Biographical Sketches

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler, the Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party, hailed from Ranshofen, a small village in the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Austria.  He was born on April 20, 1889, the fourth of six children of a minor customs official, Alois Hitler – and Klara Pölzl.  At age three, Adolf moved with the family to Passau, Germany, but remained there only two years before locating in Leonding, near Linz, Austria.  This early traveling between the two countries helped Adolf later adopt the feeling that he was more German than Austrian.

Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber.  The baptismal register did not show the name of Alois’ father, so Alois received his mother’s surname.  In 1842, a Johann Georg Hiedler married Maria Anna.  After she died in 1847 and he in 1856, Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler’s brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler.  In 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest before three witnesses.  However, many in the family – and others as well, although they kept quiet – were convinced that Maria Anna, Alois’ mother, was employed as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Graz, Austria and that this family’s 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger, had actually fathered Alois.  If true (and many prominent historians disbelieve this assertion) that would make Hitler – who hated all Jews and wanted to exterminate them – a quarter Jewish himself in the Nazi way of determining race.

In June 1895, the Hitler family moved to a small landholding at the village of Hafeld near Lambach, Austria, when Alois retired from customs and tried his hand at farming and beekeeping.  Young Adolf attended school at the village of Fischlham.  However, he rebelled against the school discipline, as well as that of his father, and began to emotionally separate from members of the family.  With the farming attempt in shambles, Alois moved the family back to Lambach and a year later to Leonding.  In February 1900, Edmund, Adolf’s younger brother, died from measles, which further pushed Adolf to being a sullen and detached boy, constantly bickering with his father and schoolteachers.  That September, Alois sent Adolf to the Realschule in Linz, Austria, hoping the son would become a customs bureau employee.  This event soured Adolf further, as he had wished to become an artist and attend a classical high school.  His schooling declined, when on January 3, 1903, Alois suddenly died.  Adolf transferred to the Realschule at Steyr, Austria for a year, before leaving school completely.

From 1905 to 1913, Adolf lived in Wien, Austria.  Following a bohemian lifestyle, he was financed by orphan’s benefits; his mother also supported him.  During this time, Hitler worked as a part-time laborer and eventually as a painter of watercolors.  The Academy of Fine Arts, Wien, rejected Hitler for admittance in 1907 and 1908, because of his inaptitude for painting, and the academy’s director suggested that Hitler study architecture.  Klara Hitler died on December 21, 1907, an event that crushed Hitler’s spirit.  Running out of money, he lived in a homeless shelter in 1909 and by 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men.  He probably began his virulent Anti-Semitism at this time.  Hitler left Austria in February 1914 and moved to München.

At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler volunteered to serve in the Bavarian Army as an Austrian citizen.  He was assigned to the 1st Company of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment “List Regiment” and served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium.  He was in combat at the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres.)  He was soon decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross 2nd Class in 1914.  During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the groin area and left thigh by shrapnel from an artillery shell that exploded in the dispatch runners’ dugout.  He subsequently spent almost two months in the Red Cross hospital at Beelitz, not returning to his regiment until March 5, 1917.  Hitler received the Iron Cross 1st Class on August 4, 1918, having previously received the Black Wound Badge on May 18, 1918.  On October 15, 1918, Hitler was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalized in Pasewalk.  At this hospital, he received word of Germany’s defeat, and suffered a second bout of blindness.

Now a decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party (a precursor of the Nazi Party [NSDAP]) in 1919, and became the leader of the NSDAP in 1921.  On November 9, 1923, Hitler and his followers attempted a coup d’état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in downtown München.  The failed coup resulted in a conviction for treason and imprisonment at Landsberg Prison, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).  After Hitler’s release from prison in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, Anti-Semitism, and Anti-Communism through the use of charismatic oratory, superb organizational skills and Nazi propaganda.

