Hitler's First Victims
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6 “The significance is that”: See Farr prosecution, December 19, 1945, IMT, vol. 190.
7 “I don’t think you”: Ibid.
8 “These four murders”: Ibid.
9 “As an organization founded”: Ibid.
10 “The enclosed files”: Memo with indictments retyped in the letter, StAAm 589:92.
11 The files lingered: Letter, “Polizeipräsident Pitzer an Oberstaatsanwalt beim Landgerichte München II,” dated December 31, 1946.
12 “Heigl made no pretense”: Letter from Josef Hartinger to the Bavarian state minister of justice, August R. Lang, February 11, 1984, DaA 20.109.
13 “I took them with me”: Ibid.
14 Josef Mutzbauer, had fallen victim: Otto Gritschneder, “Es gab auch solche Staatsanwälte,” Münchner Stadtanzeiger, February 24, 1984, 5.
15 Wäckerle’s … was dispatched: For details on Wäckerle’s life after Dachau, see obituary, “Standartenführer Wäckerle gefallen …,” DaA 38.634.
16 “With the passing”: Letter from Steiner, “H-Division ‘Viking,’ ” July 2, 1941, informing the Reichsführer of Wäckerle’s death on that day, DaA 38.634.
17 “From September 1939”: Testimony of Hans Steinbrenner, Garmisch, August 19, 1948, DaA 12.288.
18 “The behavior of the Allied soldiers”: Ibid.
19 “I need to note”: Ibid.
20 “I never lashed a detainee so long”: Ibid.
21 “I am certainly aware”: Letter from Hans Steinbrenner to Josef Hartinger, cited in Gritschneder, “Es gab auch solche Staatsanwälte,” 5.
22 “I killed the detainees Götz, Dressel”: Testimony of Karl Wicklmayr, “Vernehmungsniederschrift Karl Wickelmayr [sic], Landpolizei Oberbayern, Kriminalaussenstelle Mü-Pasing” Garmisch, September 10, 1948, StAM Stanw 34462/1.
23 “I still remember Nefzger”: Ibid.
24 “I ambushed Schloss”: Ibid.
25 “On Wäckerle’s orders”: Ibid.
26 Wicklmayr was sentenced to six years: For the final verdict in the Wicklmayr case, July 2 and 3, 1951, see StAM Stanw 2624.
27 “Look, Hartinger”: Letter from Josef Hartinger to the Bavarian state minister of justice, August R. Lang, January 16, 1984, DaA 20.108.
28 “The human being is complicated”: Ibid.
29 “Like the generals”: Letter from Hartinger to Lang, February 11, 1984.
30 “Until now I have spared”: Ibid.
31 “It is possible that the chief prosecutor”: Ibid.
32 “Wintersberger was simply overwhelmed”: Ibid.
33 “I wanted to act rashly”: Ibid.
34 denounced as “libelous”: Wintersberger letter, “An den Herrn Präsidenten des Oberlandsgerichts Bamberg, Betreff: Beleidigung des Oberlandesgerichtsrats Karl Wintersberger in Bamberg durch die Presse,” November 8, 1934, BayHStA MJu 26443.
35 “my ‘national socialist’ leanings”: Ibid.
36 “It is thanks to my thorough investigation that Abel”: Ibid.
37 “Finally I need to fulfill a duty of piety,” Letter from Hartinger to Lang, January 16, 1984.
38 “When I think about the hatred”: Ibid.
39 “the sharpest protest possible”: Letter from Theodor Eicke, “An Herrn Oberstaatsanwalt beim Landgericht Mch.II, Begrifft: Dort. Aktz. G506/34,” May 3, 1934, DaA 34851.
40 “It contains such serious, insulting attacks”: Memorandum from Wintersberger to the Generalstaatsanwalt beim Oberlandsgericht Munich Sotier, “Betreff: Ableben des Schutzhaftgefangenen Martin Stiebel,” May 9, 1934, DaA 34852.
41 In July, the SS attempted: Testimony of Friedrich Döbig, August 22, 1951, StAM Stanw 34464/3.
42 “He died, as far as I ever learned”: Letter from Josef Hartinger to August R. Lang, January 16, 1984.
