An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (George L. Mosse Series In Modern European Cultural and ... and Intellectual History (Paperback)) 0299234649, 9780299234645

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AN UNCOMPROMISING GENERATION

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

GEORGE L. MOSSE SERIES IN MODERN EUROPEAN CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Advisory Board Steven E. Aschheim Hebrew University ofJerusalem

Stanley G. Payne University of Wisconsin-l\'1adison

Annette Becker Universite Paris X-Nanterre

Anson Rabinbach Princeton University

Christopher Browning University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David J. Sorkin University of Wisconsin-Madison

Natalie Zemon Davis University of Toronto Saul Friedlander University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles Emilio Gentile Universittl di Roma "La Sapienza"

John S. Tortorice University of Wisconsin- Madison Joan Wallach Scott Institute for Advanced Study Jay Winter Yale University

Gert Hekma University ofA1nsterdam

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

An Uncompromising Generation The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office

Michael Wildt Translated by

TOM LAMPERT

THE UN IVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PR ESS

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The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The publication of this work was supported by a grant from the George L. Mosse Program at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

'fhe Universit)' of Wisconsin Press 19,10 Monroe Street. }rd ~loor 1\-tadiso n. Wiscon.s in 53711 . 2059

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Translation copyright () 2009 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin Sy1rib.JU01..c•f·busl-pl••fO.thtRcichSN

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The fact that Ehlich joined the SS in June 1932, a year before the seizure of power, indicates that even as the citizen of small town he had not aban doned politics. Moreover, Ehlich openly displayed his political affiliation at a time when it was not yet opportune for local dignitaries to belong to the NSDAP or to the SS (the National Socialist landslide election victory occurred only one month later). Ehlich's interest in politics, in particular in racial issues, constituted a long-standing and obvious alternative to practicing medicine. When the opportunity to switch professions arose, he sei1.ed it without hesitation. Nor was civil service at the Saxon Interior Ministry the goal of his engagement. After a year he decided to dedicate himself entirely to the SD.

Deployable throughout Europe: Walter Blume Walter Blume was born in Dortmund in 1906 the son of a senior secondary school teacher and grew up in a Protestant household. He studied law in Bonn. Jena, and Munster. "In order to become acquainted with the frontiers ofGermandom (Grenzlandsdeutschtum];' he wrote in his SS resume in 1935, "I took extended trips through Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark during holidays.''•' Blume passed his first state law examination in January 1930 and his second state law examination three years later, receiving his doctorate in law in 1933. Like many other young graduates beginning their legal careers, he could consider himself fortunate to have been appointed to an unpaid auxiliary judge at the district court in Dortmund. He would probably have gone on to pursue a normal career in law if the National Socialist seizure of power had not offered him unexpected opportunities. In the Einsatzgruppen trial in Nuremburg after the war, Blume testified that a well-known lawyer had pointed out to him in 1933 that it was possible for him to pursue an administrative career and tried to help him get a position at police headquarters.64 Young lawyers were in great demand. Sebastian Haffner, who at this time worked as a Referendar, or legal apprentice, at the Berlin Superior Court, reported that young lawyers were highly sought after. Haffner hi1nself received letters of the National Socialist Lawyers Union stating that his was the generation that would establish the new German Reich. Haffner commented, "I dropped the letters in the wastebasket, but not everybody did that. One could sense that the Referendars felt their increasing importance. They, not the Kammergerichtsrats [superior court judges], were the ones who now knowledgeably discussed

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court gossip in the breaks. You could hear the invisible field nlarshal's batons rattling in their bags."65 Blume seized the opportunity and was, as he wrote in 1934, "entrusted on March 1, 1933, with the leadership of the political division at police headquarters in Dortmund by Police Chief and SA-Gruppenfuhrer Wilhelm Schepmann, who had been recently appointed to his post on the occasion of the National Socialist revolution:'66 In 1947 Blume made no secret of his political attitude at the time. He said he had been raised in a politically conservative household and had always rejected the idea of class warfare. "Instead I regarded as correct the political idea of the Volksgemeinschaft as represented by the NSDAP." When asked about the persecution of Jews, he responded, "I fundamentally approved of efforts to gradually reduce the disproportionally large number of Jews in public life in Germany, in civil service, in the liberal professions, etc., to a percentage that corresponded to their overall percentage of the German population. I also considered it necessary to stop the unlimited influx of so-called Eastern Jews from Poland into Germany, which had occurred continuously since 1918 and which had led to the dramatic rise of anti-Semitism in Germany."67 It would be difficult to imagine a defendant charged with mass murder and facing a possible death sentence expressing more openly his agreement with the National Socialist Party's anticommunism and antiSemitism. On May 1, 1933, the day he began working for the Dortmund police department, Walter Blume joined the NSDAP (membership number 3,282,505) and the SA. In March 1935 he was transferred to the SS. From this point on he also worked for the SD. Like all other high-ranking Gestapo officers, his place of work changed continuously. This rotation not only allowed leading RSHA members to gather diverse professional experience but also conditioned a high degree of flexibility and operational readiness.63 Blume remained chief of the Gestapo in Dortmund until the fall of 1934. when he was transferred to the Central Gestapo Office in Berlin. Several months later he was assigned the leadership of the State Police bureaus in Halle and Hannover. In December 1935 Blume filed a report from Halle about his success in persecuting Jews. It has proved important, he wrote, that the "treatment of the Jewish question be transferred to special officials who then deal with the matter continually and exclusively:• The intensive cooperation with the SD, he continued, has proved to be "very valuable." He reported proudly: "1.) Jews avoid moving to Halle. 2.) There has been an increased

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emigration. 3.) The almost complete withdrawal of Jews from public life in Halle can be observed:'.. Blume continued to be promoted. On December 1, 1939, he was named head of the Gestapo in Berlin and simultaneously made a senior government official. A year and a half later, in March 1941, he was transferred to the RSHA as director of the important personnel division (Group I A) in Office I under Bruno Streckenbach and became one of the latter's closest colleagues. In June 1941 Blume- who had actively participated at the RSHA in putting together the personnel for the Einsatzgruppen-was appointed leader ofSonderkommando 7a in Einsatzgruppe B. After the war he was tried in the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial before a U.S. military court for crimes against humanity. Blume returned to Berlin in September 1941 (by mid-September Einsatzgruppe B had, by its own account, killed almost 24,000 people'") and reassumed his work as head of personnel at the RSHA. Nine months later, in June 1942, Blume was "deployed" again, this time as head of Security Police units in a Sonderaktion during "antipartisan warfare" in Slovenia. Himmler's personal orders stated that this operation should be "purposeful, hard, and ruthless:"' During his trial in Nuremberg Blume insisted that he was "very proud" of his service in Slovenia. He was subsequently transferred to Diisseldorf as Inspector of the Security Police for almost a year before being appointed Commander of the Security Police and the SD in Athens in August 1943. Historian Mark Mazower has characterized Blume as "the real force behind the SS in Greece:· arguing that Blume understood how to transform the Commander of the Security Police office in Athens into the center of the entire German terror apparatus in Greece." Beginning in September 1943 a branch of Eichmann's Section IV B4, led first by Dieter Wisliceny and then by Anton Burger, was established in Blume's office in Athens in order to deport Jews from the Greek mainland, in particular Athens. Earlier that year Jews from Salonika had been deported to Auschwitz. For Christmas Blume gave his subordinates selected articles of children's clothing that had belonged to Greek Jews who had fled or been murdered. 73 Blume's relentless terrorist actions against anyone even suspected of having contact with the partisans or the Allies ultimately brought him into conflict even with the German Foreign Office, which correctly feared that in the face of the U.S. advance these terror tactics would only drive Greeks to the resistance. However, before this conflict between the Foreign Office and the RSHA could become an open dispute, the German Army declared 0191t1zea by

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Bythe timt TerbovtnarrivtdinOslo,thebasisfor1heSSandpoliceapparatus had al ready bttn established. The German Armed Forces Operational Staff, 1he Foreign Office, and Wilhelm Stuchrt ill called on Himmler to appoint a suitable person for the internal administration. The Reichsfilhrer·SS selected Dr. Walter Stahlecker. wOO was at the time Commandtrofthe Security Polkeand the SD in the Protectorate 8ohemia and Moravia and who was already on his way to Oslo on April 16. On April 20 Hitler discuSKd the fundamentals of German policy in Norway with Terboven. Hi mmler.GOring, and Bormann. On the same day Hcydrich issued orders to prepue immediately the deployment of the Security Police and the SD in Norway.'" Two regimenH ofWaffen·SS and an Einsatzgruppe of the S.,curity Police and the SD - wh ich was composed of approximately 200 men, incl uding Paul Opitz and Dr. Siegfried Engel-departed for Norway on April 2s. Walter Rau ff, head of the Technical Division at the RSHA, also traveled to Norway to organize intelligence contacts. Stahlecker. nowCommanderoftheSecu rity Police and SD in Norway. U11 igned the Einsatzkommandos to t heir locations: Olso, Bergen, Trondheim, Kri stiansund, and StaVllnger, where thcy opcrated more or less as field offices of the RSHA . Stahlecker him self used the former Norwegian foreign min is1ry in Oslo as his service building."

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chberg where he was employed. At his interrogation he adn1itted his true identity and that he had headed a group in RSHA Office VI SD Foreign.•• Except for those who were able to avoid arrest through suicide or flight, almost all RSHA members were detained after 1945 because of their affiliation with the SS and the RSHA. Even those such as Engel and Steimle, who adopted assumed na1nes and attempted to live underground as agricultural laborers, were discovered at the latest in 1947 or 1948 and arrested. These men, however, received neither long sentences nor draconian punishments. Dr. Emil Berndorff, the head of protective custody at the RSHA and responsible for numerous people being sent to concentration camps. had hidden in Schleswig-Holstein at the end of the war, working for a farmer near Husum. The British occupational authority located him there and arrested him in mid-December 1945. Berndorff was initially brought to the interrogation camp in Pion, then transferred to the Neumiinster detainment camp, and later sent to the camp in Fallingbostel where he was placed before a de-Nazification court in 1947 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment for his affiliation with a criminal organization- the Gestapo and the SS. However, the court credited the time Bemdorff had spent in detention, which meant that he was able leave the camp in April 1950. By order of the general state prosecutor for the Berlin District Court, Berndorff's punishment was expunged fro1n the criminal record in November 1955, which meant that he could now regard himself as an unblem ished citizen. 20 Nevertheless, members of the RSHA could not have foreseen that their postwar detainments would be so brief and their de-Nazification sentences so mild. On the contrary, the attempts by RSHA perpetrators to go underground in order to avoid arrest makes clear that they expected to be punished. They were convinced that they would be called to account for their actions. In the first year after the war the Allies detained more than 250,000 people, a clear indication of their interest in removing the former Nazi elite. Allied military tribunals tried more than 5,000

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people, convicting 4,000 and sentencing 688 to death. The Allies also turned 6,ooo prisoners over to non -Allied countries, including Poland and Eastern and southeastern European nations, where many of them, including Vogt, Strickner, Roth, and Stage, had to reckon with the death penalty.1' The preparation and implementation of the Nuremberg trials left no doubt from the beginning about the intention of the Allied victors of putting on trial and convicting those people responsible for National Socialist crimes.

Nuremberg Trials Already during the war, when internationally the public became aware of the mass murder and the war crimes of the National Socialists, there had been demands that those responsible be tried and convicted for their crimes. At the beginning of October 1942 London and Washington announced the formation of a United Nations Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes (later the UN War Crimes Commission) that began its work only a year later. At the beginning of November 1942 Moscow followed with an announcement that it was introducing its own commission for the investigation of such crimes. In 1943 the first Soviet trial against German war criminals took place in Kharkov.22 The declaration made at the Th ird Moscow Conference on November 1, 1943, represented a milestone in that Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union announced that all war criminals would be identified and turned over to those countries where their crimes had been committed. However, the three Allies wanted to decide the fate of the major war criminals them selves.ll The Allies also agreed that these should not be protracted legal proceeding but rapid trials, if possible drumhead courts-martial. Particularly the British War Cabinet was opposed to the trials becoming prolonged public sensations. Supporters of the trials ultimately gained the upper hand in the United States after Murray C. Bernays, an attorney working for the U.S. army, cut the legal Gordian knot by suggesting that the leading representatives of the National Socialist regime, including the SA, the SS, and the Gestapo, be tried before an international tribunal for the conspiracy "to commit murder, terrorism and the destruction of peaceful populations in violation of the laws of war:' Roosevelt did not object to the memorandum of January 1, 1945, signed by the secretary of state, the secretary of war, and the attorney general that took up precisely this idea, and after the president's

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death on April 12, 1945, his successor, Harry Truman, expressly supported it. At the beginning of May the British cabinet also announced its approval of a trial by an international tribunal." The legal status of the trial was worked out at an Allied conference in London in the sumn1er of 1945. The Charter of the International Military Tribunal of August 8, 1945, defined the subject of the trial as follows: "Crimes Against Peace": planning, preparing, initiating, or waging a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties; "War Crimes": the murder, ill -treatment, or deportation to slave labor of civilian population or prisoners of war; the killing of hostages; the plundering and wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages; "Crimes Against Humanity": murder, extermination, enslavement of the civilian population; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds. Article 10 stated that groups and organizations could also be declared criminal by the tribunal and that members of these organizations could be brought to trial for their membership.25 The trial of the major war criminals began in Nuremberg on November 14, 1945. The crimes of the Reich Security Main Office were the central focus of the evidence presented against Ernst Kaltenbrunner and against the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD as criminal organizations. Major Warren F. Farr designated the a1nalgamation of the SS and the German police as a "working partnership" made up of Gestapo, Criminal Police, and SD under the leadership of Himmler, which "resulted in the end in repressive and unrestrained police activity:· The SD identified opponents, and the Criminal Police or the Gestapo arrested them and placed them in concentration camps. the tortuous and murderous conditions of which were central points in the indictrnent. As exarnples of the persecution and extermination of Jews, Farr identified the gassing trucks of the RSHA, the obliteration of the Warsaw ghetto, and the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. The SD also played an important role in the preparation of German aggressions, which were central to the points in the indictment regarding the conspiracy to com1nit a war of aggression and crimes against freedom.'6 Colonel Robert Storey presented the indictment against the Gestapo. In contrast to the SS and the SD (which rema.ined organizations of the Nazi Party), the Gestapo was a state organization, Storey argued, with a close working relationship to the SD. While the SD had served "primarily as oig1tlze1lby