Slowly, but surely, the Nazi Party gained traction.  After his appointment as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism.  Now as Führer and Reichskanzler, his public aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.  His private discussions revealed Hitler’s foreign and domestic policies that had the goal of seizing “living space” (Lebensraum) for the Germanic people in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Hitler directed the rearmament of Germany, the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939.  These actions led to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.  Under Hitler’s rule, in 1941 German forces and their European allies occupied most of Europe and North Africa and invaded Russia.  The Nazis “Final Solution,” the destruction of the European Jews, accelerated at this point.  By 1943, Hitler’s military decisions led to escalating German defeats.  In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France and the Soviet Union reached Poland in the east.  In 1945, the Allied armies successfully invaded Germany.

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.  On April 30, 1945, Hitler finished dictating his final testament and the pair committed suicide, Hitler by biting down on a cyanide capsule, while simultaneously shooting himself in the head with a pistol, to avoid capture by the Red Army.  SS troops doused the corpses with gasoline in the garden of the Reichs’ Chancellery and burned the corpses.  Rumors persisted for three decades that Hitler had fooled his enemies and had fled to South America, but all the stories proved false.

Hitler said numerous outrageous things during his career.  Here are a few perverse statements he made about women:

“A highly intelligent man should have a primitive and stupid woman.”

“These women are so oddly primitive.  A hairdresser, clothes, dancing, theaters can distract them from any serious activity.

“The only things they’re willing to read are magazines and novels.”

“With all due respect for older ladies, I would prefer having younger ones nearby.”

“I detest women who dabble in politics.  And if their dabbling extends to military matters, it becomes utterly unendurable.”

“Other women are extremely careful of their appearance, but not beyond the moment when they’ve found a husband.  They’re obsessed by their outlines, they weigh themselves on exact scales – the least gram counts!  Then you marry them, and they put on weight by the kilo!”

“Intelligence, in a woman, is not an essential thing.”

“Spanish women, even though they speak several languages, are outstandingly stupid.”

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Albert Pierrepoint

Albert Pierrepoint with his dog

Albert Pierrepoint was a British civilian executioner.  Albert served as the assistant executioner for his uncle, Thomas Pierrepoint, in seven executions of American soldiers in Britain during World War II.  The Pierrepoints were a Yorkshire family who provided three of Britain’s Chief Executioners (sometimes called “scaffolders”) in the first half of the 20th century.  Henry Pierrepoint (March 1878 – December 14, 1922) took up the craft first, hanging 105 men from 1901 to 1910.  According to reputable sources, Henry could execute a man in the time it took the prison clock to strike eight – leading him from his cell to the adjacent death chamber on the first stroke, and having him suspended, dead on the rope, by the eighth and final stroke.  Henry persuaded his older brother Thomas W. to take up the calling.

Born in 1870, Thomas Pierrepoint served as a hangman from 1909 to 1946; he is credited with having carried out 294 hangings.  Thomas W. Pierrepoint served as the chief executioner of 17 American soldiers – 16 in Great Britain and one in France.  Thomas W. Pierrepoint died on February 10, 1954 in Bradford, England.  Later, Albert Pierrepoint recalled that his uncle Thomas on one occasion counseled him on how to conduct an execution stating, “If you can’t do it without whisky, don’t do it at all.”

Albert Pierrepoint, born March 30, 1905 at Clayton, a district of Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Henry’s son and Thomas’s nephew, outdid his father and uncle combined, and executed 434 people (including 16 women) between 1932 and 1956.  Young Albert was nine when he first conceived the ambition to become an executioner.  “Hanging must run in the blood,” he once explained.  “It requires a natural flair.  The judgment and timing of a first-rate hangman cannot be acquired.”  His record was 17 hangings in one day.  Albert hanged common criminals, 15 German spies, American soldiers and Nazi war criminals.  Pierrepoint hanged Irma Grese, a female concentration camp guard, Josef Kramer, a concentration camp commandant and Lord Haw-Haw, a British traitor who broadcast for Germany in World War II.

In 1954, Pierrepoint himself was “sentenced to death” by the Irish Republican Army for his execution of a terrorist in Dublin in 1944.  Normally, Pierrepoint traveled to Ireland incognito to and from executions.

Albert Pierrepoint resigned over a disagreement about fees in 1956, when he was not paid the full fee of 15£ for an execution.  He then was appointed a British Boxing Board of Control inspector.  In 1974 he published his autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint.

