1.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
2.
Iron Cross
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The Iron Cross was a military decoration in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in the German Empire and Nazi Germany. It was established by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia in March 1813 backdated to the birthday of his late wife Queen Louise on 10 March 1813 during the Napoleonic Wars, Louise was the first person to receive this decoration. The recommissioned Iron Cross was also awarded during the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, the Iron Cross was normally a military decoration only, though there were instances of it being awarded to civilians for performing military functions. The design of the symbol was black with a white or silver outline. It was ultimately derived from the cross pattée occasionally used by the Teutonic Order from the 13th century, the black cross patty was also used as the symbol of the German Army from 1871 to March/April 1918, when it was replaced by the Balkenkreuz. In 1956, it was re-introduced as the symbol of the Bundeswehr, the Black Cross is the emblem used by the Prussian Army, and by the army of Germany from 1871 to present. It was designed on the occasion of the German Campaign of 1813, from this time, the Black Cross also featured on the Prussian war flag alongside the Black Eagle. The design is due to neoclassical architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, based on a sketch by Frederick William, the design is ultimately derivative of the black cross used by the Teutonic Order. This heraldic cross took various forms throughout the history, including a simple Latin cross. When the Quadriga of the Goddess of Peace was retrieved from Paris at Napoleons fall, an Iron Cross was inserted into her laurel wreath, making her into a Goddess of Victory. The Black Cross was used on the naval and war flags of the German Empire, the Black Cross was used as the symbol of the German Army until 1915, when it was replaced by a simpler Balkenkreuz. The Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, the traditional design in black is used on armored vehicles and aircraft, while after German reunification, a new design in blue and silver was introduced for use in other contexts. The ribbon for the 1813,1870 and 1914 Iron Cross was black with two white bands, the colors of Prussia. The non-combatant version of this award had the same medal, but the black, the ribbon color for the 1939 EKII was black/white/red/white/black. Since the Iron Cross was issued several different periods of German history. For example, an Iron Cross from World War I bears the year 1914, the reverse of the 1870,1914 and 1939 series of Iron Crosses have the year 1813 appearing on the lower arm, symbolizing the year the award was created. The 1813 decoration also has the initials FW for King Frederick William III, the final version shows a swastika. There was also the 1957 issue, a replacement medal for holders of the 1939 series which substituted an oak-leaf cluster for the banned swastika
3.
War Merit Medal
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The War Merit Medal was a World War II German military decoration awarded to recognize outstanding service by civilians in connection with the war effort. Instituted on 19 August,1940 the medal was restricted to civilians - both German and non-German - and was awarded predominantly to those working in war factories. The medal, designed by Professor Richard Klein of Munich, was a bronze award bearing the design of the War Merit Cross on the front. It was suspended from a ribbon coloured similar to the War Merit Cross, when worn, it was either as a medal ribbon bar above the left breast pocket, or with the ribbon only through the second buttonhole of the tunic. Since this was an award, the medal never incorporated swords. After 15 May,1943, the award of this medal to foreigners was supplanted by the Medal of Merit of the Order of the German Eagle, the medal was presented in an envelope wrapper. The wrapper was blue with black lettering German, Kriegs-Verdienstmedaille 1939, envelopes also came in orange-brownish colour with Kriegs-Verdienstmedaille 1939 stamped on it. It is estimated that approximately 4.9 million medals were awarded by the end of the war, for Führer And Fatherland, Military Awards of the Third Reich. Fowler, E. W. W. Nazi Regalia, medals and Decorations of Hitlers Germany
4.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
5.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
6.
Bundeswehr
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The Bundeswehr is the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities. The States of Germany are not allowed to maintain armed forces of their own, the Bundeswehr is divided into a military part and a civil part with the armed forces administration. The military part of the defense force consists of the Heer, Marine, Luftwaffe, Streitkräftebasis, Zentraler Sanitätsdienst. In addition the Bundeswehr has approximately 27,600 reserve personnel. 2%, the Bundeswehr are in the process of integrating smaller NATO members Brigades into divisions of the German army. The Bundeswehr is to play a role as anchor army for smaller NATO states. 2 of 3 Royal Netherlands Army Brigades are now under German Command, in 2014 the 11th Airmobile Brigade, was integrated into the German Division of fast forces. Also the Dutch 43rd Mechanized Brigade, will be integrated into the 1st Panzer Division of the German army, with the integration starting at the beginning of 2016, and the unit becoming operational at the end of 2019. The Dutch-German military cooperation are seen as an example for setting up a European defense union, also the Czech Republics 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade, and Romania’s 81st Mechanized Brigade, will be integrated into Germany’s 10 Armoured Division and Rapid Response Forces Division. The name Bundeswehr was first proposed by the former Wehrmacht general and Liberal politician Hasso von Manteuffel, the Iron Cross is its official emblem. It is a symbol that has an association with the military of Germany. The Schwarzes Kreuz is derived from the black cross insignia of the medieval Teutonic knights, when the Bundeswehr was established in 1955, its founding principles were based on developing a completely new military force for the defence of West Germany. In this respect the Bundeswehr did not consider itself to be a successor to either the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic or Hitlers Wehrmacht, neither does it adhere to the traditions of any former German military organization. One of the most visible traditions of the modern Bundeswehr is the Großer Zapfenstreich, the FRG reinstated this formal military ceremony in 1952, three years before the foundation of the Bundeswehr. Today it is performed by a band with 4 fanfare trumpeters and timpani. The Zapfenstreich is only performed during national celebrations or solemn public commemorations and it can honour distinguished persons present such as the German federal president or provide the conclusion to large military exercises. Another important tradition in the modern German armed forces is the Gelöbnis, there are two kinds of oath, for conscripts/recruits it is a pledge but its a solemn vow for full-time personnel. The pledge is made annually on 20 July, the date on which a group of Wehrmacht officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, recruits from the Bundeswehrs Wachbataillon make their vow at the Bendlerblock in Berlin. This was the headquarters of the resistance but also where the officers were executed following its failure
7.
Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
8.
Necklet
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A neck order is a type of decoration which is designed to be worn and displayed around a persons neck, rather than hung from the chest as is the standard practice for displaying most decorations. Most of the insignia of orders are issued in several degrees which include a neck order version for Commanders. In countries which do not typically bestow orders with degrees, neck orders are usually considered to be high-ranking decorations. In the Middle Ages most orders were worn on a collar – see livery collar, later, in the 16th century the insignia of the French Order of the Holy Spirit were worn on a ribbon. For comfort, the ribbon was put under one shoulder when riding, giving birth to the sash order. When, in the late 17th century, orders were divided into several classes, a decoration in that rank is usually awarded to high-ranking officials like brigadiers, consuls and secretaries of State. A female usually wears her commanders cross on a bow on the shoulder of her dress, in chivalric orders like the Order of Malta or the German Order the insignia of the knights is worn hanging from a ribbon around the neck. The same is true of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a number of nations confer honors which are signified in the form of an insignia on a collar or chain, including, Order of the Garter. Order of the Seraphim Order of St Olav, Order of the Chrysanthemum, Collar Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, Collar. Order of the National Coat of Arms, Collar, Order of the White Star, Collar. Order of the Three Stars, Collar, Order of the Seal of Solomon. Order of the Queen of Sheba, Order of the Liberator General San Martin. Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, chain of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary Order of Merit. Order of Saint James of the Sword, Order of the Pioneers of Liberia. Order of the Tower and Sword, Order of the Star of Romania. The Order of Merit or Order of the Companions of Honour, knights Cross of the Iron Cross Grand Cross of the Iron Cross Commanders Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary Royal Order of Sahametrei, if rank of Commander. Order of Ontario Medal of Honor, Legion of Merit, if at the rank of Commander. The Legion of Merit is awarded in degrees only to foreign nationals, presidential Medal of Freedom Texas Medal of Valor Order Chivalric orders Livery collar Duckers, Peter
9.
German Cross
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The German Cross was instituted by Adolf Hitler on 28 September 1941. It was awarded in two divisions, gold for repeated acts of bravery or achievement in combat, and silver for distinguished war service. The German Cross was unique in that the gold and silver divisions were considered as separate awards but were not to be worn simultaneously, however, pictures of recipients wearing both grades exist. The order consists of a badge, containing a swastika. It had a diameter of 6.5 cm and was worn on the side of the tunic. If a recipient had been awarded both the silver and gold divisions, the division should be worn only. Far more awards in gold were presented than in silver, specimen copies of a special grade, the German Cross in Gold with Diamonds, was manufactured in 1942 but this grade was never instituted or bestowed. In 1957 alternative de-nazified replacement versions of the German Cross were authorized for wear by the Federal Republic of Germany and this replaced the swastika with a representation of the Iron Cross for the gold division, and the War Merit Cross with Swords for the silver division. Wearing Nazi-era decorations was banned in Germany after the war, as was any display of the swastika, the 1957 replacement of the World War II decorations consequently enabled recipients to wear the German Cross again but only in the new version of the insignia. The German Cross was disparagingly referred to as Hitlers fried egg by Colonel Hans von Luck and other officers of his acquaintance, the extent to which this nickname was used is uncertain. It also been referred to in history books as the Nazi Party Badge for the near-sighted
10.
Reichsmarschall
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Reichsmarschall, Marshal of the Reich, was the highest rank in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. The rank of Reichserzmarschall was originally created before the 12th century, during the era of the German Empire and World War I, no one in the German Army held the rank. During World War II Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief Hermann Göring was the only man elevated to Reichsmarschall, the appointment was made on or before the day of Hitlers suicide, but notification by Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels was delayed until 1 May 1945
11.
Erich Koch
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Erich Koch was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945. Between 1941 and 1945 he was Chief of Civil Administration of Bezirk Bialystok, during this period, he was also the Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine from 1941 until 1943. After the Second World War, Koch stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1959 of war crimes, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a year later. Koch was born in Elberfeld, today part of Wuppertal, as the son of foreman Gustav Adolf Koch and his wife Henriette, in World War I he served without distinction as a soldier from 1915 to the end of the war in 1918. He later fought as a member of Freikorps Rossbach in Upper Silesia, a skilled trader, Koch joined the railway service as an aspirant for the middle level of the civil service. He was dismissed from this position in 1926 for anti-republican activities, Koch joined the NSDAP in 1922. From 1922 he worked in various party positions in the NSDAP-Gau Ruhr, during the Occupation of the Ruhr, he was a member of Albert Leo Schlageters group and was imprisoned several times by the French authorities. In 1927 he became Bezirksführer of the NSDAP in Essen and later the deputy Gauleiter of Gau Ruhr, Koch belonged to the left wing of the party and was a supporter of the faction led by Gregor Strasser. In 1928 Koch became Gauleiter of the Province of East Prussia, from September 1930 he was a member of the Reichstag for East Prussia. After the Machtergreifung, Koch was appointed to the Prussian State Council in July 1933 and he became Oberpräsident of East Prussia in September 1933, replacing Wilhelm Kutscher. In 1938 Koch was appointed SA-Obergruppenführer, Kochs pre-war rule in East Prussia was characterized by efforts to collectivize the local agriculture and ruthlessness in dealing with his critics inside and outside the Party. He also had plans for mass-scale industrialization of the largely agricultural province. These actions made him unpopular among the local peasants, Kochs industrialization plans led him into conflict with R. Walther Darré, who held the office of the Reich Peasant Leader and Minister of Agriculture. Darré, a neopaganist rural romantic, wanted to enforce his vision of an agricultural East Prussia, when his Land representatives challenged Kochs plans, Koch had them arrested. At the commencement of World War II Koch was appointed Reich Defence Commissioner for East Prussia, on 26 October 1939, after the end of the Invasion of Poland, he was transferred from East Prussia to the new Reichsgau Westpreußen, later renamed to Danzig-West Prussia. East Prussia was compensated with Regierungsbezirk Zichenau and these new areas lay approximately between the rivers Vistula and Narew. Soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Koch was appointed commissioner on 1 August 1941. On 1 September Koch became Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Ukraine with control of the Gestapo and his domain now extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea, it comprised ethnic German, Polish, Belarus and Ukrainian areas
12.
Herbert Backe
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Herbert Friedrich Wilhelm Backe was a German Nazi politician and SS Lieutenant general. He developed and implemented the Hunger Plan that envisioned death by starvation of millions of Slavic and Jewish useless eaters following Operation Barbarossa, as a result, millions of civilians died in the German-occupied territories. Arrested in 1945 and due to be tried for war crimes at Nuremberg in the Ministries Trial, Herbert Backe was born in Batumi, Russian Georgia, the son of a retired Prussian lieutenant turned trader. His mother was a Caucasus German, whose family had emigrated from Württemberg to Russia in the early 19th century and he studied at the Tbilisi gymnasium from 1905 and was interned on the outbreak of World War I as an enemy alien because he was a citizen of Prussia. This experience of being imprisoned for being German and witnessing the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution made Backe an anti-communist, Backe moved to Germany during the Russian Civil War with the help of the Swedish Red Cross. In Germany, he worked as a labourer, and enrolled to study agronomy at the University of Göttingen in 1920. After completing his degree he worked in agriculture and then became an assistant lecturer on agricultural geography at Hanover Technical University. Later, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Backe self-published his dissertation with a print of 10,000 copies, Backe joined the SA in 1922 and in Hannover the Nazi Party. After the dissolution of the political unit for South-Hanover Back let his membership expire. In 1927 Backe was inspector and administrator on a big farm in Pommern, in 1928 he was married to Ursula. With financial support of his father-in-law, in November 1928 he became tenant of domain Hornsen, with around 950 acres in the district of Alfeld. He succeeded to lead the farm successfully, finally, he joined the SS in October 1933. He undertook various duties in the administration of Nazi Germany, succeeding Richard Walther Darré as Minister of Food in May 1942, the most important accomplice of Herbert Backe was Hans-Joachim Riecke, who headed the agricultural section of the Economic Staff East. According to the historian Timothy Snyder, as a result of Backes plan, “4.2 million Soviet citizens were starved by the German occupiers in 1941–1944. ”From April to May 1945, Backe continued as Minister of Food in the short-lived post-Hitler Flensburg Government led by Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz. After the German Instrument of Surrender Backe was ordered by the allies, together with Dorpmüller, to fly to Eisenhower headquarters, Backe was surprised to be arrested on 1945 in US-Hauptquartier in Reims. He thought the Americans would need him as an expert to avoid hunger problems, Backe prepared himself for an expected conversation with General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a letter to his wife on 31 January 1946, he defended national socialism as one of the greatest ideas of all times, in allied captivity, Backe was interrogated during the Nuremberg trials of 21 February and 14 March 1947. Because of his fear that he was to be delivered to the Soviet Union, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell on 6 April 1947
13.
Walter Brugmann
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Walter Brugmann was a Nazi German architect. From 1928 he was head of the city engineering office in Leipzig, from 1933 he was a city planner in Nuremberg, and in 1940 worked as general supervisor for Berlin. From 1942 he worked as head of the Organisation Todt in southern Russia, a member of the Nazi Party, he died in an unexplained plane crash 1944. Brugmann handled stone supplies delivered by concentration camp prisoners, the project took off in 1940, when the slave labor brought in from across Europe delivered 19,075 cubic meters of quality stone to Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds for Brugmann construction. Work came to a stop in 1943 due to looming German defeat at the front. List of Nazi Party members This article may be expanded from the article in the German Wikipedia
14.
Karl-Otto Saur
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Karl-Otto Saur was State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for armaments and war production in Germany during the Nazi era and de jure last defence minister of the Third Reich. Saur was an engineer by profession, after graduation, he joined Thyssen, then took over the running of the family engineering firm in Freiburg after the death of his father. This business went into bankruptcy in 1928 on the threshold of the Great Depression, Saur went back to Thyssen in 1929 and was director of the August Thyssen-Hütte. He was a member of the NSDAP from 1931 and he joined the National Socialist Guild of German Engineers and the Todt Organization where he rose to be the right-hand man to Fritz Todt. Following Todts death in a 1942 plane crash, Saur became official deputy to the new armaments minister Albert Speer, in 1945 he was duly awarded the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross in Gold, a successor to the non-combatant Iron Cross, which was only awarded twice. Some sources state that this award was suggested and not finalised due to confusion. After Hitlers death, Karl Dönitz continued with Saur but also allowed Speer to return to office, from May 1945 Saur was in American captivity. For this he was viewed as a traitor by industry and was socially isolated, during denazification he was allowed to be classified as fellow traveller and was released shortly afterwards. Saur founded a consultancy in 1949, and also started a small publishing house. The resulting company Saur Verlag only became successful from the beginning of the 1960s under his son Klaus Gerhard Saur. For Führer and Fatherland, Military Awards of the Third Reich, ISBN 0-912138-14-9 Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs by Albert Speer, by Albert Speer
15.
Albert Speer
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Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer was a German architect who was, for most of World War II, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany. Speer was Adolf Hitlers chief architect before assuming ministerial office, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching himself on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitlers inner circle, Hitler instructed him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg where Party rallies were held. Speer also made plans to reconstruct Berlin on a scale, with huge buildings, wide boulevards. In February 1942, Hitler appointed Speer Reich Minister of Armaments, after the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Nazi regime, principally for the use of forced labor. Despite repeated attempts to gain early release, he served his full sentence and he later wrote a third book, Infiltration, about the SS. Speer died of a stroke in 1981 while on a visit to London, Speer was born in Mannheim, into an upper-middle-class family. He was the second of three sons of Luise Máthilde Wilhelmine and Albert Friedrich Speer, in 1918, the family moved permanently to their summer home Villa Speer on Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, Heidelberg. According to Henry T. King, deputy prosecutor at Nuremberg who later wrote a book about Speer, Love, Speer was active in sports, taking up skiing and mountaineering. Speers Heidelberg school offered rugby football, unusual for Germany, and he wanted to become a mathematician, but his father said if Speer chose this occupation he would lead a life without money, without a position and without a future. Instead, Speer followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Speer began his architectural studies at the University of Karlsruhe instead of a more highly acclaimed institution because the hyperinflation crisis of 1923 limited his parents income. In 1924 when the crisis had abated, he transferred to the more reputable Technical University of Munich. In 1925 he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Tessenow, after passing his exams in 1927, Speer became Tessenows assistant, a high honor for a man of 22. As such, Speer taught some of Tessenows classes while continuing his own postgraduate studies, in Munich, and continuing in Berlin, Speer began a close friendship, ultimately spanning over 50 years, with Rudolf Wolters, who also studied under Tessenow. In mid-1922, Speer began courting Margarete Weber, the daughter of a craftsman who employed 50 workers. The relationship was frowned upon by Speers class-conscious mother, who felt that the Webers were socially inferior, despite this opposition, the two married in Berlin on 28 August 1928, seven years were to elapse before Margarete Speer was invited to stay at her in-laws home. Speer stated he was apolitical when he was a man. On March 1,1931, he applied to join the Nazi Party, in 1931, Speer surrendered his position as Tessenows assistant and moved to Mannheim
16.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
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East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
18.
Philipp Bouhler
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Philipp Bouhler was a senior Nazi Party official who was both a Reichsleiter and Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP. Bouhler was captured and arrested on 10 May 1945 by American troops and he committed suicide on 19 May 1945 while in the U. S. internment camp at Zell am See in Austria. Bouhler was born in Munich, to a colonel. He took part in the First World War and was badly wounded, from 1919 to 1920, he studied philosophy for four semesters and in 1921 became a contributor in the publishing house that put out the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. He joined the Nazi Party in July 1922 with membership number 12, by autumn 1922 he had become deputy manager of the NSDAP. After the failed Beerhall Putsch in Munich and the subsequent refounding of the party in 1925, after the seizure of power in 1933, he became a Reich Leader and Member of the Reichstag for Westphalia. He joined the SS in the rank of Gruppenführer on 20 April 1933 with membership number,54,932, on 30 January 1936, Bouhler was promoted to the rank of Obergruppenführer. He held that position until 23 April 1945, in this job, for instance, secret decrees might be prepared, or internal business managed, before being brought before Adolf Hitler. Bouhlers office was responsible for all correspondences for Hitler which included private and his personal adjutant was SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Freiherr Michel von Tüßling. By 1944, much of the functions of the Kanzlei des Führers were absorbed by the Party Chancellery under Martin Bormann, Bouhler was responsible for the killing of disabled German citizens. By order of Hitler, Bouhler with Karl Brandt developed the Nazis early euthanasia program, Aktion T4 in which mentally ill, the actual implementation was supervised by Bouhler. Various methods of killing were tried out, the first killing facility was Schloss Hartheim in Upper Austria. The knowledge gained from the program was later applied to the industrialized annihilation of other groups of people. In 1941 Bouhler and Heinrich Himmler initiated Aktion 14f13, Bouhler instructed the head of the Hauptamt II of Hitlers Chancellery, the Oberdienstleiter Viktor Brack to implement this order. Brack was already in charge of the various front operations of T4, the scheme operated under the Concentration Camps Inspector and the Reichsführer-SS under the name Sonderbehandlung 14f13. Sonderbehandlung was the term for execution or killing. In 1942, Bouhler published the book Napoleon – Kometenbahn eines Genies and he had also published a National Socialist publication Kampf um Deutschland in 1938. Bouhler and his wife, Helene, were arrested by American troops at Schloss Fischhorn in Bruck near Zell-am-See on 10 May 1945 and his wife Helene jumped from a window at Schloss Fischhorn
19.
Wernher von Braun
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He was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, where he was a member of the Nazi Party and the SS. In his twenties and early thirties, von Braun worked in Germanys rocket development program, following the war, von Braun worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program before his group was assimilated into NASA. In 1975, he received the National Medal of Science and he continued insisting on the human mission to Mars throughout his life. Wernher von Braun was born on 23 March 1912 in the town of Wirsitz, in the Posen Province. He was the second of three sons and he belonged to a noble family, inheriting the German title of Freiherr. His father, conservative civil servant Magnus Freiherr von Braun, served as a Minister of Agriculture in the Reich Cabinet during the Weimar Republic, Von Braun had an older brother, Sigismund, and a younger brother, also named Magnus. After Wernher von Brauns Lutheran confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope, the family moved to Berlin in 1915 where his father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. He was taken into custody by the police until his father came to collect him. Wernher von Braun was an amateur pianist who could play Beethoven. He learned to both the cello and the piano at an early age and at one time wanted to become a composer. He took lessons from the composer Paul Hindemith, the few pieces of von Braun’s youthful compositions that exist are reminiscent of Hindemith’s style. Beginning in 1925, von Braun attended a school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar. There he acquired a copy of By Rocket into Planetary Space by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, in 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog. Space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering. In 1930, he attended the Technische Hochschule Berlin, where he joined the Spaceflight Society, in spring 1932, he graduated from the Technische Hochschule Berlin, with a diploma in mechanical engineering. His early exposure to rocketry convinced him that the exploration of space would require far more applications of the current engineering technology. He also studied at ETH Zürich, although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest. In 1930, von Braun attended a presentation given by Auguste Piccard, after the talk the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him, You know, I plan on traveling to the Moon at some time
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Walter Dornberger
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Major-General Dr Walter Robert Dornberger was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World Wars I and II. He was a leader of Nazi Germanys V-2 rocket program and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Center, Dornberger was born in Gießen and enlisted in 1914. In October 1918, as an artillery lieutenant Dornberger was captured by US Marines, in 1935, Dornberger received an honorary doctorate, which Col. Karl Emil Becker arranged as Dean of the new Faculty of Military Technology at the TH Berlin. On 21 December 1932, Captain Dornberger watched a rocket motor explode at Kummersdorf while Wernher von Braun tried to light it with a gasoline can at the end of a four meter long pole. In 1933, Waffenamt Prüfwesen 1/1, under the Heereswaffenamt, commenced work under the direction of Colonel/Dr, Dornberger also took over his last military command on 1 October 1934 — a powder-rocket training battery at Königsbrück. In May 1937, Dornberger and his organization were transferred from Kummersdorf to Peenemünde. In September 1942, Dornberger was given two posts, coordinating the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket development programmes and directing active operations, the first successful test launch of a V-2 was the third test launch on 3 October 1942. On 12 January 1945 on Dornbergers proposal, Albert Speer replaced the Long-Range Weapons Commission with Working Staff Dornberger, before going to the Alps, General Dornberger had hidden his own papers near Bad Sachsa, which were recovered by the 332nd Engineer Regiment. On 2 May 1945, Dornberger, von Braun, and five other men departed from Haus Ingeborg and travelled through Gaicht Pass and they met American soldiers who convoyed the group to the Tyrolean town of Reutte for the night. Other sources place them being arrested by Pattons Third Army on May 3,1945 near Prague, from 1950 to 1965 he worked for the Bell Aircraft Corporation where he worked on several projects, rising to the post of Vice-President. He played a role in the creation of the X-15 aircraft and was a key consultant for the X-20 Dyna-Soar project. He also had a role on the creation of ideas and projects which, in the end, Dornberger also developed Bells Rascal, the worlds first guided nuclear air-to-surface missile developed for the Strategic Air Command. During the 1950s he had some attrition with von Braun and was instrumental in recruiting several engineers out of the Huntsvilles team for USAF projects, the most remarkable of them was Krafft Ehricke who later created the Centaur rocket stage and actively participated in several more Defense projects. Following retirement, Dornberger went to Mexico and later returned to Germany, V-2, der Schuss ins Weltall - Geschichte einer grossen Erfindung. OCLC1223668. S. D. I. C - Island Farm, Prisoner of War Camp,198 / Special Camp, XI - Bridgend, some of the Prisoners Held at Special Camp 11 - Generalmajor Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger
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Friedrich Buchardt
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Friedrich Buchardt was a Baltic German SS-Obersturmbannführer who commanded Vorkommando Moskau, one of the divisions of Einsatzgruppe B. He then worked for MI6 until 1947, and then, presumably, Buchardt was never molested by the law, being one of the agents of more sinister reputation who was used by the West, and he died at the age of 73. Of Baltic German origin, Buchardt studied at the German Gymnasium in Riga, Latvia and law at the University of Berlin and his thesis was titled The Rights of National Minorities in Latvia and Its International Importance and Administration. He joined the SA in October 1933, but left the following year, having completed his studies, Buchardt returned to Riga, where he tried to organize a national German-Baltic movement under the leadership of Erhard Kroeger. Buchardt funded and contributed to the pro-Nazi newspaper Rigaschen Rundschau, which was closed by the Latvian authorities in May 1934 because it had too many connections with Nazi Germany. This plunged Buchardt into financial difficulties, so he became a lawyer for a company in Germany. While working at the University of Königsberg, he met Dr. Franz Six, on Sixs advice, Buchardt was recruited by the Sicherheitsdienst, working under Sixs command. He studied the topography and economy of the Soviet Union, by the late 1930s, he held a prestigious position at the Wannsee Institut, the German center for studies of the Soviet Union. In 1940, Buchardt was promoted to head of the SD in Lublin, Buchardt carried out similar work in Łódź in February 1941, this time reporting directly to the RSHA. On the eve of Operation Barbarossa, Buchardt was recalled and, in order to have blood experience rather than merely be a desk scholar and he served as the liaison officer between Franz Six and the head of Einsatzgruppe B, Arthur Nebe. Following the start of the offensive against Moscow in October 1941, he was promoted to Sturmbannführer in November 1941, and head of Vorkommando Moskau the following month. When the Red Army repelled the assault against Moscow, the new head of Vorkommando was posted back to Łódź in January 1942, from January to September 1942, he supervised the deportation of about 80,000 Jews and Romani to Chełmno extermination camp. In February 1943, Buchardt succeeded Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Wiebens as commander of Einsatzkommando 9 of Einsatzgruppe B and he was in charge of extermination actions near Vitebsk. The death toll perpetrated by Buchardts commando is likely to be in the tens of thousands, Buchardt was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords, a Silver Badge of Courage, and an Infantry Assault Badge in Silver. In June 1944, he was promoted to Obersturmbannführer, posted to Berlin, Buchardt now headed Amt III B2 of the RSHA, which specialized in racial and ethnic matters. He was under the command of Otto Ohlendorf, who headed Amt III, with defeat imminent by April 1945, the head, Otto Ohlendorf, had set up an SD underground movement called Bundschuh, named after the Bundschuh movement. The Bundschuh was to serve as a Europe-wide information network of agents that could be used by sabotage. Ohlendorf appointed Buchardt as leader of the sector of the network
22.
