NSDAP in the Third Reich was not nearly as powerful as Bolshevist Party in the USSR; however, it was a power to be reckoned with. Especially in “Jewish matters”.
In January of 1942, Adolf Hitler (officially Der Führer of NSDAP) was so preoccupied with military matters as Commander-in-Chief of Wehrmacht that the Party was de-facto under control of Chief of Party Chancellery Martin Bormann (nicknamed “Brown Eminence” because he was, indeed, “grey eminence” in German government system).
Being a fanatical anti-Semite, Bormann wanted to be a part of the “Final Solution” and was powerful enough… so Heydrich had no other choice but to invite to Wannsee Conference the representative of “Brown Eminence”.
Enter Gerhard Klopfer, the State Secretary in the Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann’s chief deputy, and (very conveniently for Heydrich), SS-Gruppenführer (.
In the otherwise excellent BBC movie “Conspiracy” (2001) Klopfer is portrayed as seriously obese and displaying a lack of tact foul enough to make even the other Nazis uncomfortable, yet in real life Gerhard Klopfer was slim-built, and his co-workers remembered him as a calm and usually very polite man.
He studied law and economics at the University of Breslau (today, the University of Wrocław) and the University of Jena. In 1929, he received his doctorate of law degree and in 1931 started working as a junior judge at Düsseldorf.
He joined NSDAP on April 1, 1933 (which made him a “March violet”) and two years later joined the staff of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess at the Party headquarters in Munich. Prior to that appointment, he worked for Gestapo, so, not surprisingly, he headed the department overseeing the Reich Interior Ministry. In 1938, he became responsible for the seizing of Jewish businesses in the Aryanization process.
By April 1941, he had advanced to the rank of Ministerialdirektor and headed Department III that oversaw coordination between the Party and all state agencies. He became a close confidant of Martin Bormann who, on 12 May 1941, became head of the Party Chancellery, the successor organization to Hess’ office so he was a natural choice for representing Bormann at Wannsee Conference.
After the war, he was arrested and made to testify at the Ministries Trial in Nuremberg in 1948. He was charged with war crimes but denied all knowledge of the Holocaust. The case against him was dropped for lack of evidence. When he died peacefully in 1987 in Ulm from natural causes, Klopfer was the last surviving attendee of the Wannsee Conference.
Wannsee Conference in 100 Facts
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RolandVT
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RolandVT
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Schöngarth Represented HSSPF of General Government
Surprisingly few are aware of the fact that Operation Reinhard death factories (Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) and Chelmno killing center (responsible for the majority of death toll of “Holocaust by Gas”) were run not by RSHA (or WVHA) but by local HSSPF – Higher SS and Police Leaders (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer).
The HSSPF were the overseeing authority of the Jewish ghettos in Poland and directly coordinated deportations to killing centers (in other words, all deportations of “Holocaust by Gas”).
They provided SS guards and other support personnel for the transports to the death factories, and also negotiated with the agencies and ministries of the Reich for rolling stock, supplies and provisions, rail schedules, and other requirements necessary to keep the roundups and the death trains moving efficiently.
Hence, Heydrich had no other choice but to invite to Wannsee Conference the representative of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger – HSSPF “Ost” (the highest police and security post in General Government).
Enter SS-Oberführer Karl Eberhard Schöngarth. After a tumultuous youth (he was a member of a Freikorps in Thuringia, SA and the paramilitary Viking League and took part in the Kapp Putsch and the Beer Hall Putsch), he enrolled at Leipzig University, majoring in economics and law.
Ultimately, he got a doctorate in law (cum laude). He rejoined the NSDAP, joined the SS and in 1935 went to work for Prussian Gestapo in Berlin (where his patron was no other than Reinhard Heydrich).
Subsequently, we worked for SD (domestic intelligence service), returned to Gestapo and in January of 1941 was transferred to Kraków to work under Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in General Government SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger. Which made him a perfect representative of the latter at Wannsee Conference.
Like Rudolf Lange (see below), Schöngarth could rightfully be considered as a “living essence” of Wannsee Conference (which was all about serial mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland and other European countries).
For part of the time during his posting in Kraków, Schöngarth led a temporary Einsatzgruppe unit, (Einsatzgruppe z.b.V.) in eastern Galicia. Schöngarth was responsible for the murders of approximately 10,000 Polish Jews between July and September 1941 and the massacre of Lwów professors and their families behind the frontlines during Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union.
The Einsatzgruppe led by Schöngarth murdered more than 5,000 Jews from the Brzesc Ghetto between July 10 and 12 1941. Schöngarth was a fanatical enemy of Jews and utterly ruthless in his determination to carry out the executions.
In Lwów, he informed officers under his command that anyone failing to carry out the execution orders would himself be shot, and that he would support any officer that shot a comrade for this failure.
The Wannsee Conference took place during a fraught political atmosphere in the General Government. Hans Frank, the Governor General, was at odds with HSSPF Krüger who, though technically subordinate to Frank, was appointed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and took orders only from him.
They had major disagreements over control of the police forces, over Jewish policy and over the issue of the protection of German ethnicity and culture. Himmler, as the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, felt that this was solely in his purview.
Heydrich wanted to ensure that the meeting ran smoothly and came to an agreement with regard to the planned actions. Due to the intense personal and political hostilities involved, Heydrich made the decision not to invite Krüger.
He opted, instead, to invite Schöngarth (the representative of the latter) who was less likely to clash with the representative of the General Government, Frank’s deputy, State Secretary Josef Buhler. It was a smart decision – there were no clashes and the conference went smoothly as planned by Heydrich.
Schöngarth was one out of only three attendees of Wannsee Conference (two others were Eichmann and Buhler) executed for war crimes. After the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands, Schöngarth was taken into custody by British authorities who promptly charged him and six of his alleged accomplices with the murder of Americo S. Galle, an American pilot.
Charges were most likely bogus, but Schöngarth ordered so many murders that he deserved hangman’s noose thousands of times. On 11 February 1946, all of the defendants were found guilty. Five were sentenced to death; one to 15 years and one to 10 years in prison.
Schöngarth and his condemned accomplices were all executed by hanging by famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint at Hamelin Prison on 16 May 1946. Also hanged on the same day for unrelated crimes at Hamelin were Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher – Zyklon B suppliers to killing centers.
The HSSPF were the overseeing authority of the Jewish ghettos in Poland and directly coordinated deportations to killing centers (in other words, all deportations of “Holocaust by Gas”).
They provided SS guards and other support personnel for the transports to the death factories, and also negotiated with the agencies and ministries of the Reich for rolling stock, supplies and provisions, rail schedules, and other requirements necessary to keep the roundups and the death trains moving efficiently.
Hence, Heydrich had no other choice but to invite to Wannsee Conference the representative of SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger – HSSPF “Ost” (the highest police and security post in General Government).
Enter SS-Oberführer Karl Eberhard Schöngarth. After a tumultuous youth (he was a member of a Freikorps in Thuringia, SA and the paramilitary Viking League and took part in the Kapp Putsch and the Beer Hall Putsch), he enrolled at Leipzig University, majoring in economics and law.
Ultimately, he got a doctorate in law (cum laude). He rejoined the NSDAP, joined the SS and in 1935 went to work for Prussian Gestapo in Berlin (where his patron was no other than Reinhard Heydrich).
Subsequently, we worked for SD (domestic intelligence service), returned to Gestapo and in January of 1941 was transferred to Kraków to work under Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in General Government SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger. Which made him a perfect representative of the latter at Wannsee Conference.
Like Rudolf Lange (see below), Schöngarth could rightfully be considered as a “living essence” of Wannsee Conference (which was all about serial mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland and other European countries).
For part of the time during his posting in Kraków, Schöngarth led a temporary Einsatzgruppe unit, (Einsatzgruppe z.b.V.) in eastern Galicia. Schöngarth was responsible for the murders of approximately 10,000 Polish Jews between July and September 1941 and the massacre of Lwów professors and their families behind the frontlines during Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union.
The Einsatzgruppe led by Schöngarth murdered more than 5,000 Jews from the Brzesc Ghetto between July 10 and 12 1941. Schöngarth was a fanatical enemy of Jews and utterly ruthless in his determination to carry out the executions.
In Lwów, he informed officers under his command that anyone failing to carry out the execution orders would himself be shot, and that he would support any officer that shot a comrade for this failure.
The Wannsee Conference took place during a fraught political atmosphere in the General Government. Hans Frank, the Governor General, was at odds with HSSPF Krüger who, though technically subordinate to Frank, was appointed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and took orders only from him.
They had major disagreements over control of the police forces, over Jewish policy and over the issue of the protection of German ethnicity and culture. Himmler, as the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, felt that this was solely in his purview.
Heydrich wanted to ensure that the meeting ran smoothly and came to an agreement with regard to the planned actions. Due to the intense personal and political hostilities involved, Heydrich made the decision not to invite Krüger.
He opted, instead, to invite Schöngarth (the representative of the latter) who was less likely to clash with the representative of the General Government, Frank’s deputy, State Secretary Josef Buhler. It was a smart decision – there were no clashes and the conference went smoothly as planned by Heydrich.