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an intelligence-gathering agency;' the Gestapo was "the executive agency of the police system." Storey's characterization of the RSHA proved to be influential for the subsequent proceedings: "I might say here parenthetically, if the Tribunal please, that we like to think of the RSHA as being the so-called administrative office through which a great many of these organizations were administered and then a number of these organizations, including the Gestapo, maintaining their separate identity as operational organizations."" Storey distinguished among intelligence service, administration, and executive or law-enforcement authority, regarding RSHA Office III (SD Domestic) as the "internal intelligence organization of the police system:· In his view the responsibility of Office VI (SD Foreign) was limited to foreign political intelligence, of Office VII to "ideological research." He regarded only the Gestapo (Office IV) and the Criminal Police (Office V) as executive bodies. The SD, he argued, should be considered a criminal organization only because it had cooperated with the Gestapo and had been a part of the SS. Drawing on the RSHA schedule-of-business plan of March 1, 1941 (submitted as document L-219), Storey presented to the tribunal an organizational chart of the RSHA that emphasized the apparently clean separation of offices, groups, and sections with separate responsibilities defined in terms of information collection and law enforcement, which significantly influenced the prosecution's perspective, despite the fact that the long chain of concrete crimes Storey presented the court whether the "Bullet decree:· commando order, or the mass murders committed by the Einsatzgruppen-repeatedly revealed the links between the SD and the Gestapo. Given the knowledge available to prosecutors at the time and their lack of familiarity with novel police institutions such as the RSHA, they assumed there had been distinct and separate functions within the RSHA that had to be evaluated differently in legal terms. This allowed witnesses from the SD and the Gestapo as well as the defendants themselves to reinterpret this division as a form of nonparticipation. The first witness, Otto Ohlendorf, emphasized that when he had been appointed leader of Einsatzgruppe D he had assumed a completely new function entirely separate from his position as head of RSHA Office Ill. The term "SD," Ohlendorf insisted, had been used incorrectly over the course of the years as a comprehensive designation for the Security Police and the SD. He argued that "SD" had originally been a designation for anyone belonging to the SS through the SD Main Office. Introducing an argument that would be used repeatedly, Ohlendorf claimed that the SD had possessed Digitlzea by

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no executive power and had remained purely an intelligence organ. The RSHA, he argued, had been nothing more than a "camouflage designation" to allow the chief of the Security Police and the SD, whenever necessary. to use one or the other letterheads. whether as party organization, police. or ministerial authority, at any particular time." According to Ohlendorf, the SD was. "as a niatter of fact, the only authority offering criticism within the Reich and reporting facts from an objective point of view to top levels.""' Walter Schellenberg, who was interrogated on the following day, made similar claims. emphasizing that the SD Foreign Office. as the political secret service of the Reich. had worked only abroad and had been merely "an information service."'° As a defense witness for the Gestapo, Werner Best emphasized the con· tinuiry between the political police in the Nazi era and during the Weimar Republic as well as the fact that the actions taken by the Gestapo had corresponded to existing Gern1an laws. According to Best. the Gestapo had been responsible only for "the prosecution of political crimes, that is to say, for actions that were committed for political reasons or motives in violation of the criminal law and, on the other hand, the taking of police measures for the prevention of such crin1es:· In other words, it had taken prophylactic measures to ensure that such crimes were not committed. Gestapo stations. Best continued, were staffed predominantly with officers from existing police stations. and German officials placed great importance on continuing to serve the state even when the government had changed. Best argued that within the Gestapo as well there had been distinctions between the higher administrative officials and midlevel and low-level executive officials. When asked about the indisputable crimes of the Gestapo. Best responded that in these cases the Gestapo has been used as "an instrument for the carrying out of matters which were alien to the Police sphere. l might say they were misused and abused along these lines."" Ohlendorf, Schellenberg, and Best could do nothing to alter the fact that the military tribunal condemned the Gestapo and the SD as criminal organizations. Although the prosecutors and the tribunal judges did not, for the most part, recognize the actual intimate connections and overlap of personnel between the SD and the State Police leadership, to say nothing of the conceptual amalgamation of the SD and the police into a "state protection corps;· the evidence presented at the trial was sufficient to declare the SS. the Gestapo. and the SD crim inal organizations. The tribunal determined that "from a functional point of view both the Gestapo and the SD were important and closely related groups within the organization of the Security Police and the so:· which stood under a single command (that ofHeydrich and later Kaltenbrunner), had a single headquarters (the Digitlz"" by

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RSHA) and its own command channels, and worked as a single organization in the occupied territories. While the tribunal did distinguish between the SD as an intell.igcnce service and the Gestapo as the state police, this had no legal significance for the crimes committed by the Security Police and the SD. The Gestapo and SD were identified as being responsible for "the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labour programme and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war." One significant consequence of this judgment was that the Criminal Police and the Order Police were not included, although they had also participated in the mass crimes of the Nazi regime. The military tribunal regarded them as loyal organizations of a dictatorship and thus did not define them as criminal organizations. As a result, members of the Criminal Police and the Order Police were for many years neglected by law enforcement agencies investigating and prosecuting National Socialist crimes. 31 Ernst Kaltenbrunner vehemently contested all charges against him and claimed that he had taken over from Himmler only the intelligence service and not the executive domains of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police for which, he argued, Millier and Nebe had been solely responsible. Kaltenbrunner, however, was unable to deny either the evidence presented by the prosecution or his position as head of the RSHA. The tribunal found Kaltenbrunner guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging. Kaltenbrunner, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank. Frick, Streicher, Fritz Sauckel, Jodi, and Seyss-Inquart were executed on October 16, 1946. In accord with Allied Control Council Law Number 10 of December 10, 1945, regarding the punishment of persons guilty of war crimes, crimes against peace and against humanity, U.S. military tribunals presided over twelve subsequent trials of high-ranking members of the Nazi Party, government, military, and business leaders, physicians, lawyers, and Otto Ohlendorf and other Einsatzkommando leaders.n Twenty-three men were indicted in the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial (Case 9). including ten directly from the RSHA: Otto Ohlendorf, head of RSHA Office III SD Domestic and leader of Einsatzgruppe Din 1941-42 Heinz Jost, head of Office VI SD Foreign and leader of Einsatzgruppe A in 1942 Erwin Schulz, head of Office I Personnel and leader of Einsatzkom~ando s if 1941 Original from o;g;11zea by

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Franz Alfred Six, head of Office VI I Ideological Research and leader of the Vorkon1mando Moscow in 1941 Walter Blume, head of Group I A Personnel and leader of Sonderkommando 7a in 1941-43 Martin Sandberger, head of Section I B 3 and of Group VI A and leader ofSonderkommando 1a in 1941-43 'A' illy Seibert, head of Section III D 2 and leader of the SD division for the staff of Einsatzgruppe D in 1941 and 1942 Eugen Stein1le, head of Group VI Band leader of Sonderkommando 7a in 1941 and of Sonderkommando 4a in 1942 and 1943 'A1alter Haensch, head of Section ID 2 SS Disciplinary Matters and leader ofSonderkommando 4b in 1942 Gustav Nosske, head of Section IV D 5 Occupied Eastern Territories and leader of Einsatzkommando 12 in 1941 and 1942 All of the defendants pleaded "not guilty:'-" The trial proceeded in accordance with the London Charter of August 8, 1945, which had been adopted for the trial of the major war criminals: the reading of the indictment; the accused entering pleas of guilty or not guilty; presentation of the evidence by the prosecution and defense; interrogation of witnesses and defendants; addresses of the defense and prosecution; final statement by the defendants; judgment and punishment. The evidence presented at the Einsatzgruppen trial was drawn almost exclusively from the "Situation Reports USSR'' (from May 1942 on "Reports from the Occupied Eastern Territories"), which had been compiled at the RSHA on the basis of individual reports by the Einsatzgruppen between June 23, 1941, and May 21, 1943.Js The defendants' strategy. which was don1inated by Otto Ohlendorf, centered primarily on the claim that a central order by Hitler himself to kill all Jews in the occupied Soviet territories had been issued before the deployment of the Einsatzgruppen. The defendants claimed that they had acted in accordance with Hitler's highest orders- which in itself would not have relieved them of culpability since Article 8 of the London Charter expressly stated that the fact that defendants acted pursuant to orders of their governn1ent or of a superior would not free thern from responsibility. However, such an order could be considered as a mitigating factor in detern1ining the punishn1ent if the tribunal deeded this justified. Thus, while the defendants could not expect to escape punishment through this strategy, they could at least hope to be spared the death penalty.JO 01g1tizea by

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The proceedings, which were headed by U.S. military judge Michael A. Musmanno, with Telford Taylor serving as the chief prosecutor, took place between September 15, 1947, and April 10, 1948. Interrogat ions of the defendants were limited primarily to prosecutors confronting them with their own situation reports and defense attorneys calling into question the credibility of these reports. The defense attempted to demonstrate that the murders committed by the Einsatzgruppen had been acts of self-defense against partisans or reprisals ordered by superiors. They even compared the executions by the Einsatzgruppen to the victims of the Allied bombings of German and Japanese cities. In the light of the documented crimes committed by the defendants, however. this sophistry had little effect. The tribunal's judgment, which was issued on April 8, 1948, made starkly clear the judges' horror at what they had heard and seen. At the outset it must be acknowledged that the facts with which the Tribunal must deal in this Opinion are so beyond the experience of normal man and the range of man-made phenomena that only the most complete judicial inquiry, and the most exhaustive trial, could verify and confirm them. Although the principal accusation is murder and, unhappily, man has been killing man ever since the days of Cain, the charge of purposeful homicide in this case reaches such fantastic proportions and surpasses such credible limits that believability must be bolstered with assurance a hundred times repeated . . .. Certainly never before have twenty-three men been brought into court to answer to the charge of destroying over one million of their fellow-human beings. There have been other trials imputing to administrators and officials responsibility for mass murder, but in this case the defendants are not simply accused of planning or directing wholesale killings through channels. They are not charged with sitting in an office hundreds and thousands of miles away from the slaughter. It is asserted with particularity that these men were in the field actively s uperintending, controlling, directing, and taking an active part in the bloody harvest:"

The tribunal issued more death sentences in this case than in any of the other follow-up trials. Fourteen defendants were given the death penalty, two were sentenced to life imprisonment, three were given twenty-year sentences, and two were given ten-year sentences. Of the RSHA members who were defendants, Ohlendorf, Sandberger, Steimle, Seibert, Haensch, and Blume were sentenced to death by hanging. In its individual judgments the tribunal stated that the evidence of the case had revealed not one but two Otto Ohlendorfs: the student, lecturer, and scholarly analyst and the head of an Einsatzgruppe responsible for the extermination of Digitized by

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90,000 people. Martin Sandberger, the tribunal argued in its judgment, had willingly committed mass murder. At Riga, his Einsatzkon1mando's first stop. the situation report describes the destruction of synagogues, the fomenting of anti-Semitic pogroms, and the liquidation of 400 Jews. While Sandberger attempted to place the entire blame for these murders on the German secret military police and the Estonian militia, he admitted his responsibility for the execution of 350 captured Estonian Communists. In its judgment of Eugen Stei1nle the tribunal stated that between September and December 1941, when Steimle was the leader ofSonderkommando 7a, the unit had executed at least 500 people; later, when Steimle led Sonderkommando 4te Zeitu>1g, Marion Donhoff of Die Zeit, and writ· ers for the publication Christ u11d Welt, attempted to a certain extent to reestablish the lost honor of traditional German elites by calling for their political-moral rehabilitation. Former generals of the German Wehrmacht such as Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel, who now served as Adenauer's key advisers for rearmament, tied the fate of convicted war criminals in Landsberg directly to the question of the defense alliance. The Council of Protestant Churches in Germany composed memoranda, and the Bundestag and Adenauer raised the issue with McCloy. West German Federal President Theodor Heuss also intervened on behalf the prisoners. On January 7, 1951, more than 3,000 West Germans demonstrated before the Landsberg prison, calling for a reprieve of the death sentences-" On January 31, 1951, McCloy issued his decisions. He reduced the time of imprisonment in 52 cases; in 32 of these the reductions were substantial enough that the prisoner could be released immediately. McCloy reduced 17 of the 20 life-imprisonment sentences and commuted 10 of the 15 death sentences to prison terms. 4 of these to life imprisonment. He also confirmed 5 death sentences- against SS-Economy and Administrative Main Office head Oswald Pohl as well as Einsatzkommando or Einsatzgruppe heads Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Nau1nann, and Otto Ohlendorf. The five were executed in Landsberg on June 7, 1951. These were the last execu· tions of war criminals in the Federal Republic of Germany. As a result of McCloy's decision, nine of the "red jackets"- death row inmates in Landsberg were issued red uniforms- from the Einsatzgrup· pen trial were spared the death penalty, including Walter Blume (whose sentence was now twenty-five years' imprisonment), Walter Haensch (fifteen years' imprisonment), Martin Sandberger (life imprisonment), Willy Seibert (fifteen years' imprisonment), and Eugen Steimle (twenty years' imprisonment). Heinz Jost's and Gustav Nosske's life sentences were reduced to ten years' imprisonment, and both were released from prison in December 1951 for "good behavior." Franz Alfred Six, whose sentence had been reduced from twenty years to ten years, was released in October 1952. Erwin Schulz's sentence was reduced from twenty years to fifteen years." Digitized by

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McCloy's decision marked a caesura. It was now merely a question of time as to when the remaining prisoners would also be released. Thus, the ostensibly levelheaded faction regained the upper hand over the renitent part of the German population who, in their refusal to admit the horrendous deeds of those convicted of war crimes, threatened to present an offensive image of postwar Germany to the outside world and nourished fears that Nazism was still virulent among the population. One of the characteristics of these debates in West Germany was that they blurred the boundaries even regarding crimes such as the mass murder of defenseless women and children committed by the Einsatzgruppen. Respectable and honorable Germans offered support to Einsatzkommando leaders who had been convicted of multiple murders without apparently being able to distinguish between the soldiers who had followed the orders of their superiors and the men who had organized and initiated the racist mass murder.

