For the SS leadership, the rapid growth of staff, camps and prisoner numbers was a reason for celebration. Just months before the end of the war, WVHA leader Oswald Pohl formally proposed Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, who had been in charge of the day-to-day management of the camp system since 1939, for the German Cross in Silver. Glücks received the award, a high decoration for war service, from Hitler on 25 January 1945.
For two years SS-Gruppenführer Glücks has been head of D Department in the SS Business Administration Main Office [WVHA]. In this capacity he is responsible for managing all matters connected with concentration camps. He is not only charged with monitoring the military leadership of the 40,000 men who make up the guard units, but he is responsible at present also for military discipline in, and management in line with SS rules of, 15 concentration camps and 500 satellite camps containing a total of some 750,000 inmates. In this post, which SS-Gruppenführer Glücks occupied as Inspector of Concentration Camps even before he was made head of D Department, he contributed significantly to war munitions by making continuous use of inmates to produce armaments.[…] This achievement justifies his being awarded the distinction of the German Cross in Silver.
Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, SSO, Glücks, Richard, 22.4.1889
Translation: Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes