by J. Lee Ready
Thus German policemen who had terrorized their own people were allowed to continue to terrorize them with Allied blessing. It is true that they could only operate with a military policeman from one of the occupying powers [British, American, French or Soviet] looking on, but as these foreigners invariably did not speak German, their control was ineffective. The Allies needed the German police to keep order. They even used German Army military police and allowed them to retain their weapons! On occasion German police gave orders to individual British Tommies and American GIs. They were especially necessary in the American sector, because once the fighting ceased on the American front the US government began rushing its troops to the ports to set sail for the Pacific and the war against the Japanese. Moreover this mad dash for the seaports did not stop come the Japanese surrender in August 1945, for the American politicians had promised to ‘bring the boys home’ as soon as the shooting stopped. By mid-1946 there were no major US ground combat units left in Europe!
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Just as Allied prisoners of the Germans during the war had continued to address each other with military titles and respect each other’s rank and considered themselves still members of the army, air force or navy, so SS prisoners of war after 1945 continued to think of themselves as SS, and they respected the chain of command. They only ceased to think of themselves as SS when they were released into civilian life. Thus those who were not released until 1955 counted their prison time as SS service time. In this sense the SS ‘existed’ for thirty years.
During the twelve years of Hitler’s Third Reich the German police, aided and abetted by certain elements of the SS, murdered 300,000 German citizens. This includes T-4 and Its components. This does not count the 205,000 Jews and 20,000 Gypsies from Germany that were murdered, for according to Nazi law they were not German citizens. Over 15,000 German soldiers were executed for military crimes such as desertion and refusing to obey orders. In contrast the US military executed one, and the British executed none.
Outside of the Third Reich the Nazis were responsible for perhaps as many as twelve million ‘murders’, with almost half of the victims chosen simply because they were of the Jewish race.
A high number of SS officers committed suicide at war’s end or soon after: August Korreng, Walter Buch, Curt von Gottberg, Richard Gluecks, Hugo Jury, Ernst-Robert Grawitz, Matthias Kleinheisterkamp, Wilhelm Rediess, Walter Schimana, Heinz Roch, Rudolf Querner, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krueger, Karl von Treuenfeld, Philipp Bouhler, Walter Krueger, Fritz Freitag, Heinrich Petersen, Arthur Roedl, Odilo Globocnik, Heinz Seetzen, Karl Sauberzweig, Hans Pruetzman, Max Thomas, Theodor Dannecker, to name but a few.
The most important German suicide as far as the world was concerned, after that of Hitler, occurred on 23 May 1945. Heinrich Himmler, who had insisted every SS member should be proud of his membership in this elite and august body, was caught by British troops disguised as an army grenadier. This denial of his association with the SS was the final insult and the final lie. On May 23 he poisoned himself.
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Naturally after such a grotesque war and holocaust of death the various populations who had been oppressed by the Nazis wanted revenge. And revenge it was, rather than justice.
Despite the above exceptions at the end of the war the Anglo-Americans had approached the SS with a knee-jerk reaction, claiming that all men and women who had joined the SS had done so in violation of a British and/or American law, which was passed after they had joined. As if this was not ridiculous enough, it even applied to those who had been conscripted. It is almost pythonesque, first to prosecute someone for disobeying a law that had not yet been written, and secondly to prosecute a citizen of one country for committing an act in that country that was illegal in another country. This appears to be absurd, but the British and Americans were quite sincere about this, though had the tables been turned, e.g. had the post-war Albanian government declared all Americans drafted into the US Navy during the war to be criminals, the English-speaking world would have burst into laughter.
In late 1945 trials began all over Germany, centered on Nuremberg, where the judges were members of the American, British, French and Soviet armies. All Germans even nuns and children were judged and all found guilty of something, somewhat akin to the ‘war guilt’ clause in the Versailles Treaty. But in these denazification hearings a lowly party member might get off with a mere fine or some community service such as clearing bomb rubble. The publicized trials were of ‘war criminals’. In most of the trials the Allies bragged how fair they were compared to Nazi trials [a truism], but the Allies decided that exculpatory evidence need not be handed to the defense attorneys!