Schöngarth was one out of only three attendees of Wannsee Conference (two others were Eichmann and Buhler) executed for war crimes. After the surrender of German forces in the Netherlands, Schöngarth was taken into custody by British authorities who promptly charged him and six of his alleged accomplices with the murder of Americo S. Galle, an American pilot.
Charges were most likely bogus, but Schöngarth ordered so many murders that he deserved hangman’s noose thousands of times. On 11 February 1946, all of the defendants were found guilty. Five were sentenced to death; one to 15 years and one to 10 years in prison.
Schöngarth and his condemned accomplices were all executed by hanging by famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint at Hamelin Prison on 16 May 1946. Also hanged on the same day for unrelated crimes at Hamelin were Bruno Tesch and Karl Weinbacher – Zyklon B suppliers to killing centers.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Friedrich Kritzinger Represented Adolf Hitler
Officially, Friedrich Kritzinger represented Hans Lammers, head of Reich Chancellery (Office of the Chancellor) and Lammers represented Adolf Hitler (the Chancellor) … however, in the end, Kritzinger did represent Hitler.
Although, almost certainly, Hitler did not even know about Wannsee Conference – being preoccupied with the war (that did not go very well for Germany) Der Führer had neither time nor desire to care about such “trivial” matters.
He definitely approved the “final solution of the Jewish question” as proposed by Heydrich and Himmler (which made Hitler just as guilty of the Holocaust) but there is no evidence that he knew about the existence of six killing centers – let alone Wannsee Conference.
He was definitely informed about the progress of the Final Solution – but there is no evidence that he cared about how exactly the Jews were disposed of. All he wanted to know that they were gone. Removed from the face of the Earth.
Kritzinger was the son of a Protestant pastor (of all people) in Grünfier (today, Zielonowo in Poland – of all places). He was a Great War hero – fought on the western front, attained the rank of Leutnant in the reserves and earned the Iron Cross both 1st and 2nd class and the Order of Hohenzollern (second only to the famous Blue Max – Pour le Mérite).
He got his doctorate in law (as did more than half of the attendees of Wannsee Conference) and subsequently practiced international and constitutional law in the Ministry of Justice.
Kritzinger welcomed the Nazi seizure of power and was involved in drafting legislation that supported the Nazi regime – including legislation that established the legal basis for expropriating the property of the outlawed trade unions.
He was no stranger to providing legal cover for mass murder: after the Night of the Long Knives, he worked on a law that legitimized as “acts of self-defense” the extrajudicial murders of SA leaders and other political opponents of Hitler.
On February 1, 1938, Kritzinger accepted the transfer to the Reich Chancellery as head of Division B (which among other duties dealt with “Jewish matters”) with the civil service rank of Ministerialdirektor. Membership in NSDAP was a requirement – so he joined the Party.
He was involved with the drafting of draconian wartime legislation such as the so-called Regulation Against Public Pests of September 5, 1939, which imposed the death penalty for acts like looting and arson (not a bad idea at wartime).
Other laws sought to further deprive the German Jewish population of its remaining rights. The 11th Regulation of the Citizenship Law issued on November 25, 1941 stipulated that all German Jews who had emigrated retrospectively lost their German citizenship, and their assets will be confiscated by the state.
At 51, Kritzinger was the oldest of the participants at the Wannsee Conference. There is no record of any comments by him in the Wannsee Protocol. There also is no documentation that he vocally or openly opposed the plans discussed at Wannsee, though evidence suggests that he sought to distance himself from the whole murderous affair.
He did not attend the follow-up meeting on March 6, 1942, opting to send a less senior official who was instructed not to discuss policy positions but only to report back on the meeting. This was most likely the approach taken by Kritzinger at Wannsee Conference.
Kritzinger stayed on at the Reich Chancellery and, as the management of the Second World War consumed more and more of Adolf Hitler’s time and energy, Lammers was usually with the Führer at his military field headquarters.
Consequently, Kritzinger took on more of the day-to-day operations of the Chancellery in Berlin. He continued to serve as the Chancellery’s State Secretary in the Flensburg government set up under Hitler’s appointed successor, Gross-Admiral Karl Dönitz.
Kritzinger was arrested by British soldiers on 23 May 1945 along with the rest of the Flensburg government. He testified as a witness at Nuremberg trials (plural) and was the only one of the Wannsee Conference participants to admit of his own accord that he had been present.
He acknowledged the criminal nature of the conference, and he testified that he had been ashamed of German politics during the war, admitting that Hitler and Himmler were mass murderers. Serial mass murderers, actually.
He was released in April 1946 but then arrested again in December. Due to health-related reasons, he was released again and died of natural causes in April 1947 at the age of 57.
Although, almost certainly, Hitler did not even know about Wannsee Conference – being preoccupied with the war (that did not go very well for Germany) Der Führer had neither time nor desire to care about such “trivial” matters.
He definitely approved the “final solution of the Jewish question” as proposed by Heydrich and Himmler (which made Hitler just as guilty of the Holocaust) but there is no evidence that he knew about the existence of six killing centers – let alone Wannsee Conference.
He was definitely informed about the progress of the Final Solution – but there is no evidence that he cared about how exactly the Jews were disposed of. All he wanted to know that they were gone. Removed from the face of the Earth.
Kritzinger was the son of a Protestant pastor (of all people) in Grünfier (today, Zielonowo in Poland – of all places). He was a Great War hero – fought on the western front, attained the rank of Leutnant in the reserves and earned the Iron Cross both 1st and 2nd class and the Order of Hohenzollern (second only to the famous Blue Max – Pour le Mérite).
He got his doctorate in law (as did more than half of the attendees of Wannsee Conference) and subsequently practiced international and constitutional law in the Ministry of Justice.
Kritzinger welcomed the Nazi seizure of power and was involved in drafting legislation that supported the Nazi regime – including legislation that established the legal basis for expropriating the property of the outlawed trade unions.
He was no stranger to providing legal cover for mass murder: after the Night of the Long Knives, he worked on a law that legitimized as “acts of self-defense” the extrajudicial murders of SA leaders and other political opponents of Hitler.
On February 1, 1938, Kritzinger accepted the transfer to the Reich Chancellery as head of Division B (which among other duties dealt with “Jewish matters”) with the civil service rank of Ministerialdirektor. Membership in NSDAP was a requirement – so he joined the Party.
He was involved with the drafting of draconian wartime legislation such as the so-called Regulation Against Public Pests of September 5, 1939, which imposed the death penalty for acts like looting and arson (not a bad idea at wartime).
Other laws sought to further deprive the German Jewish population of its remaining rights. The 11th Regulation of the Citizenship Law issued on November 25, 1941 stipulated that all German Jews who had emigrated retrospectively lost their German citizenship, and their assets will be confiscated by the state.
At 51, Kritzinger was the oldest of the participants at the Wannsee Conference. There is no record of any comments by him in the Wannsee Protocol. There also is no documentation that he vocally or openly opposed the plans discussed at Wannsee, though evidence suggests that he sought to distance himself from the whole murderous affair.
He did not attend the follow-up meeting on March 6, 1942, opting to send a less senior official who was instructed not to discuss policy positions but only to report back on the meeting. This was most likely the approach taken by Kritzinger at Wannsee Conference.
Kritzinger stayed on at the Reich Chancellery and, as the management of the Second World War consumed more and more of Adolf Hitler’s time and energy, Lammers was usually with the Führer at his military field headquarters.
Consequently, Kritzinger took on more of the day-to-day operations of the Chancellery in Berlin. He continued to serve as the Chancellery’s State Secretary in the Flensburg government set up under Hitler’s appointed successor, Gross-Admiral Karl Dönitz.
Kritzinger was arrested by British soldiers on 23 May 1945 along with the rest of the Flensburg government. He testified as a witness at Nuremberg trials (plural) and was the only one of the Wannsee Conference participants to admit of his own accord that he had been present.
He acknowledged the criminal nature of the conference, and he testified that he had been ashamed of German politics during the war, admitting that Hitler and Himmler were mass murderers. Serial mass murderers, actually.
He was released in April 1946 but then arrested again in December. Due to health-related reasons, he was released again and died of natural causes in April 1947 at the age of 57.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Martin Luther Represented von Ribbentrop
No surprise here – the former was the protégé of the latter. first as an advisor in the Ribbentrop Bureau, and later as a diplomat in the Foreign Office. Interestingly was the 1946 discovery of his copy of the minutes of that conference (Wannsee Protocol) that first brought to light the conference and its diabolical purpose.
Luther was a Great War veteran – he served in a railway unit, attained the rank of Leutnant of reserves in 1917 and was awarded the Iron Cross, second class. Discharged from the army at the end of the war, he went into business and used his skill at logistics to found a hauling and furniture moving business.
His first venture went bankrupt in the poor economic climate of the Weimar Republic (happened all the time) but he started another furniture moving and interior decorating business.
His persistence paid off: in this second venture he was very successful (which allowed him to buy a house in the affluent Zehlendorf neighborhood of Berlin). He also owned an apartment building and was sufficiently financially secure to turn his attention to politics.
Sensing the Zeitgeist, he joined NSDAP in March of 1932. He was active in helping to raise funds for the Party in his capacity as the head of the local National Socialist People’s Welfare, the Party’s charity organization. In the course of his work, he made the acquaintance of the wealthy wine merchant and Adolf Hitler’s foreign policy advisor Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife.
