Hitler's First Victims

by Timothy W. Ryback

  Six days later, Hartinger crossed the Somme with his regiment at Chipilly and the following day joined the assault near Hamel, just east of Amiens. Again the weather cooperated. They cleared a second British position with a massive gas attack and advanced yet again with orders to suppress British artillery fire in preparation for a major assault on Villers-Bretonneux. Hartinger and his men spent the night burrowing in amid the ruins of a nearby village as munitions were brought forward. The German artillery barrage commenced at dawn. The British guns responded only sporadically. Then suddenly the front flared with an enemy barrage that virtually obliterated Hartinger’s unit. “The bursting of shells was accompanied by the crash of collapsing houses,” the regimental history recorded. “Rubble covered teams, artillery, and ammunition. Rafters, bricks, and gravel whirled through the air.” After four days, the regiment had lost its commander, 2 battery chiefs, 4 lieutenants, 40 junior officers, 11 officers, and 323 regular soldiers along with 379 horses and 1 veterinarian. Hartinger emerged from the slaughter unscathed and ready for more. He was awarded Bavaria’s Military Service Medal and was subsequently promoted to lieutenant, committing himself to three more years of military service.

  Following the armistice in November 1918, Hartinger returned home to Amberg to find Bavaria in a state of political chaos. After the Red Army victory at Dachau, he joined ten thousand other demobilized veterans in enlisting in the state militia, the Freikorps, where he found common cause with future adversaries in crushing the Soviet Republic of Bavaria. Hilmar Wäckerle, as noted, enlisted in the Freikorps Oberland, while Hans Frank, Adolf Wagner, and the Baron von Malsen-Ponickau all rallied to the Freikorps Epp, as did Heinrich Himmler, who had been a few months too young to make it to the front. Hans Steinbrenner was just thirteen at the time, and in a fevered delirium from an abscessed leg, but he never forgot the sounds of artillery and gunfire in the streets, and, of course, the sight of the Bolsheviks raiding his father’s gun shop.

  On May 1, the Freikorps Epp spearheaded the drive into Munich along with the Freikorps Oberland. The battle-hardened Epp pressed as mercilessly through the streets of Munich as he had two years earlier outside of Verdun, massacring the haphazard elements of the Bavarian Red Army. By Gumbel’s calculation, nearly five hundred Red Army soldiers died in the fighting, were executed, or were “accidentally killed.” Another estimate placed the number at one thousand. Epp lost fewer than forty men.

  Hartinger had enlisted in the Freikorps Hilger that March, but he had also registered as a student and was living in a first-floor apartment at Blütenstrasse 14 in Munich, where he was a firsthand witness to the butchery. Despite possessing all the qualifications of a right-wing radical, as defined by Gumbel, Hartinger appeared to undergo a transformation in that blood-spattered spring of 1919. He resigned from his Freikorps, relinquished his officer’s commission in the Reichswehr (abandoning secure monthly pay), and enrolled as a student in the department of law at the Ludwig Maximilian University, joining the first class of German law students to be educated in a multiparty democratic republic.

  The legal profession, as Gumbel observed, was steeped in monarchist values and notoriously conservative. When the Criminal Procedure Code was first introduced in the late nineteenth century, it was decried by many in the judiciary for its imposition of foreign concepts such as habeas corpus and the right to self-defense. “I also believe that the ethics in demanding of the accused to explain his guilt or innocence are superior to the Anglo-American method, in which the defendant has a right to defend himself,” one eminent jurist had loftily asserted at the time. “It is fundamental to the German character that one answers directly and honestly when faced with a charge.” A legal authority of the day, Adolf Dochow, wrote a handbook for judges providing instructions for subverting the Criminal Procedure Code. “The accused is not obliged to give an explanation,” Dochow observed; “however, the judge does not have to alert him to this right.”

  Two generations later, things had begun to change. By the time Hartinger enrolled in the law faculty in the spring “emergency semester”—foreshortened as a result of the postwar turmoil and the Bolshevik revolution—the law faculty offered five different courses on the Criminal Procedure Code alone. Kurt Tucholsky, the wry observer of German fancies and foibles, marveled at the handbooks on civil rights that proliferated in the Weimar Republic, noting that the “book in Germany most frequently cited after the Bible” was the Criminal Procedure Code.