Albert Pierrepoint's Pub -- "Help the Poor Struggler"

Albert Pierrepoint and his wife Annie retired to the seaside town of Southport.  In his memoirs, on the final page, Albert Pierrepoint concluded, “The trouble with the death sentence has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off.”  Pierrepoint was also the proprietor for two pubs, “Help the Poor Struggler” and the “Rose and Crown.”  Albert Pierrepoint died on July 10, 1992 in a nursing home in Southport.

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Johann Reichhart

Johann Reichhert in “work” clothes

 

Guillotine used by Reichert found in storage in 2014

Johann Reichhart was born on April 29, 1893 in Wichenbach near Wörth an der Donau into a family of executioners going back eight generations.  During World War I, he served in the trenches at Verdun.  On March 23, 1924, Reichhart applied to the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice in Munich for the position of executioner.  The administration accepted his offer, allocated 150 Goldmark for each execution he performed and announced, “From April 1, 1924, Reichhart takes over the execution of all death sentences coming in the Free State of Bavaria to the execution by beheading with the guillotine.”  His career began on July 4, 1924 – when he beheaded two men on the guillotine at Landshut – spanned the time of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

Application Document for Johann Reichhart

In 1929, however, his reputation was such that he fled Germany to Holland, opening a vegetable market in The Hague.  During these years, he returned to Bavaria only when he received an encrypted telegram informing him of an assigned execution.  With Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Reichhart returned to Germany and joined the Nazi Party four years later.  The Nazis proved prolific superiors and Reichhart made so much money as an executioner that in 1942 he bought a private home in the Gleisse Valley, near Deisenhofen, south of Munich.  Reichhart executed 3,165 people, most of them during the period 1939 – 1945 when, according to his own records, he put 2,876 men and women to death.  In this Third Reich era, the executions derived largely from heavy sentences handed down by the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court) for political crimes such as treason, and included Sophie and Hans Scholl of the German resistance movement White Rose (Reichhart executed them at Munich’s Stadelheim Prison.)  Most of these sentences were carried out by Fallbeil (“drop hatchet”), a shorter, largely metal re-designed German version of the French guillotine.  Reichhart served as one of four principal executioners in the Third Reich.

Johann Reichhart (center) in 1924 at one of his first executions

Reichhart was very strict in his execution protocol, wearing the traditional German executioners’ attire of black coat, white shirt and gloves, black bow tie and top hat.  He initially served as the Bavarian State Executioner.  His work took him to many parts of occupied Europe, including Poland and Austria.  He claimed during questioning that, toward the end of the war, as the allied armies closed in, he supposedly disposed of his mobile guillotine in a river, a claim that seems to be related to almost every guillotine in Germany at the end of the conflict.

Following Victory in Europe Day in 1945, Reichhart, who was a member of the Nazi Party, was arrested for the purposes of denazification, but was not immediately tried for carrying out his duty as one of the primary judicial executioners in the Third Reich.  He was subsequently employed by the Occupation Authorities beginning in November 1945, to help execute Nazi war criminals at Landsberg am Lech by hanging.  He appears to have worked for the Americans only through May 1946.  According to a reliable source, Reichhart spoke to the prison commandant, sometime after hanging seven men on May 29, stating that he was worried that he was executing some innocent men.  He stated that, although he was afraid of repercussions, he would rather face judicial proceedings than continue as the hangman.  One source states that one of his sons assisted him at Landsberg in the executions; photographic records can not confirm that.  One source credits Reichhart with hanging 42 German war criminals after the war, but it is far more likely that he hanged only 21 condemned men at Landsberg Prison and was not involved in any way with the Nürnberg executions.

His work at Landsberg terminated, police arrested Reichhart at his home in May 1947 and took him to an internment camp at Moosburg an der Isar.  His court proceedings began on December 13, 1948 at Munich.  On November 29, 1949, in a German (probably Bavarian) tribunal, Reichhart was sentenced to strict punishment measures.  The court sentenced him to two years confinement in a labor camp and confiscation of 50% of his assets.  He was forbidden from ever holding public office, voting or the right to engage in politics.  Finally, Reichhart was forbidden to own a motor vehicle or possess a driver’s license.  He also was ordered to pay 26,000 marks for the cost of the trial.