Initially, Ribbentrop hired him as just an interior decorator, but soon he offered Luther ф position in the Ribbentrop Bureau – the shadow foreign policy unit in the Nazi Party that Ribbentrop had established to circumvent the long-serving career diplomats in the Foreign Office (which had no love for the Nazis). Luther accepted and was placed in charge of the Party liaison office.
In November 1938, Luther was appointed as head of the sub-department Referat Partei, which carried out liaison activities between the ministry and the Party. In 1940, he persuaded Ribbentrop to appoint him as head of the Abteilung D (Deutschland), a new department combining several Referate.
In addition to his existing functions, the ambitious Luther (too ambitious as it would turn out soon) now was given responsibility for foreign travel, printing and distribution of written materials, liaison with the SS and, significantly, Jewish policy under Referat D III, which he entrusted to Franz Rademacher (the one who proposed the Madagascar Plan).
His control over the “Jewish” department in the Foreign Office and his liason functions with the SS were two other reasons why Luther was chosen to represent Ribbentrop at Wannsee Conference.
By July 1941, Luther was advanced to the civil service rank of Ministerialdirektor with the title of Unterstaatssekretär (Under State Secretary). Thus, Luther was at the height of his power when he attended the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 as the official representative of the Foreign Ministry.
He was the only undersecretary invited, with most other ministry representatives being full state secretaries. This was due to the conference organizer, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, who much preferred dealing with the ambitious and cooperative Luther (a committed Nazi), rather than the aristocratic Foreign Office traditionalist, State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker.
The “Luther memorandum” composed specifically for the conference, committed the Foreign Ministry to working with other countries to introduce antisemitic restrictions modeled on the Nuremberg Laws, and then to transport their Jews to the killing centers in occupied Poland.
Following the conference, Luther’s department was involved with preparing and securing agreement at the diplomatic level for the deportation of Jews from the countries allied with Germany, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, as well as from the areas occupied by Germany such as the nominally independent countries such as Vichy France.
However, by early 1943, Luther fell out of favor with Ribbentrop for a number of reasons (happens all the time in bureaucratic systems). Threatened on several fronts, Luther plotted to supplant Ribbentrop by attempting to discredit him.
He most likely sought assistance in this from SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, head of the SS foreign intelligence service, who himself had ambitions of replacing Ribbentrop.
The plot failed; clever Schellenberg escaped unscathed… and poor Luther ended up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in March. There he was put to work cultivating the camp herb garden.
After two suicide attempts, he was freed over two years later when the camp was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945, but was hospitalized and died shortly afterward of heart failure at the age of 49.
He never faced trial (or even investigation) for his involvement in the Holocaust, which was actually quite significant.
Luther was a Great War veteran – he served in a railway unit, attained the rank of Leutnant of reserves in 1917 and was awarded the Iron Cross, second class. Discharged from the army at the end of the war, he went into business and used his skill at logistics to found a hauling and furniture moving business.
His first venture went bankrupt in the poor economic climate of the Weimar Republic (happened all the time) but he started another furniture moving and interior decorating business.
His persistence paid off: in this second venture he was very successful (which allowed him to buy a house in the affluent Zehlendorf neighborhood of Berlin). He also owned an apartment building and was sufficiently financially secure to turn his attention to politics.
Sensing the Zeitgeist, he joined NSDAP in March of 1932. He was active in helping to raise funds for the Party in his capacity as the head of the local National Socialist People’s Welfare, the Party’s charity organization. In the course of his work, he made the acquaintance of the wealthy wine merchant and Adolf Hitler’s foreign policy advisor Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife.
Initially, Ribbentrop hired him as just an interior decorator, but soon he offered Luther ф position in the Ribbentrop Bureau – the shadow foreign policy unit in the Nazi Party that Ribbentrop had established to circumvent the long-serving career diplomats in the Foreign Office (which had no love for the Nazis). Luther accepted and was placed in charge of the Party liaison office.
In November 1938, Luther was appointed as head of the sub-department Referat Partei, which carried out liaison activities between the ministry and the Party. In 1940, he persuaded Ribbentrop to appoint him as head of the Abteilung D (Deutschland), a new department combining several Referate.
In addition to his existing functions, the ambitious Luther (too ambitious as it would turn out soon) now was given responsibility for foreign travel, printing and distribution of written materials, liaison with the SS and, significantly, Jewish policy under Referat D III, which he entrusted to Franz Rademacher (the one who proposed the Madagascar Plan).
His control over the “Jewish” department in the Foreign Office and his liason functions with the SS were two other reasons why Luther was chosen to represent Ribbentrop at Wannsee Conference.
By July 1941, Luther was advanced to the civil service rank of Ministerialdirektor with the title of Unterstaatssekretär (Under State Secretary). Thus, Luther was at the height of his power when he attended the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 as the official representative of the Foreign Ministry.
He was the only undersecretary invited, with most other ministry representatives being full state secretaries. This was due to the conference organizer, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, who much preferred dealing with the ambitious and cooperative Luther (a committed Nazi), rather than the aristocratic Foreign Office traditionalist, State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker.
The “Luther memorandum” composed specifically for the conference, committed the Foreign Ministry to working with other countries to introduce antisemitic restrictions modeled on the Nuremberg Laws, and then to transport their Jews to the killing centers in occupied Poland.
Following the conference, Luther’s department was involved with preparing and securing agreement at the diplomatic level for the deportation of Jews from the countries allied with Germany, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, as well as from the areas occupied by Germany such as the nominally independent countries such as Vichy France.
However, by early 1943, Luther fell out of favor with Ribbentrop for a number of reasons (happens all the time in bureaucratic systems). Threatened on several fronts, Luther plotted to supplant Ribbentrop by attempting to discredit him.
He most likely sought assistance in this from SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, head of the SS foreign intelligence service, who himself had ambitions of replacing Ribbentrop.
The plot failed; clever Schellenberg escaped unscathed… and poor Luther ended up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in March. There he was put to work cultivating the camp herb garden.
After two suicide attempts, he was freed over two years later when the camp was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945, but was hospitalized and died shortly afterward of heart failure at the age of 49.
He never faced trial (or even investigation) for his involvement in the Holocaust, which was actually quite significant.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Josef Bühler Represented General Government
Josef Bühler was a lawyer by education – like most of the attendees of Wannsee Conference. He studied law at the universities in Munich, Kiel, Berlin and Erlangen. He earned a Doctor of Law degree and passed the state law examination in 1930.
That year, he joined the Munich law firm of Hans Frank, who regularly defended Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in court… and was the close associate of the latter ever since (he was even executed in the same manner – by hanging).
After Frank was appointed as a minister without portfolio in Hitler’s cabinet, he brought Bühler into his ministerial office in 1938. Just before the outbreak of the war, Bühler was conscripted into the German Army but Frank obtained his release.
After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939, Frank was appointed Governor General for the occupied Polish territories at the end of October and Bühler accompanied him to Kraków.
On 8 December, Bühler was made head of the Governor General’s office with the rank of Ministerialdirektor. On March 8, 1940, he was promoted to State Secretary. After Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Frank’s Deputy Governor General, departed to become the Reichskommissar of the occupied Netherlands in May 1940, Bühler became acting Frank’s deputy, a designation that was made permanent in June 1941.
Though not given the formal title of Deputy Governor General, as State Secretary he was Frank’s chief deputy and represented him during his absences. Hence, he was the natural choice to represent Frank at Wannsee Conference.
The minutes of the meeting document Bühler stating that the General Government would welcome the launch of the Final Solution in its territory, and he stressed the importance of solving the “Jewish Question” in the General Government as quickly as possible as three million of Jews under his control were simply unmanageable.
When Adolf Eichmann was asked at his 1961 trial in Jerusalem what was meant by this statement, he answered that Bühler clarified that they all should be killed. Which was, most likely, true.
After the war, Bühler was arrested by the Americans and testified in Frank’s defense at the Nuremberg Trials, denying all knowledge of the Holocaust (which was not true) and trying to deflect all blame onto the SS (ditto). In May of 1946, he was extradited to Poland to face trial for his horrific crimes committed during Nazi occupation.
The trial was a judicial farce, but Bühler was guilty as sin – and got what he deserved. Bühler was executed by hanging on August 22, 1948 at Montelupich Prison in Kraków.
That year, he joined the Munich law firm of Hans Frank, who regularly defended Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in court… and was the close associate of the latter ever since (he was even executed in the same manner – by hanging).
After Frank was appointed as a minister without portfolio in Hitler’s cabinet, he brought Bühler into his ministerial office in 1938. Just before the outbreak of the war, Bühler was conscripted into the German Army but Frank obtained his release.
After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939, Frank was appointed Governor General for the occupied Polish territories at the end of October and Bühler accompanied him to Kraków.
On 8 December, Bühler was made head of the Governor General’s office with the rank of Ministerialdirektor. On March 8, 1940, he was promoted to State Secretary. After Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Frank’s Deputy Governor General, departed to become the Reichskommissar of the occupied Netherlands in May 1940, Bühler became acting Frank’s deputy, a designation that was made permanent in June 1941.
Though not given the formal title of Deputy Governor General, as State Secretary he was Frank’s chief deputy and represented him during his absences. Hence, he was the natural choice to represent Frank at Wannsee Conference.
