Hitler's First Victims

by Timothy W. Ryback

  That Tuesday morning, as scheduled, Wäckerle arrived as commandant and immediately struck an iconic pose. “The first time I saw Wäckerle at the camp, he was carrying a pizzle and had a big dog beside him,” Hans Steinbrenner remembered. “After that, I never saw Wäckerle without his dog and pizzle.” For Wäckerle, the assignment was a point of pride. “When Hitler took over power in 1933, I quit my job at the Reichsführer’s personal request and was ordered to Dachau,” he later boasted in his SS curriculum vitae. The job seemed tailor-made for the former cadet—he was enrolled in an elite military academy at age thirteen—and decorated frontline soldier who had been rushed to war as a seventeen-year-old corporal in the autumn of 1918. Wäckerle subsequently enlisted in the Freikorps Oberland that helped Freikorps Epp crush the Bavarian soviet mini-state. In 1922, Wäckerle joined the Nazi movement while studying farm management, along with young Heinrich Himmler, at Munich’s Technical University. “I was with the party from the very beginning,” Wäckerle observed, joining in “all its early struggles,” including the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. During the “years of illegality” when the party was banned, Wäckerle participated in assassination attempts in the French occupation zone. “In 1931, I rejoined the party in Kempten and helped establish the SS there,” he noted. “Within the party I functioned as a senior agricultural adviser and served as a speaker at meetings.” Wäckerle arrived in Dachau with sterling Nazi credentials and practical experience. Having managed farms in Thüringen, Upper Bavaria, and Allgäu for the previous eight years, he knew something about keeping living stock in barbed-wire enclosures.

  Wäckerle made a quick tour of the “inner camp”; then he assembled the SS men and informed them that he expected iron discipline and blind obedience. Echoing Malsen-Ponickau, he insisted there was to be no accommodation with the detainees. He wanted the SS to be to Germany what the Cheka, the dreaded Soviet secret police, were to the Russians—men without mercy or conscience. Wäckerle explained that in former times when prisoners arrived at detention facilities, they were routinely given twenty-five lashes to instill fear and subservience. He was introducing a similar regimen for Dachau. He would be present for the arrival of detainees and would personally select those to be flogged. Wäckerle was joined by an additional seventy SS guards who replaced Captain Schlemmer and the departing state policemen of Company 2. Sixty more SS men arrived the next day. The camp now swarmed with SS. Meanwhile, transports continued to deliver detainees. The transport from Fürth and Nuremberg brought Benario, Goldmann, and Arthur Kahn, as we know. A second transport delivered another twenty-six men from Deggendorf, and a third from Miesbach added another twenty-eight. The next day fifty-six more detainees arrived from Kempten, Munich, and Sonthofen. Amid the tumult, state police captain Winkler and Lieutenant Schuler attempted to protect the arriving detainees from abuse but were ignored by the SS guards. “I should note in this context,” Schuler later recalled, “that I did not enter the detainees’ camp, which was separated from the rest of the camp by barbed wire, because I was not allowed in unless something happened or Commandant Wäckerle needed help.”

  The SS men exercised their newfound authority that evening with drink and gunfire. Steinbrenner marched into Barrack II at three o’clock in the morning, fired his pistol, and rousted the men from their bunks and into the night chill, where he assembled them for roll call. The next day, Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns were shot.

  Wäckerle found a competent and like-minded deputy commandant in SS lieutenant Erspenmüller, who had been a police officer in Rosenheim and had lost his job over his association with the Nazi movement. Josef Mutzbauer served as the office administrator with the pro bono assistance of a local lawyer, Otto Franck, who was rumored—incorrectly—to be related to the new state minister of justice, Dr. Hans Frank. Franck designed the camp registration system and for a time had shuttled police officers between Dachau and Munich in his private car. Dr. Delwin Katz, the Jewish physician whom the Times reporter saw, worked in the camp infirmary, along with part-time services from several Munich-based physicians, including Dr. Werner Nürnbergk, a graduate of the Ludwig Maximilian University medical school in Munich and SS lieutenant, who came to serve as the camp’s first offical doctor.*2

  The guards were a mixed group. Hans Kantschuster had served in the French Foreign Legion and was said to be a heavy drinker, as was Karl Ehmann, who had terrorized the streets of Würzburg on a motorcycle emblazoned with a swastika. Karl Wicklmayr was studying philosophy in Munich. He had been a fervent communist in the 1920s but joined the Nazi movement after reading Nietzsche. He was known as “the student.” Hans Steinbrenner was the son of a Munich gunsmith. He boasted of a personal connection to Ernst Röhm, who used to buy guns from his father.