Several members of the SS RSHA, SS KZL, SS WVHA and Allgemeine SS were sentenced to death. Rudolf Hoess was not as proud of his work at Birkenau, once the war was over, as he had been when the Nazis were ‘top dog’, so he hid by disguising himself as a ‘farm worker’. He was recognized, arrested and executed by the Poles. Many others were executed by the Poles including Wilhelm Trapp, Therese Brandl, Gerda Steinhoff, Amon Goeth, Albert Forster, Herbert Boettcher, Arthur Greiser, Elizabeth Becker, Wanda Klaff, Else Ehrich, Arthur Liebenhenschel, Jenny Barkmann, Juergen Stroop, Ewa Paradies, Sydonia Bayer, Maria Mandel and Jacob Sporrenberg. Oskar Dirlewanger was beaten to death by Polish soldiers.
The Czechs executed Karl Frank, Ruth Hildner, Karl Hanke, Bernhard Voss, Kurt Daluege and Hermann Hoefle among others. The Anglo-Americans hanged Ernst Kaltenbrunner as they did many others including Karl Brandt, Emma Zimmer, Vera Salvequart, Martin Weiss, Gertrud Schreiter, Greta Bosel, Paul Blobel, Eberhard Schoengarth, Josef Kramer, Ruth Closius, Viktor Brack, Oswald Pohl, Juana Bormann, Irma Grese, Otto Ohlendorf, Elizabeth Marschall, Dorothea Binz, Elisabeth Voelkenrath and Erich Naumann. The Dutch shot Hans Albin Rauter among others. Friedrich Jeckeln, Hellmuth Becker and Heino Hierthes were just three of the thousands that died in Soviet captivity. Erwin Roesener, August von Meyszner, Juergen Wagner, Laszlo Deak, Josef Grassy, Richard Kaaserer, Carl von Oberkamp and Wilhelm Behrends were hanged by the Titoists.
Otto Rasch, who went from intellectual to mass murderer, died shortly after the war from Parkinson’s disease. One wonders how much this personality altering illness had been responsible for his actions.
Friedrich Mennecke was sentenced to death, but with perhaps poetic justice this psychiatrist, who had sentenced tuberculosis patients to death, himself died of this illness before he could be executed.
By 1951 with the British and Americans at war with Communists in Korea, and fearful of a Soviet offensive into Western Germany, they began to secretly release from prison most of the convicted war criminals, even those under sentence of death!
Karl Jaeger was certainly guilty of many crimes, but he was not caught until 1959, and it was his fellow Germans who imprisoned him. He soon committed suicide.
Adolf Eichmann was obviously ashamed of his participation in the massacre of helpless women and children because he fled to South America. Kidnapped by Israeli intelligence, he was executed in Israel in 1961. Werner Heyde was caught by the Germans in 1961. He committed suicide.
Erich von dem Bach Zelewski, who had murdered hundreds of thousands, made a plea bargain with his American prosecutors like a thief in a cheap B movie, and he got off with minimal prison time. However, his fellow Germans were not so easily hoodwinked and they eventually sentenced him to life imprisonment. He died in prison.
Otto Bradfisch escaped prosecution by the Allies, but in 1961 his fellow Germans sent him to prison for mass murder. Horst Barth committed suicide in a German prison this year. Heinz Jost did time for mass murder, but still died a free man in 1961. Franz Six, a mass exterminator, served only seven years behind bars and died in 1965. Ilse Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment by a post war German court, and she committed suicide in 1967.
Franz Stangl was not caught until 1967 and died in a German prison in 1971. Ludolf von Alvensleben died free in 1970 in Argentina. Wilhelm Koppe
died a free man in 1975. Gottlob Berger was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment, but was released in 1951 and died in 1975. Bruno Streckenbach was a prisoner of war for ten years, but died a free man in 1977.
Herta Oberheuser the insane doctor died free in 1978. Josef Mengele, the mad doctor of Auschwitz, escaped to South America and died a free man in 1979. August Heissmeyer, who had sent twelve year old boys into battle, not only died in 1979 a free man, but after the war he had managed a Coca-Cola plant! This year another SS doctor, Walter Schultze, also died in freedom. Heinz Reinefarth died a free man in 1979.