The minutes of the meeting document Bühler stating that the General Government would welcome the launch of the Final Solution in its territory, and he stressed the importance of solving the “Jewish Question” in the General Government as quickly as possible as three million of Jews under his control were simply unmanageable.
When Adolf Eichmann was asked at his 1961 trial in Jerusalem what was meant by this statement, he answered that Bühler clarified that they all should be killed. Which was, most likely, true.
After the war, Bühler was arrested by the Americans and testified in Frank’s defense at the Nuremberg Trials, denying all knowledge of the Holocaust (which was not true) and trying to deflect all blame onto the SS (ditto). In May of 1946, he was extradited to Poland to face trial for his horrific crimes committed during Nazi occupation.
The trial was a judicial farce, but Bühler was guilty as sin – and got what he deserved. Bühler was executed by hanging on August 22, 1948 at Montelupich Prison in Kraków.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Wilhelm Stuckart Co-Authored Infamous Nuremberg Laws
Wilhelm Stuckart was invited to Wannsee Conference for purely political reasons – to represent Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick who was the nominal boss of Heinrich Himmler (in the latter’s capacity of Chief of German Police) and at the time of the conference still yielded significant power.
However, there was another – personal – rationale for inviting Stuckart: he co-authored infamous Nuremberg Laws that formed the foundation for the whole “Holocaust Project” (they defined who was the Jew – and who wasn’t).
Stuckart was no stranger to violence: he was active in the militant far right early on and joined the Freikorps von Epp in 1919 (at the age of 17) to resist the French occupation of the Ruhr. In 1922, he started studying law and political economy at the universities of Munich and Frankfurt am Main, and joined the NSDAP in December that year.
He finished his studies in 1928, receiving a doctorate in law. From 1930, Stuckart served as a district court judge and in 1932-33 he worked as a lawyer and legal secretary for the SA in Stettin (today, Szczecin in Poland).
Then he went into politics as many lawyers did in many countries at all times (they still do). On April 4, 1933 he became the Mayor and State Commissioner in Stettin and later was elected to the state parliament and the Prussian State Council.
On May 15, 1933, Stuckart was appointed Ministerial Director of the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and Culture (of all offices), and on June 30, 1933, he was promoted to State Secretary.
Two years later, he moved to Reich Ministry of Interior, Division I: Constitution and Legislation, with the responsibility for constitutional law, citizenship and racial laws (hence his co-authorship of Nuremberg laws).
Stuckart was no stranger to serial mass murder either: in August 1939, he signed a confidential decree regarding the “Reporting Obligations of Deformed Newborns,” which became the basis for the Nazi regime’s euthanasia of children. Two years later, Stuckart’s own one-year-old son, Gunther, who was born with Down syndrome, became a victim of this program (with Stuckart’s full consent).
A prolific writer, Stuckart came to be seen as one of the leading Nazi legal experts, focusing especially on racial laws. In 1936 Stuckart, as the chairman of the Reich Committee for the Protection of German Blood, he co-authored the government’s official Commentary on German Racial Legislation in elaboration of the Reich Citizenship and Blood Protection Laws.
The commentary explains that these racist laws were based on the concept of Volksgemeinschaft (“People’s community”) to which every German was bound by common blood (the essence of National Socialism).
Individuals were not members of society (unlike in fascist regimes) but members of the German Volk, through which they acquire citizenship rights. Interests of the Volk were always superior to those of the individual.
People born outside of the Volk were seen to possess no rights and represent a danger to the purity of the people’s community. As such, anti-miscegenation legislation was justified, even necessary. Stuckart stated that these laws represented “a preliminary solution of the Jewish question”.
His views on the Final Solution were surprisingly mild given his background in political violence and in serial mass murder of Aktion T4. According to the minutes of the conference, Stuckart supported forced sterilization for persons of “mixed blood” (half-Jewish) instead of extermination.
Heydrich called a follow-up conference on March 6, 1942, which further discussed the problems of “mixed blood” individuals and mixed marriage couples.[18] At this meeting, Stuckart argued that only first-degree Mischlinge (persons with two Jewish grandparents) should be sterilized by force, after which they should be allowed to remain in Germany and undergo a “natural extinction”.
Stuckart served briefly as Interior Minister in Karl Dönitz’s Flensburg Government in May 1945. When that government was dissolved by the Allies, Stuckart was arrested and subsequently called as an expert witness at the IMT Nuremberg trial.
Stuckart himself was tried by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Ministries Trial in 1948 for his role in formulating and carrying out anti-Jewish laws. The court described him as an ardent Jew-hater who was able to pursue his anti-Semitic campaign from the safety of his ministerial office.
Former co-worker Bernhard Lösener from Interior Ministry testified that Stuckart had been aware of the murder of the Jews even before the Wannsee Conference (which was most likely true).
However, there was no definitive evidence of his role of the Holocaust so he was sentenced to time served in April 1949. In 1951, he was tried in a de-Nazification court, classified as a “fellow traveler” and fined 500 Deutsche Mark.
Stuckart was killed on 15 November 1953 near Hanover, West Germany, in a car accident a day before his 51st birthday. There were rumors that he was killed by Jewish avengers but no evidence of that had ever surfaced.
However, there was another – personal – rationale for inviting Stuckart: he co-authored infamous Nuremberg Laws that formed the foundation for the whole “Holocaust Project” (they defined who was the Jew – and who wasn’t).
Stuckart was no stranger to violence: he was active in the militant far right early on and joined the Freikorps von Epp in 1919 (at the age of 17) to resist the French occupation of the Ruhr. In 1922, he started studying law and political economy at the universities of Munich and Frankfurt am Main, and joined the NSDAP in December that year.
He finished his studies in 1928, receiving a doctorate in law. From 1930, Stuckart served as a district court judge and in 1932-33 he worked as a lawyer and legal secretary for the SA in Stettin (today, Szczecin in Poland).
Then he went into politics as many lawyers did in many countries at all times (they still do). On April 4, 1933 he became the Mayor and State Commissioner in Stettin and later was elected to the state parliament and the Prussian State Council.
On May 15, 1933, Stuckart was appointed Ministerial Director of the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and Culture (of all offices), and on June 30, 1933, he was promoted to State Secretary.
Two years later, he moved to Reich Ministry of Interior, Division I: Constitution and Legislation, with the responsibility for constitutional law, citizenship and racial laws (hence his co-authorship of Nuremberg laws).
Stuckart was no stranger to serial mass murder either: in August 1939, he signed a confidential decree regarding the “Reporting Obligations of Deformed Newborns,” which became the basis for the Nazi regime’s euthanasia of children. Two years later, Stuckart’s own one-year-old son, Gunther, who was born with Down syndrome, became a victim of this program (with Stuckart’s full consent).
A prolific writer, Stuckart came to be seen as one of the leading Nazi legal experts, focusing especially on racial laws. In 1936 Stuckart, as the chairman of the Reich Committee for the Protection of German Blood, he co-authored the government’s official Commentary on German Racial Legislation in elaboration of the Reich Citizenship and Blood Protection Laws.
The commentary explains that these racist laws were based on the concept of Volksgemeinschaft (“People’s community”) to which every German was bound by common blood (the essence of National Socialism).
Individuals were not members of society (unlike in fascist regimes) but members of the German Volk, through which they acquire citizenship rights. Interests of the Volk were always superior to those of the individual.
People born outside of the Volk were seen to possess no rights and represent a danger to the purity of the people’s community. As such, anti-miscegenation legislation was justified, even necessary. Stuckart stated that these laws represented “a preliminary solution of the Jewish question”.
His views on the Final Solution were surprisingly mild given his background in political violence and in serial mass murder of Aktion T4. According to the minutes of the conference, Stuckart supported forced sterilization for persons of “mixed blood” (half-Jewish) instead of extermination.
Heydrich called a follow-up conference on March 6, 1942, which further discussed the problems of “mixed blood” individuals and mixed marriage couples.[18] At this meeting, Stuckart argued that only first-degree Mischlinge (persons with two Jewish grandparents) should be sterilized by force, after which they should be allowed to remain in Germany and undergo a “natural extinction”.
Stuckart served briefly as Interior Minister in Karl Dönitz’s Flensburg Government in May 1945. When that government was dissolved by the Allies, Stuckart was arrested and subsequently called as an expert witness at the IMT Nuremberg trial.
Stuckart himself was tried by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Ministries Trial in 1948 for his role in formulating and carrying out anti-Jewish laws. The court described him as an ardent Jew-hater who was able to pursue his anti-Semitic campaign from the safety of his ministerial office.
Former co-worker Bernhard Lösener from Interior Ministry testified that Stuckart had been aware of the murder of the Jews even before the Wannsee Conference (which was most likely true).
However, there was no definitive evidence of his role of the Holocaust so he was sentenced to time served in April 1949. In 1951, he was tried in a de-Nazification court, classified as a “fellow traveler” and fined 500 Deutsche Mark.
Stuckart was killed on 15 November 1953 near Hanover, West Germany, in a car accident a day before his 51st birthday. There were rumors that he was killed by Jewish avengers but no evidence of that had ever surfaced.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Erich Neumann Saved “Productive Jews”
Contrary to a very popular misconception, Hermann Göring was not a diehard anti-Semite (his deputy in Luftwaffe, Erhard Milch who for all practical purposes ran the latter, was half Jewish – and it did not bother Göring at all). It was Göring who coined the famous statement: “I decide, who is the Jew – and who isn’t” – and he pretty much lived by that maxim.