APPENDIX: THE HARTINGER REGISTERS
1 Register I, Munich, May 30, 1933: “Wichtige Vorkommnisse im Konzentrationslager Dachau”, DaA 34851.
2 Register II, [undated]: DaA 8833.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Three discoveries alerted me to the full significance of the Dachau murders. The first was Josef Hartinger’s observation, in his letter of February 11, 1984, that he believed from the outset that Hilmar Wäckerle was ordering the execution of Jews in Dachau. The second was Karl Wintersberger’s categorical dismissal of his deputy’s suspicion. The third, of course, was the remarkable headline in the Sunday, April 23, 1933, edition of the New York Times, reporting on the shootings but failing to mention the names of Rudolf Benario, Ernst Goldmann, and Arthur Kahn, or to investigate the further fate of Erwin Kahn. The reporter literally missed the story of the century.
These four murders gave specificity and substance to the painful and oft-repeated observation that the trail of blood that began in Dachau led ultimately and seemingly inexorably to Auschwitz. It was my goal in writing this book to show that what has come to seem so obvious, even inevitable in retrospect, had been for most contemporary observers unthinkable, including America’s leading newspaper of record. I also wanted to demonstrate that if Germany had found more individuals like Hartinger, perhaps history could have been set on a different, less horrific path.
I first tested this idea in an opinion piece for the International Herald Tribune in January 2011 under the title “First Killings of the Holocaust,” and awaited qualifiers and corrective missives regarding such specificity in an event of such complexity and magnitude. Instead, I received encouraging responses, not the least from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I thank Serge Schmemann for first giving this story an audience in the pages of the International Herald Tribune’s op-ed section.
I would also like to acknowledge three previous chroniclers of the Dachau murders whose work contributed to the framing of the Hartinger story. Hans-Günter Richardi demonstrated the narrative power of eyewitness testimonies in recounting the killings in his superb account of the early Dachau Concentration Camp, Schule der Gewalt (School of Violence). Professor Dr. Lothar Gruchmann underscored for me the centrality, and potential drama, of the judicial processes. Dr. Rolf Seubert provided new and surprising primary source documents in his contribution to a retrospective on the former Dachau detainee and distinguished postwar writer Alfred Andersch.
However, archival materials and eyewitness testimony provided the main substance for this book. The transport manifests of regular deliveries to Dachau, generally twenty-five to thirty detainees at a time, were a source of poignant detail. Here, one could trace the diverse trajectories and occasional collisions of individual fates. I came to see that the world of extremist Bavarian politics could be surprisingly small and personal. The buses from Bamberg, Würzburg, or Nuremberg delivered clusters of friends, sometimes into the vengeance-seeking hands of hometown adversaries. Wäckerle was particularly concerned by a transport from Kempten, where he had spent several years as commander of the local SS unit. Leonhard Hausmann from Augsburg found himself at the mercy and gunpoint of a fellow Augsburger, SS staff sergeant Karl Ehmann. Karl Lehrburger was identified by a visiting team of SS men from Nuremberg. The testimonies of victims and perpetrators alike were, of course, the primary source for this story. The accounts of atrocity were endless and overwhelming. Here the devil truly resided in the details.
But the material needed to be approached with caution. Human memory is faulty at best, and all the more so when sieved through trauma and time, or, in the case of the Nuremberg defendants, seeking to avoid the gallows. There are frequent divergent eyewitness accounts, even with an incident as central as the shooting of Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns. Some claim that the four men were standing in line waiting for mail delivery, others that they were returning from a work detail, and one had them lying in the grass between Barracks II and III talking about a U.S. dollar. Most eyewitnesses saw Steinbrenner lead them to the gate and hand them to Erspenmüller, but others saw Steinbrenner accompany them into the woods. One account had Johann Kantschuster emerging from the trees with a smoking pistol. State pol
ice officer Emil Schuler provided the most detailed and credible account, along with a precise sketch of the crime scene, but seemed astonishingly, almost criminally, passive in the face of such blatant atrocity.