  The decision to abandon his military career and devote himself to legal studies plunged Hartinger into poverty. His father had been ruined by the postwar financial crisis and could provide no means of support, a point Hartinger underscored in an application for student aid on May 25, 1919. “I have no personal resources and it is impossible to find work at the moment,” he wrote. Two years later, he was still in school but still without support. A financial request form he submitted to the Office of the Indigent on May 14, 1921, summarized his continued financial desperation: Military Income: 0. Civilian Income: 0. Support for Reserve Officers: 0. A welfare administrator visited Hartinger in his single-room quarters at Blütenstrasse 4 and found him living in “dire need.” It was determined that “Hartinger’s critical financial situation is probably directly related to his service at war.” Finally, that May, Hartinger secured a 500-mark student subsidy.

  Despite the hardships, Hartinger was an excellent student. He completed his final round of examinations in June 1924 with top-level scores. Shortly thereafter he secured an entry-level position in the Bavarian civil service and was assigned for three months as prison assessor in Amberg, where he was introduced into “a number of responsibilities of the State Prosecutor,” including “implementation of penal procedures and prison affairs.”

  Hartinger impressed his superiors with his capacities from the outset. “His gift for sharp analysis, combined with an extensive and well-rounded education, allows him to quickly grasp the criminal cases and recognize the key elements of each case,” a supervisor observed. He went on to serve as an assistant deputy prosecutor in Passau, then as a civil court judge with Munich I, where he remained for the next six years, establishing a reputation as a man of impressive capacity and an unrelenting opponent to the rising Nazi movement. “In my position as a prosecutor with Munich I, I was ruthless in prosecuting National Socialist excesses,” Hartinger recalled. “Through my determination I was able to convict Ribbentropp [sic], the editor of a Nazi newspaper, for press violations after he was repeatedly acquitted in the matter.”*2 In March 1931, Hartinger was promoted from assistant prosecutor in Munich I to deputy prosecutor in Munich II.

  By then, the once struggling student was now a state civil servant with a salary ranked in the “special class.” Thanks to his wife’s relatives, he was living “comfortably” in an elegant street lined with fine clothing and jewelry shops, just around the corner from the stately Munich State Opera House and the Palais Montgelas, and just down the street from Odeonsplatz, which abutted the Wittelsbach Palace Gardens, open to the public for strolls. From his apartment, it was a brief tram ride to his office, or a pleasant twenty-minute stroll.

  Hartinger referred to Munich affectionately as “my second home” after Amberg. At the age of thirty-nine, he was well situated and happily married, with a five-year-old daughter and the promise of a bright career in the Bavarian civil service. If all went according to plan, Hartinger would spend several more years with Munich II, and could anticipate eventually being appointed as a chief prosecutor, then a district attorney general, and possibly even a president of a district court, with the prospect of a full pension when he reached retirement age in the late 1950s.

  But then came that phone call from the Dachau camp. What he had heard and would subsequently see and learn reminded him of the troubled spring of 1919. The legal system had failed to respond back then, as Emil Gumbel made clear, and the consequences had been horrific. What happened in Germany in the spring of 1919 would not be allowed to recur
in the spring of 1933. It was Hartinger’s firm conviction that the past would not repeat itself, at least not in the Munich II jurisdiction.

  * * *

  *1 Gumbel commented on the impact of political ideology on the nature of political murder, noting that the right-wing belief in strong leaders—as opposed to the communist embrace of the masses—resulted in the targeted assassination of left-wing and centrist political leaders. “The effectiveness of this technique for the moment is indisputable,” Gumbel wrote. “The left no longer has any signiifcant leaders, no one for whom the masses can have the feeling: he has suffered so much for us, he has risked so much for us, that we can blindly trust him.” Right-wing leaders survived and thrived—foremost among them, Adolf Hitler.

  *2 Hartinger appears to be thinking of Alfred Rosenberg rather than Joachim von Ribbentrop. Rosenberg served as the editor of the Nazi daily newspaper Völkischer Beobachter from 1923 to 1938, and was repeatedly charged with press violations. Ribbentrop had no involvement with the National Socialist movement until 1932, when he met Hitler and joined the Nazi Party, serving as Hitler’s foreign minister from 1938 to 1945. Since significant portions of the Munich I court records have been destroyed, there is no way of confirming the particular trial to which Hartinger is referring.