Gunther Burstyn
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Gunther Adolf Burstyn was an inventor, technician, and officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army. In 1911, he produced the first design of a fighting vehicle with swiveling gun turret. His draft design, more advanced than some of the designs of World War I, was rejected both by Austria-Hungary and by the German Empire and no prototype was ever produced. He later sought to patent his design, but was told that it might infringe existing patents, in 1941 Burstyn was awarded the War Merit Cross, 1st and 2nd class, with Swords. At the end of World War II he committed suicide because he feared Soviet captivity, Burstyn was christened Günther, but in later life chose to omit the umlaut and use the name Gunther
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Adolf Butenandt
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Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt was a German biochemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 for his work on sex hormones and he initially rejected the award in accordance with government policy, but accepted it in 1949 after World War II. He was President of the Max Planck Society from 1960 to 1972, born in Lehe, near Bremerhaven, he started his studies at the University of Marburg. For his Ph. D he joined the group of the Nobel laureate Adolf Windaus at the University of Göttingen. Adolf Windaus and Walter Schöller of Schering gave him the advice to work on hormones extracted from ovaries and this research lead to the discovery of estrone and other primary female sex hormones, which were extracted from several thousand liters of urine. For this research he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1939 together with Leopold Ružička who was involved in the synthesis of several newly discovered steroids, after his Habilitation he became lecturer in Göttingen 1931. He was professor at the Technical University of Danzig 1933-1936, and after a visit in the US, in 1933 Butenandt had signed the Loyalty Oath of German Professors to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State. Butenandt joined the Nazi Party on 1 May 1936, when the institute moved to Tübingen in 1945 he became a professor at the University of Tübingen. In 1956, when the relocated to Martinsried, a suburb of Munich. He also served as president of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science following Otto Hahn from 1960 to 1972, Butenandt is credited with the discovery and naming of the silkworm moth pheromone Bombykol in 1959. Butenandt died in Munich in 1995, at the age of 91 and his wife Erika, born in 1906, has died in 1995 at 88. Von der Rockefeller Foundation zur Kaiser-Wilhelm/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Adolf Butenandt als Biochemiker und Wissenschaftspolitiker des 20, Adolf Butenandt und die Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft - Wissenschaft, Industrie und Politik im Dritten Reich. Biography 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Biography MPG Biography Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Background information on and historical lectures by Adolf Butenandt
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Kurt Daluege
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Kurt Daluege was the chief of the national uniformed Ordnungspolizei of Nazi Germany. Following Reinhard Heydrichs assassination in 1942, he served as Deputy Protector for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Daluege directed the German measures of retribution for the assassination, including the Lidice massacre. After the end of World War II, he was extradited to Czechoslovakia, Daluege, son of a Prussian state official, was born in the small Upper Silesian town of Kreuzburg on 15 September 1897. He entered the Prussian Army in 1916 and served with the 7th Guards Infantry Regiment and he served on the Eastern Front. In October 1917, attended officer training in Doberitz, during his service on the Western Front, he was severely wounded in the head and shoulder. He was hospitalised and declared 25% disabled, Daluege was awarded the Iron Cross, second class and the Wound Badge in Black. After World War I, Daluege became leader of Selbstschutz Oberschlesien - Upper Silesian Self Defense — an Upper Silesian veterans organization engaged in combat with the Poles in that region. In 1921, he became active in the Freikorps Rossbach while studying engineering at the Technical University in Berlin. Two years later he joined the Nazi Party and was assigned Party number 31,981, from 1924, he helped to organize the Berlin Frontbann, largely a front organization for the Nazi Sturmabteilung, since it and the Nazi Party were banned in Prussia at the time. In 1926 he joined the SA directly, eventually becoming the leader of Berlins SA and Goebbels deputy Gauleiter, or Party leader, throughout the period 1926—1929, Daluege led the Berlin-Brandenburg division of the SA. In July 1930, in accordance with Hitlers wishes, Daluege resigned from the SA and joined the SS with the rank of SS-Oberführer and his main responsibility was to spy on the SA and political opponents of the Nazi Party. Berlin SS headquarters was placed at the corner of Lützowstrasse and Potsdamerstrasse. In August 1930, when Berlin SA leader Walter Stennes had his men attack the Berlin Party headquarters, it was Dalueges SS men who defended it and put the attack down. Sometime afterwards in an letter to Daluege, Adolf Hitler proclaimed SS Mann, deine Ehre heißt Treue. At the same time, Hermann Göring moved Daluege to the Prussian Interior Ministry, thus neutralising the SA and shifting the balance of power within the party to the SS. Evidence of Dalueges ruthlessness goes beyond his intrigue against his former SA comrades and are discernible in his remarks concerning anyone he considered a threat to society. He once argued that, the consciously asocial enemies of the people must be eliminated by state intervention if it hopes to prevent the outbreak of moral degeneration. By November 1934, Dalueges authority over the police was extended beyond Prussia to encompass all of Germany
25.
Karl von Eberstein
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Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Eberstein was a member of the German nobility, early member of the Nazi Party, the SA, and the SS. Further, he rose to become a Reichstag delegate, an HSSPF and SS-Oberabschnitt Führer, Eberstein was born on 14 January 1894 in Halle on the Saale, of the Dillenburger branch of the von Eberstein family. His father was an army major, Karl was at cadet schools until 1912. Early on in World War I, Karl served in the German Army with Field Artillery Regiment 17 in August 1914 and he was also a balloon observer, and later a battery commander in Artillery Regiment 16. He was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class and the Iron Cross First Class, after World War I, Eberstein fought as a member of the Freikorps in Middle Germany and/or Upper Silesia, and also with the Halle Protection Police. After that, he went into banking, Eberstein joined the Nazi Party in 1922, but quit after the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. He then re-joined the Party in 1925 with number,15067 and he was an early member of the SS and on the staff of Heinrich Himmler. According to Jonathan Petropolous, Eberstein was part of Himmlers strategy to attract members of the nobility, Eberstein obtained the officer rank SS-Sturmführer on 1 April 1929. He also joined the SA in July 1930 but left it later, Eberstein played a part in the first meeting of two of the major leaders of both the SS and later the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler. Eberstein and Heydrichs families were both from Halle on the Saale and he was also a friend of Lina Heydrich, Reinhard Heydrichs wife. Acting on the advice of Karl von Eberstein, Himmler agreed to interview Heydrich, when Himmler cancelled Heydrichs interview in Munich due to alleged illness, Lina ignored the message, and sent Heydrich on a Munich bound train. Karl met Heydrich at the station and drove him to meet Himmler, Himmler received Heydrich and hired him as the chief of the new SS Ic Service or Intelligence Service, which would later become known as the Sicherheitsdienst. Eberstein was the president of Munich during Kristallnacht. On 10 November 1938, at 1,20 a. m, Heydrich sent out a telegram to various police organizations giving orders for police behavior during the riots. At 2,10 Eberstein sent a telegram to the State Police HQ of Augsburg, Nürnberg, Würzburg, weinstraße, the Regierungspräsident, and the Gauleiter, with the subject line Anti-Jewish Measures. The Ordnungspolizei or Orpo would. do nothing to hinder the demonstrations, the SS troops could help, but the state police was supposed to maintain control. It went on to state that between 20 and 30,000 Jews would be arrested in Germany and it concluded. Every effort will be made to arrest immediately as many Jews as the jails will hold, primarily healthy male and well-to-do adults of not too advanced age. David Irving contends that Eberstein was a witness to Hitlers anger on that night, and this claim was refuted at the Irving v. Lipstadt trial, when Irving sued Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier
26.