I was particularly cautious with Josef Hartinger’s accounts, and not just because he was recalling events of a half century after the fact and just beyond his ninetieth birthday. Barbara Distel had met Hartinger when she was director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. She told me he had felt he had not received adequate recognition for his efforts, since most of the attention had gone to Karl Wintersberger. I wondered whether his detailed description of the events, long after all other key participants were dead, was an attempt to position himself for posterity. I was therefore rigorous in seeking corroborating evidence or testimony and did find lapses. Hartinger recalled, for example, that on June 2 he retrieved the files himself from Kiessner’s office because Kiessner had gone home for the day. Kiessner recalled that he was sitting in his office when Hartinger came by to collect the files. Hartinger was also unable to square the existence of two signed sets of indictments dated June 1, 1933, one set with his signature and one set with Wintersberger’s. I also failed to resolve the contradictions. But Hartinger seemed to be as honest with the material as he could be, and certainly was more generous with his assessment of Karl Wintersberger than the postwar judges who found Wintersberger guilty of complicity.
The surviving autopsy reports by Dr. Moritz Flamm provided crucial evidence for the Hartinger indictments and a central point of reference for this story. I am thankful to Professor Dr. Wolfgang Eisenmenger, the former head of the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, for generously providing copies of archival material on Dr. Flamm, reviewing the early chapters, and alerting me to the potentially sinister implications of the Erwin Kahn autopsy. I am also thankful to Dr. Claudius Stein at the Archiv und Sammlungen des Herzoglichen Georgianums of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, who helped clarify the identity of Dr. Nürnbergk, and set me on a trail that led from Munich to archives in Erfurt, Weimar, Berlin, and Washington, D.C. It was in D.C. that Dr. Stefan Hördler at the German Historical Institute provided vital corroborating evidence for confirming Dr. Nürnbergk as the camp’s first official physician.
The director of the Bavarian State Archives in Munich, Dr. Christoph Bachmann, was particularly helpful in leading me to the surviving documents (most destroyed during the war) from the “little Hitler trial.” I would like to express particular and sincere appreciation to Robert Bierschneider, also at the Bavarian State Archives, who was, as in the past, ever helpful in guiding me to some of the most crucial material in the Bavarian state’s vast holdings. Anton Knoll provided similar and equally appreciated support in the archive at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. A word of thanks is also due to Peggy Frankston and Caroline Waddell at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for their diverse and kind assistance.
I also received generous help from archivists in special collections or local archives across Bavaria. In Munich, these included the personnel files and the war service records within the Main Bavarian State Archives, as well as the collections at the Institute for Contemporary History. I would also like to recognize willing assistance at public and private archives in Augsburg, Bamberg, Coburg, and Fürth, and especially in Amberg, where Till Strobel was of particular help with materials on Hartinger. Manfred Lehner gave access to primary source materials on Rudolf Benario collected by the students at the Soldner High School in Fürth. These young people provided an exceptional tribute to the memory of one of the first victims of the Holocaust. Sincere appreciation is also due to Michael Schneeberger for the copy of the Benario photo. I owe similar thanks to Daniel Dorsch, head of the Willy Aron Society in Bamberg, as well as Gerald Raab at the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg. Appreciation is also due to Denise Anderson for her extensive efforts at the University of Edinburgh. Lothar Kahn at age ninety kindly shared with me memories of his older brother, Arthur Kahn, and his parents’ reaction to their son’s death. The German Historical Institute in Paris was an indispensable source for standard reference works, as well as an original copy of Emil Gumbel’s insightful and tragically prescient 1922 report on political violence.
Florian Beierl shared, as always, his valuable contacts and primary source materials, and Guido Burkhardt kindly reviewed the sections related to the history of Bavaria. Oliver Halmburger and his team at Loopfilm in Munich, especially Kai Schäfer, were vital in identifying and securing relevant images and photographs. Russell Riley at the University of Virginia located important early accounts of Dachau in the American press, in particular several key articles in the New York Times.
The scholars Professor Dr. Johannes Tuchel, Dr. Nikolaus Wachsmann, and Joseph Robert White pointed me in useful directions for my research into the early camps. I appreciate the time and attention provided by Philippe Couvreur, the long-serving registrar at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, who is custodian of the original files of the Nuremberg tribunal. Justice Richard Goldstone, the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, kindly reviewed the sections related to the prosecution in Nuremberg. Special thanks to Jonathan Duff in Paris and Sonia Pressman Fuentes in Sarasota, Florida, for their careful reading and judicious critique.