Johann Reichhart adjusting rope prior to hanging Martin Weiss, former commandant of Dachau and Neuengamme concentration camps.

Financially ruined, his marriage failed, and one son, Hans, committed suicide in 1950 (he was 23.)  In 1963, there were public demands, during a series of taxi driver murders, for the re-introduction of the death penalty in West Germany and Reichhart was vocal in his support for this legislation.  He maintained that the preferred method of killing should be the guillotine, as it was the fastest and cleanest method of execution.

Johann Reichhart died in in a nursing home at Dorfen near Erding, Bavaria, on April 26, 1972.   On May 2, 1972, his body was cremated at the crematorium at the Ostfriedhof in Munich.  He is buried in in the Ostfriedhof in a family grave (Section 47, Row 2, #21) that also contains his two sons and his uncle, Franz Xavier, a prolific executioner in his own right.

Johann Reichhart’s Grave

 

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Martin Steglich

Wartime photo of Martin Steglich. After Desert Storm, he said the American Army had become the “Sons of the Blitzkrieg.”

Martin Steglich, a Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves winner, was born in Breslau on July 16, 1915.  As with his friend, Heinz-Georg Lemm, Steglich’s early career saw him assigned to the 12th Infantry Division, serving many positions in the 27th Infantry Regiment in Poland, France and Russia (including the encirclement at the Demjansk Pocket.)  During this encirclement, Lieutenant Steglich was flown out of the pocket and to Berlin, where he briefed Adolf Hitler on the situation and had lunch with the German leader and his entourage!  Martin Steglich won the Iron Cross Second Class on September 14, 1939, the Iron Cross First Class on June 27, 1940 and the Honor Roll Clasp of the Army on July 28, 1941.  He gave his Infantry Assault Badge to Major MacLean in 1991 after “Desert Storm.”  Martin Steglich received several serious wounds during the war and finished the conflict as the commander of the 1221st Grenadier Regiment in the 180th Infantry Division, defending the Rhineland.  He received the Oak Leaves on April 5, 1945.  About that time, he was seriously wounded by bullets from a strafing Allied aircraft, striking him in the mouth and foot.

Between tours at the front, Martin Steglich wrote training doctrine and prepared several training films, including how to destroy a tank in close combat.

Martin Steglich joined the Bundeswehr in the mid-1950s; he was promoted to the grade of oberst (colonel) on August 1, 1962.  He owned a furniture store and lived in Ruppichteroth (in a house he nicknamed Haus MaRo) with his wife and three daughters, until his death on October 20, 1997.  Martin had little interest in politics and was truly a gentleman of the old school.

Funeral Notice for Martin Steglich

 

Grave of Martin Steglich shortly after his funeral

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Günther Prien, U-47

Günther Prien welcoming returning U-boat

Heinrich Günther Prien, Navy U-boat Commander, was born on January 16, 1908 in Osterfeld/Thüringia, the son of a judge.  In 1923, he joined the German Merchant Navy, receiving his Master’s License in 1932.  He subsequently joined the German Navy and went into the U-boats, receiving command of the U-47 in 1938.  A year later, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Günther Prien took his submarine into Scapa Flow and sank the British battleship HMS Royal Oak.  Upon returning to Germany, Prien and the crew of the U-47 received heroes’ welcomes in Berlin.  Prien received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.  His later career saw him promoted to Korvettenkapitän (Lieutenant Commander) and awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross.  He conducted ten wartime patrols, spending 238 days at sea.

In addition to sinking the 29,150-ton Royal Oak, Prien sank 30 merchant ships, for a total of 162,769 tons.  He and the crew of the U-47 were killed in action on March 7, 1941 in the North Atlantic.  Initially, it was believed that his submarine was sunk by the British destroyer HMS Wolverine.  But current history is unsure and the U-47 could have been the victim of an accident or mechanical failure.  Before his last patrol, Günther Prien authored Mein Weg Nach Scapa Flow (My Way to Scapa Flow.)