Postwar Careers The majority ofleading RSHA members were interned in detention camps and subsequently tried by de-Nazification courts, which in 1948 and 1949 tended to issue prison sentences that were equivalent to the detention time the prisoners had already served. On their release immediately after the tri· als, these men faced no further impediment in their return to middle-class security and decorum. Nevertheless, former Gestapo and Criminal Police officers who wanted to be reinstated in the German civil service continued to encounter a number of difficult, if not insurmountable, hurdles. In Article 131 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany the parliamentary council decreed that there would be federal legislation to regulate the legal status of persons, including refugees and expellees, who had been employed in public service on May 8. 1945, and had not yet been reinstated or who were employed in positions not corresponding to their previous ones. This meant that the civil service lobby was the sole group in West Germany that was able to anchor its right to reparations in the Basic Law. According to a census of the West German government, approximately 430,000 people, one-third of whom were professional soldiers, could make claims for reparations according to Article 131, including approximately 55,000 who had been dismissed after the war for political reasons- that is, because of their affiliation to National Socialism. The civil servants of the Reich Security Main Office were part of this group." Digitized by

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The former civil servants of the Gestapo and the professional soldiers of the Waffen-SS were expressly excluded from this legal regulation, albeit with a characteristic exception. The final chapter of the Federal Law Addressing Article 131 (known as the 131 Law) stated that the law was also applicable to Gestapo officers if they had been transferred to the Gestapo "for official reasons:' Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 the Gestapo had been established primarily with existing Criminal Police officers, all of whom had been transferred to the Gestapo "for official reasons." This meant that members of the RSHA who had already been civil servants before they were transferred to the Gestapo had good chances of being reinstated as civil servants in West Germany. Former Criminal Police officers from RSHA Office V were included in the normal provisions of the 131 Law since they were not considered members of Gestapo. Completely independent of the 131 Law, which dealt exclusively with claims to reappointment and assistance, public agencies were also free to hire former members of the Gestapo and the SD. There was never a prohibition on appointing forn1er RSHA members to public service. Thus, it is hardly surprising that beginning in the early 1950s almost all members of RSHA Office V (Criminal Police) were reinstated as part of the Criminal Police in the Federal Republic of Germany, and several of them even rose to high-level positions. Dr. Josef Menke, Nebe's personal referent, had been employed as a lumberjack and a construction worker immediately after the war before being arrested and classified as a "follower" (Mitlaufer) in 1948. Menke worked as an accountant in his b rother-in-law's construction company until the summer of 1950 and was then reinstated as a civil servant, initially as chief of the Municipal Criminal Police in Coburg in Upper Frankonia. In 1954 he was appointed chief of the Criminal Police in Aachen, and in 1959 he became chief of the Criminal Police in Dortmund. Dr. Rudolf Hom, who joined the NSDAP in 1931 and worked as a dentist before becoming deputy director of the Criminal-Biological Institute, was appointed chief of the Criminal Police in Gottingen in 1952. From 1957 to 1961 Horn even served as an instructor at the State Police School in Hannoversch-Munden and was subsequently transferred to Aurich as chief of the State Criminal Police Station. Dr. Walter Zirpins, former head of the Criminal Police in Lodz, was initially appointed division head for the Criminal Police in the Interior Ministry of Lower Saxony in 1951 before becoming chief of the Criminal Police in Hannover in 1956.'8 Dr. Walter Schade, who had worked at the Criminal-Technical Institute, found a position as a senior governn1ent official in the Customs 0191t1zea by

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Criminal Institute in Cologne. In the spring of 1952 Dr. Otto Martin, a biologist and Schade's former colleague at the KTI, assumed a similar post as an expert for biological. pedological, and medical investigations in the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt). Kurt Amend, who had headed the Manhunt Section in RSHA Office V and had worked with Arthur Nebe in 1944 on the escape of eighty British soldiers from the Sagan prisoner-of-war camp, rose to head of the manhunt division at the Federal Criminal Police Office, the very position that he had occupied at the RSHA. For some time it even appeared as if Paul Werner, the former deputy head of RSHA Office V. would become director of the Federal Criminal Police Office.• 9 Things were markedly different for former members of the Gestapo. Only eight of the former leading personnel in RSHA Office IV were appointed to civil service positions in the BRO. However, those who were appointed were able to attain remarkable positions. For example, Rudolf Kroning, who as a member of RSHA Group IV F had dealt with foreigners living in the German Reich and had cooperated closely with Eichmann's Section IV B 4, went on to become president of the Mainz State Social Court. Rudolf Bilfinger, who had been the head of the Group Organization and Law at the RSHA and was sentenced by a French military court in 1953 to eight years' imprisonment for his actions as Gestapo chief in Toulouse, rose to become a judge at the Superior Administrative Court in Baden-Wlirttemberg.so Others were able to find positions in parastatal institutions. For example, Hans Pieper, the former head of the registry in RSHA Office IV, became director of the People's Alliance for Peace and Freedom, which was funded by the Federal Chancellor's Office. 51 The vast majority of former Gestapo section heads either became selfemployed law}ters, which was not surprising given their legal training, or found work in private enterprise. Not all of them were as successful as Berhard Baatz, who had demonstrated his engagement and dedication as the RSHA section head for Occupied Poland and for Compulsory Laborers as well as in diverse "deployments." In postwar Germany Baatz advanced to director of the Mannesmann Housing Company in Duisburg. Dr. Gunther Knobloch, who had processed situation reports of the Einsatzgruppen at the RSHA, rose to become a division head at Siemens, and Horst Kopkow became managing director of a textile company.52 Heinz Wanninger had headed the Organization Section in RSHA Office I and had been involved as the RSHA liaison officer at the Reich Justice Ministry in the criminal agreements Himmler and Thierach reached regarding Polish and Soviet slave laborers. He also enjoyed a remarkable career in postwar Germany; oig1tlze1lby

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the legal basis for the vast majority of the planned RSHA trials. Indict· ments were submitted in only four cases, and there was only one major trial before the Berlin District Court. All of the other legal proceedings were abandoned. It is difficult to believe that this was all a coincidence, and scholars have repeatedly voiced the suspicion that the alteration of paragraph 50 of the penal code was a contrived construction intended to undermine the impending trials of Nazi perpetrators, in particular leading RSHA mem· bers.'6 The fact that the general adviser for criminal legal reform up to 1966 was the well-known criminal law expert and commentator Dr. Eduard Dreher appears to support these suspicions. During the final years of the war Dreher had worked as a state prosecutor at the Special Court in Innsbruck and had called for the court to issue several death sentences, which were subsequently carried out." In the 1950s Dreher also had con· tact with Ernst Achenbach. a member of the FDP in the Bundestag. who with Werner Best had organized the amnesty campaign for Nazi perpetra· tors at the time.•• Many of these people had carefully followed the Stash in· sky judgment in 1962 and concluded that in the future numerous National Socialist perpetrators could only be indicted as accomplices to murder. In a letter to Werner Best in early January 1963, the Bonn attorney Lohmann wrote that this would provide an opportunity to call for a partial amnesty for "accomplices." " There was not a public campaign, but Best was active behind the scenes ensuring that former Gestapo officers provided appropriate testimony as witnesses so that defendants could only be convicted as "accomplices to murder" and received reduced sentences. However, there is no evidence that the group around Best exerted influence of any kind on the draft legislation in the Federal Ministry of Justice. Even the argument that those involved knew what they were doing can be applied concretely only to Dreher, who was no longer responsible for criminal legal reform under Heinemann in late 1966 and thus had no authority regarding the Introductory Law. The draft for the alteration of paragraph 50 was drawn from a resolution in the Criminal Penal Reforn1 Commission of 1955, which had already been formulated as paragraph 30 in the draft of a new penal code when the Federal Court of Justice issued its decision about Stashinsky. The initiative for this alteration clearly did not come from Achenbach, Best, or Dreher. And even if we presume that Dreher was at least aware of the consequences this alteration would have on the statute of limitations for National Socialist crimes, he did nothing to conceal this explosive fact. On the contrary, the new law was carefully

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inspected by a plethora of experts with representatives from all political parties in the Bundestag, none of whom drew any connection between this reform and the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes- for understandable reasons, since the changes were in no way aimed at the paragraphs relating to murder in the penal code. Several months after the law was passed, defense lawyers for Bovensiepen, Baatz, and Deumling evidently discovered that the changes could be used to their clients' advantage. While Harro Thomsen was released from prison with a rather conventional justification in September 1968, the petitions of December 1968 referred explicitly to the new version of paragraph 50, section 2 of the penal code. At the time, however, this legal interpretation was by no means undisputed or established. The RSHA trials collapsed only after the May 1969 judgn1ent by the Federal Court of Justice. The bitter truth is that it was not an intentional obstruction of justice but a lack of overview and sensitivity for issues related to the legal prosecution of National Socialist crimes that prevented a major legal confrontation with perpetrators from the Reich Security Main Office. The unfolding of the preliminary investigations of leading RSHA members-from the impetus provided by foreign state prosecutors in early 1963, through the German Federal Justice Ministry's proud report in February 1965 praising the RSHA preliminary investigations as "exemplary models of clarification;• to the decision by the Federal Court of Justice in May 1969-demonstrates the conspicuous limits of dealing with violent National Socialist crimes through the legal system. The paragraph on murder in the penal code was poorly suited for prosecuting the mass murders of the Nazi regime. The legal distinction prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s between three perpetrators- Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich- and a multitude of accomplices in no way corresponded to the actual responsibility and actions of defendants. In this sense it may well be that the collapse of this legally insufficient construction through the admittedly absurd coincidence of a new law intended to simplify the prosecution of traffic violations was only consistent. And perhaps the embarrassing failure stemming from the In troductory Law contributed to the fact that the German Bundestag-after the United Nations Assembly had adopted the Convention on the NonApplicability of Statutory Lim itations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in November 1968- raised the statute of limitations for murder to thirty years on June 26, 1969, thereby allowing the German courts to search for Nazi perpetrators until the end of 1979.50

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Integration and Ignorance: The RSHA Leadership in the Federal Republic of Germany Less than 5 percent of the RSHA leadership committed suicide with the collapse of the National Socialist regime. Those who did kill themselves might have been motivated by the fear of vengeance from the victors, which had been vehemently invoked by Goebbels during the final months of the war, or by the sense that everything they had believed in was collapsing. The example of Heinrich Himmler is certainly significant. After initially attempting to escape under an assumed name, Himmler subsequently revealed his identity in detention and then committed suicide when he was realized he would be treated as criminal rather than a privileged prisoner of war. A few former RSHA members, including Eichmann. Rauff, Deumling, and almost certainly Weinmann, were able to flee to the Middle East or Latin America. Others, such as Ehrlinger, Engel, and Filbert, went underground, hiding as farm laborers or lumberjacks during the initial postwar months and taking on assumed names in order to avoid arrest. However, the vast majority of the former leadership of the RSHA was captured and detained by the Allies, whose intelligence units were well-informed and worked efficiently in arresting National Socialist perpetrators. In July 1945 the U.S. launched an expanded wave of arrests, once again detaining tens of thousands of higher-ranking Nazis. Approximately 250,000 Germans were placed in Allied detention camps during the first year after the war. The significance of these immediate postwar years for the former leading strata of the National Socialist regime should not be underestimated. Through the Nuremberg trials the Allies had made it unmistakably clear that they would prosecute Nazi crimes and even developed new international laws for the indictment of crimes against humanity in order to be able to deal with the exceptional dimension of these transgressions. The trials in Nuremberg were carefully prepared and utilized an enormous amount of documentary evidence. As a consequence, no one in the detention camps could be certain that his crimes would not be discovered. In its judgments the tribunal did not hesitate to issue the death penalty and to have it implemented. Of all the trials conducted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the Einsatzgruppen trial- in which numerous leading RSHA members were defendants- resulted in the largest number of death sentences. During these initial postwar years, the former leadership group of the RSHA could not expect to be released from

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detention camps in the near future but had to face being put on trial and having to fight for their own lives. The fear of being extradited to countries of the newly emerging Eastern Bloc was particularly great: RSHA mem· bers indicted by courts in these countries for crimes committed as leaders of Einsatzkommandos or as police chiefs were confronted with the pros· pect of death sentences and executions, as demonstrated by the examples of Strickner, Stage, Vogt, and Roth. Such expectations did not promote ideological heroism in the detention camps but opportunism, denial, and prevarication. As historian Lutz Niethan1mer writes, "If anyone still had backbone as a Fascist, it was broken here because an upright gait would have been fatal; only those who ate humble pie were able to maintain or re-attain their privileged positions.'"' The future prospects for former RSHA members changed fundamentally with the break in the anti· Hitler coalition, the polarization of East and West, and the division of Germany into two countries, since the plans of the United States and the Soviet Union to integrate West and East Germany into their respective alliances rendered inopportune a sustained phase of de-Nazification. The trials of arrested RSHA members before de· Nazification courts in Germany in 1947 and 1948 were by no means as severe as those of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. On the contrary, the attempted political cleansing became a whitewashing of Nazi perpetrators. For the most part these de-Nazification trials rested solely in establishing the defendants' undeniable affiliation with the SS and the Gestapo, inquiring about knowledge of the existence of concentration camps and the murder of Jews (which the defendants almost invariably denied), and the subsequent conviction for their affiliation to a criminal organization and a prison sentence that was almost always identical to the time in detention already served, which meant that those convicted were able could leave the courthouse as free men following the judgments. This undoubtedly marked the beginning of a carefree period for the former RSHA leadership. The Bundestag and the West German govern· ment actively pushed for the amnesty and integration of former National Socialists. The West German side stylized the release of war criminals still held in the Allied prisons as a condition for rearmament. The United States did carry out the executions of Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Paul Blobel, and three others in June 1951, thereby reaffirming the judgments of the International Military Tribunal; and Great Britain arrested the circle of Nazi dignitaries around the former state secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, Werner Naumann, in 1953, demonstrating that they would not tolerate a political underground. Nevertheless, the signs of the times were 01g1tizea by

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not difficult for RSHA members to read. It was clear they no longer had to fear legal prosecution. The old functional elite was needed to construct a new state and a functioning social system. At the same time a review of the postwar careers of the former RSHA elite undermines claims of seamless continuity or even a restoration of National Socialist elites in the Federal Republic Germany. It proved rather difficult for these men to reestablish their connections from the prewar era, especially given the fact that a large number of RSHA members had begun their professional careers in the Gestapo or the SD. Former Criminal Police officers who had completed their training before they transferred to the Gestapo had the least difficulty in attaining their old positions. The exception paragraph in the 131 Law made it possible for them to successfully claim that their affiliation to the Gestapo had occurred "for official reasons:' In addition, they were best able to present their activities during the Nazi era in a purely functional light: normal police work that was far removed from the crimes of the Gestapo. Most members of RSHA Office V were reinstated as criminal police officers in West Germany, and many of them attained high-ranking positions, as Karl Schulz and Walter Zirpins illustrate. Matters were not so simple for former Gestapo officers who had come to the Secret State Police or the SD as apprentice lawyers rather than Criminal Police officers. The exception paragraph of the 131 Law did not apply to them, and although public institutions were not legally prohibited from hiring former Gestapo or SD members, the percentage of former administrative lawyers at the RSHA who were reinstated in state service was significantly less than that of former Criminal Police officers. To be sure, there were also RSHA jurists who had scandalously successful careers in the Federal Republic, such as Dr. Rudolf Bilfinger, who became a senior administrative judge at the Administrative Court for Baden-Wiirttemberg in Mannheim after the war. However, most RSHA lawyers did not find positions in state service but worked instead either in the semi-public domain as functionaries in associations or found lucrative positions in the private sector as self-employed lawyers or as specialists in commercial law. Not all were as successful as Berhard Baatz or Heinz Wanniger, who became members of company boards, but none of them was unable to find a comfortable and well-situated position in the burgeoning affluent society of the Federal Republic of Germany. Former SD members who had neither been civil servants nor had training as administrative lawyers had the most difficult time - with the exception of former members of the SD Foreign Office who were recruited as "Eastern experts~ by Western secret service agencies and by the West 0191t1zea by