Jonathan Segal, my editor at Alfred A. Knopf, guided this book with firmness, rigor, and wisdom from start to finish. My agent, Gail Hochman, remains an ongoing source of support and encouragement, assisted by Marianne Merola, who continues to work her magic. And last but defintely not least, Dr. Richard M. Hunt remains a model and mentor, just as he did nearly three decades ago when I served as a teaching assistant in his course on Weimar and Nazi culture at Harvard University. As always, Jonathan Petropoulos in California was there to provide friendship, encouragement, and an unrelentingly scrupulous review of the historical content.
My wife, Marie-Louise, who directs the Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention program at the Salzburg Global Seminar, first alerted me to the connection between the Dachau murders and the Nuremberg tribunal. For this and for her steadfast support I remain grateful and indebted, happily so, though, as one can imagine, our dinner conversations are not always about the cheeriest of subjects. I also wish to thank our two oldest children, Katrina and Brendan, for their willingness to let me test ideas on them, and in particular our youngest, Audrey, for her extensive help in the final work on the manuscript and additional archival research. Last but not least, I have the pleasure of continuing to acknowledge my mother, who has always been there to encourage my writing and, at a similar age to Joseph Hartinger, seems destined to continue doing so for many years to come.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Argenta Press [1.1]; Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R99859 [1.2], Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-02921A [1.3]
Archiv KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau [map legend translated by author] [1.4]
US Holocaust Memorial Museum [1.5], Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Bayerischer Heimgarten [1.6], Archiv KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau [1.7]
Stadtarchiv Müunchen [1.8], Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-01-02 [1.11], Archiv KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau [1.9], Bundesarchiv, R2Pers BDC RS [1.10]
Bayerische Stattsbibliothek/Bayerischer Heimgarten [1.13], Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (MJu26797) [1.14]
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek [1.15], Personal archive Michael Schneeberger [1.16], University of Würzburg Archive [1.17], Staatsarchiv München (StAnw 34465) [1.18]
Archiv KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau [1.19], Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Völkischer Beobachter [1.20], Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1989-011-13 [1.21]
Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-01-16 [1.22], Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-01-23 [1.23], Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Bayerischer Heimgarten [1.24]
Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-03-07 [1.25], Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Münchner Illustrierte [1.26], Archiv KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau [1.27]
Bundesarchiv, Bild 152-01-14 [1.28], Archiv KZ-Gede
nkstätte Dachau [1.29], Staatsbibliothek München [1.30]
Staatsarchiv München (StAM Stanw 34462/3) [1.31], University of Munich Archives [1.32 and 1.33]
University of Munich Archives [1.34], Bundesarchiv, BArch/ehem. BDC: RS [1.35], Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (Abt IV OP 739) [1.36], Staatsarchiv München (Stanw 7014) [1.37]
Doc ID 9908504, 1.1.6.1, ITS Digital Archives [1.38], Staatsarchiv München (Stanw 7014) [1.39]
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1974-160-13A [1.40], Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R96361 [1.41]
US Holocaust Memorial Museum [1.42], Archiv KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau [1.43]
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIMOTHY W. RYBACK has written for the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, a New York Times Best Book of the Year 2000, and Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, which has appeared in more than twenty-five editions around the world. He lives in Paris with his wife, and has three grown children.
The assistant trial counsel Warren Farr making a case for the collective guilt of the Nazi SS before the Nuremberg tribunal on the afternoon of Wednesday, December 19, 1945. Farr presented some of the earliest forensic evidence of the Holocaust. (illustration credit i1.1)
The February 27, 1933, arson attack in Berlin on the Reichstag, seat of German representative democracy, came a month after Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. The next day, President Hindenburg issued an emergency decree, at Hitler’s urging, that suspended personal liberty in the name of national security. (illustration credit i1.2)
Storm troopers in Berlin taking communists into “protective custody” on March 6, 1933. Since “protective custody” was extrajudicial, there were no indictments or arrest warrants, and thus no legal recourse. (illustration credit i1.3)