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Friedrich Paulus

Friedrch Paulus before Stalingrad

Friedrich Paulus, Army Field Marshal, was born on September 23, 1890 in Breitenau, Hesse, the son of a school teacher.  His first assignment was with the 111th Infantry Regiment; he fought in France, Macedonia and Serbia from 1914-1918.  After World War I, Paulus was assigned to the 13th Infantry Regiment in Stuttgart, before serving in several General Staff positions in the XVI Corps, the Tenth Army and the Deputy Chief of the German General Staff.

In January 1942, Paulus assumed command of the German Sixth Army and led this formation through the Stalingrad Campaign until 1943, when he and the Sixth Army surrendered.  The winner of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Paulus was captured by the Soviets, remained a prisoner, until released from prison in 1953 and allowed to settle in East Germany.  He died on February 1, 1957 in Dresden.  Friedrich Paulus’ remains were later transferred to Baden-Baden, where he was buried with his wife, whom he last saw in 1942.

Iconic photo of Paulus at surrender of Sixth Army. He is to the right; in the center is the Sixth Army Chief of Staff Arthur Schmidt; to the left is Wilhelm Adam, the Sixth Army Adjutant

Paulus was maligned after the war for his conduct of the Stalingrad fight, especially after Soviet forces had surrounded the Sixth Army in November 1942.  But he was in an untenable position.  The following are some quotations of Friedrich Paulus about Stalingrad that show his emotions during the campaign.

“The Stalingrad battle continues along its stubborn course. Things are going very slowly, but every day we make just a little progress. The whole thing is a question of time and manpower. But we’ll beat the Russians yet!” (October 7, 1942)

“I expect you [to a colonel] to carry out the orders of your superior officers.  In the same manner the Führer, as my superior, can and must expect that I shall obey his orders.” (November 1942)

“Unless I concentrate every available man and inflict a decisive defeat on the enemy advancing from the south and west, my Army will be faced with imminent destruction.” (November 23, 1942)

“I still believe, however, that the Army can hold out for some time.  On the other hand – even if anything like a corridor is cut through to me – it is still not possible to tell whether the daily increasing weakness of the Army, combined with lack of accommodation and wood for constructional and heating purposes, will allow the area around Stalingrad to be held for any length of time.” (November 26, 1942)

“You are talking to dead men.” (January 1943)

“The last horses have been eaten up.” (January 19, 1943)

Paulus later in life in East Germany, where he died

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Heinz-Georg Lemm

Wartime photo of Heinz-Georg Lemm

Born on June 1, 1919 in Schwerin, Heinz-Georg Lemm was one of the most highly decorated soldiers in World War II Germany, winning the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. His early career saw him assigned to the 12th Infantry Division, serving many positions in the 27th Infantry Regiment in Poland, France and Russia (including the encirclement at the Demjansk Pocket.)  In addition to these awards, Lemm won the Tank Destruction Badge, Close Combat Badge in Silver, Wound Badge in Silver and the German Cross in Gold. He ended the war as an oberst (the youngest in the German Army) and the commander of the 27th Fusilier Regiment, having fought with the unit against American forces in the Battle of the Bulge.

In a discussion with Major MacLean in 1991, Heinz Georg-Lemm stated that he was at Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg on July 20 to receive the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross.  As the day was hot, the officers’ mess was moved from inside a building to outside under several trees.  Major Lemm sat down at a table and shortly after, another officer sat down beside him. It would turn out to be Oberst Claus von Stauffenberg, who engaged in small talk before leaving, telling Major Lemm that he had to get ready to brief Hitler.  The bomb in von Stauffenberg’s brief case later exploded near Hitler in the briefing room, and Lemm’s award ceremony was postponed until the following day.  But someone remembered that von Stauffenberg had conversed with Lemm and for several hours, interrogators asked Major Lemm what the two had discussed, before finally clearing him of any potential complicity in the assassination attempt.

Heinz-Georg Lemm was a prisoner of American forces for ten months, until 1946.  He was then transferred to Soviet control and confined to a Soviet prisoner of war camp until 1950, when he returned to Germany. In 1957, Heinz-Georg Lemm joined the post-war German Bundeswehr (Post-WWII German Army) and progressed to the rank of lieutenant general.  He commanded the 5th Panzer Division and the Troop Office of the Bundeswehr before retiring on September 30, 1979.  He then led the Association for Knight’s Cross Recipients.  General Lemm retired to the small village of Ruppichteroth, northeast of Bonn, to be closer to his old Army friend and fellow Knight’s Cross winner, Martin Steglich.  Heinz-Georg Lemm died on November 17, 1994.