Adolf Eichmann
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Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. In 1960, Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Mossad, Israels intelligence service, following a widely publicised trial in Israel, he was found guilty of war crimes and hanged in 1962. After an unremarkable career, Eichmann briefly worked for his fathers mining company in Austria. He worked as an oil salesman beginning in 1927, and joined the Nazi Party. Eichmann drew up plans for a Jewish reservation, first at Nisko in south-east Poland and later in Madagascar, as the Nazis began the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, their Jewish policy changed from emigration to extermination. To co-ordinate planning for the genocide, Heydrich hosted the regimes administrative leaders at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, Eichmann collected information for Heydrich, attended the conference, and prepared the minutes. Eichmann and his staff became responsible for Jewish deportations to extermination camps, after Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Eichmann oversaw the deportation of much of that countrys Jewish population. Most of the victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where 75 to 90 per cent were murdered upon arrival, by the time the transports were stopped in July 1944,437,000 of Hungarys 725,000 Jews had been killed. Historian Richard J. Evans estimates that between 5.5 and 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, after Germanys defeat in 1945, Eichmann fled to Austria. He lived there until 1950, when he moved to Argentina using false papers, information collected by Mossad, Israels intelligence agency, confirmed Eichmanns location in 1960. During the trial, Eichmann did not deny the veracity of the Holocaust or his role in organising it, found guilty on many of the charges, he was sentenced to death by hanging and executed on 1 June 1962. Otto Adolf Eichmann, the eldest of five children, was born in 1906 to a Calvinist Protestant family in Solingen and his parents were Adolf Karl Eichmann, a bookkeeper, and Maria, a housewife. The elder Adolf moved to Linz, Austria, in 1913 to take a position as manager for the Linz Tramway and Electrical Company. After the death of Maria in 1916, Eichmanns father married Maria Zawrzel, Eichmann attended the Kaiser Franz Joseph Staatsoberrealschule in Linz, the same high school Adolf Hitler had attended some 17 years before. He played the violin and participated in sports and clubs, including a Wandervogel woodcraft and he left without attaining a degree and joined his fathers new enterprise, the Untersberg Mining Company, where he worked for several months. From 1925 to 1927 he worked as a clerk for the Oberösterreichische Elektrobau AG radio company. Next, between 1927 and early 1933, Eichmann worked in Upper Austria and Salzburg as district agent for the Vacuum Oil Company AG. During this time, he joined the Jungfrontkämpfervereinigung, the section of Hermann Hiltls right-wing veterans movement
27.
Reinhard Gehlen
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In 1942, Gehlen was chief of FHO, the German Armys military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front. In late 1945, at the start of the Cold War, Reinhard Gehlen was born to a Roman Catholic family, his father was a book-seller in Erfurt. In 1920, Reinhard joined the Reichswehr, then attended the German Staff College, and was graduated in 1935, after which he was promoted to captain and assigned to the German General Staff. From 1935 to 1936, Captain Gehlen served in the General Staff, in July 1941, Major Gehlen was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, sent to the Eastern Front, and assigned, as senior intelligence-officer, to the Fremde Heere Ost section of the Staff. Head of FHO In spring of 1942, Gehlen assumed command of the FHO from Colonel Eberhard Kinzel, as head of the FHO, Col. Reinhard Gehlen escaped inclusion to Hitlers revenge upon the military conspirators. In April 1945, despite his professionalism and the military intelligence, Hitler dismissed the FHO spymaster Gehlen. In the event, the files secured in the mountains of Upper Bavaria, Gen. Gehlen controlled fifty cases of Nazi intelligence about the USSR, britain, France, had no spies within the countries from which the occupying Red Army had vanquished the Wehrmacht. As planned, upon surrendering specifically to the U. S, as a spymaster with great knowledge of Soviet forces, and anti-communist intelligence contacts in the USSR, the American Army recognized the political value of the Nazi General Gehlen. In the event, Capt. Boker deleted the names of Gehlen, and his Wehrmacht command, from the lists of Nazi prisoners of war. The FHO archives in the control of Gehlen were unearthed and secretly taken to Camp King, by end of summer 1945, Capt. Boker had the support of Brigadier General Edwin Sibert, the G2 of the U. S. On 20 September 1945, General Reinhard Gehlen and three associates were flown from the American Zone of Occupation in Germany to the U. S. to become spies for the U. S. Government. In July 1946, the U. S. officially released the military prisoner Gehlen, the cover-name of the Gehlen Organization was the South German Industrial Development Organization. From the beginning of his association with the U. S. Government, between 1947 and 1955, the Org agents interviewed every German PoW who returned to West Germany from captivity in the Soviet Union. The Gehlen Org employed hundreds of ex–Nazis, and also had contacts with the anti-communist organizations of the East European émigré communities in Western Europe. Among the successes of the Gehlen Org is Operation Bohemia, an effort of anti-communist counter-espionage. As the spies emerged from the shadows, Gehlen, personally, and the Gehlen Organization, officially, were attacked by the governments of the Western powers, by way of that transference of geopolitical sponsorship, the anti–Communist Gehlen Organization became the nucleus of the Bundesnachrichtendienst. Gerhard Boldt Cookridge, E. H. Gehlen, Spy of the Century,1971, and New York, Random House. 1972 Critchfield, James H. Partners at Creation, The Men Behind Postwar Germanys Defense, X +243 pp, ISBN 1-59114-136-2
28.
Karl Hanke
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Karl August Hanke was the last Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, and an official of the Nazi Party of Nazi Germany. He served as governor of Lower Silesia from 1941 to 1945 and he was shot and killed by Czech partisans on 8 June 1945. Hanke was born in Lauban in Silesia, on 24 August 1903 and his older brother was killed in World War I. Hanke was too young for service in the war and attended Gymnasium through Obersekunda and he served in the Reichswehr as a Zeitfreiwilliger in the 19th Infantry Regiment at Frankfurt/Oder from 1920 to 1921. Hanke obtained an education as an engineer by attending the German Millers School at Dippoldiswalde. He then decided to obtain a practical experience as a railway workshop apprentice before returning to milling. From 1921 to around 1926, Hanke mainly worked in the industry, serving as a business manager for mills in the vicinity of Silesia, Bavaria. He later attended the Berufspädagogische Institut in Berlin, receiving a degree that qualified him to teach milling at vocational schools, later in 1928, he worked in Berlin-Steglitz as a master miller. After this he became an instructor at a technical school in Berlin. Hanke joined the Nazi Party on 1 November 1928, with membership number 102606, Hanke began his National Socialist career at the somewhat low level of Amtswalter, a low ranking speaker and factory cell organizer in Berlin. He joined the Sturmabteilung Reserve in 1929, that year he became a deputy street cell leader. In 1930 he was promoted to street cell leader and then a leader in Berlin. Hanke was fired from his position at the vocational school in April 1931 for his political agitation for the Nazi Party. He went to work full-time for the party, by late 1931, he was Kreisleiter of Westend in Berlin, working under Berlins Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels. In 1932, Hanke was made chief Gau organizational director and on 1 April 1932, in his position as Kreisleiter of Westend in Berlin, Hanke was the first party official to establish contact with the young architect Albert Speer. Hanke contracted Speer to convert a villa in the suburbs into an office for the local party organization in 1932. Hanke and Speer became close friends, in 1944, according to Speers book, Hanke strongly advised Speer never to visit a camp in Upper Silesia for any reason. Hanke had seen something that he was not allowed to describe, adolf Hitler took an early liking to the outspoken young Hanke, who by April 1932 had become an NSDAP delegate to Prussian State Parliament
29.