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German Federal Intelligence Service. The example of Eugen Steimle, who went on to work as a teacher of German and history at a private boys' school despite his conviction as a mass murderer, was more the exception than the rule. These men also had little chance at an academic career in West Germany because they had left the university in the 1930s to launch their political careers at the RSHA. Germanists such as Rossner or Spengler and historians such as Biederbick turned to journalism or the publishing industry in order to establish new careers. Other former SD members found work in small or midsized companies. As a rule, however, the greatest professional discrepancies between the National Socialist and the postwar era can be found a1nong former SD members such as Hans Daufeldt, who was a failed hotelier after the war, or Erich Ehrlinger, who worked as the head of reception at a gambling house. In 1945 hardly any of these men expected that they would be given a "second chance" after the collapse of the Nazi regime, and when it was offered they used this opportunity to find a niche in West German postwar society quietly and inconspicuously. One rare exception to this was August Finke, a former agent of the SD Foreign Office in Stockholm, who was openly active in a political revival of the extreme Right in West Germany. working as state chairman and a member of state parliament for the right-wing Socialist Reich Party until it was banned in 1952. Finke subsequently found a well-paid position as director of the Agricultural and Forestry Employers' Association in Weser-Ems. Nevertheless, the fact that these men were no longer active in radical right-wing politics does not mean that they had become true democrats. In 1962 a dismayed investigating judge noted that Walter Blume, who could no longer be prosecuted by West German courts due to his conviction at the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial, and who could therefore express himself relatively frankly at interrogations. noted that Blume con tinued to be a "believer in National Socialism" who had designated Heydrich's extermination orders as not "advantageous" and would rather have postponed the "solution to the Jewish question" until the postwar era." While statements like this were rare, they do point to the ideological constancy of these men, who were well aware that such political views were inopportune in postwar Germany and that they would jeopardize their "second chance" if they attempted to embark on another career in politics. The ignorance of the German public about the mass crimes in the East, even among honorable men such as Wilhelm Kaisen, Theodor Heuss, and Carlo Schmid, corresponded to the indifference and obtuseness of RSHA

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perpetrators in regard to their own past, as the case of Hans Riissner dem onstrates with particular clarity. Considered in moral terms and from the perspective of the victims, the largely unchallenged postwar careers of RSHA members and their return to middle-class decorum is certainly scandalous. It can hardly be justified that the racist and murderous Volkstum politician Dr. Hans Ehlich was able to become a respectable physician again after the war. The standard argument used to justify this was that it had been necessary to employ the old functional elite in order to establish the new Federal Republic of Germany. In response to accusations that two-thirds of the civil servants at the West German Foreign Office were former National Socialists, the first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, insisted that it "was impossible to proceed differently. It is impossible to build up a foreign office if one does not at least initially fill the leading positions with people who understand something about past history."s3 This argument, however, loses its superficial plausibility if it simultaneously involves a practical suspension of the penal code and allows the most serious crimes to go unpunished. It is difficult to estimate the damage that occurs to a society that is formally based on the rule of law but whose population does not share a broad belief in constitutional democracy when the fundamental principle that all citizens are equal before the law is not honored. It is possible that state prosecutors who reestablished the validity of the penal code in the late 1950s also provided an inestimable service to West German society. For the former RSHA elite, this meant an end to the comfortable and carefree times. Despite the in part scandalously mild sentences, the trials against Fischer-Schweder, Filbert, Widmann, Ehrlinger, and others made unmistakably clear that former RSHA members would be legally prosecuted for their crimes in Federal Republic of Germany. The extensive RSHA trial prepared by the work group at the Berlin Superior Court would have represented the largest German legal proceeding dealing with Nazi crimes of violence in the postwar era, with the RSHA at the center. For the accused, the fact that these proceedings did not result in an indictment or a trial certainly meant that they had avoided the most acute and gravest threat. But it did not mean that they had been granted amnesty or allowed a peaceful life. Even after the decision by the Federal Court of Justice in May 1969 and the abandonment of numerous preliminary proceedings, state prosecutors' offices in West Germany, above all the Central Office in Ludwigsburg, continued to search for new alternatives to bring former RSHA perpetrators before a court of law. New investigations were

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initiated, interrogations were conducted, public opinion in Germany began to change, and demands became louder that former National Socialist perpetrators be punished, preventing these men from enjoying a peaceful end of their lives. The extensive bill of indictment against Bru no Streckenbach for the murder of at least a million people was finally issued on June 30, 1973, ahnost two decades after his return from the Soviet Union. Streckenbach, who was suffering from serious heart disease. submitted various medical reports classifying him as unable to stand trial, which was subsequently confirmed by court doctors of the public health authorities in Hamburg. On September 20, 1974, the Hanseatic Appellate Court definitively rejected the initiation of a trial. Thus, like many of his colleagues at the RSHA, Bruno Streckenbach never had to answer for his crimes before a German court. However, the "second chance" that these perpetrators received did not mean that they could lead secure lives beyond the laws of the West German state. Despite their integration into postwar German society, and despite the rampant ignorance and denial regarding Nazi mass crimes, RSHA members were confronted with the threat of legal prosecution at the end of their lives. Although there were too few convictions, RSHA perpetrators could no longer be certain that beginning in the early 1970s they would not be put on trial sooner or later. Bruno Streckenbach died in Hamburg on October 28, 1977, only three years after the decision by the Hanseatic Appellate Court.

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Conclusion

The leading corps of the Reich Security Main Office was a special perpetrator group whose typology cannot be easily generalized. The fundamental significance of these men as a group lay in the specific institution with which they were affiliated and whose conceptions and practices they determined. With the RSHA as the headquarters of racist, anti-Semitic persecution and extermination, these men became the core group of the genocide carried out by the National Socialists. In terms of perpetrator types, the leading corps of the RSHA was distinguished in significant ways from other perpetrator groups in the National Socialist regime. Hardly any other group within the Nazi leadership possessed such generational homogeneity and academic training. In comparison to the political leaders of the NSDAP, the senior civil servants of the Nazi regime, or the generals of the Wehrmacht, the leading personnel of the RSHA was markedly younger and more educated. The RSHA leadership was also exceptional within the SS. As Ruth Bettina Birn's investigation demonstrates, Senior SS and Police Leaders were part of an older "front generation:· Karin Orth's meticulous study of SS concentration camps shows that camp commandants were drawn from an older group of men oriented around Theodor Eicke and were only replaced by younger personnel in 1941and1942. There were similarities between these new concentration camp commandantsperhaps best embodied in the person of Rudolf Hoss-and the leadership corps of the RSHA in terms of the ideology of absoluteness. However, this younger leadership at concentration camps in general did not have the university education that RSHA leaders did. In his investigation of the SS Economic and Administration Main Office, Jan Erik Schulte presents a bureaucratic apparatus that was more influenced by hypertrophic economical plans than administrative efficiency and whose leading personnel was distinguished from that of the RSHA leadership corps in terms of age as well as education. oig1tlze1lby

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Even Werner Best, who was a central figure in the establishment of the political police and the recruitment of its leadership personnel, was not prototypical for the RSHA. While there were numerous parallels in regard to legal training, early political militancy, and ideological orientation, Best's dispute with Heydrich in 1939 and 1940 about whether the RSHA should have a state or a volkisch basis already revealed the limits of what Best was prepared to accept in terms of the transformation of the German police into an institution detached from legal regulation and obligated solely to Volk and race. Above all, however, Best's departure from the RSHA in June 1940 n1eant that he did not participate in the crucial radicalization to mass murder. Best remained a Schreibtischtater, or desk perpetrator, while the apprentice lawyers and university graduates he had recruited to the RSHA radicalized into a genuine perpetrator type who not only prepared these crimes at their offices in Berlin but also carried them out on location as leaders of Einsatzkommandos. As the example of Best makes clear, the radicality of these perpetrators did not emerge solely from their ideological development as university students but unfolded within the particular institution of the RSHA, which provided their ideological absoluteness with an adequate and unbounded structure and thus created the necessary prerequisite for the actual implementation of the RSHA elite's racist ideas for reordering Europe. Only this triangular connection between generational experiences coalesced into a specific ideology, a new kind of institution such as the RSHA, and the conditions of the war allow us to explain the practices of these men who were absolutely committed to their racist project and who sought to remove any and all impediments through increasingly radical measures. Genocide was not a conscious alternative for these perpetrators when they left the university and began working for the SD or the Gestapo. However, the radicalization and dissolution of boundaries that led to mass murder were inherent in the specific and certainly singular connection of ideology, institution, and practice.

Generation The First World \Var clearly constituted a decisive rupture at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hardly any of the soldiers who confidently went off to war in August 1914 believing that they would be home before Christmas had any idea of what they would actually encounter. This war was not a chivalrous joust but a mass death on the battlefield, a machinelike laceration of bodies; soldiers were mowed down by the thousands by 0191t1zea by

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opposing machine guns without any chance of survival. The experiences of death, fear, and mutilation, of murderous equality and the complete meaninglessness of the individual gave rise to the myth of a Frontkampfer generation in Germany. After the war this myth assumed a heroic dimension in order to cover over the internal and external scars that remained and to try to give meaning to the meaninglessness that both combatants and civilians had experienced. Old Europe was literally bombed away on the battlefield. After this war nothing was as it had been before. "The good old days" had disappeared forever, even for those who continued to yearn for them. However, for adolescent German men -those too young to have been drafted and yet too old to recall the war as merely a distant childhood memory-this war also became a thorn in their sides, reminding them of a missed opportunity to prove themselves, one that had been offered to an older generation but not to their own. While this adolescent war generation did not experience firsthand the physical violence and death of battle, the war nonetheless did not remain a distant occurrence in their lives. The notion of a "home front" was not merely an invention of propaganda but also a designation of the actual incorporation of women, the elderly, and young people into the war effort. Women filled the gaps in factories and offices that had been left by the men drafted to war. Schoolchildren collected raw materials for the war economy and were drilled in military service at school. It was above all the media-in particular newspapers, which had up to three daily editions-that brought the distant battles home. Here the war appeared as a parlor game, as the deployment of armies of toy soldiers who victoriously advanced, occupied important hills, or withdrew as a provisional tactic in order to "straighten out" the front. For the adolescent war generation, war became a game, an adventure that they could take part in on a daily basis without really participating, an expansive field for imagination, desires, and fantasies without providing any real physical experience of it. For these adolescents the First World War thus constituted the incisive biographical caesura that allowed them to become a generation unto themselves. They were painfully aware of their own lack of war experience, which they regarded as an unbridgeable generational limitation and which at the same time seemed to implicitly call on them to do son1cthing of their own. Discontinuity, breaking with the past, and looking toward the future became the distinguishing marks of this generation, which perhaps more than any other in Germany in the twentieth century turned the Digitized by

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notion o f "youth" into a program-not in the conventional sense of genealogical and generational conflict but as the blueprint for a new world, one that based its own absoluteness on the collapse of the old world. If "youth" had become synonymous with the notion of departure and had developed into a new style even before the First World War, it was now tied to the idea of a whole generation. It meant the renunciation of the old and the traditional, of the decayed and the rotten, and the turn to a bright future that was to be achieved less through favorable material conditions or the sober evaluation of resources than through strength of will and spiritual power. The lead ing members of the Reich Security Main Office were drawn from precisely this generation. More than three-quarters of them were born after 1900, around 60 percent in the decade between 1900 and 1910. These men experienced adolescence during the precarious and unstable postwar era in Germany, when poverty and civil war predominated. Although attempted Spartacist revolutions were limited to large cities and industrial districts, the Weimar Republic had enormous difficulty defending itself against its opponents, as was evident to anyone living outside the sites of civil strife. The culmination of these disturbances occurred in 1923. The occupation of the Rhineland by French and Belgian troops triggered open resistance that was supported and financed by the German government and that quickly shook the political and economic foundations of the Weimar Republic. Believing the time was ripe for revolt, radical anti -Republican groups recruited supporters for the "battle of national liberation." The German government's financing of strikers in the Rhineland strained state finances and drove inflation to dizzying heights. Savings evaporated while speculators amassed fortunes. The immaterial values of bourgeois society, including hard work, frugality, and sound budgeting, were torn asunder in the turbulence of skyrocketing inflation. Even if Stresemann's policies in the fall of 1923 allowed the government to regain control of the situation, the belief in civil society had been fundamentally shaken. Self-help no longer meant solidarity in organizing but egoism, ruthlessness, and violence. For an adolescent war generation that had experienced only instability, discontinuity, and collapse, the future meant a radical critique of the bourgeois masquerade and of the hollow promises of liberal politicians; it meant a mistrust of the guiding institutions of civil society such as parliamentary democracy. the division of powers, and rights guaranteed by law. In the eyes of this generation, the future could only be a countermodel, a new and radically different order

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that established a "true" comn1unity and that offered individuals a stable and reliable sense of self. For the young men who later assumed leading positions at the RSHA, college and university campuses represented one of the most important experiential spaces. Only a quarter of the RSHA leadership had parents who were college graduates. Around 60 percent came from the lowermiddle-class families with fathers who were merchants, technicians, engineers, master artisans, and, in particular, midlevel and senior-level civil servants. More than three-quarters of leading RSHA members had been awarded an Abitur, two-thirds had a university degree, and almost onethird (roughly half of those who had university degrees) also earned a doctoral degree. The leading corps of the RSHA, in other words, was not composed of men who had failed in conventional life. They did not come from the social margins of society but instead were a part of the educated elite. More than half of RSHA leaders who attended university completed degrees in law or political science. However, 22 percent earned degrees in the humanities, including German studies, history, theology. journalism, and classics. Thus, the stereotype of the SS lawyer has to be relativized to some degree, at least for the RSHA. The number of RSHA leaders who did not study law and did not have an administrative-legal career was remarkably high and demonstrates how powerful Heydrich's notion of a "fighting administration," understood in political rather than bureaucratic-administrative terms, had been in recruiting leading personnel. Lawyers, historians, Germanists, and journalists occupied leading positions at the RSHA. Significantly, nonlawyers at the RSHA were located was primarily in the offices of the Security Service. It is equally remarkable, however, that a perpetrator group so obsessed with the idea of race included almost no natural scientists. The few chemists and the sole biologist all served as section heads at the Criminal-Technical Institute. The only physicist at the RSH.A worked as a subaltern official in Office Ill, which, given the significance of physics for the development of the sciences as well as for war technology in the twentieth century. shines an important light on the "intellectual constitution" of the RSHA. As Hannah Arendt pointed out, although racism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries presented itself in the garb of natural science. its own narrative remained a philosophy of history that employed race and nature as its historical ground and that retained the belief in the progress to son1ething higher and better on the basis of developmental laws. The focus of racist

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thought was not on attaining knowledge of nature but on ostensibly historical laws in which race was understood as the biologistic definitions of human groups and, above all, as a historical mission. This mission appeared all the more urgent to the volkisch ideologues and racial biologists because they believed that the best and bravest young German men had died in the First World War and that as a result the hereditary-biological substance of the Volk was dramatically threatened. If they did not succeed in "replenishing" this biological substance and at the san1e time in averting all racial "n1ixing" and "impurity of German blood," the fate of the German Volk, they believed, was sealed. For this reason the battle against the Jews as the incarnation of the "internal enemy"-a term Hitler used in Mein Kampf and in his speeches-was a battle of destiny, an Armageddon. Hitler had tied a German victory in this global battle directly to himself as the Fiihrer and repeatedly emphasized that only during the brief span of his own life did Germany have a chance of obtaining victory. Thus, from the perspective of these ideological perpetrators the race with time was dramatic, requiring supreme effort and the most radical measures. When the leading cadre of the RSHA were university students, the notion that their youthful generation would construct a new world and that the "preservation of the German Volk" was an urgent racial-biological necessity were prevalent ideas on German campuses. This helps explain the militant student activism that characterized these future leaders. The German Student Body's anti-Semitic resolutions to exclude Jewish stu· dents could only be reversed through governmental countermeasures. The largest student organization, the Deutscher Hochschulring, professed its allegiance to the "German Volksgemeinschaft" (ethnic community), from which Jews were excluded because, it insisted, the "Jewish way is not the German way." The German Academic Convention had demanded in 1925 that the foreign infiltration of universities be brought to a halt and that no additional Jewish college instructors be appointed. Around 1930 there was hardly a fraternity in Germany that admitted Jews as members. A National Socialist student was elected as head of the German Student Body for the first time in July 1931; only five years after its establishment the National Socialist German Students League had become the dominant political association at German universities and colleges. Numerous leading members of the RSHA had been activists in the NSDStB. Every RSHA member who included in his SS resume his own