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Walther-Peer Fellgiebel

Wartime photo of Walter Fellgiebel

The son of General Erich Fellgiebel, a major conspirator in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at Rastenburg, Walther-Peer Fellgiebel was born on May 7, 1918 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.  Walther had his own distinguished military career.  He won the Iron Cross Second Class on July 13, 1940, during the French Campaign.  On July 30, 1941, Fellgiebel received the Iron Cross First Class and the Wound Badge in Black, for actions on the Russian Front with the 298th Artillery Regiment.  He would receive the Wound Badge in Silver, for additional wounds, on August 3, 1943.  An artilleryman, Walter Fellgiebel won the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross on September 7, 1943 as the battery commander of the 2nd Battery of the 935th Light Army Artillery Detachment.  Ten days later, Fellgiebel received the General Assault Badge.

The younger Fellgiebel was probably unaware of his father’s participation in the assassination plot, but was arrested on August 1, 1944.  He was released and promoted to major on November 9, 1944.  In February 1945, authorities arrested him again, but senior Army officers interceded on his behalf and he thus survived the war.

After the conflict, he served as the head of the Association of Knights Cross Recipients.  He later wrote Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes, 1939–1945: Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile (The Bearers of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945: The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War, All Military Branches.)  Walther-Peer Fellgiebel died in Frankfurt am Main, Germany on October 14, 2001.

Erich Fellgiebel

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Karl Dönitz

Navy Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz

Karl Dönitz, Navy Grand Admiral, was born on September 16, 1891, in Grünau near Berlin.  As a young officer, Dönitz served in World War I on the light cruiser SMS Breslau and then on several U-boats.  His boat was sunk on October 4, 1918 and he became a prisoner of war of the British.  He served in numerous positions after the war and became the commander of the First U-boat Flotilla “Weddigen” on September 1, 1935.  Dönitz became the commander of all Germany’s U-boats on January 28, 1939.  Nicknamed “The Lion” and “Onkel (Uncle) Karl,” he led this force to within a whisker of defeating Great Britain in the early part of World War II.  After the sacking of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Karl Dönitz became the Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy on January 30, 1943.  In a surprise decision by Adolf Hitler, he named Karl Dönitz as the Führer‘s successor in May 1945.  During the war, Grand Admiral Dönitz received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves.  Both his sons were killed in action during the conflict.  Dönitz’s final message to his U-boat sailors on May 4, 1945 was:

“My U-boat men!  Six years of U-boat war lie behind us.  You have fought like lions.  A crushing material superiority has forced us into a narrow area.  A continuation of our fight from the remaining basis is no longer possible.  U-boat men!  Undefeated and spotless you lay down your arms after a heroic battle without equal.  We remember in deep respect our fallen comrades, who have sealed with their death their loyalty to the Führer and Fatherland.  Comrades!  Preserve your U-boat spirit, with which you have fought courageously, stubbornly and imperturbably through the years for the good of the Fatherland.  Long live Germany!  Your Grand Admiral.”

In 1946, Karl Dönitz was convicted at Nürnberg of war crimes and sentenced to ten years imprisonment.  Dönitz was released from Spandau Prison (Berlin) in 1956.  He later authored Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days.  Karl Dönitz died on December 24, 1980 in Aumühle near Hamburg.  Several thousand former U-boat sailors attended his burial ceremony at the Waldfriedhof (Forest Cemetery) in Aumühle.  Dönitz’s Crews is all about the relationship Dönitz had with his U-boat sailors during the war.