Adolf Heusinger
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General Adolf Heusinger was a German general who served as head of the West German military from 1957 to 1961 and as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964. Heusinger joined the German Army as a volunteer in 1915 and later became a professional soldier, Heusinger was born in Holzminden, in the Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire. He entered the Prussian Army in 1915, becoming an officer in 1917, following the war, Heusinger was retained in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic. In August 1937, Heusinger was assigned to the Operations Staff of the re-established Army General Staff and he served there, being promoted to lieutenant colonel on March 20,1939, and remained in that position until October 15,1940, when he became its chief. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the German Army High Command assumed its wartime organization, Heusinger accompanied the field staff and assisted in the planning of operations for the invasions of Poland, Denmark, Norway, and France and the Low Countries. Halder was replaced as Chief of the General Staff in September 1942 by General Kurt Zeitzler, Heusinger remained chief of the Operationsabteilung and was promoted to Generalleutnant on January 1,1943. In June 1944, Zeitzler became ill, and on June 10, in this capacity, he attended the meeting at Adolf Hitlers Wolfs Lair on July 20,1944, and was standing next to Hitler when the bomb planted by Claus von Stauffenberg exploded. Heusinger was hospitalized for his injuries in the explosion, but was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo to determine his role, if any, in the July Plot. Although there was evidence that Heusinger had had contacts with many of the conspirators, there was insufficient evidence to connect him to the plot. However, he was placed into the Führer-Reserve and was not assigned to another position until March 25,1945 and he was taken prisoner by the Western Allies in May 1945. A internee from 1945 to 1947, Heusinger testified during the Nuremberg Trials, in 1950, he became an advisor on military matters to Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of West Germany. He served in the Blank Office Amt Blank, the office headed by Theodor Blank, with the establishment of the West Germany Armed Forces Bundeswehr in 1955, Heusinger returned to military service. He was appointed a Generalleutnant on November 12,1955. in the Bundeswehr, in March 1957, he succeeded Hans Speidel as chief of the Bundeswehrs all-armed forces department. Shortly thereafter, in June 1957, Heusinger was promoted to general and named the first Inspector General of the Bundeswehr. In April 1961, he was appointed Chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Washington, D. C. where he served until 1964, when he retired. He was, according to reports, wanted by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s for war crimes committed in the occupied Soviet territories. Heusinger died in Cologne on November 30,1982, aged 85, wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949–1959. Biography on BMVg website http, //www. dhm. de/lemo/html/biografien/HeusingerAdolf/ Adolf Heusinger - CIA, CIAs file on Heusinger, the document shows that Heusinger initialed the Commissar Order and Commando Order, but, due to his cooperative attitude, no further action was taken
30.
Reinhard Heydrich
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Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German Nazi official during World War II, and a main architect of the Holocaust. He was an SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei as well as chief of the Reich Main Security Office and he was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. Many historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite and he was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst, an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of co-ordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany, the attacks, carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians, presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and he died from his injuries a week later. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the villages of Lidice, both villages were razed, all men and boys over the age of 16 were shot, and all but a handful of its women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born in 1904 in Halle an der Saale to composer and opera singer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife and his father was Protestant and his mother was Roman Catholic. His two forenames were patriotic musical tributes, Reinhard referred to the hero from his fathers opera Amen. Heydrichs third name, Eugen, was his maternal grandfathers forename. Heydrichs family held social standing and substantial financial means, Music was a part of Heydrichs everyday life, his father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music, Theatre and Teaching and his mother taught piano there. Heydrich developed a passion for the violin and carried that interest into adulthood and his father was a German nationalist who instilled patriotic ideas in his three children, but was not affiliated with any political party until after World War I. As a youth, he engaged his younger brother, Heinz and he excelled in his schoolwork—especially in science—at the Reformgymnasium. A talented athlete, he became a swimmer and fencer. He was shy, insecure, and was bullied for his high-pitched voice. The latter claim earned him the nickname Moses Handel, in 1918, World War I ended with Germanys defeat. In late February 1919, civil unrest—including strikes and clashes between communist and anti-communist groups—took place in Heydrichs home town of Halle, under Defense Minister Gustav Noskes directives, a right-wing paramilitary unit was formed and ordered to recapture Halle. Heydrich, then 15 years old, joined Maerckers Volunteer Rifles, when the skirmishes ended, Heydrich was part of the force assigned to protect private property. Little is known about his role, but the left a strong impression
31.
Franz Josef Huber
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Franz Josef Huber was an SS general who rose to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei. He was an official under both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Huber joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and worked closely with Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, after the annexation of Austria in 1938, Huber was posted to Vienna, where he was appointed chief of the Security Police and Gestapo for Vienna, the Lower Danube and Upper Danube regions. He was responsible for the deportations of Jews from the area, after the war ended, Huber never served any prison time and died in Munich in 1975. Huber was born on 22 January 1902 in Munich and he attended school through seven classes of gymnasium. In his last year of school, Huber served as a Zeitfreiwilligen which were units that could be mobilized on short notice by the army. In mid-1922 he entered the Munich police service and by 1923 was a auxiliary assistant, Huber was promoted to office assistant and by 1926 joined the political police department. In January 1928, Huber was made an assistant and later a police inspector. During the years of the Weimar Republic he worked with Heinrich Müller, Huber was involved in the suppression of the Nazi Party, communist, and other political groups. In 1933, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler became chief of the Munich Police and Reinhard Heydrich was commander of Department IV, the political police. Heydrich did not dismiss Huber, Müller or Josef Albert Meisinger as he perceived correctly that these men were thorough professionals, Heydrich was appointed chief of the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. Immediately thereafter, Heydrich transferred to the Berlin office of the Gestapo, thereafter, in 1937 Huber joined the Nazi Party as member number,4,583,151 and also joined the SS with number 107,099. In early 1938 Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Himmler wanted to dispose of Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, meisingers investigation revealed that Blombergs wife, Erna Gruhn had been a prostitute with a police record and once posed for pornographic photos. In 1936 Meisinger uncovered allegations of homosexuality made against the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Colonel General Werner von Fritsch, a file was prepared and Heydrich passed the information on to Hitler. Hitler chose to dismiss the allegations and ordered Heydrich to destroy the file, however, he did not do so. In late January 1938, Göring wanted to dispose von Fritsch as he did not want Fritsch to become the successor to Blomberg, Heydrich resurrected the old file on Fritsch. Meisinger at the time was in charge of Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und der Abtreibung Huber and Meisinger led the investigation against Fritsch, at one point Huber and Meisinger interrogated Otto Schmidt, a notorious criminal whose Berlin gang had specialized in blackmail of homosexuals. Schmidt identified Fritsch as a homosexual, Heydrich resubmitted the updated von Fritsch file to Hitler
32.
Friedrich Jeckeln
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Friedrich Jeckeln was a high-ranking official in the SS of Nazi Germany who served as an SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. After the end of World War II, Jeckeln was convicted for his crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in Riga, Latvia, Jeckeln served in World War I as an officer. After being discharged following Germanys defeat, Jeckeln worked as an engineer before joining the Nazi Party on 1 October 1929, in January 1931, Jeckeln was accepted into the SS. By the end of 1931 he was placed in charge of a regiment, in 1932, Jeckeln was elected as a member of the Reichstag. In January 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. In 1936, Jeckeln was appointed SS and Police Leader of Western Germany, Jeckeln was known to be ruthless and brutal. Political opponents, especially members of the KPD, SPD and the unions, were pursued relentlessly until their death, together with party member Friedrich Alpers, Jeckeln was primarily responsible for the Rieseberg murders in the summer of 1933. From 1941 to 1945 he also served as the commander of SS-Oberabschnitt Ostland which was a paper command of the Allgemeine-SS. After the Second World War began, Jeckeln was called up to duty in the Waffen-SS. As was the practice in the SS, Jeckeln took a lower rank from his Allgemeine-SS position, in 1941, however, his front line service was terminated and he was transferred by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to serve as Higher SS and Police Leader of Eastern Russia. In this role Jeckeln assumed direction and control of all SS-Einsatzgruppen mass killings, Jeckeln developed his own methods to kill large numbers of people, which became known as the Jeckeln System. Jeckeln had staff which specialised in each part of the process. As applied in the Rumbula massacre on 30 November and 8 December 1941, Jeckelns system worked as follows, the people to be murdered were organised into columns of 500 to 1,000 people and driven to the killing grounds about 10 kilometres to the south. The Order Police led the columns to the killing grounds, three pits had already been dug where the killing would be done simultaneously. The victims were stripped of their clothing and valuables, the victims were run through a double cordon of guards on the way to the killing pits. The killers forced the victims to lie face down on the floor, or more often. Each person was shot once in the back of the head with a Russian submachine gun. The shooters either walked among the dead in the trench, killing them from a range of two metres, or stood at the lip of the excavation and shot the victims below them
33.