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membership in the NSDStB before 1933 also listed the political functions that he had exercised. Mere membership was not enough; active engagement was required. Martin Sandberger and Erich Ehrlinger had flown a swastika flag over the Auditorium Maximum at the University ofTlibingen on March 8, 1933. In the weeks that followed a cultural revolution took place. The student activists, supported by Martin Heidegger, understood themselves as the revolutionary core of a fundamental and volkisch reorganization of the university and demanded the dismissal of political liberals as well as leftist and Jewish instructors. However, the example of the explicitly non-Nazi student representa· tives around Heinz Grafe, Wilhelm Spengler, and the Black Hand at the University of Leipzig also illustrates the ideologically charged nature of this generation. The focus of discussion at the Miltenberg conference with Hans Freyer and Otto Koellreutter in 1929 was neither democracy as a constitutional problem nor as the practical policies of a parliamentary republic. The debate focused instead on fundamental issues such as the relation of state and nation or Volk and state. Significantly, the term "Volk" was understood here not as the people within a state but rather as a "community of blood or destiny" still in search of political organization. "The Volk wants to become a state," and battle was supposed to be the medium through which a people "becomes a Volk:' Invoking Carl Schmitt, participants at the Miltenberg conference argued that the Volk "feel itself united in the friend-enemy relation of tension. It thinks and is thought of as the subject of possible wars:' This critique, which fit readily within the spirit of the youth movements of the time, was aimed primarily at the "liberal conception of the state;' according to which politically mature citizens constitute the state's foundation. These young university students saw themselves as the members of a future elite. They did not want to be citizens but leaders, not an elected elite but the self-selected natural elite of the Volk. As students of law and political science, they outlined a model of law and politics that had little in common with either the Weimar constitution or the theories of the Prussian state philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. For these students, leadership was based not on law and rights but on history and deeds. According to the participants of the Wertheim conference in April 1930, which included Heinz Grafe, Erhard Mading, Friedrich Maetzel, Hans Pieper, and Wilhelm Spengler- that is, almost the entire Black Hand-a leader was a person "who grasps the situation of a group of people, presents them with something new as an ideal and, stepping to

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the front, realizes this goal with absolute dedication. In this process, he does not rule his followers but is instead carried by them. What we mean here is the capacity for dedication and the belief in the absolute value of an idea." Leadership. deed, and idea- the political thought of these young men circled around these three elen1ents. Leadership was grounded in knowledge about the organic development of nature and Volk and was confirmed in the deed. The leader proved himself through the superiority and the success of his own deeds. regardless of what these might be. Success was all that counted, and it simultaneously justified the action and the idea. The deed legitimated itself. What characterized the worldview of this generation was not so much its specific political substance but a particular form of political thought. Politics always aimed at the unconditional or the whole and was never to be subordinated to a regulating norm or a moral law of any kind. Hans Freyer had called for "absolute dedication and the greatest intensity," thereby setting the tone along with Carl Schmitt for a politics that was realized in the deed and the decision rather than in negotiations and compromises. If there was one thing that these youthful activists of the Black Hand-who had nothing to do with the National Socialism at this point in time-profoundly rejected, it was compromise. What they believed to be essential was political will and the resoluteness to implement that will. Thus, according to their own self-understanding, these men were not paper-pushers, and their claim to leadership was not grounded in rules and regulations. Certainly none them could have anticipated or even imagined their subsequent deployment in the occupied territories. However, when they were in fact "deployed:' the orders they were issued corresponded precisely to the worldview that they had fiercely and passionately debated as university students: leaders did not merely design political conceptions or formulate decrees; leaders also issued commands on location and ensured that the actual practice corresponded to the "idea:' "Spirit:• which was talked about so much at the time, was real.ized only in practice. The idea was fulfilled in the deed. "However different they might be," the twenty-four-year-old Heinz Grafe had written about the "young generation:• "they share the unconditional will to deployment, to action. A new desire has replaced the old thinking. Young people today no longer love theoretical programs; they want work-plans and deployment possibilities. Crammers and bookworms do exist, but they are not decisive for the face of the new generation. This will be determined by those crews ready for action, who want to assume responsibility and who yearn for deployment."

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Institution For these young men the National Socialist's political victory in 1933 opened up horizons for professional advancement and power that they were hardly able to comprehend at the time. The year 1933 marked great change for most of the future RSHA leaders. Heinz Jost, Paul Werner, Erwin Schulz, Bruno Streckenbach, Werner Best, Heinrich Miiller, Walter Blume, and numerous others were assigned to leading positions in the Political Police and actively engaged in the National Socialist persecution of political opponents. Erich Ehrlinger decided to pursue not a career in law but one in the SA and later in the SD. While Martin Sandberger did complete his legal training and received brilliant grades in his state law examinations, he also decided to pursue a career in politics. Erwin Weinmann gave up his post as a physician at the University Clinic in Tubin· gen in order to become a member of the SD. Hans Ehlich abandoned his medical practice in order to head the Race and Public Health Section at the Interior Ministry in Saxony. For these men politics in the sense of shaping the world and realizing their will always represented a serious career option that could be chosen at any time. When the opportunity to switch to politics arose, they seized it without hesitation. Shortly after the National Socialist assumption of power, when Heinz Grafe was still not yet a member of the NSDAP, he believed he was on the side of the losers and joined the Stahlhelm in an unsuccessful attempt to move closer to the new regime. Grafe then seized the opportunity offered by Hohn and Heydrich to work for the SD. This allowed him to maintain his elitist understanding of politics and to imagine himself near the center of power, but as an adviser rather than a follower. Nevertheless, the particularity of this historical situation lay less in the fact that during a time of political unrest these young activists yearned impatiently for an opportunity to intervene in the unfolding events than in the character of the institutions that they joined. As a result of Himmler's and Heydrich's success in the interparty struggle for the leadership of the German police in 1936, both the police and the Security Service of the SS- which had been a rather insignificant organization prior to thisgrew beyond their original functions as instruments of terror employed against domestic political opponents. From the racial-biological perspective of the SS it was necessary for the police and the SD to assume more extensive responsibilities, in Himmler's words, "to safeguard the German Volk as an organic total being, its life force and its organizations, from

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destruction and disintegration. The authority of a police assigned such responsibilities cannot be construed restrictively:' What was new about the National Socialist regime was that it was grounded not in state and law as organizing principles but in Volk and race. The basis for political action in Nazi Gern1any was not dictatorial state or bureaucratic regulations- even in their most repressive form but rather a "healthy volks-sense" and the Aryan race, whose continued development could not be regulated bureaucratically. In the German Yolk's "battle of destiny" against ideological opponents, which meant first and foremost the Jews as the supreme ernbodirnent of the "opposing race" or the "anti-Volk," a National Socialist police had to have the freedom to employ any means available in order to win the ideological war. According to Heydrich, "If we as National Socialists do not fulfill our historical responsibility because we were too objective and humane, these mitigating circumstances will not be taken into account. It will simply be said that we did not fulfill our historical responsibility:' The fact that the Nazi regime was based on race and Volk rather than the state already implied a dissolution of the traditional boundaries of politics. It is certainly possible to deploy a traditional police force in order to suppress domestic opposition and to terrorize and control the population. However, only the conceptual development and the organizational implementation of a specifically National Socialist ideological police, whose leading personnel was no longer composed of administrative lawyers but of political activists, created the conditions necessary for the radically destructive dynan1ic that characterized the Nazi regime. This concept of a police understood in comprehensive political terms corresponded to an ideological will to political reorganization and dissociation from established traditions. For this reason active engagement in the RSHA was possible even for those with no close ties to National Socialism in terms of party politics; the RSHA offered a correspondence between worldview and institution, between the political will to reshape both society and the world and the structures capable of irnplementing this reshaping. It represented a new and radical type of institution characterized by the acceleration of ideological radicalization. It is at this point that the long-standing scholarly debate about intentionality and functionality disintegrates, for without the institution of the RSHA embedded in a National Socialist regime based on Volk and race the ideology would have lacked the organization necessary to implement the deeds; and without this radical conception the RSHA would not have been able to assume the structural form that it needed in order to carry 01g1tlz•dby

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out its specific policies of persecution and extermination. Raul Hilberg and Zygmunt Baumann have emphasized the bureaucratic character of the extermination process, which could only have been managed by a ra· tionalized modern society. Traditional administrative institutions such as the German Foreign Office, the Reich Interior Ministry, the regional tax offices, and the railroad were without question involved in the Holocaust. However, the central role that a newly established institution such as the Foreign Office's German Division, which was filled with young activists lacking any diplomatic training, played in the "final solution to the Jewish question" points to the problems of analyzing the National Socialist state in terms of a Weberian model of bureaucratization. In the key domain of the SS and the police, administrative traditions no longer held sway. On the contrary, Heydrich's "fighting administration" meant the dissolution of traditional administrative practices. Recent investigations of the SS and the German police apparatus as well as regional studies of the occupied territories, including the present study, suggest that we should no longer discuss the problem of intentionality and functionality on the basis of traditional state theory or the bureau· cratization models of modernization theory but instead that we investigate the specific form of the National Socialist state and its ruling structure in light of more recent sociological organizational and institutional theory. This also means critically questioning the notion that in National Socialist Germany the "cumulative radicalization" (Hans Mommsen) led to structural chaos, the ostensible resolution of which always involved agreeing to the most radical common denominator. Institutions such as the RSHA, on · the contrary, attained their power from a guiding idea that shaped their structural form. The reality was intended, and the ideology was part of the institution's character. The ability of the National Socialist regime. despite this administra· tive confusion, to implement a dimension of destruction previously unimagined should lead us to pose the question differently: How could a modern society be transformed in an extremely brief period of time in such a way that it was able to wreak this kind of destruction? The structur· alist approach retains the Weberian ideal type as its theoretical reference and is thus able to understand National Socialism solely as the disinte· gration of a state and the radicality of the National Socialists only as a consequence of the ensuring chaos, while the intentionalist approach fo· cuses on Hitler's usurpation of state authority. Both approaches, however, avoid two significant questions: Whether and to what extent did the re· gime intentionally create a specific kind of state order in the sense of a Digitized by

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racist "Volksgen1einschaft" whose institutions were then capable of this kind of radical practice; and was this transformation of society into such a "Volksgemeinschaft" precisely the prerequisite for the participation of so many Germans in the mass crimes of the regime? This latter question has been emphasized in recent research on National Socialism, in particular in studies of denunciations and "Aryanization:' In this sense the RSHA proved to be a pioneer institution. It represented the type of a political "fighting administration" called for by Heydrich. It was capable of increasing or decreasing in size, of creating new sections and divisions or dissolving old ones, of shifting emphases or establishing new points of focus, and of initiating interoffice work groups. Despite the laborious administrative procedures peculiar to an institution such as the RSHA, it was also dynamic enough to be able to realize the political goals that it pursued. The development of both institutions-the Political Police and the SD- reveals an extensive capacity for them to alter then1selves, to reorganize, and to create new organizations. They were institutions in movement that were continually transformed according to the political demands of their assignment, not only by the decision makers of the regime but also and in particular by the actors within the institutions themselves. After Werner Best left the RSHA in June 1940, the influential Administration Office he had headed was divided into a Personnel Office and an Organization Office. With Streckenbach and Nockemann as their respective heads, the two offices initially retained their significance within the RSHA. It was only during the second half of the war, when the Germans conquered no new territories and the RSHA did not establish any new field offices (and even dissolved existing ones), that the two offices lost their power. RSHA Office IV (Gestapo) was able to maintain its powerful position, although its focus changed significantly over the course of the war. Even before the conclusion of the Hitler-Stalin pact the National Socialists had smashed domestic Communist resistance; the pact then broke any remaining opposition in Germany. In the German war of conquest and the final solution the RSHA assun1ed responsibility for rapidly assembling Einsatzgruppen in the occupied territories that were subsequently transformed into permanent field offices. RSHA Countries Group IV D, which had not even been included in the original drafts for Office IV, acquired a corresponding relevance, although the efficiency of German occupational terror was largely dependent on the respective country sections within Group JV D. It was no coincidence that the extremely important domain of foreign laborers was assigned to this group, as the millions of 0191t1zed by

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slave laborers from all over Europe represented the most serious police problem for the RSHA and for Gestapo stations within the German Reich. Eichmann's Section IV B 4, which in terms of size and significance was the equivalent of an independent division, functioned as a deportation headquarters that was active throughout Europe. These new key areasEichmann's apparatus and the important Countries Group IV D-were not staffed with Criminal Police officers who had received their professional training during the Weimar Republic and had become a Gestapo officers due to their anti-Bolshevism but with markedly younger men- in part administrative lawyers, in part SD men-virtually all of whom were Mdeployed" outside Germany either before or after they assumed administrative positions at the RSHA. There were also significant changes within the SD. Office VII Research on Ideological Opponents, which had been broadly conceived in its original form, declined in significance over the course of the war because its research was academically oriented and because its influential head, Franz Alfred Six, left the office in 1940 to pursue a university career as well as to begin a career at the German Foreign Office. Nevertheless, the very existence ofsuch an office is remarkable and indicative of the special character of the RSHA. In terms of stealing from libraries and archives in the occupied territories, RSHA Office VII was as active as the official pilfering organization of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Deployment Staff of Reich Leader Rosenberg). The example of the SD demonstrates how the amalgamation of the SS and the German police into a new institution actually functioned in practice. In order to fulfill the SD's original responsibilities- that is, spying on political opponents-Reinhard Hohn, Franz Alfred Six, and Otto Ohlendorf had developed the research of the "life-areas work" in the mid193os. The SD was supposed to collect information from all of the different spheres of life- including law, culture, state, economy, and science- and report whether the Nazi worldview had been established there and what forms of resistance existed. Heydrich's Function Decree of July 1937 mandated that the SD should turn over to the Gestapo all individual cases in which the law enforcement measures by the State Police came into consideration. The domains ofVolkstum, science, party and state, administration, foreign countries, and Freemasonry were to be the exclusive domain of the SD; and the SD was also supposed handle all general and basic questions regarding churches, Judaism, the economy, and the press. Contrary to what its protagonists claimed repeatedly after the war, the work of the SD was by no means limited to the collection and evaluation of 01g1tizea by

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intelligence within the RSHA, ostensibly for the sole purpose of providing "objective" and "critical" information about the mood of the population or important foreign intelligence to leaders of the National Socialist regime. In contrast to this whitewashed irnage, n1embers of Group Ill A Constitution and Administration under Karl Gengenbach were charged with compiling cases in which criminal sentences "grossly contradicted the healthy Yolks-sense" so that the RSHA was in a position to assist judicial organs and its own law enforcement authorities take appropriate measures. Group Ill C Culture under Wi lhelm Spengler aggressively sought to influence the publication policies of the regime as well as the appointments of university professors and the allocation of research monies. Hans Rossner's extensive memorandum on the field of German studies constituted something of a guideline for law enforcement measures by the State Police against ideologically suspect college instructors. This connection between theory and practice or research and law enforcement was particularly evident in RSHA Group Ill B Volkstum under Hans Ehlich. Members of this group actively participated not only in the regime's settlement and "resettlement" measures and took part in the racial policy decisions of the SS, but it also developed its own genocidal drafts for the General Plan East. These men were not merely office bureaucrats. The work they performed in the Berlin headquarters was intimately connected to the concrete practices on location. They implemented the terrorist occupational rule per decree and directive from their offices as well as carried out the terror themselves. As an institution the RSHA functioned as a movable and flexible organization whose headquarters was in Berlin but whose power and force unfolded on location. In the ideal-typical conception of its founders the RSHA was supposed to unite political initiative, problem analysis, organizational commissions, and practical implementation within a single institution no longer subject to any administrative or legal norms. Responsible "for the alignment of all political affairs of the SS." as Himmler stated in his orders of June 25, 1942, the RSHA was supposed to act everywhere and with every available means.

