in the book "Uncle Tom’s Cabin". In one particular incident during the summer of 1944 Simon was reported to have assigned a group of severely malnourished Hungarian Jews, who had recently arrived on a transport from Auschwitz, the grueling task of building their own barracks. The order would result in numerous deaths from exhaustion among the already badly-ailing Jews. Afterward, Simon ordered the SS to bludgeon to death several children from the same transport before dispatching the survivors into the tunnels at Mittelwerk. Mittelbau-Dora was evacuated shortly before the arrival of American troops in April 1945. During the evacuation, Simon led a transport of 350 prisoners to the Ebensee concentration camp in Austria. Immediately following his arrival at Ebensee, Simon was drafted into a local Wehrmacht unit. He surrendered to American forces on 8 May 1945 but managed to escape from captivity the following day. Simon was later identified as an alleged war criminal and was arrested a second time by US occupation authorities. He stood trial as a defendant in the Dachau-Dora war crimes trial, staged by the Office of the US Military Government (OMGUS) in 1947. Simon pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was, however, convicted of war crimes on 30 December 1947 and sentenced to life imprisonment and interned in Landsberg Prison. Simon was released from prison in 1954. He returned to his native Ruhr district, where he worked as a salesman. He died in obscurity in Bochum, West Germany on 27 September 1971.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wilhelm Simon

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wilhelm Simon claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wilhelm Simon before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wilhelm Simon ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wilhelm Simon

In research: Wilhelm Simon appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wilhelm Simon in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wilhelm Simon is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1900 births, 1971 deaths, Buchenwald concentration camp personnel, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wilhelm Simon outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wilhelm Simon in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wilhelm Simon means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wilhelm Simon out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wilhelm Simon in simple terms?

Why does Wilhelm Simon matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wilhelm Simon?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wilhelm Simon.