True, it was Göring who tasked Heydrich with finding and implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question” – but everybody knew, that it was Hitler’s order and Göring was a mere intermediary (a courier even).
In reality, Göring did not care much about extermination of the Jews – but he did care a lot about making his Reichswerke (which pretty much controlled German wartime economy) operate at the maximum performance possible.
And when it needed irreplaceable Jewish workers, Göring wanted them in his employ – not in gas chambers or in shooting ranges. And when Göring (the second-in-command in the Reich) wanted something, he got it.
Enter Erich Neumann – close associate of Göring at the Office of a Four-Year Plan and his representative at Wannsee Conference. Like most of the attendees, he was a lawyer by training – he studied law (and economics) at the Universities of Freiburg, Leipzig and Halle-Wittenberg.
He was a Great War veteran – he fought bravely on the Eastern front, rising to the rank of Leutnant of reserves, having earned the Iron Cross, second class, and the Wound Badge (he was honorably discharged due to a severe hand wound).
He had extensive experience in banking, trade and commerce (as well as in government service) and in September of 1933 he was appointed to the Prussian State Council by Hermann Göring and served as its secretary at the time of Wannsee Conference (thus becoming the close associate of the latter indeed).
At Wannsee Conference, Neumann requested that Jewish workers in firms essential to the war effort not be deported for the time being. His objection was not that they should be spared based on humanitarian or moral grounds, only that they not be deported before replacements could be found, thus temporarily keeping them for their economic benefit to the Reich. Thus, saving thousands of Jews.
After the war, Neumann was arrested by the Allies, but denied all knowledge of the Holocaust, even refusing to admit that he had been an attendee at the Wannsee Conference. No charges were ever brought against him and he was released due to poor health in mid-1948. He died peacefully in 1951 of acute circulatory failure.
True, it was Göring who tasked Heydrich with finding and implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question” – but everybody knew, that it was Hitler’s order and Göring was a mere intermediary (a courier even).
In reality, Göring did not care much about extermination of the Jews – but he did care a lot about making his Reichswerke (which pretty much controlled German wartime economy) operate at the maximum performance possible.
And when it needed irreplaceable Jewish workers, Göring wanted them in his employ – not in gas chambers or in shooting ranges. And when Göring (the second-in-command in the Reich) wanted something, he got it.
Enter Erich Neumann – close associate of Göring at the Office of a Four-Year Plan and his representative at Wannsee Conference. Like most of the attendees, he was a lawyer by training – he studied law (and economics) at the Universities of Freiburg, Leipzig and Halle-Wittenberg.
He was a Great War veteran – he fought bravely on the Eastern front, rising to the rank of Leutnant of reserves, having earned the Iron Cross, second class, and the Wound Badge (he was honorably discharged due to a severe hand wound).
He had extensive experience in banking, trade and commerce (as well as in government service) and in September of 1933 he was appointed to the Prussian State Council by Hermann Göring and served as its secretary at the time of Wannsee Conference (thus becoming the close associate of the latter indeed).
At Wannsee Conference, Neumann requested that Jewish workers in firms essential to the war effort not be deported for the time being. His objection was not that they should be spared based on humanitarian or moral grounds, only that they not be deported before replacements could be found, thus temporarily keeping them for their economic benefit to the Reich. Thus, saving thousands of Jews.
After the war, Neumann was arrested by the Allies, but denied all knowledge of the Holocaust, even refusing to admit that he had been an attendee at the Wannsee Conference. No charges were ever brought against him and he was released due to poor health in mid-1948. He died peacefully in 1951 of acute circulatory failure.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Otto Hofmann Provided Racial Experts for the Holocaust
The first step to annihilate Jewish population of territories controlled by Nazi Germany and its’ allies (European Axis powers) was, obviously, to identify those who had to be killed according to perverted perception of reality by the Nazis.
In other words, to determine, who was the Jew – which was the job for racial experts of the RuSHA – SS Race and Settlement Main Office. Formally, it was of the equal status with the RSHA (headed by Heydrich – the CEO of the “Holocaust Project”) so he invited to Wannsee Conference RuSHA Chief Otto Hofmann.
Hofmann had similar background to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller – he was also a highly decorated Great War veteran and also served in the Air Force (though Hofmann was Austrian, not German – he was born in Innsbruck).
At the outbreak of the Great War, Hofmann volunteered for service with the Royal Bavarian Army (like Hitler) at Landsberg am Lech and, from January 1915, saw front-line service with Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 8.
In March 1917, he was promoted to Leutnant and was assigned as an observer and a liaison officer to an Austro-Hungarian fighter unit on the Eastern front. On 20 June 1917, he was shot down over Romania and taken prisoner by the Russians.
However, he escaped from captivity after five weeks and returned to the German lines. He completed basic pilot training and was assigned to a reserve pilot unit before he was discharged in March 1919, having earned the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class and the Military Merit Order of Bavaria 3rd and 4th class with Swords.
Hofmann saw short-term service as an artilleryman in a Freikorps unit at the Bavarian-Czech border between April and October 1919. Married since July 1918, he entered civilian life in 1920 as a salesman in his father-in-law’s wholesale wine business at Nuremberg.
In 1925, he started his own business as an independent representative for several large wine companies from Germany and abroad. In April 1923, Hofmann became an early member of the Nazi Party, which was soon banned in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch. After the Party was re-founded in early 1925, Hofmann did not rejoin until August 1, 1929 – which still made him an Alter Kämpfer.
On April 1, 1931, Hofmann joined the SS. Shortly after the Nazi seizure of power, he left his wine business in April 1933 when he became a full-time SS functionary, attached to SS-Gruppe Süd in Munich as adjutant to the chief of the auxiliary political police.
On January 1, 1937, Hofmann was assigned to RuSHA, becoming its training officer for SS-Oberabschnitt West in Düsseldorf. On July 17, he was made deputy to the RuSHA Chief, SS-Obergruppenführer Günther Pancke.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, he virtually ran the entire organization due to Pancke being occupied with more important duties – he was as Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer “Mitte” (covering Anhalt, Brunswick, Southern Hanover and Magdeburg).
On December 16, Hofmann also took control as head of the RuSHA Race Office (Rassenamt). He was named Pancke’s successor as RuSHA Chief on July 9, 1940, and was appointed to hold the post “for the duration of the war”.
Hofmann knew personally several of the other attendees (which was another reason for inviting him), including Heydrich, with whom Hofmann had previously worked on issues of Germanisation in the occupied Eastern territories.
Moreover, Hofmann’s RuSHA office for years had compiled and maintained an index of individuals with partly Jewish origins, in order to assist in tracking down such persons not only in Germany but in other areas of Europe (and thus already was the key partner of RSHA in the “Holocaust Project”).
On July 8, 1945, Hofmann was arrested by the Allies (unbelievably, he turned himself in). Hofmann was indicted by the US Military Tribunal on July 1, 1947 and put on trial at Nuremberg on October 20th at the RuSHA Trial (no surprise here).
He was charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a criminal organization (SS). On 10 March 1948, he was found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which was later reduced to 15 years.
On April 7, 1954, Hofmann was released from Landsberg Prison, having served just under nine years. Between 1959 and 1982, Hofmann was questioned several times during preliminary investigations into war crimes of the Nazi era. In two instances, the investigations led to criminal proceedings against him.
However, Hofmann’s prior convictions prevented the prosecution from trying him again for the same crimes (“double jeopardy” principle), so he was limited to being questioned as a witness. So, both cases were eventually dismissed, and Hofmann died in Bad Mergentheim on December 31, 1982 at the ripe old age of 86.
In other words, to determine, who was the Jew – which was the job for racial experts of the RuSHA – SS Race and Settlement Main Office. Formally, it was of the equal status with the RSHA (headed by Heydrich – the CEO of the “Holocaust Project”) so he invited to Wannsee Conference RuSHA Chief Otto Hofmann.
Hofmann had similar background to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller – he was also a highly decorated Great War veteran and also served in the Air Force (though Hofmann was Austrian, not German – he was born in Innsbruck).
At the outbreak of the Great War, Hofmann volunteered for service with the Royal Bavarian Army (like Hitler) at Landsberg am Lech and, from January 1915, saw front-line service with Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 8.
In March 1917, he was promoted to Leutnant and was assigned as an observer and a liaison officer to an Austro-Hungarian fighter unit on the Eastern front. On 20 June 1917, he was shot down over Romania and taken prisoner by the Russians.
However, he escaped from captivity after five weeks and returned to the German lines. He completed basic pilot training and was assigned to a reserve pilot unit before he was discharged in March 1919, having earned the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class and the Military Merit Order of Bavaria 3rd and 4th class with Swords.
Hofmann saw short-term service as an artilleryman in a Freikorps unit at the Bavarian-Czech border between April and October 1919. Married since July 1918, he entered civilian life in 1920 as a salesman in his father-in-law’s wholesale wine business at Nuremberg.