  The SS men were mostly young, untrained, and undisciplined. Many had been pressed into service in the camp and did not want to be there. Schuler recalled that over the Easter weekend “an entire shift of guards” did not even show up for duty. Detainees recalled pistols being shot randomly among the barracks. Bursts of machine-gun fire sent men scrambling for cover. A contingent of SS guards nearly massacred the entire kitchen staff. “They [the SS guards] did not know that at four o’clock in the morning the cook and kitchen helpers from Barrack VIII were the first to start working,” detainee Walter Hornung recalled. “Fortunately, no one was hit. They threw themselves to the ground and fled back into the barrack.”

  IN HIS FIRST WEEKS as commandant, Wäckerle watched the arrival of diesel-driven buses carrying twenty-five to thirty detainees at a time, generally one transport per day, sometimes two, spewing exhaust and passengers onto the open square in front of his headquarters. He reviewed the arrival manifests that listed each detainee, his background and profession, and would identify those who would receive particular abuse. There were few men of real interest. Most of the high-value Bolsheviks were either still at large or had quietly slipped across the border to Brussels, Paris, Prague, or Moscow, beyond the reach of the government security forces. Some transports came from milk-run sweeps of Bavarian towns and villages, collecting clutches of detainees, five or six at a time. Others made single-stop deliveries from the larger cities like Bamberg, Würzburg, Augsburg, Rosenheim, and, of course, Munich. Mostly, they delivered second- and third-tier communist agitators, Social Democrats, a random professor or journalist or lawyer, and the occasional Jew, men who had glutted police stations, prisons, cellars, and warehouses across Bavaria for the past month, and were now being flushed out of the penal system and “collected” in the facility for which Wäckerle had responsibility.

  On April 25, Wäckerle received a transport of high-value detainees gleaned from Munich security facilities: nine from the Ettstrasse police jail, thirteen from the Stadelheim penitentiary, and three from the prison attached to the Munich courts. He took particular note of the first half dozen names on the two-page typewritten transport manifest: Max Dankenreiter, Peter Distler, Rudolf Grohe, Herbert Hunglinger, Joseph Kraudel, and Sebastian Nefzger. These were “people who, until November 9, 1933, served as spies within the NSDAP,” an appended annotation explained. “With the exception of Distler and Grohe the detainees have confessed their guilt. Distler and Grohe did not deny the accusation.”

  Hitler had long suspected that state police agents had infiltrated the party. As early as 1922, he had established his own “Security Department,” an internal spy unit within the National Socialist Party, to gather intelligence not only on communists and Social Democrats, but on those within his own ranks. This secret operation, essentially a one-man show, had been set up by Reinhard Heydrich, then an exceedingly competent twenty-two-year-old SS officer.

  Of the six men singled out on the transport manifest—the first harvest of Heydrich’s gleaning eye—number four, “Hunglinger, Herbert,” was seen as perhaps the worst offender. The fifty-three-year-old retired police major was among the earliest members of the National Socialist movement, having joined in 1920. He had played a central role in the
Führerschule, the school for training party leaders, and was said to have earned the rare honor of possessing “the trust of the Führer.” An interrogation at the Ettstrasse police jail had yielded his confession as a spy, and now he was being delivered into the hands of Wäckerle.