In 1980 Karl Bruenner died in freedom. At Albert Gemmeker’s trial in the Netherlands his Jewish prisoners spoke up for him, so he was sentenced to just ten years, but served only six. Thus, he spent the last thirty years of his life in freedom, dying in 1981. After serving nine years for his part in the Holocaust Otto Hofmann died a free man in 1982, the same year Willy Tensfeld expired. In addition to POW time, Karl Wolff served nine years in prison for the killing of thousands of Jews. He died a free man in 1984. Walter Rauff died in 1984 in Chile. Hermann Harm died in 1985.
Emil Mazuw died in 1987. Karl Heinz Buerger passed away in 1988 a free man.
Werner Best was arrested on 8 May 1945 in Denmark and soon sentenced to death. However, in the appeals court his assistance in saving the nation’s Jews helped him and he was in fact released from prison in 1951. He was dogged by German legal proceedings against him for years, but he successfully returned to the law profession, dying a free man in 1989.
Wilhelm Harster served time in Dutch and German prisons for sending people to concentration camps, but died a free man in 1991. In 1998 Erich Priebke was convicted in an Italian court of complicity in the Ardeatine Caves massacre.
Anton Sawoniuk was convicted of war crimes in 1999 in Britain, and died in prison in 2005.
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It is understandable that the two post-war German nations – [East] German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of [West] Germany – chose not to recreate the SS KZL. First of all there were no longer any concentration camps, and secondly the world would not have stood for it. However, they each created a police force and border police, using police veterans. Indeed the East German police became as trigger happy as that of the Third Reich. They each created an intelligence service, both using veterans of the SD, Kripo, Gestapo and Abwehr. They each created an army, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe, using veterans of Hitler’s forces. So how come neither created a new Waffen SS?
There were two reasons for this. First the world had never understood the difference between a Waffen SS soldier and a guard at Buchenwald. Thus even the recreation of the Waffen SS under a new name, such as Verfuegungstruppe, would have been a bad public relations move for these two governments that were trying desperately to recover their national pride in a hostile world.
The second reason is pure jealousy among German Army officers! This is understandable. E.g. British Army generals had mistrusted their commandos from the beginning. Only Churchill’s influence had kept them from being disbanded. But, as soon as Churchill was thrown out of office by the British people in summer 1945, the British Army began to disband its commandos. The fact that they were elite soldiers was irrelevant. The US Army generals were just as antagonistic towards their commando-style troops – raiders, special service force, rangers etc – and they disbanded all of them in the last year of the war. Small teams of elite warriors made everyone else look bad, so they had to go. The German generals were no different. Had Germany won the war, the army generals would still have tried to disband the Waffen SS. This second ‘army’ of Hitler’s had put the German Army to shame on more than one occasion and the fact that its officers were commoners of trade and working class families and were de facto amateur soldiers only made things more embarrassing for the generals, who came from an officer class that drew primarily from aristocracy and landed gentry.
Take a look at the commanders of divisions and larger formations in the German Army during the war. Most were aristocrats and all were pre-war German or Austrian regular soldiers. Of the Waffen SS officers that commanded divisions only a half dozen were aristocrats and fewer than a dozen had been regular German Army soldiers before the war, and one had been a regular naval officer. Three had been regulars in the Hungarian Army, and one a regular in the Romanian Army. About a dozen were young men who started their careers as SS soldiers. As for the remainder ten or so had been professional policemen, three had made a profession as Hitler’s bodyguards, two had been flying instructors, two were well known competitive equestrians, three had been concentration camp guards, three professional stormtroopers, one was an engineer, one a farm inspector, one a magazine publisher, one a trader, one a corporate security consultant, one a diplomat, one a farmer, one an officer clerk, one a shopkeeper, one a motorcycle racer, and one, Dirlewanger, was an ex-convict, and at least ten received their commands strictly through political influence.
Some had served in the army on a short hitch, and not all as officers. E.g. as far as the army was concerned Eicke, Dietrich and Reinefarth were mere sergeants.
Almost all German Army officers were in their forties if not fifties and sixties before they reached divisional command. However, the Waffen SS officer corps was a full generation younger than their army counterparts. Fully fifteen SS divisional commanders had been in their twenties when the war began.