 

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Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Paul Dirlewanger, SS-Oberführer (SS Senior Colonel), was born on September 26, 1895 in Würzburg.  The son of a lawyer, he attended grade school and high school, before passing the Abitur, a test that allowed him to enroll in college.  Dirlewanger was never married; he stood six feet tall.  He was wounded in combat during in World War I and won the Wound Badge in Black, the Iron Cross Second Class and Iron Cross First Class, as well as the Württemberg Golden Medal for Bravery.  In the chaos of post-war Germany, Dirlewanger served on an armored train in a Freikorps (Free Corps) para-military volunteer unit that fought Communist insurgents.  He originally joined the Nazi Party in 1922 , with party number 12,517, but he was later expelled from that organization.  Dirlewanger then attended the University of Frankfurt, where he obtained a Ph.D.  He later re-joined the Nazi Party (party number 1,098,716,) but ran afoul of some local party leaders; the Gauleiter of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, Wilhelm Murr, even attempted to put him in a concentration camp.  During the early 1930s, Dirlewanger was a member of SA Brigade 155, but quickly was charged with insubordination and disrespect.  A serial sex-offender, Oskar Dirlewanger was convicted of morals’ charges and sentenced to several years in prison (the girl was under 14 while Dirlewanger was 39.)

After his release from prison, Dirlewanger — on the recommendation of his World War I comrade, now SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger (head of the SS Main Leadership Office) — volunteered to serve with a German military expeditionary force in Spain, known as the Condor Legion; here he helped train Spanish crews in tank warfare, after arriving in Spain in April 1937.  His commander, Oberst Ritter von Thoma, of the German Army, rated his performance in Spain as outstanding.  For his superior service there, Dirlewanger received the Spanish Campaign Medal, the Spanish Military Service Cross and the Spanish Cross in Silver.  Oskar Dirlewanger returned to Germany from Spain in May 1939.  In commenting on his past, Dirlewanger said at this point, “Even though I did wrong, I never committed a crime.”  After the outbreak of World War II, Dirlewanger wrote to a senior SS officer and volunteered for service as an SS officer, suggesting that a special unit be formed of hunter poachers, with Dirlewanger in command.  His rationale was that if men could successfully track and find animals in the forests, those same men could successfully hunt and kill men in those same areas of rough terrain.  Promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer, he was named to command the Special Command Dirlewanger (Sonderkommando Dirlewanger), a Waffen-SS unit (composed of these former prisoners) formed to hunt partisans.

Oskar Dirlewanger and his unit, initially battalion-size, fought partisans in Poland in 1942, guarded Jews in forced labor camps (and the Lublin Jewish Ghetto) and in general made life miserable for Poles in Lublin and Kraków.  According to British historian Michael Tregenza, Oskar Dirlewanger and SS-Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik took part in numerous drunken outings, when Sonderkommando Dirlewanger was assigned to Lublin in 1941 and 1942.  The unit transferred to White Russia in 1943, after the SS chief in Poland, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, said that the unit was too brutal and corrupt to remain in the General Government.  Dirlewanger fought against Soviet partisans through the summer of 1944 in Russia and White Russia, killing thousands of armed – and unarmed – inhabitants in the region.  Dirlewanger and his unit took part in the following anti-partisan operations: Operation Adler, Operation Greif, Operation Nordsee, Operation Regatta, Operation Karlsbad, Operation Frieda, Operation Franz, Operation Erntefest I and II, Operation Hornung, Operation Lenz Süd, Operation Lenz Nord, Operation Zauberflöte, Operation Draufgänger I and II, Operation Günther, Operation Kottbus, Operation Frühlingsfest and Operation Hermann.

Heinrich Himmler discussed the unit with his senior SS leaders about this time in the war, and said, “In 1941 I organized a ‘poacher’s regiment’ under Dirlewanger…a good Swabian fellow, wounded ten times, a real character – bit of an oddity, I suppose.  I obtained permission from the Führer to collect from every prison in Germany all the poachers who had used firearms and not, of course, traps, in their poaching days — about 2,000 in all.  Alas, only 400 of these ‘upstanding and worthy characters’ remain today.  I have kept replenishing this regiment with people on SS probation, for in the SS we really have far too strict a system of justice…When these did not suffice, I said to Dirlewanger…’Now, why not look for suitable candidates among the villains, the real criminals, in the concentration camps?’…The atmosphere in the regiment is often somewhat medieval in the use of corporal punishment and so on…if someone pulls a face when asked whether we will win the war or not he will slump down from the table…dead, because the others will have shot him out of hand.”