  10

  Law and Disorder

  BY MONDAY, May 8, all hell seemed to be breaking loose in the Dachau Concentration Camp. In less than thirty-six hours, one detainee had committed suicide, another had died in a failed assault on a guard, and a third had vanished into thin air. For all the order and discipline on which Wäckerle prided himself, he appeared to have lost control of his camp. Word of the chaos spread quickly. That Wednesday, the Dachau newspaper reported on the dramatic developments in the nearby detention facility:

  During the night from May 8 to 9, the mechanic and well-known communist leader Johann Beimler of Augsburg escaped from the Dachau Concentration Camp.… A 100-mark reward was set by the camp administration for any information leading to the capture of the fugitive.… The former chairman of the communist faction in the former Bavarian parliament, Fritz Dressel, of Deggendorf, who was arrested only a few days ago in Munich and taken into protective custody, committed suicide in Dachau during the night of last Monday. The reason for his suicide is unknown. He probably killed himself because of depression.

  Yesterday, Tuesday afternoon, the detainee Götz, former communist member of parliament, was shot while violently assaulting one of the guards. A judicial commission immediately started an inquiry.

  News of the Beimler escape went national, then international. The escape was trumpeted in the left-wing press from London to Prague to Moscow. One of the most wanted men in Germany, a prize catch of the Hitler government, had simply vanished from one of the most heavily guarded and secure detention facilities in the country. The Beimler escape represented a massive security failure for the facility and a public embarrassment for Wäckerle. Two weeks after his star turn in the pages of the New York Times, the “quiet-mannered, blond, blue-eyed” former officer was humiliated.

  The worst part for Wäckerle was that he had seen it coming. The week before, Beimler had complained about a serious pain in his lower abdomen. The symptoms suggested appendicitis. Wäckerle checked with his superiors. Instructions came that Beimler was to be taken to a hospital. He was entrusted to Captain Schlemmer, who accompanied him to the Nussbaumstrasse clinic for observation. The attending physician determined immediately that there was nothing wrong; Beimler was “feigning illness.” “After consultation with the officials in the penitentiary in Stadelheim,” where Beimler had been before his transfer to Dachau, an internal memo records, “it was decided that he will not be kept in the sick bay but rather in a solitary security cell.” Beimler was transported back to Stadelheim. The prison was put on high alert. The area surrounding the prison was searched for suspicious activity, but “absolutely nothing abnormal was observed.” Three days later, when Beimler was returned to Dachau, Wäckerle was waiting.

  It was another wet, miserable spring day, the air dank and chilled, the ground muddy and covered in puddles. Surveying the transport list, Wäckerle saw among the twenty-nine prisoners not only Beimler, but a number of other notable communists. Willy Wirthgen was the leading communist activist in Allgäu, where Wäckerle had run a farm several years before. Back then Wirthgen was considered “a particularly dangerous communist,” as was Hans Rogen, who had “allegedly shot SA man Kiefer on the Giesinger mountain.” There was also Josef Hirsch, a communist on the Munich city council notorious for anti-Nazi tirades, and Fritz Dressel, yet another delegate to the state legislature. “That one is an especially dangerous communist,” an annotation on the transport list noted. Word also had it that Dressel had spit in the face of an SS man at the Ettstrasse police station. There was Max Holy, who, despite his involvement with the Red Assistance, the Communist Party’s international liaison unit, was said to “count among the decent communists.” Finally, there was Joseph Rahm, who had reportedly kicked an SS man while being beaten at the Ettstrasse police station.

  The arrival of these men came amid heightened concern on Wäckerle’s part. “On that day, when three buses of detainees arrived from Kempten, Wäckerle was particularly agitated,” police trainer Emil Schuler recalled. “He apparently came from Kempten and it seems that among the newly arrived prisoners he had spotted some of his political enemies. Thus I assume that in his rage and also fear of a communist revolt, Wäckerle gave orders to Erspenmüller to shoot some prisoners that evening.”