In 1925, he started his own business as an independent representative for several large wine companies from Germany and abroad. In April 1923, Hofmann became an early member of the Nazi Party, which was soon banned in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch. After the Party was re-founded in early 1925, Hofmann did not rejoin until August 1, 1929 – which still made him an Alter Kämpfer.
On April 1, 1931, Hofmann joined the SS. Shortly after the Nazi seizure of power, he left his wine business in April 1933 when he became a full-time SS functionary, attached to SS-Gruppe Süd in Munich as adjutant to the chief of the auxiliary political police.
On January 1, 1937, Hofmann was assigned to RuSHA, becoming its training officer for SS-Oberabschnitt West in Düsseldorf. On July 17, he was made deputy to the RuSHA Chief, SS-Obergruppenführer Günther Pancke.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, he virtually ran the entire organization due to Pancke being occupied with more important duties – he was as Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer “Mitte” (covering Anhalt, Brunswick, Southern Hanover and Magdeburg).
On December 16, Hofmann also took control as head of the RuSHA Race Office (Rassenamt). He was named Pancke’s successor as RuSHA Chief on July 9, 1940, and was appointed to hold the post “for the duration of the war”.
Hofmann knew personally several of the other attendees (which was another reason for inviting him), including Heydrich, with whom Hofmann had previously worked on issues of Germanisation in the occupied Eastern territories.
Moreover, Hofmann’s RuSHA office for years had compiled and maintained an index of individuals with partly Jewish origins, in order to assist in tracking down such persons not only in Germany but in other areas of Europe (and thus already was the key partner of RSHA in the “Holocaust Project”).
On July 8, 1945, Hofmann was arrested by the Allies (unbelievably, he turned himself in). Hofmann was indicted by the US Military Tribunal on July 1, 1947 and put on trial at Nuremberg on October 20th at the RuSHA Trial (no surprise here).
He was charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a criminal organization (SS). On 10 March 1948, he was found guilty on all counts and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which was later reduced to 15 years.
On April 7, 1954, Hofmann was released from Landsberg Prison, having served just under nine years. Between 1959 and 1982, Hofmann was questioned several times during preliminary investigations into war crimes of the Nazi era. In two instances, the investigations led to criminal proceedings against him.
However, Hofmann’s prior convictions prevented the prosecution from trying him again for the same crimes (“double jeopardy” principle), so he was limited to being questioned as a witness. So, both cases were eventually dismissed, and Hofmann died in Bad Mergentheim on December 31, 1982 at the ripe old age of 86.
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Heinrich Müller Had Little to Do with the Holocaust
Except, of course, attending the Wannsee Conference which was a criminal conspiracy to commit serial mass murder (genocide of the Jews). Which made him as guilty as Reinhard Heydrich – or Adolf Eichmann.
Müller was brought to the conference (by his boss Reinhard Heydrich) for bureaucratic reasons: he was the nominal boss of Adolf Eichmann – head of the “Jewish” Referat IV-B4 which nominally belonged to Gestapo (hence the ‘IV’). In reality, however, Eichmann reported directly to Heydrich – to Müller’s relief.
Müller was born into a family of a Bavarian police officer so there is no surprise that he ended up becoming the chief of police in Germany – albeit political police. In his youth, he was a real forward thinker: just prior to the outbreak of the Great War he completed an apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic.
During the last year of the war, he served in the Luftstreitkräfte (air arm of the imperial German) as a pilot for an artillery spotting unit. He was very lucky (or very good pilot – or both) as chances for survival in this occupation were slim.
He was decorated several times for bravery (including the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, Bavarian Military Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords and Bavarian Pilots Badge). He was brave indeed – once he flew solo to bomb… Paris.
Soon after the war ended, he (predictably) joined the Bavarian Police.
Although not a member of any Freikorps, Müller was involved in the suppression of the communist risings in the early post-war years. After witnessing the shooting of hostages by the revolutionary “Red Army” in Munich during the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he acquired a lifelong hatred of communism – and most likely intense dislike of Jews (BSR was run by Jews).
During the years of the Weimar Republic, Heinrich Müller was head of the Munich Political Police Department, having risen quickly through the ranks due to his spirited efforts.
It was while serving in a police capacity in Munich that Müller first became acquainted with many members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) including Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, although during the Weimar period he supported the Bavarian People’s Party.
Interestingly, during the Nazi putsch that deposed the Bavarian government of Minister-President Heinrich Held, Müller advocated using force against the Nazis to his superiors. So, he was no friend of the Nazis either.
Once the Nazis seized power, Müller’s knowledge of communist activities placed him in high demand. Unlike all other attendees of Wannsee Conference, Müller did not subscribe to the Nazi ideology: he was quintessential apolitical cop.
Müller was determined to serve the German state, irrespective of what political form it took, and believed it was everyone’s duty, including his own, to obey his superiors without question.
Authors of an internal Nazi Party memorandum could not understand how “so odious an opponent of the movement” could become head of the Gestapo, especially since he had once referred to Hitler as “an immigrant unemployed house painter” and “an Austrian draft-dodger”. So, he was no friend of Der Führer either.
Another memorandum stated the Müller was by “no means a National Socialist” and would persecute the Nazis with the same zeal that he demonstrated persecuting the Left – if ordered to do so by his superiors.
Müller joined the SS in 1934… not being a member of NSDAP (something unheard of in the Third Reich). By 1936, with Heydrich head of the Gestapo, Müller was its operations chief (de-facto, it was run by the latter).
British author and translator Edward Crankshaw described Müller as “the arch-type non-political functionary” who was “in love with personal power and dedicated to the service of authority, the State”… regardless of its kind.
One of Müller’s first major acts occurred during the unprecedented Kristallnacht pogrom, when he ordered the arrest of between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews. Which most likely prevented a bloodbath as these were the most likely to resist (Russian pogroms proved that such resistance could lead to dozens of dead on both sides).
Heydrich also tasked Müller to create a centrally organized agency to deal with the eventual emigration of the Jews (which was done and had nothing to do with any violence against the Jews).
While the nominal chief of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was Reinhard Heydrich, it was Müller who actually run its operations. Shortly thereafter, Müller took official charge of this office but then handed control over to Adolf Eichmann.
In September 1939, when the Gestapo and other police organizations were consolidated under Heydrich into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Müller was made chief of the Gestapo (RSHA “Amt IV”). To get this position, he had to join NSDAP which he finally did. To distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller (a very common name), he became known as “Gestapo Müller”.
Müller did have full information about the Holocaust; however, there is no evidence that he was personally involved in the genocide of the Jews (Heydrich and then Kaltenbrunner gave orders directly to Eichmann bypassing Müller). However, he did pass certain orders to Einsatzgruppen.
Once the conference concluded, Müller, Heydrich, and Eichmann remained afterwards for additional “informal chats” – which, however, were between Heydrich and Eichmann with Müller being just present.
In April 1945, Müller was among the last of the Nazi loyalists assembled in the Führerbunker as the Red Army fought its way into the city center of Berlin. He was (allegedly) last seen there in the evening of May 1st.
From that day onwards, he was never seen or heard from again and no trace of Müller has ever been found after the war. Some historians are of the opinion that he was most likely killed or committed suicide during the chaotic fall of Berlin, but his body, if recovered, was never identified.
Another possibility is that he made a successful escape from the Führerbunker, reached Switzerland and joined Heinrich Himmler’s Die Neue SS (most likely, as its chief of security).
Müller was brought to the conference (by his boss Reinhard Heydrich) for bureaucratic reasons: he was the nominal boss of Adolf Eichmann – head of the “Jewish” Referat IV-B4 which nominally belonged to Gestapo (hence the ‘IV’). In reality, however, Eichmann reported directly to Heydrich – to Müller’s relief.
Müller was born into a family of a Bavarian police officer so there is no surprise that he ended up becoming the chief of police in Germany – albeit political police. In his youth, he was a real forward thinker: just prior to the outbreak of the Great War he completed an apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic.
During the last year of the war, he served in the Luftstreitkräfte (air arm of the imperial German) as a pilot for an artillery spotting unit. He was very lucky (or very good pilot – or both) as chances for survival in this occupation were slim.
He was decorated several times for bravery (including the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, Bavarian Military Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords and Bavarian Pilots Badge). He was brave indeed – once he flew solo to bomb… Paris.
Soon after the war ended, he (predictably) joined the Bavarian Police.
Although not a member of any Freikorps, Müller was involved in the suppression of the communist risings in the early post-war years. After witnessing the shooting of hostages by the revolutionary “Red Army” in Munich during the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he acquired a lifelong hatred of communism – and most likely intense dislike of Jews (BSR was run by Jews).
During the years of the Weimar Republic, Heinrich Müller was head of the Munich Political Police Department, having risen quickly through the ranks due to his spirited efforts.
It was while serving in a police capacity in Munich that Müller first became acquainted with many members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) including Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, although during the Weimar period he supported the Bavarian People’s Party.
Interestingly, during the Nazi putsch that deposed the Bavarian government of Minister-President Heinrich Held, Müller advocated using force against the Nazis to his superiors. So, he was no friend of the Nazis either.
Once the Nazis seized power, Müller’s knowledge of communist activities placed him in high demand. Unlike all other attendees of Wannsee Conference, Müller did not subscribe to the Nazi ideology: he was quintessential apolitical cop.