  The single most notable name on the manifest that morning was that of Hans Beimler. “Beimler, number 7 on the list, is the leader of the Communist Party Germany (KPD) of the district of Southern Bavaria,” an annotation noted. Wäckerle needed no instruction. Beimler was the most publicly defiant, most fanatically unapologetic Bolshevik in all Bavaria, the founder of its Communist Party. His tirades in parliament were legendary. He condemned National Socialists, Catholic centrists, and Social Democrats in equal measure. He railed against the “financial bourgeoisie” and the “process of fascistization” across the country. He considered the Nazis as little more than an “arm of the bourgeoisie.” He called on the “working masses” to rise and crush the existing economic and political system. “Then the time will come to end all anguish,” Beimler predicted in June 1932 during a seemingly endless rant before the Bavarian state parliament, “in a Red Bavaria, in a Soviet Germany.” Six months later, Beimler publicly declared war on the Hitler government with his belligerent invitation to “meet again in Dachau.”

  Wäckerle believed Beimler to be not only a public provocateur but also a ruthless murderer. He recalled that in late April 1919, as the Freikorps rampaged their way through the streets of Munich and the communists battled for survival, Beimler had presided over the execution of ten hostages taken from the “bourgeoisie.” On telegraphed instructions from Lenin in Moscow to take hostages, the communists held Count Gustav von Thurn und Taxis, the Countess von Westarp, and eight others as human barter in the unheated cellars of the Luitpold High School on Müllerstrasse. As the Bolshevik state tottered, the hostages were shunted up the stairs and into the high school courtyard and then summarily executed. “The corpses were plundered and mutilated to such an extent that even now, apart from three, we haven’t been able to identify them,” the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten reported. “Two of the corpses are missing the upper halves of their heads.”

  At the time, Wäckerle was an eighteen-year-old soldier fighting his way into Munich with the Freikorps Oberland, but the stories and images of the massacre followed him to Dachau. Steinbrenner recalled that Wäckerle had a collection of photographs of the butchery at the Luitpold High School that he showed his SS subordinates. He told them that Beimler was personally responsible for these atrocities. Wäckerle was mistaken, but it hardly mattered.

  * * *

  *1 The camp’s official title was the Konzentrationslager Dachau, or Concentration Camp Dachau, but the terms Sammellager Dachau, or Collecting Camp Dachau, as well as Schutzhaftlager Dachau, or Protective Custody Camp Dachau, were used interchangeably by the police, the courts, and the SS alike. The camp letterhead had Konzentrationlager, but Wäckerle referred to his facility as Sammellager.

  *2 SS lieutenant Dr. Werner Nürnbergk (SS registration number 102278, born April 2, 1907) is listed as the camp doctor in June 1933, but was clearly present in the camp before this date as evidenced by documents bearing his signature from May. Werner Nürnbergk may well rank as the official SS camp physician of the Third Reich.

  8

  Steinbrenner Unleashed

  IN HIS FIRST DAYS as commandant, Wäckerle came to appreciate Hans Steinbrenner. The twenty-eight-year-old SS man had only joined the party in February after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, like thousands of other opportunistic latecomers. However, Steinbrenner compensated for his lack of seniority in the movement with a near pathological hatred of Bolsheviks and a seemingly boundless capacity for sadistic violence against Jews. He made regular visits to the camp infirmary, across the hall from the SS changing room. Steinbrenner approached one man who was suffering from a toothache. Steinbrenner stroked the swollen cheek gently and inquired “with apparent concern” if the man was in pain. When the detainee said yes, Steinbrenner slugged him in the jaw, sending him to the floor. Steinbrenner asked if he was still in pain, then sent him on his way. He then drove his knee into the stomach of another man. The man collapsed, writhing in agony at Steinbrenner’s feet. The remaining patients fled. Steinbrenner was said to have pressed burning cigarettes into men’s flesh, kicked them in the genitals, and regularly lashed detainees to a bloody pulp. He would often demand that they race through mud and water until they collapsed. The abuse of Jewish detainees was dubbed Judensport, or Jew games.