War In October 1941 Heydrich proudly announced to his new colleagues in Prague that Hit ler had said that he would send an SS man wherever he saw the unity of the Reich endangered in order to preserve that unity. The head of the RSHA and newly appointed representative of the Reich Protectorate did not understand this con1mission frorn the Fuhrer solely 01gitized by

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in territorial terms. Both Heydrich and Himmler strove relentlessly to assume responsibility not only for "police security" but also for comprehensive "political security," particularly in the occupied territories. While an SD Einsatzkommando for Austria in March 1938 had been primarily concerned with confiscating documents and archival material from Jewish and Masonic organizations, the Einsatzkomn1andos deployed in the annexation of the Sudentenland in the fall of 1938 and in Czech territory in the spring of 1939 were given expanded commissions that made them quasi-mobile units of the Security Police and the SD, which were supposed to ensure police security in the respective territories for the German occupational authorities. Although the official coin mission of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland in September 1939 was similar, Himtnler and Heydrich were evidently determined from the beginning to expand the executive authority of the SS and the police. The fear of "franc-tireurs" and the Polish resistance during the initial days of the invasion of Poland were reinterpreted by the German media as a "flaming Polish revolt." This gave Himmler an opportunity to invoke the "special commission" he had received from Hitler delegating comprehensive responsibilities to SS and police units. However, it is clear from the events in Bydgoszcz that the Einsatzkommandos were already practicing an expanded "security commission"- including the autonomous execution of hostagesindependent of Himmler's order of September 7, 1940. In other words, the SS and police leadership's desired radicalization was complemented by the readiness of Einsatzgruppen on site to radicalize police practices. In response to the hesitation by German army leadership to implement the policy of ethnic cleansing in the annexed western Polish territories, Hitler replaced the military administration with a civil administration headed by Nazi Gauleiters and commissioned the SS and the police to carry out the evacuations. For the Einsatzkommandos of the Security Police and the SD, the liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia- there were, according to Heydrich, "thousands" of victims-and the evacuation of Poles and Jews from the . western Polish territories into the so-called General Government represented a radicalization of large-scale racist policies of persecution and extermination. Although the attempt, pushed by Eichmann, to establish a "reservation" for German, Austrian, and Czech Jews in Nisko on the San River failed, it illustrates the enormous energy that the RSHA expended in trying to "solve" the "Jewish question:' The deployment of the Security Police and the SD in Poland clearly marked a change. The Einsatzgruppen-the bulk of whose leading Digitized by

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personnel became part of the RSH.A leadership shortly thereafter - engaged in practices that far exceeded the terror these men had previously exercised as the heads of State Police stations or as SD leaders. In the fall of 1939 Einsatzkom1nandos in Poland carried out executions, the scale and methods of which were similar to the mass executions subsequently performed in the occupied Soviet Union. It was in Poland that numerous SS leaders who were later responsible for the "final solution" in the RSHA learned to think in "large spaces" and to transgress civilizational limits. The practice of mass murder in Poland in the fall of 1939 represented, in a certain sense, the actual founding act of the Reich Security Main Office. It is probably impossible to overestimate the importance of these experiences in Poland, and one significant gap in the scholarly literature has long been a detailed regional study investigating the racist character of this war as a preliminary stage in the attack on the Soviet Union two years later. Alexander Rossino's study of the crimes in Poland in September 1939 represents an initial step that should be continued, in particular through examinations of the treatment of the Polish and Jewish civilian population by German soldiers. For the SS and the German police, the commission to engage in ethnic cleansing expanded their political maneuvering room in a qualitatively new way, especially in light of the fact that Hitler had assigned Himmler the overall responsibility for settlement policy. Only a fraction of the large-scale settlement and evacuation plans of 1939 and 1940 were actually implemented, and it is possible to designate them, when measured against the objectives of Nazi planners, simply as a chronology of failure. These plans had to be repeatedly abridged or divided into short-term and long-term plans. The obstacles that RSHA perpetrators encountered, however, did not cause them to abandon their aims; on the contrary, in response they sought to force through the "solution" with even ·' more radical means. These men were incapable of thinking pragmatically. While they did make tactical concessions when these were unavoidable, they clung implacably and unconditionally to their ideological objectives. "The word impossible," Himmler had stated categorically, "must not exist and will never exist for us:• Wherever expulsions were possible from the German Reich as well, they were implemented. The Jews of Stettin were deported to Lublin in mid-1940, as were Jews from the West Prussian administrative district of Schneidemiihl a short time later. In occupied Alsace and Lorraine, the Nazi Gauleiters and the Einsatzkommandos of the RSHA engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing in 1940, deporting thousands of French people, in particular Jews, to the unoccupied part of France. They also used the Digitlz"" by

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opportunity to deport German Jews from Baden and the Saar-Palatinate to Vichy France. With the German victory over France, National Socialists revived the old anti-Semitic plan of deporting Jews to Madagascar, a plan with genocidal dimensions since it was well-known that the island's inhospitable living conditions could not have supported the millions of people who were supposed to be deported there. Although the Madagascar plan remained a chimera prior to a German victory over England, the National Socialist leadership seriously discussed it for months, an indication of the intensity of its anti-Semitism. The war against the Soviet Union appeared to open the way for an even more radical alternative. Following the defeat of the Soviet Union, which German leaders assumed would happen quickly, European Jews were to be deported to the "East." The Einsatzgruppen of the RSHA were given a radical commission in this ideological war: the liquidation of"Jewish Bolsheviks," which meant the murder of Soviet party and state functionaries as well as the intelligentsia. The "special responsibilities on orders of the Fuhrern issued to Himmler in March 1941 served as the political basis for the SS and the police to act with largely autonomous executive authority and extensive maneuvering room in regard to the Wehrmacht. The authority to decide who was considered part of the "Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsian was to lie solely with the SS and the police rather than the military. The actual orders issued to the Einsatzgruppen when they marched into the Soviet Union behind the Wehrmacht were ambiguous - a circumstance that has spawned various interpretations in postwar scholarly literature. These interpretations, however, have largely ignored the fact that Heydrich left the decision of who should be executed expressly to the local Einsatzkommando leaders and that the description contained in the orders of the groups of people who were supposed to be murdered represented merely a kind of a guideline. Scholarly debates about the different practices of the Einsatzgruppen have misunderstood the practical character of an order, which should be understood primarily as a form of authorization. Only in those rare cases in which the party issuing orders and the party receiving orders are located in the same place at the same time do orders represent unambiguously determined instructions for action. Jn almost every other situation, orders have to be modified and adapted to the specific circumstances. Einsatzkommando leaders had been selected by the RSHA leadership not least because they were expected to be able to make adequate decisions that accorded with Heyd rich's orders even in circumstances that were difficult to foresee and to determine exactly. Digitized by

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442 All three case studies examined in this book-that of Schulz, Sandberger, and Ehrlinger-demonstrate that these men knew quite precisely what their assignments were. Nevertheless, the maneuvering room and decision -making possibilities are also recognizable. Schulz had qualms and was evidently unable to take the step from an anti-Bolshevist Gestapo chief to a racist mass murderer who executed women and children. l\llartin Sandberger proved to be a model student of the RSHA. "Without any sentimental humanitarianism;· he ensured the implementation of the Nazi volkisch-racist project by means of mass murder, extermination through compulsory labor, and expulsion. Distinct from Sandberger, who preferred to let the Estonia police carry out the actual murders, Ehrlinger participated in the executions and urged others to participate as well. At no point can we detect in Ehrlinger any lust to kill or sadistic pleasure; however, when he randomly fired an entire magazine into a group of defenseless prisoners without revealing any perceptible agitation, he had clearly become an ideological perpetrator lost in the abyss of his own assignment. The fact that Ehrlinger succeeded Erwin Schulz as head of Office I at the RSHA in early 1944-the first time someone was appointed to head an RSHA office primarily on the basis of his deployment in the East-points to an increased radicalization during the second half of the war within the RSHA as well. Under Heydrich the RSHA had been able to wrestle political leadership for the "solution to the European Jewish question" in 1941 and subsequently proved to be the radicalizing factor, consistently pushing the National Socialist regime's deportation decisions. Heydrich did not even shy away from staged attacks- for example, in Paris in October 1941- in order to intensify the regional persecution of Jews and to implement their deportation to the East. When the decision was made in September 1941 to deport German and Austrian Jews to the occupied Polish and Soviet territories during the war, the final impediment to comprehensive geno· cide had been overcome. Self-created "inherent necessities"- diseases and epidemics in the horribly overcrowded ghettos where inmates received inadequate provisions and endured catastrophic hygienic conditions, or defining "Jews incapable of labor" as "dead-weight existences" who only burdened the food supply of the Wehrmacht and the "home front" - pro· vided the perpetrators with justifications for implementing mass murder as a kind of problem solving. Once again the actual failure of Nazi deportation plans did not lead the planners to alter their objectives but to radicalize them unconditionally through even more extreme means.

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The regional RSHA stations and Eichmann's central RSHA Section IV B 4 pushed for the seizure, detention, and deportation of European Jews to extermination camps wherever and whenever possible. Despite the numerous obstacles it encountered-whether the unwillingness of partner states to turn over their own Jewish citizens to the Germans or the hesitance among parts of the National Socialist leadership within the German Reich to surrender so-called Mischlinge or Jews living in "mixed marriages" -the RSHA was unwilling to concede to compromises in any of these disputes, always seeking to undermine, circumvent, or break through the resistance it met. In the early years of the National Socialist regime the leading members of the RSHA were not contemplating mass murder in any concrete sense. Genocide, however, was always an inherent possibility in their thinking. The war in the East provided the space required for a process of radicalization leading to ethnic murder. While there were still numerous legal and administrative impediments within the German Reich that the RSHA had to overcome or remove, these restrictions of civil society did not exist in the East. The notion that modernity is composed of bureaucratization and the increasing regulation of social interaction proves untenable in light of the practices of the National Socialist regime in the East. There the dissolution of boundaries also meant the dissolution of bureaucracies and regulations as well as the personalization of decision-making processes. Neither the German Civil Code nor the official Handbook for Administrative Civil Servants had any validity in Estonia and Lithuania or in the Ukraine and Crimea. Here these young college graduates were on their own as Einsatzkommando leaders, local rulers far removed from the Berlin headquarters who made daily decisions over life and death. These men did not understand themselves as armchair scholars or conceptual pioneers in any way. On the contrary, they were convinced that the success of a theory could only be demonstrated in practice. Although racism and anti-Semitism were present throughout Europe, in Germany they became tied in a specific way to an ideological form that, inspired by the humanitarian utopias and historical myths of the nineteenth century, was ruthless and unconditional and always aimed at totality, neither shying away from world war as a purifying exterminatory fire nor from attempts to create the new man. The project was not simply to Kracially" revive Germany but to ethnically reorganize all of Europe. It was this fascination with designing different and more beautiful worlds and with making these worlds become horrifying realities that drew intellectuals,

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college graduates, and scientists in droves to the National Socialist regime as willing and ardent supporters. Philosophers believed that they had finally assumed the reins of power; physicians were convinced that they now had absolute control over human life; and historians thought that they had become the makers of world history. Their participation in the crimes of the Nazi regime was not as functional, objective, and technical as these intellectual elites sought to argue after the war. Whoever fails to see the passion behind the mask of objectivity will not discover the energy and fire of these perpetrators. For this reason, RSHA leaders were neither pencil-pushers nor bureaucrats. They were not cogs in an anonymous machine of extermination. They developed the ideas for the mass murders, constructed the apparatuses to carry them out, and then operated the machines themselves. Were these men intellectuals? There appears to be no simple answer to this question. The history of intellectuals in the nineteenth and, in particular, the twentieth centuries demonstrates their unconditional readiness to cooperate with power in order to establish the rule of Enlightenment, or even to usurp power in order finally to be able to create the new worldOnly if one adheres to an emphatic notion of the intellectual and is convinced that the true image of the intellectual lies in J:.mile Zola's /'accuse, in the enlightener's indictment of the arbitrariness of political rule, and in the stylization of the intrepid battle of words against power will one deny these RSHA perpetrators the status of intellectuals. Not every college graduate or university professor is an intellectual. But before we hastily conclude that Ohlendorf, Sandberger, Grafe, Steimle, Jonak, Rang, and others were not intellectuals. we should consider whether this question focuses an unfamiliar but necessary light on the role and practices of intellectuals and their relation to power in the twentieth century.