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Regarding members of the Waffen SS, there were few high profile trials. One was the Malmedy trial. Though Jochen Peiper was known to have treated prisoners well and he abandoned them rather than kill them, he was tried by the Americans after the war along with 74 others including Sepp Dietrich, Gustav Knittel, Fritz Kraemer and Herman Priess for the killing of prisoners near Malmedy, despite the prosecution admitting that most of these men were nowhere near Malmedy at the time of the shooting. The trial was the worst kind of kangaroo court with no pretense at military justice. E.g. the defense was allowed only two lawyers who were not given enough time to interview all 76 defendants. Moreover the US Army made sure that as many Jewish personnel as possible were assigned to the trial. Belgian civilians who had witnessed the shooting were not called as witnesses. Of course the sham trial resulted in the death penalty or life imprisonment for everyone. Fortunately the US Congress investigated the trial, found it to be a shameful travesty and they commuted the sentences to a few years in prison. Peiper, Dietrich, Knittel, Kraemer and Priess may have been guilty of other crimes, but not this one.
Jean Bassompierre was executed by a French firing squad in 1948.
Hans-Goesta Pehrsson escaped from Soviet captivity in 1945 and returned to his native Sweden to live in peace, dying in 1974. Werner Lorenz died free in 1974. Leon Degrelle managed to catch an airplane to Spain at the last minute of the war, and there he lived in fame and freedom. He was soon joined by Miguel Ezquerra Sanchez, who had escaped from a Soviet prison camp. Years later Otto Skorzeny arrived in Spain having escaped from a US prison.
Max Simon spent most of his remaining years in British and German prisons and died a convict in 1961.
Felix Steiner died a free man in 1966. Karl von Pfeffer-Wildenbruch was already 56 years old when he entered Soviet captivity, but he survived ten brutal years and died a free man in 1971 aged 82. Paul Hausser became an historian after the war and died a free man in 1972 aged 92. Jochen Peiper eventually went to live in France. One night in 1976 he was murdered by unknown assailants. 1976 is the year Toni Ameiser died. Wilhelm Keilhaus became a consultant to the new [West] German Army – the Bundeswehr and died in 1977. Fried rich Bock passed on in 1978. Willi Bittrich was held as a prisoner of war for nine years. He died a free man in 1979. Hugo Kraas died a free man in 1980, as did Gustav Krukenberg. Both Werner Fromm and Desiderius Hampel died free men in 1981. In 1982 Walter Harzer died. He had become a respected historian after the war. Adolf Ax passed away in 1983, as did Rudolf Lehmann. Hermann Priess spent nine years in POW camps and prisons
and died a free man in 1985, the year Sylvester Stadler died. Johannes Muehlenkamp lived until 1986. Karl Maria Demelhuber died a free man in 1988. Otto Weidinger died free in 1990 as did Max Hansen and Helmut Raithel. In 1991 Walter Reder died. Gustav Lombard, despite ten years in a Soviet prison camp, lived to die a free man in 1992. Georg Besslein survived ten years in a Soviet camp and passed on in 1993. Both Max Wuensche and Teddi Wisch survived fearsome wounds and died free men in 1995. Karl Ullrich passed on in 1996. Karl Kreutz died a free man in 1997. Otto Baum spent three years as a POW of the British, and died a free man in 1998. Max Seela passed away a year later, and Heinz Harmel survived many hair-raising escapades and died a free man in 2000, the same year Walter Mattusch and Walter Schmidt passed away. Wilhelm Mohnke survived ten years in a Soviet POW camp, and was pilloried by the Canadian and British press as a murderer, but neither country actually found any evidence of this and he spent the remainder of his life in freedom and lived to see the new millennium, dying in 2001. Josef Diefenthal died this year. Siegfried Siegel passed away in 2002. Guenther Grass became a well known author and was still writing in the new century.
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As can be seen the punishment meted out to SS veterans was haphazard to say the least. The Americans began releasing their prisoners of war as early as May 1945, letting the last of them go by 1949, by which time the British had released theirs too. But the Soviets held ordinary soldiers, army and SS, for ten years in some cases. This meant that some SS personnel had been held POW by the Anglo-Americans, released, then arrested and imprisoned for war crimes for several years, and were still walking free before the Soviets released all of their ordinary landsers!
Some absolute psychopathic killers were never even imprisoned, while ‘good’ men were on occasion sentenced to death. It was pot luck, to say the least. Heinz Lammerding was sentenced to death by the French for the Oradour massacre, though he had been nowhere near the place. Fortunately he was not in French hands, and the British refused to hand him over to the French court, because they felt he was innocent [and perhaps because he was working for British intelligence by this date].