  Steinbrenner headed the Schlägergruppe, the camp whipping team. He was fascinated by the latent potential in those eighteen inches of turgid leather for inflicting pain. “After a few strokes I saw for the first time the effect of these lashings,” he recalled. “The pizzle would begin to chafe the skin. The wound would then grow moist, but it never actually bled.” Witnesses disagreed. Kasimir Dittenheber, who worked in a camp office, recalled that Steinbrenner was charged with “selecting” the Jews from the arriving transports and leading them into the Arrest Bunker, where, “as we could hear in the office, [they] were beaten in the most brutal manner.” “Steinbrenner placed the greatest value on making certain that the head was not struck, so that the pain would last as long as possible,” one detainee recalled. A physician was on hand with injections to revive those who had been beaten unconscious. One detainee described Steinbrenner as “the spiritual leader of all abuses.” Many called him Mordbrenner, or “murder man,” while to Wäckerle he was simply “Hans.”

  On April 26, a dank and drizzle-chilled day, Wäckerle watched casually, smoking a cigarette, while Steinbrenner and a team of SS guards awaited the arrival of the Munich transport, pizzles twitching expectantly in their hands. As soon as the bus carrying the new arrivals roared into the camp facility and came to an abrupt stop, the door flew open and the men tumbled out. Steinbrenner set his men upon the new arrivals, lashing, kicking, and cuffing them amid the screamed orders, “Into two rows!” The men were whipped and beaten into a double rank, then a guard barked the first seven names from the transport manifest with a crisp call and response, ordering each to step forward in turn.

  “Dankenreiter!”

  “Here!”

  “Distler!”

  “Here!”

  “Grohe!”

  “Here!”

  “Hunglinger!”

  “Here!”

  “Kraudel!”

  “Here!”

  “Nefzger!”

  “Here!” Nefzger, a veteran who had lost part of his left leg during the war, stepped forward on his prosthesis.

  “Beimler!”

  Hans Beimler, standing in the back rank, murmured a response. He was a low, dark, surly figure, with large, protruding ears. He was thick, hard, and defiant. Steinbrenner knew he would not break easily.

  “Beimler!” a guard snapped a second time. Again there was barely a murmur. The guard repeated the name with the same measured force, each time drawing a heightened but still unsatisfactory response. The others grew restless. “We’ll teach him how to do it,” one detainee growled menacingly. “The Moscow hireling,” another said. After eight, possibly ten calls, Beimler stepped forward. Andreas Irrgang was on the same transport and watched Beimler “beaten and kicked” by Steinbrenner. Beimler joined the six other detainees. “Are there any Jews here?” a young SS man shouted. “You, too, get over to the right side. Including baptized Jews!” Two young men, who might have been students, stepped forward. A guard then hung a cardboard sign around Beimler’s neck with the hand-scrawled words “Herzlich willkommen.”

  Wäckerle had watched the selection process with cool detachment. Now he spoke. “These bastards are to be lashed right away,” he said. “They are paid pigs and traitors—in addition, half rations for them.” He pointed to the remaining detainees. “Those over there, I believe, are all proletariat who were misled by that one.” He pointed to Beimler. “We’ll give them regular rations. In addition, eac
h of them can keep five marks of the money he brought with him. Those other pigs don’t get a cent.”

  The men were marched into the large processing hall and ordered to empty their pockets. Wäckerle stood to the side and observed while Steinbrenner ferreted among the men, looking for infractions. Steinbrenner stopped beside Beimler and reached into his coat pocket. “Herr Kommandant! Herr Kommandant!” he shouted. “This guy here ignored the order to put everything on the table!” Steinbrenner held up a small pencil. “He wanted to smuggle this.”

  Wäckerle looked at Beimler coolly, then ordered, “Fourteen days’ strict confinement!”

  Steinbrenner marched Beimler, along with Hunglinger, through the camp. They passed groups of workers along the road, who stared at Beimler. Others watched from rooftops where they were making repairs with buckets of tar. A mere two months earlier, Steinbrenner had been unemployed, with no education and little means of support. Now, on this dreary day, he found himself with command over one of the state’s leading political personalities. Steinbrenner began lashing Beimler, whipping his shoulders and head and turning his large ears bright red. “Look over here,” Steinbrenner called to the gawkers. “We have your beloved Beimler, who misled and corrupted your minds.” Then he returned to Beimler and continued his lashing.