Müller was determined to serve the German state, irrespective of what political form it took, and believed it was everyone’s duty, including his own, to obey his superiors without question.
Authors of an internal Nazi Party memorandum could not understand how “so odious an opponent of the movement” could become head of the Gestapo, especially since he had once referred to Hitler as “an immigrant unemployed house painter” and “an Austrian draft-dodger”. So, he was no friend of Der Führer either.
Another memorandum stated the Müller was by “no means a National Socialist” and would persecute the Nazis with the same zeal that he demonstrated persecuting the Left – if ordered to do so by his superiors.
Müller joined the SS in 1934… not being a member of NSDAP (something unheard of in the Third Reich). By 1936, with Heydrich head of the Gestapo, Müller was its operations chief (de-facto, it was run by the latter).
British author and translator Edward Crankshaw described Müller as “the arch-type non-political functionary” who was “in love with personal power and dedicated to the service of authority, the State”… regardless of its kind.
One of Müller’s first major acts occurred during the unprecedented Kristallnacht pogrom, when he ordered the arrest of between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews. Which most likely prevented a bloodbath as these were the most likely to resist (Russian pogroms proved that such resistance could lead to dozens of dead on both sides).
Heydrich also tasked Müller to create a centrally organized agency to deal with the eventual emigration of the Jews (which was done and had nothing to do with any violence against the Jews).
While the nominal chief of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was Reinhard Heydrich, it was Müller who actually run its operations. Shortly thereafter, Müller took official charge of this office but then handed control over to Adolf Eichmann.
In September 1939, when the Gestapo and other police organizations were consolidated under Heydrich into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Müller was made chief of the Gestapo (RSHA “Amt IV”). To get this position, he had to join NSDAP which he finally did. To distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller (a very common name), he became known as “Gestapo Müller”.
Müller did have full information about the Holocaust; however, there is no evidence that he was personally involved in the genocide of the Jews (Heydrich and then Kaltenbrunner gave orders directly to Eichmann bypassing Müller). However, he did pass certain orders to Einsatzgruppen.
Once the conference concluded, Müller, Heydrich, and Eichmann remained afterwards for additional “informal chats” – which, however, were between Heydrich and Eichmann with Müller being just present.
In April 1945, Müller was among the last of the Nazi loyalists assembled in the Führerbunker as the Red Army fought its way into the city center of Berlin. He was (allegedly) last seen there in the evening of May 1st.
From that day onwards, he was never seen or heard from again and no trace of Müller has ever been found after the war. Some historians are of the opinion that he was most likely killed or committed suicide during the chaotic fall of Berlin, but his body, if recovered, was never identified.
Another possibility is that he made a successful escape from the Führerbunker, reached Switzerland and joined Heinrich Himmler’s Die Neue SS (most likely, as its chief of security).
Scribo, ergo sum
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RolandVT
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Adolf Eichmann Was No “Banality of Evil”
Hannah Arendt either did not know what she was talking about (at best) or was a deliberate liar (at worst). Because her concept of “banality of Evil” had nothing to do with history – or with psychology, for that matter. It was a rather crude anti-Nazi propaganda, cut and dry, plain and simple, loud and clear.
Nazi decisions actions that resulted in deliberate murder of millions, were monstrously, unspeakably evil – no doubt about that. Both of the Nazis in general – and of Adolf Eichmann in particular.
However, there was nothing “banal” about that Evil – in fact, exactly the opposite was true. In reality, Nazi evil was unique, because it was perpetrated by very smart, supremely intelligent, very gifted, highly educated individuals (more than half of Wannsee Conference attendees had doctorates – as did most commanding officers of Einsatzgruppen) who sincerely, deeply and passionately loved their country.
Their fundamental problem was that they were national-sociopaths and that their decisions and actions were based on misinterpreted facts, faulty logic – and did not use enough common sense. Adolf Eichmann included.
In reality, Eichmann was a talented, highly competent and very successful logistics and transportation manager who planned and executed shipment of over a million Jews to SS killing centers, mostly to Auschwitz (contrary to a popular misconception, he had little to do with Operation Reinhard).
On Heydrich’s orders, he put together Wannsee Conference, oversaw the stenographer who took the minutes (and other support staff), and prepared the official distributed record of the meeting.
True, Adolf Eichmann was no genius, sure – but he was no banality (or mediocrity) either. He did have some talents, but his most important qualities were that he was highly ambitious, very driven, very determined, very daring (to put it mildly) individual committed to accomplishing something really great. Ideally, something absolutely unique in human history. And he did – to the utter horror of mankind.
It is important to note that, unlike his boss Reinhard Heydrich (who was a genuine patriot of Germany), Eichmann did what he did not for his country – he did it for himself. For fame and recognition, sure – but mostly for the feeling of accomplishment – the key driving force for high achiever (which Eichmann was).
I seriously doubt that Eichmann hated the Jews (such characters are rarely, if ever, capable of intense hatred) or loved his country (ditto). I also doubt that Eichmann believed in (or even cared about) the “existential threat of Jews to Germany”, “existential racial war” or any other construct of Nazi ideology (that stemmed from perverted Nazi imagination). I do not think that he cared about ideology at all – most likely he even wasn’t a Nazi.
Both Nazis and the Jews (in radically different ways, of course) were mere tools for him. Tools to achieve what he wanted – a grandiose accomplishment, ideally absolutely unique in human history. Nothing more.
In his childhood, Otto Adolf Eichmann played the violin – as did Reinhard Heydrich all his life. This, most likely, established a certain bond between the two that ultimately resulted in genuinely diabolical partnership.
His poor school performance (happens all the time to gifted individuals) resulted in his father’s withdrawing him from the Realschule and enrolling him in the vocational college. It also gave him additional drive to succeed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.
He left without attaining a degree and joined his father’s new enterprise, the Untersberg Mining Company, where he worked for several months. Subsequently, he worked in sales for a number of companies which gave him excellent people skills that he utilized very successfully in his murderous activities.
His decision to pursue a career in the Nazi Party was made for him by a family friend and local SS leader Ernst Kaltenbrunner (later RSHA Chief and Eichmann’s boss). On his strong advice (order, actually – it appears that Kaltenbrunner found that Eichmann had potential to bring enormous value to NSDAP), Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party in April of 1932.
A few months after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in January 1933, NSDAP was banned in Austria. In addition, Eichmann lost his sales job… so he decided to move back to his native Germany.
Most likely due to some serious influence from Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann decided to join the SS – and did. After he attended a training program at the SS depot in Klosterlechfeld in August, Eichmann returned to the Austrian border in September, where he was assigned to lead an eight-man SS liaison team to guide Austrian Nazis into Germany and smuggle propaganda material from there into Austria.
When this unit was dissolved, he found himself guarding the Dachau concentration camp. He did not like it very much (to put it mildly), so requested transfer to the SD, to escape the “monotony” of military training and service at Dachau.
Eichmann was accepted into the SD and assigned to the sub-office on Freemasons, organizing seized ritual objects for a proposed museum and creating a card index of German Freemasons and Masonic organizations.
He prepared an anti-Masonic exhibition, which proved to be extremely popular. Visitors included Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and Baron Leopold von Mildenstein. Which provided Eichmann with excellent connections.
Von Mildenstein (the leading supporter of Zionists in NSDAP and in the SS), was so impressed with Eichmann that he invited him to join his Jewish Department, Section II/112 of the SD, at its Berlin headquarters.
Eichmann’s was assigned to prepare reports on the Zionist movement and various Jewish organizations. He took his job very seriously and even learned a modicum of Hebrew and Yiddish, gaining a reputation as a specialist in Zionist and Jewish matters… which was not exactly true (but still way better than anyone else’s).
In 1938, Eichmann was posted to Vienna to help organize Jewish emigration from Austria, which had just been integrated into the Reich through the Anschluss.[43] Jewish community organizations were placed under supervision of the SD and tasked with encouraging and facilitating Jewish emigration.
Funding came from money seized from other Jewish people and organizations, as well as donations from overseas, which were placed under SD control. Eichmann was very successful in his endeavor – the time he left Vienna in May 1939, nearly 100,000 Jews had left Austria legally, and many others had been smuggled out to Palestine and elsewhere.
After a posting in Prague to assist in setting up an emigration office there, Eichmann was transferred to Berlin in October 1939 to command the short-lived (because of the war) “Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration” for the entire Reich under Heydrich and Müller.
In December, Eichmann was given the command of “Jewish” RSHA Referat IV B4 nominally under Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller (in reality, Eichmann reported directly to RSHA Chief Reinhard Heydrich).
Heydrich announced Eichmann to be his “special expert”, in charge of arranging for all deportations into occupied Poland. The job entailed co-ordinating with police agencies for the physical removal of the Jews, dealing with their confiscated property, and arranging financing and transport.
Within a few days of his appointment, Eichmann formulated a plan to deport 600,000 Jews into the General Government. Which was not to be as it met stiff resistance from Hans Frank (governor of occupied Poland not annexed into the Reich) and Hermann Göring.
On March 24, 1940, the latter (the second-in-command in the Reich) forbade any further transports into the General Government unless cleared first by himself or Hans Frank.
Transports continued, but at a much slower pace than originally envisioned. From the start of the war until April 1941, around 63,000 Jews were transported into the ghettos of occupied Poland. On many of the trains in this period, up to a third of the deportees died in transit.