In August 1944, the Dirlewanger Regiment moved to the Warsaw Uprising (August-September 1944) and the Slovakian Uprising in October-November 1944.  During the Warsaw Uprising in Poland, Dirlewanger killed thousands of civilians and his men behaved in such a despicable manner that SS generals at Warsaw begged for the unit to be sent somewhere else.  Moving to Slovakia, Dirlewanger and his men ravaged that countryside as well, as they attempted to suppress that uprising.  The Dirlewanger Regiment then moved to the Eastern Front in late 1944, first to Hungary; by this time, the unit was receiving drafts of unwilling troopers scoured from the concentration camps.

Sonderkommando Dirlewanger expanded throughout the war and finished as the 36th Waffen-SS Division in Germany, fighting near Halbe as part of the German Ninth Army.  German propaganda correspondents and wartime photographers did not follow them in action.  This was for good reason, as wherever the Dirlewanger unit operated, corruption and rape formed an every-day part of life and indiscriminate slaughter, beatings and looting were rife.  On August 15, 1943, SS-Gruppenführer Curt von Gottberg and SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach recommended Dirlewanger for the German Cross in Gold for his achievements against Soviet partisans; he later received the award.  He received the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross for his accomplishments in Russia in 1944 and for his role in crushing the Warsaw Uprising.  In fighting in both world wars, Dirlewanger was wounded in action at least twelve times.  He received the Wound Badge in Black, the Close Combat Bar and the Anti-Partisan Badge.

Dirlewanger avoided death on the Eastern Front, after he was wounded in February 1945, when he turned the division over to Fritz Schmedes.  One source says that he came back to command the unit and served with them until about April 12, 1945, when he was wounded once again.  Subsequently, Dirlewanger attempted to hide in Upper Swabia at the end of the war.  Free French authorities arrested Dirlewanger at the end of May or beginning of June, probably in the Allgäu Alps in southern Germany.  Polish laborers, under the employment of the French, identified Oskar Dirlewanger and beat him to death on June 7, 1945 at Altshausen/Upper Swabia, while he was in French captivity, although rumors persisted that Dirlewanger had survived the immediate post-war period and fled to Egypt or Syria in late 1945 to avoid prosecution.  French authorities later exhumed the remains of Oskar Dirlewanger from the Altshausen Friedhof on the northwest side of town and confirmed that it was indeed him, although the French file on Oskar Dirlewanger remains locked and inaccessible.  After the war, in perhaps the most-classic understatement of the war, Gottlob Berger said this of Oskar Dirlewanger, “Now Dr. Dirlewanger was hardly a good boy.  You can’t say that.  But he was a good soldier, and he had one big mistake that he didn’t know when to stop drinking.”

Capture of Oskar Dirlewanger

Reputed photo of Oskar Dirlewanger after arrest

Oskar Dirlewanger was undoubtedly a serial sex offender and pathological killer.  British historian Michael Tregenza has documented Dirlewanger in Lublin, Poland and presents strong evidence that Dirlewanger murdered Polish women there, to include killing some by Strychnine injections.  Had Oskar Dirlewanger survived the aftermath of the war, and been apprehended, the only question would have been which nation would have tried and executed him.

For many years after the war, the operations of Dirlewanger and his unit remained shrouded in mystery.  This ended in 1988, when the author found several thousand pages of reports of Sonderkommando Dirlewanger in the U.S. National Archives, later using them to write The Cruel Hunters: SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, Hitler’s Most Notorious Anti-Partisan Unit.

During the war, Dirlewanger’s unit had the following designations:

Wilddiebkommando Oranienburg (June 1940 to July 1940)
Sonderkommando Dr. Dirlewnager (July 1940 to September 1940)
SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger (September 1940 to September 1943)
Einsatz-Bataillon Dirlewanger (numberous occasions in 1943 and 1944)
SS-Regiment Dirlewanger (September 1943 to December 1944)
SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (December 1944 to February 1945)
36. Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS (February 1945 to May 1945)

 

Oskar Dirlewanger2016-03-28T19:45:49-05:00
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