William Joyce
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William Brooke Joyce, nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an American-born, Irish-German Fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during World War II. He was convicted of one count of treason in 1945 and was sentenced to death. The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords upheld his conviction and he was hanged at Wandsworth Prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 3 January 1946, making him the last person to be executed for treason in the United Kingdom. The death penalty for treason was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1998. William Brooke Joyce was born on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn, New York and his father was Michael Francis Joyce an Irish Catholic from a family of farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, who had taken United States citizenship on 25 October 1894. His mother was Gertrude Emily Brooke, who born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire. A few years after Williams birth, the returned to Salthill, Galway. Joyce attended the Jesuit St Ignatius College in Galway, Joyces mother was strongly Anglocentric and despite tensions with father for marrying a Catholic, remained staunchly Protestant and Unionist herself, hostile to Irish nationalism. The attitude of Joyces father was more Gombeen in nature, though de facto pro-British, he bought up houses, while he is known to have hung around with Black and Tans at Lenaboy Castle, it is doubtful that the teenage Joyce engaged in any significant operations. Nevertheless, the Irish Republican Army dispatched a volunteer, Michael Molloy, Joyce was only saved because his father had moved his family to another house on a different route. Capt. Keating arranged for William Joyce to be mustered into the Worcester Regiment soon after, a few months later he was discharged when it was found out he was underage. Joyce remained in England and briefly attended Kings College School, Wimbledon, on a foreign exchange and his family followed him to England two years later, having backed the losing side in the conflict in Ireland. Joyce had relatives in Birkenhead, Cheshire, whom he visited on a few occasions and he then applied to Birkbeck College of the University of London and to enter the Officer Training Corps. At Birkbeck, he obtained an honours degree. He also developed an interest in Fascism, and he worked with the British Fascists of Rotha Lintorn-Orman, on 22 October 1924, while stewarding a meeting in support of Jack Lazarus, Joyce was attacked by Communists and received a deep razor slash that ran across his right cheek. It left a permanent scar which ran from the earlobe to the corner of the mouth and he claimed his attackers were Jews. In 1932, Joyce joined the British Union of Fascists under Sir Oswald Mosley, the journalist and novelist Cecil Roberts described a speech given by Joyce, Thin, pale, intense, he had not been speaking many minutes before we were electrified by this man. So terrifying in its force, so vituperative, so vitriolic
34.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
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Ernst Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany during World War II. An Obergruppenführer in the Schutzstaffel, between January 1943 and May 1945 he held the offices of Chief of the Reich Main Security Office and he was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial at the first Nuremberg trials. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, born in Ried im Innkreis, Austria, Kaltenbrunner was the son of a lawyer, and was educated at the Realgymnasium in Linz. After Gymnasium, Kaltenbrunner went on to obtain his degree in law at Graz University in 1926. He worked at a law firm in Salzburg for a year before opening his own law office in Linz and he had deep scars on his face from dueling in his student days, although some sources attribute them to an automobile accident. On 14 January 1934, Kaltenbrunner married Elisabeth Eder who was from Linz, in addition to the children from his marriage, Kaltenbrunner had twins, Ursula and Wolfgang, with his long-time mistress Gisela Gräfin von Westarp. All the children survived the war, on 18 October 1930, Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party as NSDAP member number 300,179. In 1931, he was the Bezirksredner for the Nazi Party in Oberösterreich and he went on to join the SS on 31 August 1931, his SS number was 13,039. He first became a Rechtsberater for the party in 1929 and later held this position for SS Abschnitt VIII beginning in 1932. That same year, he began working at his fathers law practice, in January 1934, Kaltenbrunner was briefly jailed at the Kaisersteinbruch detention camp with other National Socialists for conspiracy by the Engelbert Dollfuss government. While there he led a strike which forced the government to release 490 of the party members. In 1935, he was jailed again on suspicion of high treason and this charge was dropped, but he was sentenced to six months imprisonment for conspiracy and he lost his license to practice law. From mid-1935 Kaltenbrunner was head of the illegal SS Abschnitt VIII in Linz and was considered a leader of the Austrian SS, to provide Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinz Jost with new information, Kaltenbrunner repeatedly made trips to Bavaria. Hiding on a train and on a ship traveled to Passau, he would return with money. Kaltenbrunner was arrested again in 1937, by Austrian authorities on charges of being head of the illegal Nazi Party organisation in Oberösterreich. Controlled from behind the scenes by Himmler, Kaltenbrunner still led, albeit clandestinely, then on 21 March 1938, he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer. He was a member of the Reichstag from 10 April 1938 until 8 May 1945, amid all this activity, he also helped establish the concentration camp at Mauthausen near Linz. On 11 September 1938, Kaltenbrunner was promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer, also in 1938, he was appointed High SS and police leader for Donau, which was the primary SS command in Austria
35.
Hasso von Manteuffel
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Hasso-Eccard Freiherr von Manteuffel was a German general during World War II. He was one of only 27 holders of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, after the war, he was elected to the Bundestag and was the spokesman for defense of the Liberal Party. A proponent of rearmament, he was responsible for coining the new name for the post-World War II German armed forces, hasso von Manteuffel began his military career during the First World War. In 1919, he joined the Freikorps and then the newly created Reichswehr, in February 1937 he joined the Panzer Troop Command of the OKH, and in February 1939 became a senior professor at Panzer Troop School II in Berlin. During Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, Manteuffel commanded a battalion in the 7th Panzer Division, in early 1943, Manteuffel was sent to Africa, where on 5 February he became the commander of the Division von Broich/von Manteuffel, serving in 5th Panzer Army. Here Manteuffel took part in the Battle of Tunisia, the division retreated during the resulting Battle of the Dnieper. Manteuffel was appointed commander of the Grossdeutschland Division on 1 February 1944, the division engaged the Red Army west of Kirovograd, then retreated across Ukraine. In late July Großdeutschland was ordered to East Prussia, following the collapse of Army Group Centre in Soviet Operation Bagration, the division failed to break through to the Army Group North in the Courland Pocket. On 1 September 1944, Manteuffel was promoted to General of Panzer Troops and given command of the 5th Panzer Army on the Western Front, which took part in the Ardennes Offensive. Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army achieved one of the deepest penetrations of Allied lines during the offensive, almost reaching the Meuse River, on 10 March 1945 Manteuffel was made the commander of the 3rd Panzer Army on the Eastern Front, attached to Army Group Vistula. His army was assigned to defend the banks of the Oder River north of the Seelow Heights, on 25 April the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front broke through Third Panzer Armys line, forcing a German retreat. On 3 May 1945 Manteuffel surrendered his troops to the British Army at Hagenow, at first Manteuffel was interned at the British-administered Island Farm Special Camp 11 for high-ranking Wehrmacht officers. In 1946 he was handed over to the Americans and took part in the U. S. Army Historical Division project, for which he produced a monograph on the mobile warfare aspect of the Ardennes Offensive. After his release in December 1946, he entered politics and was a representative of the Free Democratic Party of Germany in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 1957, in 1957 he joined the German Party. In the early 1950s Manteuffel advised on the redevelopment of the Bundeswehr, Manteuffel was charged in 1959 for having a deserter shot in 1944. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, in 1968 he lectured at the United States Military Academy at West Point, speaking about combat in deep snow conditions and worked as a technical adviser on war films. Panzer-Division 50th Swords on 22 February 1944 as Generalleutnant and commander of the 7, panzer-Division 24th Diamonds on 18 February 1945 as General der Panzertruppe and commander-in-chief of 5
36.
Dr. Josef Mengele
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Josef Mengele was a German Schutzstaffel officer and physician in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Mengele was a member of the team of doctors responsible for the selection of victims to be killed in the gas chambers. Arrivals deemed able to work were admitted into the camp, Mengele left Auschwitz on 17 January 1945, shortly before the arrival of the liberating Red Army troops. After the war, he fled to South America, where he evaded capture for the rest of his life, Mengele received doctorates in anthropology and medicine from Munich University and began a career as a researcher. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938, initially assigned as a battalion medical officer at the start of World War II, he transferred to the concentration camp service in early 1943 and was assigned to Auschwitz. There he saw the opportunity to conduct research on human subjects. His subsequent experiments, focusing primarily on twins, had no regard for the health or safety of the victims, assisted by a network of former SS members, Mengele sailed to Argentina in July 1949. In spite of requests by the West German government and clandestine operations by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. He drowned while swimming off the Brazilian coast in 1979 and was buried under a false name and his remains were disinterred and positively identified by forensic examination in 1985. Mengele was born the eldest of three children on 16 March 1911 to Karl and Walburga Mengele in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany and his younger brothers were Karl Jr and Alois. Mengeles father was founder of the Karl Mengele & Sons company, Mengele did well in school and developed an interest in music, art, and skiing. He completed high school in April 1930 and went on to study medicine at Goethe University Frankfurt, Munich was the headquarters of the Nazi Party. In 1931 Mengele joined the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, an organisation that was in 1934 absorbed into the Nazi Sturmabteilung. In 1935, Mengele earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Munich, as an assistant to von Verschuer, Mengele focused on the genetic factors resulting in a cleft lip and palate or cleft chin. His thesis on the subject earned him a cum laude doctorate in medicine in 1938, both of his degrees were later rescinded by the issuing universities. In a letter of recommendation, von Verschuer praised Mengeles reliability, on 28 July 1939, Mengele married Irene Schönbein, whom he had met while working as a medical resident in Leipzig. Their only son, Rolf, was born in 1944, Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel in 1938. He received basic training in 1938 with the Gebirgsjäger and was called up for service in the Wehrmacht in June 1940, some months after the outbreak of World War II
37.