Eichmann’s most visible achievement was deportation of 437,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in May-July of 1944… after which things got really bizarre even by the standards of the Third Reich.
According to Eichmann, Himmler authorized him to allow emigration of a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks equipped to handle the wintry conditions on the Eastern Front. Nothing came of the proposal, as the Western Allies refused to consider the offer.
In June 1944 Eichmann was involved in negotiations that resulted in the rescue of 1,684 people, who were sent by train to safety in Switzerland in exchange for three suitcases full of diamonds, gold, cash, and securities. These valuables disappeared into the thin air after the war.
At the end of the war, Eichmann was captured by US forces and spent time in several camps for SS officers using forged papers that identified him as Otto Eckmann. He escaped from a work detail at Cham, Germany, when he realized that his identity had been discovered.
In 1948, Eichmann obtained a landing permit for Argentina and false identification under the name Ricardo Klement through the (in)famous Ratlines. He departed from Genoa by ship on June 17, 1950 and arrived in Buenos Aires a month later.
On May 11, 1960, Eichmann was captured near his house on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, Buenos Aires and smuggled out of the country to Israel. The legality of his trial in Jerusalem left much to be desired, but Eichmann earned the hangman’s noose more than a million times – so he got what he deserved.
Eichmann was hanged at an Israeli prison a few minutes past midnight on June 1, 1962. Within hours Eichmann’s body was cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Mediterranean Sea, outside Israeli territorial waters, by an Israeli Navy patrol boat.
Nazi decisions actions that resulted in deliberate murder of millions, were monstrously, unspeakably evil – no doubt about that. Both of the Nazis in general – and of Adolf Eichmann in particular.
However, there was nothing “banal” about that Evil – in fact, exactly the opposite was true. In reality, Nazi evil was unique, because it was perpetrated by very smart, supremely intelligent, very gifted, highly educated individuals (more than half of Wannsee Conference attendees had doctorates – as did most commanding officers of Einsatzgruppen) who sincerely, deeply and passionately loved their country.
Their fundamental problem was that they were national-sociopaths and that their decisions and actions were based on misinterpreted facts, faulty logic – and did not use enough common sense. Adolf Eichmann included.
In reality, Eichmann was a talented, highly competent and very successful logistics and transportation manager who planned and executed shipment of over a million Jews to SS killing centers, mostly to Auschwitz (contrary to a popular misconception, he had little to do with Operation Reinhard).
On Heydrich’s orders, he put together Wannsee Conference, oversaw the stenographer who took the minutes (and other support staff), and prepared the official distributed record of the meeting.
True, Adolf Eichmann was no genius, sure – but he was no banality (or mediocrity) either. He did have some talents, but his most important qualities were that he was highly ambitious, very driven, very determined, very daring (to put it mildly) individual committed to accomplishing something really great. Ideally, something absolutely unique in human history. And he did – to the utter horror of mankind.
It is important to note that, unlike his boss Reinhard Heydrich (who was a genuine patriot of Germany), Eichmann did what he did not for his country – he did it for himself. For fame and recognition, sure – but mostly for the feeling of accomplishment – the key driving force for high achiever (which Eichmann was).
I seriously doubt that Eichmann hated the Jews (such characters are rarely, if ever, capable of intense hatred) or loved his country (ditto). I also doubt that Eichmann believed in (or even cared about) the “existential threat of Jews to Germany”, “existential racial war” or any other construct of Nazi ideology (that stemmed from perverted Nazi imagination). I do not think that he cared about ideology at all – most likely he even wasn’t a Nazi.
Both Nazis and the Jews (in radically different ways, of course) were mere tools for him. Tools to achieve what he wanted – a grandiose accomplishment, ideally absolutely unique in human history. Nothing more.
In his childhood, Otto Adolf Eichmann played the violin – as did Reinhard Heydrich all his life. This, most likely, established a certain bond between the two that ultimately resulted in genuinely diabolical partnership.
His poor school performance (happens all the time to gifted individuals) resulted in his father’s withdrawing him from the Realschule and enrolling him in the vocational college. It also gave him additional drive to succeed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.
He left without attaining a degree and joined his father’s new enterprise, the Untersberg Mining Company, where he worked for several months. Subsequently, he worked in sales for a number of companies which gave him excellent people skills that he utilized very successfully in his murderous activities.
His decision to pursue a career in the Nazi Party was made for him by a family friend and local SS leader Ernst Kaltenbrunner (later RSHA Chief and Eichmann’s boss). On his strong advice (order, actually – it appears that Kaltenbrunner found that Eichmann had potential to bring enormous value to NSDAP), Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party in April of 1932.
A few months after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in January 1933, NSDAP was banned in Austria. In addition, Eichmann lost his sales job… so he decided to move back to his native Germany.
Most likely due to some serious influence from Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann decided to join the SS – and did. After he attended a training program at the SS depot in Klosterlechfeld in August, Eichmann returned to the Austrian border in September, where he was assigned to lead an eight-man SS liaison team to guide Austrian Nazis into Germany and smuggle propaganda material from there into Austria.
When this unit was dissolved, he found himself guarding the Dachau concentration camp. He did not like it very much (to put it mildly), so requested transfer to the SD, to escape the “monotony” of military training and service at Dachau.
Eichmann was accepted into the SD and assigned to the sub-office on Freemasons, organizing seized ritual objects for a proposed museum and creating a card index of German Freemasons and Masonic organizations.
He prepared an anti-Masonic exhibition, which proved to be extremely popular. Visitors included Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and Baron Leopold von Mildenstein. Which provided Eichmann with excellent connections.
Von Mildenstein (the leading supporter of Zionists in NSDAP and in the SS), was so impressed with Eichmann that he invited him to join his Jewish Department, Section II/112 of the SD, at its Berlin headquarters.
Eichmann’s was assigned to prepare reports on the Zionist movement and various Jewish organizations. He took his job very seriously and even learned a modicum of Hebrew and Yiddish, gaining a reputation as a specialist in Zionist and Jewish matters… which was not exactly true (but still way better than anyone else’s).
In 1938, Eichmann was posted to Vienna to help organize Jewish emigration from Austria, which had just been integrated into the Reich through the Anschluss.[43] Jewish community organizations were placed under supervision of the SD and tasked with encouraging and facilitating Jewish emigration.
Funding came from money seized from other Jewish people and organizations, as well as donations from overseas, which were placed under SD control. Eichmann was very successful in his endeavor – the time he left Vienna in May 1939, nearly 100,000 Jews had left Austria legally, and many others had been smuggled out to Palestine and elsewhere.
After a posting in Prague to assist in setting up an emigration office there, Eichmann was transferred to Berlin in October 1939 to command the short-lived (because of the war) “Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration” for the entire Reich under Heydrich and Müller.
In December, Eichmann was given the command of “Jewish” RSHA Referat IV B4 nominally under Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller (in reality, Eichmann reported directly to RSHA Chief Reinhard Heydrich).
Heydrich announced Eichmann to be his “special expert”, in charge of arranging for all deportations into occupied Poland. The job entailed co-ordinating with police agencies for the physical removal of the Jews, dealing with their confiscated property, and arranging financing and transport.
Within a few days of his appointment, Eichmann formulated a plan to deport 600,000 Jews into the General Government. Which was not to be as it met stiff resistance from Hans Frank (governor of occupied Poland not annexed into the Reich) and Hermann Göring.
On March 24, 1940, the latter (the second-in-command in the Reich) forbade any further transports into the General Government unless cleared first by himself or Hans Frank.
Transports continued, but at a much slower pace than originally envisioned. From the start of the war until April 1941, around 63,000 Jews were transported into the ghettos of occupied Poland. On many of the trains in this period, up to a third of the deportees died in transit.
Eichmann’s most visible achievement was deportation of 437,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in May-July of 1944… after which things got really bizarre even by the standards of the Third Reich.
According to Eichmann, Himmler authorized him to allow emigration of a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks equipped to handle the wintry conditions on the Eastern Front. Nothing came of the proposal, as the Western Allies refused to consider the offer.
In June 1944 Eichmann was involved in negotiations that resulted in the rescue of 1,684 people, who were sent by train to safety in Switzerland in exchange for three suitcases full of diamonds, gold, cash, and securities. These valuables disappeared into the thin air after the war.
At the end of the war, Eichmann was captured by US forces and spent time in several camps for SS officers using forged papers that identified him as Otto Eckmann. He escaped from a work detail at Cham, Germany, when he realized that his identity had been discovered.
In 1948, Eichmann obtained a landing permit for Argentina and false identification under the name Ricardo Klement through the (in)famous Ratlines. He departed from Genoa by ship on June 17, 1950 and arrived in Buenos Aires a month later.
On May 11, 1960, Eichmann was captured near his house on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, Buenos Aires and smuggled out of the country to Israel. The legality of his trial in Jerusalem left much to be desired, but Eichmann earned the hangman’s noose more than a million times – so he got what he deserved.
Eichmann was hanged at an Israeli prison a few minutes past midnight on June 1, 1962. Within hours Eichmann’s body was cremated, and his ashes scattered in the Mediterranean Sea, outside Israeli territorial waters, by an Israeli Navy patrol boat.
Scribo, ergo sum