Postwar Even in disintegration the RSHA proved to be a dangerous institution. Although one can hardly speak of a "headquarters" in Berlin in 1944 and 1945, given the transfer of numerous RSHA sections and divisions to locations outside the city, the respective units demonstrated that despite the increasing difficulties in communication, their radicality had in no way decreased. On the contrary, the actions of the deportation commandos in Hungary and Slovakia showed the RSHA's power even in the final phase of the war. The relentlessness and cruelty with which Walter Huppenkothen, as RSHA prosecutor, sent Wilhelm Canaris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans 0191t1zea by

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Oster, and Hans von Donanyi to their deaths at the beginning of April 1945 was characteristic of the absoluteness of his worldview. Even the SS's ghostly attempts during the final phase of the war to establish contacts with the Allies made clear that the leaders of the RSHA clung relentlessly to their ideas of a Jewish world conspiracy. They continued to be fixated on the idea that Jews controlled the pulleys and levers of world politics. They were convinced that the middlemen in Switzerland, Sweden, and Hungary represented their opponents' true headquarters of power and even believed that after they had killed millions, they could "generously" and "chivalrously" order an end to the mass murder and be treated by the Allies as honorable negotiating partners. With the collapse of the National Socialist regime few RSHA mem · bers committed suicide. A number were able to go underground and flee the country. Several were tried and convicted for their crimes. The only comprehensive trial of leading RSHA members that actually took place was the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1947 and 1948. Of the twenty-three de· fendants in this trial, ten came from the RSHA. Of these, six were con· demned to death, two to life imprisonment, and two to twenty years of imprisonment. In January 1951 the U.S. high commissioner commuted the remaining death sentences to life imprisonment; Heinz Jost and Gustav Nosske, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, were released from the Landsberg prison in December 1951 for "good behavior:· Franz Alfred Six was subsequently released in October 1952, and Martin Sandberger, the final RSHA prisoner, was released in May 1958. The four case studies of Erwin and Karl Schulz, Martin Sandberger, and Hans Rossner traced the different paths of integration that these former RSHA perpetrators took in the civil society of the Federal Republic of Germany. Karl Schulz profited from the political decoupling of the Criminal Police from the Gestapo in the 1950s, which helped former Criminal Police officers, irrespective of their unqualified affiliation with the RSHA, be reinstated in Criminal Police service in the Federal Republic and to advance in part to senior positions. Despite the exception clause of the 131 Law, former Gestapo members such as Erwin Schulz encountered greater professional difficulties. A significant number of Gestapo officers were un able to find positions in state service and worked instead as self-employed lawyers or economic consultants. The case of Erwin Schulz also illustrates how quickly the cold war and the Iron Curtain caused the National Socialist mass crimes in the East to be forgotten. Martin Sandberger was able to rely on his family connections. Even prominent figures such as Theordor Heuss and Carlo Schmid intervened for Sandberger, contributing to his Digitlzea by

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image as a seduced young college graduate and causing his actual crimes to fade increasingly into the background. As the head of a renowned publishing house, Hans Rossner was even in the position to correspond professionally with Hannah Arendt. Rossner repeatedly expressed his admiration for her, evidently untroubled by the fact that the RSHA had deported people like Arendt to extermination camps and that he himself had spearheaded the persecution of the George circle because of its ostensible "spiritual Jewification." The self-certainty of these perpetrators-a combination of ignorance and lack of self-reflection that revealed traces of their former ideologi· cal arrogance and pretensions of belonging to the master race-began to waver only in the 1960s when former leading members of the RSHA were confronted with criminal investigations in an altered social and political climate, the shock of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, and the tenacious work of a group of state prosecutors centered in Berlin. The collapse of the RSHA trials is in part a demonstration of the role of contingency in history: a law altering the punishment of traffic violations proved to have inadvertent consequences for the criminal prosecution of National Socialist perpetrators. However, the legal discussion about prosecuting accomplices to murder also reflected the difficult and virtually impossible task of adequately dealing with Nazi crimes through the legal system. The paragraph on murder in the German penal code was hardly suited for the persecution of the mass crimes committed by RSHA members. Nevertheless, since the mid-196os these men had to fear that they might still be put on trial for their deeds. Although almost all of the RSHA trials were cancelled as a result of the alteration to paragraph 50, section 2 of the penal code, in the aftermath investigating state prosecutors considered every possible alternative for prosecuting former RSHA members. The era of ignorant security in the 1950s had definitively come to an end. The perpetrators at the RSHA were never transformed into true dem· ocrats. Instead they recognized that the "second chance" they had been offered in the Federal Republic lay less in participating in politics than in being shielded from legal prosecution and in quietly finding an economic niche in the developing consumer society. Thus, the problem of a political historiography of postwar Germany is not the question of continuity or the discovery that numerous "normal" college graduates, intellectuals, and scientists had not only actively served the National Socialist regime and set the stage for the extermination but had actually developed and implemented the mass murder itself. The far greater scholarly challenge lies in

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the issue of discontinuity- that is, in the question of how this postwar society was able to become democratic despite this burden. If there is one fundamental insight that an investigation of the RSHA offers, it is the power of institutions. Without the radicalizing structure of the Security Police and the SD, consciously severed from the traditional administrative context and oriented solely toward the political mission of securing of the volkisch-racist National Socialist domain of power, these young radicals would have remained "paper tigers:' A connection of this ideology alone to the powerful institutions of a dictatorship would have led to the expulsion of German Jews in Nazi Germany, but not to their murder. Only with the amalgamation of conceptual radicality, new institutions, and unbound practices of power in wartime could a process of radicalization be unleashed that ultimately led to genocide. Conversely, it is possible that without the specific institutions and without the radicalizing practices, these ideological perpetrators would have remained radicals but would not have had the power to make their ideology a reality. In moral terms, it is certainly reprehensible that Nebe's former adjutant Karl Schulz was able to become chief of the State Criminal Police Office in Bremen after the war. In this function, however, he was situated in a legal-political context that made any kind of radicalization or dissolution of boundaries impossible. The legal and political institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany-which up to the passage of state-of-emergency laws were guaranteed not least by the Allies - allowed broad leeway for the private convictions of those working within them but at the san1e time established quite narrow boundaries for anticonstitutional activities in the exercise of official duties. Considered in moral terms and from the perspective of the victims, it is certainly scandalous that former leading members of the RSHA were allowed to return largely unchallenged to middle-class normality. It can hardly be justified that after the war Hans Ehlich was able to open a practice as a respectable physician, yet at the same time it points to the limits of the standard argument that it was necessary to turn to the old functional elite in order to build up the new Federal Republic of Germany. Furthermore, the damage that accrued when the penal code was virtually suspended for certain people or for certain crimes weighed like an oppressive mortgage on the constitutional democratic development of postwar Germany. It was only in the 1960s that these perpetrators- who included not only the director of the Federal Chancellor's Office, Hans Globke, erstwhile author of the commentary to the Nuremberg racial laws in the

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1930s, but also men who radically implemented these laws as a practical

reality-were subject to legal investigations for murder and for abetting murder. This delay n1akes clear the political price paid for the acceptance of democratic institutions in postwar Germany. The question of whether or not this price was too high will have to be discussed elsewhere. However, this virtual state of emergency in a society composed of democratic institutions in which that society suspends the validity of its own laws in order to integrate the perpetrators of National Socialist crimes reveals how fragile and risky the process of establishing a civil society in postwar Gern1an actually was.

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N OT ES

Archive and Repository Abbreviations BArch BOC BS1U

GenSIA Berlin GLA lfZ LArch NA PRO RSHA-Verfahren Ru SHA

sso StAnw USHMM USHRI USM TN ZStL

Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives), Berlin Berlin Document Center (today part of the Bundesarchiv Berlin) Bundesbeauftragte fiir die Unterlagen des Staatssichheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Office of 1he Federal Commissioner for the Records of the Ministry ofS1ate Security for 1he State Security of the GDR), Berlin Generalstaa1sanwaltschaft Berlin (General Stale Prostcu1or's Office), Berlin German Literalur< Archive, Marbach lnstilut filr Zci1geschichte (lnslitute for Conlemporary Hislory). Munich Landesarchive Berlin (Berlin State Archives) Nalional Archives, Washington, D.C. Public Records Office, London RSHA Trial (files in the Landesarchive Berlin, B. Rep. 057-01 GSTA beim Kammergericht Berlin) Rasse· und Siedlungshauptamt der SS (Race and Set1lemen1 Main Office of the SS) SS Officer (files in the Berlin Document Cenler) Staaisanwaltschaft (Slate Prosecutor's Office) Uniled S1a1es Holocausl Memorial Museum, \\'ashinglon, D.C. Uniled Stales Holocaus1 Research lnstilule (now !he Cenier for Advanced Holocaust Studies), Washing1on, D.C. Uniled S1a1es Mililary Tribunal Nuremberg Zenlrale Sidle der Landesjuslizverwahungen zur Aufklarung nali· onalsozialislischen Gewaltvcrbrechen (Central Office for !he Slate Justice Administration for the ln\'f."Stigati~en 1md biograpl1ische Studien (Gottingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2000), 101.

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Notes to Pages 86-94

27. Biographical information has been drawn from BArch, BDC, SSO and RuSHA

file Hans Daufeldt; BArch DH. ZR 527 A 4, ZSK 14; ZStL, 4 AR 1517/62; Interrogation Daufeldt, Nov. 18, 1964, RSHA· Verfahren, Personalhefi Pd 4. 28. Best, "Reinhard Heydrich, Manuskripl, Kopenhagen, 1.10.1949," in Diinemark in

Hitlers Hand: Der Beric/11 des Rcichsbcvollmiichtigten Werner Best uber seine Besatzungspolitik in Diinemark mit Studicn uber Hitler, Goring, Himmler. Heydrich, Ribbentrop, Canaris u.a., ed. Siegfried Matlok (Husum: Husum Verlag, 1988). 163. See also Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien uber Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vermurft. 1903-1989 (Bonn: Dietz, 1996}. 195.

29. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, Jan. 1, 1933. Grafe Family Private Collection. 30. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, Mar. 5, 1933. 31. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, Mar. 9, 1933. 32. On the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies during the first years of their rule, see Fried-

lander, Nazi Germany and the fews; Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy toward German Jews, 1933-1939 (Urbana: University of lllinois Press, 1970). 33. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee. Apr. 6 and 16, 1933. 34. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, Apr. 14, 1933. 35. Haffner, Defying Hitler, 142- 43. On the actual representation of Jews in the German state see Peter Pulzer, Jews and the German State: The Political History ofa Minority, 1848- 1933 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); on the percentage of Jews in the legal professions see ibid .. 274-83. 36. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, June 8, 1933. 37. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, June 10, 1933. 38. Heinz Grafe to his fiancee, July 4, 1933. On the Gleichschahung of the Stahlhelm during the summer 1933 see Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm: 8w1d der Frontsoldatcn 1918 - 1935 (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1966), 263- 71; and Volker R. Berghahn, "Das Ende des Stahlhelm," Vicrtcljahrsheftc fur Zeitgescl1ichte 13 (1965): 446 -51. 39. Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet, League of Frontline Soldiers), was a right-wing paramilitary organi1.ation founded in the Weimar Republic following the German defeat in World War I. In 1930 it had 500.000 members and was the largest paramilitary organization in Germany. 40. RuPrMdl to Gestapa. Mar. 3, 1936, BArch DH, ZR 48. 41. Heydrich to RuPrMdl, June 29, 1933, BArch DH. ZR 48. In his letter from Julj• 6. 1936, von Wedelstadt agreed to Grlife's provisional appointment to the Secret Police. On November 2. 1936, Grafe was permanently appointed government official in the Prussian state service with simultaneous appointment in the civil service. 42. "Gleichschahung;' roughly translated as "alignment~ was the term used to indicate the incorporation of a previously independent organization or association into the National Socialist order. 43. Elisabeth and Erhard Miiding. "Erinnerungsblatter," masch., 1984, BArch Koblenz, Kleine Erwerbungen 817, p. 49. Hohn was born in Grafenthal in Thiiringia in 1904, the son of a lawyer. At age eighteen he joined the German People's Defense and Offense League and sold the VO/kischer Reobachter in his hometown . He was a Digitized by

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N(>tes to Pages 95-100

law student at the University of Munich during the Hitler· Ludendorff putsch in 1923. \\'hen the NSDAP was banned, he joined the Young German Order and soon became one of Arthur Mahraun's imponant coworkers. However, when Mahraun became a co· founder of the Deutsche Staatspartei in 1929, the two broke politically. Hohn resigned from his post in the Order and became a lecturer and a freelance tutor at the University of Jena. leaving the Order completely in 1932. That same year he became a member of the SS and the SO. Aner Otto Ohlendorf assumed control of the Lebensgebietsarbeit in the SO Main Office from Hohn in 1936-37, the latter increasingly withdrew from active work in the SD. Aner the end of the Second World War, Hohn was founder and longtime director of the Bad Harzburg Academy. He died on May 14, 2000, at the age of ninety· five. 44. Ibid .. 49- 50. 45. Ibid .. 50-51. 46. Dienstleistungszeugnis filr Erich Ehrling~r. Apr. 17. 1935· BArch. R 58 Anh./14. 47. BArch DH. ZR 555, A 14. In September 1933 Hitler commissioned the SA to "provide unified physical and mental training to German university students in the sense of making them spearheads of the German revolution." As a result, the SA University Otlicts were established on all German campuses. In addition, the leader of th< German Student Body encouraged students to become members of the military associations that were subordinate to the head of the SA (i.e.. the SA and the SS). The Wehrsportdienst (military athletic service), which was pushed by the leadership of the SA, became ii!· creasingly important in the everyday life of college students. taking up more than twenty hours a week on several campuses. including Erlangen and Halle. Michael Griittner. Srudenten im Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Schoningh. 1995). 251-55. 48. Erich Ehrlinger, handwritten resume, Sept. u. 1934· BArch OH, ZR 555, A 14. 49. When not otherwise indicated, biographical information has been drawn from BArch, BOC, SSO Martin Sandberger. Sandberger's dissertation was entitled, Die Sozi· t1lversicherung im nationalsozialistischen Staat: Gru11dsiitzliches zur Streitfrage: Versiclte· rung oder Versorgung' and was published in 1934· 50. Camp 020 Interim Interrogation Report, Oct. 1945, p. 4, NA, RC 319, box 191, file XE000855 Sandberger. Scheel confirmed this in his sworn affidavit from November 28, 1947· He stated that he had known Sandberger since his work as head of the Student Body in Tubingen in the spring of 1933. When he became head of the SD-Oberabschnitt Southwest he spoke with Sandberger about working for the SD (Eidesstattliche Versiche· rung Gustav· Adolf Scheel, Nov. 28, 1947, NA, USM TN. Case No. 9 Otto Ohlendorf et al., Defense exhibits, Sandberger No. 8 [roll 24, fol. u8- 120)). 5i. Personalbericht. May 5, 1936, gez. Scheel, BArch, BDC. SSO Manin Sandberger. 52. Scheel was arrested by the U.S. Army in May 1945. A German de·Nazification cou.n sentenced him as a major offender to five years in a work camp. In 1953 Scheel was imprisoned again for a half-year as part of a series of British arrests of former leading Nazis in the so-called Naumann circle. From 1954 until shortly before his death in 1979, Gustav-Adolf Scheel had a medical practice in Hamburg. 53. When not otherwise indicated. biographical information has been drawn from oig1t1ze-0 by