Wilhelm Mohnke
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Wilhelm Mohnke was one of the original members of the SS-Staff Guard Berlin formed in March 1933. From those ranks, Mohnke rose to one of Adolf Hitlers last remaining generals. He joined the Nazi Party in September 1931, with the SS Division Leibstandarte, Mohnke participated in the fighting in France, Poland and the Balkans. He was appointed to command a regiment in the SS Division Hitlerjugend in 1943 and he led the unit in the Battle for Caen, receiving the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross on 11 July 1944. Mohnke was given command of his division, the Leibstandarte. During the Battle of Berlin, Mohnke commanded the Kampfgruppe Mohnke and was charged with defending the Berlin government district, including the Reich Chancellery and the Reichstag. He was investigated after the war for war crimes, including allegations that he was responsible for the murder of prisoners in France in 1940, Normandy in June 1944 and he was never charged and died in 2001, aged 90. Mohnke was born in Lübeck on 15 March 1911 and his father, who shared his name with his son, was a cabinetmaker. After his fathers death, he went to work for a glass and porcelain manufacturer, Mohnke joined the Nazi Party with number 649,684 on 1 September 1931. Shortly thereafter, he joined the SS with number 15,541, Mohnke began with the rank of SS-Mann. Mohnke was selected for the unit in March 1933 and he was assigned to SS-Stabswache Berlin, which established its first guard at the original Reich Chancellery. By August, Mohnke was one of two company commanders, in September, the unit became known as the SS-Sonderkommando Berlin after the training units SS-Sonderkommando Zossen and SS-Sonderkommando Jüterbog merged with it under Dietrichs command. With the merger, Mohnke was transferred to the 2nd Battalion, Mohnke took part in the Polish Campaign in September,1939. He was wounded on 7 September 1939 and recovered in the hospital in Prague, for this, Mohnke received the Wound Badge in Black. He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class on 29 September 1939, Mohnke led the 5th company of the 2nd Battalion of the Infanterie-Regiment Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, at the outset of the Battle of France in 1940. He took command of the 2nd Battalion on 28 May after the commander was wounded. It was around this time that Mohnke was allegedly involved in the murder of 80 British, Mohnke was never brought to trial over these allegations, and when the case was reopened in 1988, a German prosecutor came to the conclusion there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. The case briefly resurfaced once again in late 1993 when it became evident that the British government had not revealed some pertinent files from its archives during the earlier investigation, however, nothing substantial came from this either
38.
Arthur Nebe
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Arthur Nebe was a key functionary in the security and police apparatus of Nazi Germany and a Holocaust perpetrator. Nebe rose through the ranks of the Berlin and Prussian police forces to head of Nazi Germanys Criminal Police in 1936. Prior to Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, the killing unit was deployed largely in modern-day Belarus behind Army Group Centre, and reported over 45,000 victims by November 1941. In late 1941, Nebe was posted back to Berlin and resumed his career within the RSHA, Nebe commanded the Kripo until he was denounced and executed after the failed attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in July 1944. Born in Berlin in 1894, the son of a Berlin school teacher, Nebe volunteered for military service, in 1920 Nebe joined the Berlin detective force, the Kriminalpolizei. He attained the rank of an inspector in 1923 and the rank of Police Commissioner in 1924. Nebe was a conservative nationalist, who embraced the shift of the country to the right in the 1930s, in July 1931, he joined the Nazi Party and the Schutzstaffel. Nebe became the Nazis liaison in the Berlin criminal police, with links to an early Berlin SS group led by Kurt Daluege, in early 1932, Nebe and other Nazi detectives formed the NS Civil Service Society of the Berlin Police. In 1933 he came to know Hans Bernd Gisevius, then an official in the Berlin Police Headquarters, after the war, in 1935 Nebe was appointed head of Prussian Criminal Police. He later obtained the rank of SS-Gruppenführer, an SS equivalent to that of a police general, in July 1936, the Prussian Criminal Police became the central criminal investigation department for Germany, the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt. It was amalgamated, along with the state police, the Geheime Staatspolizei, into the Sicherheitspolizei. Nebe was appointed head of the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, reporting to Heydrich, the addition of the Kripo to Heydrichs control helped cement the foundations of the police state. It also led to an overlap of personnel from the SD, Gestapo and Kripo to leadership positions in the police and security forces in Germany. On 27 September 1939, Himmler ordered the creation of the Reich Main Security Office, the RSHA was divided into main departments, including the Kripo, which became Department V of the RSHA. Department V was also known as the Reich Criminal Police Office, Kripos stated mission, which Nebe embraced, was to exterminate criminality. In 1939, Nebe lent a commissioner in his Criminal Police Office, Christian Wirth of Stuttgart, to the euthanasia organisation, also in 1939, as head of Kripo, he was involved in the discussions around the upcoming campaigns against the Sinti and Roma. Nebe wanted to include sending Berlins Gypsies to the reservations for the Jews. In October 1939, Nebe ordered Adolf Eichmann to put Gypsies with Jews on the transports to Nisko, Nebe volunteered to command Einsatzgruppe B, which was to operate behind Army Group Center after the invasion of the Soviet Union
39.
Egon von Neindorff
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Egon von Neindorff was a German general in the Wehrmacht during World War II. He was a recipient of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves of Nazi Germany, on July 1,1942, Neindorff took command of Fortress Brigade 1 in Crete. From September 1942 he commanded the 189th Reserve Division, and on 1 December 1942 was promoted to major-general, from 17 January 1944 Neindorff led the 36th Infantry division in Bobruisk. On 22 January 1944 he became commander of the German garrison at Tarnopol, in March–April 1944, it was encircled by Soviet forces. Hitler had declared Tarnopol a fortified point, to be held to the last man. A German relief attempt was mounted 11 April, but fell short of its goal, Neindorff was killed in action on 15 April, organized resistance quickly collapsed. The garrison of about 4,600 was lost with only 55 men reaching German lines the next day
40.
Franz Neuhausen
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He worked as a representative of Germany and the Nazi Party in Belgrade throughout the 1930s, during which he amassed a huge fortune. On 18 October 1943 he succeeded Harald Turner as the Chief of the Military Administration in Serbia, Neuhausen was considered sleazy and unscrupulous and notoriously corrupt. After complaints by senior Nazi officials in south-east Europe he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp and he was handed over by the US to the Yugoslav authorities after the war, and was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released in 1953 and died in Munich, West Germany in 1966, Neuhausen was born on 13 December 1887 in the town of Merzig in the Rhine Province of the German Empire. Nothing is known of his family or life before World War I, in the inter-war period he reached the rank of Gruppenführer in the National Socialist Flyers Corps which was a paramilitary Nazi Party organisation similar to the Sturmabteilung or SA. It is likely that he fulfilled both political and economic intelligence work in Yugoslavia throughout the 1930s and he had effective networks in both government and political circles and kept himself well informed about political and economic conditions, becoming a wealthy industrialist in the process. With the assistance of his close friend Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring he obtained shares in a range of mining, as a result of such deals, Neuhausen was arrested by the Gestapo several times but Göring interceded on his behalf on each occasion to ensure that the serious charges were downgraded. In return, Neuhausen provided Göring with foreign currency, and when he attended the Reichsmarshalls birthday party each year he gave Göring a 30-pound bar of gold or silver. Göring used this money to amass a collection of artworks and jewelry at his country estate. Soon after the administration began, Neuhausen appointed commissioners through whom he controlled the Serbian National Bank and other key economic. In October 1943, the Germans simplified their military administration, at the mines the labourers were under the supervision of the SS and worked in knee-deep water for 12-hour shifts. Neuhausen was also chair of the German banking corporation Bankverein für Serbien in the occupied territory, economically, the occupied territory was very important to the Germans as a source of metals, minerals, coal and food. The presence in Belgrade of direct representatives of senior Nazi officials such as Himmler, in particular, he strenuously opposed attempts by Foreign Affairs Envoy Hermann Neubacher to give more power to the Belgrade puppet government of Milan Nedić. Neubacher believed that Neuhausen was corrupt and that he had amassed a fortune while serving in Belgrade. He was replaced as plenipotentiary for economic affairs by his mining chief Theo Keyser, Neuhausen died on 14 April 1966 in Munich, West Germany. Alford, Kenneth D. Hermann Göring and the Nazi Art Collection, The Looting of Europes Art Treasures, Der Bankier Hermann Josef Abs, eine Biographie. A Low Dishonest Decade, The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, Kroener, Bernard R. Müller, Rolf-Dieter, Umbreit, Hans, eds. Germany and the Second World War, Volume 5, Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power, wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources, 1939-1941
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Kriegsmarine