  Wäckerle wanted the men sorted and identified immediately. As the transport arrived and the men tumbled from the truck, Wäckerle’s men set to work with flailing pizzles and curses. “Where is Dressel? That swine spit in my face.” “Just don’t forget Rahm. That bastard hit an SS man.” Rahm, a young man of twenty-one, was pulled from the ranks and set upon by SS men who beat and cuffed him to the ground, then pummeled him with their boots as he writhed in the mud, bleeding from his mouth and nose. Wäckerle watched the scene with cool detachment, as usual smoking a cigarette, then pronounced his sentences for the Arrest Bunker. “Beimler, my friend, fourteen days of strict detention,” he said. “Dressel gets five days so that he doesn’t spit on any other SS men. Hirsch, give him some time to think about his actions against the nationalist factions in the city council—three days. Rahm, five days.”

  The men were marched to the Arrest Bunker, where Vogel was waiting for them. Vogel placed Hirsch in Cell 1, where Hunglinger had hanged himself the previous week, and, since Götz was still in Cell 2, he assigned Dressel and Beimler together in Cell 3, with Rahm in Cell 4. Steinbrenner arrived a short while later and flung open the door to Cell 3. “What, you bastard, you spit on an SS man?” he screamed at Dressel, commanding him to strip and lie on the bunk. Steinbrenner then ordered his men to set upon Dressel with their pizzles, starting with the soles of his feet and gradually working their way up his legs, across his buttocks, back, and shoulders to the top of his head. Beimler was next. “And you, you coward, you swine, it’s your turn now,” he said. “We’re going to beat your feigned illnesses out of you all right. Strip!” Steinbrenner watched Beimler undress, ordered him onto the bunk, then put his whipping team to work again. When they finished, Steinbrenner slammed the door and moved on to Rahm, who stood in his cell bleeding and terrified.

  “Why is that young guy there?” Vogel queried Steinbrenner, who explained that Rahm had reportedly kicked an SS man at the Ett Street police station. Rahm said that while he was being beaten he had flinched and accidentally struck an SS man. There was no defiance in the battered young man, only fear. “Yes, that seems more logical to me, than that this young kid could have hit an SS man,” Vogel mused. “We can’t really consider that hitting. I would defend myself the same way if I were being beaten.” Vogel and Steinbrenner reflected for a moment, then released Rahm, dispatching him to the regular barracks. Dressel was now moved into the empty cell.

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bsp; Hirsch was selected for particular abuse. “He was one of the real bosses out there,” Wäckerle had told Steinbrenner, and signaled with his hand to let Hirsch really have it. “Hard, really hard,” he had said. In the cell, Steinbrenner ordered Hirsch to strip. When Hirsch did not respond quickly enough, Steinbrenner tore the clothes into shreds himself, then set his men on Hirsch. They broke Hirsch’s nose, smashed out his front teeth, and kicked him in the genitals, then began lashing him bloody with their pizzles. Hirsch blacked out. “So, you dog, you dead dog, you’re awake again,” Steinbrenner said when Hirsch regained consciousness. The other SS men told Steinbrenner to leave Hirsch alone. He had had enough. But Steinbrenner went after him again, giving him another four or five lashes.

  Steinbrenner and his team returned later in the day for another round of flogging. They started with Hirsch, then Götz, then Beimler, then Dressel, each time the same routine—the clack of boots, the jangling of keys, the order to strip, the thrashing from heel to head, with an occasional cuff or kick as seemed appropriate, the slamming of the door, the jangling of keys, and the lock bolted down.

  The next day, Steinbrenner returned in the company of Wäckerle, who stood in the narrow, dank hallway amid the swarm of accompanying SS men, with Steinbrenner in the lead. “Götz, the troublemaker, is in there,” Steinbrenner explained, opening the door, then adding, “A first-class criminal.” Beimler was next. “In here we have a particularly special example of a Bolshevik pig,” Steinbrenner said. Wäckerle studied the battered, glowering man with the protruding ears, made a few comments, then turned. Steinbrenner slammed the door. Vogel turned the lock. They proceeded to Dressel for a similar routine. During a separate interrogation, Hirsch had the toes on his right foot twisted out, and his right thumb broken.