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BArch, BOC, SSO Wilhelm Spengler. See also the biographical information (which is not always correct) in Shlomo Aronson, Reinhard Heydrich ur1d die Fruhgcschichte von Gestapo utrd SD (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags· Anstalt), 1971, 162-63. 54. According to testimony at the Nuremberg trials by Friedrich Karl Freiherr von Eberstein, who was head ofSS-Oberabschnitts Mitte in Dresden in 1933-34, Beutel car· ried out Heydrich's execution orders in Saxony on June 30, 1934. Trial of the Major War Crimir1als before the International Military Tribur1al, 42 vols. (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1947), 20: 289 - 290, 296). On the SD in Saxony, see Carsten Schreiber. "'Eine verschworene Gemeinschaft': Regionale Verfolgungsnetzwerke des SD in Sach· sen;' in Nachrichtendienst, politische Elite. Mordeinheit: Der Sicherheirsdienst des Reichs· fuhrers SS, ed. Michael Wildt (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), 57- 85. 55. Spengler to the Gestapo Office, May 3, 1935, BArch Potsdam, SS Versch. Prov. Film 4971, Aufn. 909718; and June 13, 1935, Prov. Film 3664, Aufn. 899906. 56. On this issue see the detailed and important volume edited by Sonke Lorenz, Dieter Bauer, Wolfgang Behringer, and Jurgen Michael Schmidt. Himmlers Hexenkarto· thek: Das Interesse des Nationalsozialismus an der Hexenverfolgung (Bielefeld: Verlag filr Regionalgeschichte. 2000 ). 57. Memorandum Six, "Die Entwicklung des Amtes II (1935-1939);' July 17, 1939, BArch, R 58IF, 295, Bl. 2-9. See also Lutz Hachmeister, Der Gegnerforscher: Die Karriere des SS-Fuhrers Franz Alfred Six (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998), 111. In 1937 Spengler was transferred to the Central Division II 1 Life Areas Evaluation and directed its Main Divi· sion 1111 Cultural Life, which was later incorporated in the RSHA Group Ill C Culture. 58. When not otherwise indicated, biographical information has been drawn from BArch, BOC, SSO Hans Ehlich. 59. Sworn affidavit, Nov. 25, 1947, RSHA-Verfahren, Personalakte Pe 6. 6o. In the meantime his brother, Ernst Weinmann, had become the leading National Socialist in the Tlibingcn City Council as well as the deputy district director of the NSDAP and an important factor in municipal politics in Tubingen. In 1935 he was appointed to the influential office of first deputy and became mayor ofTubingen in 1939. Benigna Schonhagen, Tubingen ur1term Hakenkreuz: Eine Universitiitsstadt in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Tiibingen: Konrad Thiess Verlag, 1991), 187, 319. From 1941 to 1944 Ernst Weinmann was settlement commissioner with the military commander in Serbia and was responsible for the expulsion and deportation of thousands of people. In November 1944 Ernst Weinmann returned to his post as mayor of Tiibingen. Af· ter the war he was extradited to Yugoslavia and tried for the crimes he committed as settlement commissioner. He was sentenced to death and executed in December 1946. Hans-Joachim Lang, "Ernst Weinmann: Tubinger Oberbiirgermeister und Bdgrader Deportationsminister;· in Nationalsozia/ismus in Tiibi11gen: Vorbei und vergessen, ed. Bcnigna Schonhagen (Tlibingen: Kulturamt der Stadt Tlibingen, 1991), 108-10. 61. In a letter to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office from January 13, 1937, Weinmann noted that "at the suggestion of the director the SD- Oberabschnitt Siidwest;' he had declared himself prepared "to assume a full -time position with the SD Rl'SS" (BArch, BDC, SSO Erwin Weinmann). oig1tlze1lby

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470

62. Personalbeurtcilung, SD-Oberabschnilt Sudwest. n.d. (1938), BArch. BDC. SSO Er''"in \\'einmann. 63. BArch, BDC, SSO \Valter Blume. 64. Interrogation Blume, Oct. 31. 1947, NA, USMTN. Case No. 9 Otto Ohlendorf et al., p. 1803 (roll 15, fol. 210). 65. Haffner, Defying Hitler, 191. 66. Walter Blume resume, Aug. 15. 1934. BArch DH. ZR 106. 67. Interrogat ion of Walter Blume, Oct. 31, 1947, NA. USMTN. Case No. 9 Otto Oh lendorf et al., S. 1803 (roll 15, fol. 210), NA. 68. Gerhard Paul also noted this rotation principle in his study of all the directors of State Police bureaus in 1938-39. The vast majority of these sixty State Police dirtctors remained at their post for only a brief period of time. Gerhard Paul, "Ganz normale Akademiker: Eine Fallstudic zur regionalen staatspolizeilichen Funktionselite; in Die Gestapo-Mythos und Realitiit, ed. Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1995), 246. 69. Blume to the Staatspolizeileitstelle Dresden. Dec. 5, 1936, Special Archive Moscow, 5001-290, fol. 109-111. 70. Christian Gerlach. "Die Einsatzgruppe B 1941/ 42," in Die Einsatzgruppen in der

besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/4>: Die Tiitigkeits- und Lageberi- 10; for Schulz see the statement by Franz Schulz ( n.d .) to the de-Nazification court in Bielefeld (4" Sp. ls. 275/ 47), BArch DH. ZR 201. 76. Josef Vogt applied for membership to the SS at the beginning of 1939 but was certilied by the Race and Settlement Main Office as being "unsuited for the SS" on the basis of his "defective physique" and being an "imbalanced Ostic or East-Baltic mixed-breed." Best presented the application to Heydrich, who forwarded the procedure to Himmler. Himmler subsequently approved Vogt's admission to the SS. Stellungnahme des RuSHA. Apr. 14, 1939, Vermerk Best, Apr. 22. 1939, SD-Hauptamt to Pcrsonalhauptamt, July 31, 1939, all in BArch. BOC. RuSHA file Josef Vogt). In Schul1.'s case the responsible racial specialist voted against Schul1.'s admission into the SS. Schulz was nevertheless admitted to the SD as an SS SturmbannfUhrer in 1939 on Himmler's explicit instructions (Sicherhcitshauptamt, Leiter Zentralabtcilung I/ >. ge~. Klingemann, to SS-Personalhauptamt, Aug. 31, 1939, BArch, BOC, Personalakte Franz Schulz). 77. An RSHA evaluation of Kopkow included the follo wing: "With exemplary atti· tude and rare grit, he was always in the front rows of auditorium battles" (RSHA, Beflii1111er, 78. 81. Browning, Origins, 41. 82. See Longerich, Politik der Vcrnichtu11g, 256-61. Leni Yahil refers to Eichmann's memo regarding Miiller'scommission on October 6, 1939, according to which the opera· lion should expressly serve "first and foremost to acquire experience so that on the basis of this experience it will be possible to execute the transport of the masses" (The Holo· carat: The Fate of the European Jewry, 1932 -1945, trans. Ina Friedman and Haya Galai (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990(, 150). 83. Heydrich an BdS Krakau und IdS in Breslau, Posen, Danzig, Konigsberg, 21.12.1939, mit Bezug auf cine Dienstbesprechung am 19.12.1939, BArch R 58/240, Bl. 26; see David Cesarani, Eichmtmn: His Life and Crimes (London: William Heinemann, 2004), 81. 84. "Top Secret Note. 20 October 1939, on conference between Hitler and Chief OKW concerning future relations of Poland to Germany, 17 October 1939~ in Nazi Con· spiracy and Aggression, 3:619- 21. 85. SS and police courts replaced military courts; as supreme legal authority, Himm· lcr determined the composition of these courts. Verordnung fiber eine Sondergerichts· barkeit in Strafsachen fur Angehorige des SS und fiir Angehorige der Polizeiverbiinde bei besonderem Einsatz, Oct. 17, 1939, Reichsgesetzblatt, 1:2107- 8. See here \Volfgang Scheff· ler, "Zur Praxis der SS· und Polizeigerichtsbarkeit im Dritten Reich," in Klassenjustiz und Pluralismus: Festschrifi fur Ernst Frae11kel, ed. Gunther Docker and Winfried Steffani (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Kampe, 1973), 224-36; "Die Sondergerichtsbarkeit von SS und Polizei. Militiirjustiz oder Grundlegung einer SS-gemassen Rechtsordnung?" in Das Unreclrtsregime: Internationale Forschung uber den Nationalszialismus, ed. Ursula Bi.ittner, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1986), 243-59. 86. On this see in particular Jansen and Weckbecker, Der "Volksdeutsche Se/b$t· sclrutz,~ 111 - 59.

87. Aktenvermerk Heyd rich, July 2, 1940, in Helmut Krausnick, "Hitler und die Morde in Polen," Vierteljahrshcfts fiir Zeitgescl1ichte 11 (1963): 206-9; see Rossino. Hitler, 14. 88. Rede Himmler in Metz, Sept. 7, 1940. li\1T. 29:104 (1918-PS}; a partial English translation in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 4:553- 71. 89. Bogdan Musial, " Das Schlachtfeld zweier totalitarer Systeme: Polen unter deut · scher und sowjetischer Herrschaft 1939 - 1941," in Mallmann and Musial, Genesis des Ge· 11ozids, 15. 90. See Browning. Origins. 72-81. 91. Aktenvermcrk Heydrich. July 2, 1940, in Krausnick. "Hitler und die Mordc in Polen," 206-9. 92. Poli1.eisitzung am May 30. 1940, in Werner Priig and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, eds.,

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Das Diensttagebuch des deutschcn Generalgouverncurs in Polen 1939- 1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsch Verlags-Anstalt, 1975), 211- 12. 93. Polizeisitzung am May 30, 1940, in /)as Dienstt11gebucl1 des deutschen Gencralgouverneurs in Polen, 214-15.

Chapter 8. Expulsion, 1940 "Aufzeichnung Keitels vom 20.10.1939 iiber cine Unterredung mil Hitler am 17.10.1939:• Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (/MT), 42 vols. (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1947), 26:378-83 (864PS); for the English translation, see "Top Secret Note, 20 October 1939, on Conference between Hitler and Chief OKW Concerning Future Relations of Poland to Germany. 17 October 1939," in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1947), 619- 21. 2. Camp 020 Interim Interrogation Report Martin Sandberger, October 1945, NA, RG 319, box 191, file XEooo855 Sandberger. On the E\VZ see Gotz Aly, "Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European fews, trans. Belinda Cooper and Allison Brown (New York: Oxford University Press. 1999). 35; Valdis Lumans, Himmlers 1.

Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933 - 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1993); Andreas Strippel. "NSVolkstumspolitik und die 'Neuordnung Europa': Rassenpolitische Selektion der Einwan · dererzentralstelle des Chefs der Sichcrhcitspolizei und des SD (1939- 1945)" (PhD diss., University of Hamburg. 2009). 3. The UWZ was established on November u . 1939, on the instruction of Senior SS and Police Leader Wilhelm Koppe in Poznan and was called the Office for the Resettle· ment of Poles and Jews before its name was changed at the end of April 1940. It was sub· ordinate to Office III (Ehlich) and Office IV (Eichmann) of the RSHA. The UWZ used all local police agencies for the "evacuation of people of foreign heritage [ Fremdstiimmigen) from the Warthegau." Officially Ernst Damzog. as Inspector of the Security Police in Poznan, directed the UWZ, but it was actually run by his deputy Rolf Heinz Hoppner. Aly, Final Solution, 38-39, 52; Czeslaw Madajczyk. Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideurscl1la11ds in Polen 1939- 1945 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1987), 406. 4. Anordnung RKF, Himmler, I/II, Oct. 30, 1939, BArch, R 75/3 b, in Faschismus-

Getto-Massenmord. Dokumentation uber Ausrottung und Widerstand der Juden in Polen wahrend des Zweiten Welrkrieges, ed. Tatiana Berenstein (Berlin: Rutten and Loening, 1961). 42- 43. 5. Anordnung RSHA I HB. gez. Best, Oct. 31, 1939, BArch, R 58/2.40, Bl. 17. 6. Protokoll der Besprechung vom, Nov. 8, 1939, in Documenta Occupationes Teuronicae, 9 vols. (Poznan: lnstitut Zachodni, 1946). 7:3- 5. At this meeting Streckenbach presented the expanded deportation plans, according to which all Jews and Congress Poles were to be evacuated from the Reich Gaus of Danzig and Posen as well as from East Upper Silesia by the end of February 1940 (Aly. Final Solution. 38). 7. Rundschreiben Koppe, Nov. 12, 1939. zur "Abschiebung von Juden und Polen aus oig1t1ze-0 by

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Notes to Pages 244- 248

dern Reichsgau 'Wartheland;" in Faschismus-Gctto-Massenmord. 43-46. See also Aly. Final Solution, 38 - 39. 8. The long-term plan has not been found as a document, allhough a draft of it does exist, apparently from Office Ill , entitled "Fernplan der Umsiedlung in den Ostprovinzen" [Long-Term Plan for Rt>seltlernent in the East Provinces] (BArch, R 69/1146, Bl. 1- 13). On the attribution and dating of the plan, see Aly. Final Solution, 40- 41. 9. Memorandum by Abramowitz about a preliminary meeting on the "Evacuation of Jews and Poles in the Eastern Territories" in Berlin on January 4, 1940 (lfZ, Document T/171 of the Eichmann Trial). A similar report can be found in a letter from an officer of the labor division at the Office of the General Governor to the Governor of the District of Krakow, Dec. 12, 1939, in F1iscl1isnrns- Getto - Masserimord, 48; see also Madajczyk, Okkupationspolitik, 408-11. 10. Rede Franks am 25.11.1939 vor Mitarbeitern in Radom. in Faschismus-Gcttof.lussenmord, 46; for an English account and translation, see Christopher Browning, Ori·

gi11s of the Final Solution: The Evolution of the Nazi Jewish Policy, Septeml>er 1939-March 1942, conrrib. Jurgen Matthaus (Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and

Yad Vashem, 2004), 45. 11. Vermerk Abramowitz, Jan. 8, 1940; compare with Browning, Origins. 5312. Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des "Ausliinder-Eirisatzes" in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, rev. ed. (Bonn: Dietz Verlag. 1999). 13. Aly, Final Solution, 76. 14. Ibid .. 82; Browning, Origins. 54 - 63. 15. Vermerk iiber die Sitzung vom 30.1.1940 im RSHA, Nurnberger Dokument N0 5322, in Faschismus-Getto-Masunmord, so- 52. 16. Protokoll der "Sitzung iiber Ostfragen unter dem Vorsitz des Ministerprasiden · ten Generalfeldmarschall Goring" am 12.2.1940 in Berlin, in /MT, 36:299 - 307 (305-EC); compare with Browning, Origins, 61. 17. Die Tagebuclier von Joseph Goebbels: Samtlidie Fragmente, pt. 1, vol. 4, ed. Elke Frohlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1987). 21; Browning, Origins, 56. 18. Rede Himmler vor den Gauleitern, Feb. 29, 1940, BArch, NS 19/ 4007, Bl. 14-84, in Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945 und anderen Ansprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith (Frankfurt am Main: Propylaen, 1974), 115- 44. 19. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of the European Jewry, 1932-1945, trans. Ina Friedman and Haya Galai (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 138-39. 20. Fernschreiben EWZ, gcz. Sandherger, Jan. 16, 1940, BArch, R 69/854, Bl. 61. 21. Browning, Origins, 65. 22. Aly, Firral Solution, 59. 23. Ibid., 18. 24. Erlass RSHA, Heyd rich, Apr. 24, 1940, in Dokumente iibcr die Verfolgung dcrJii-

dischen Burger in Baden-Wiirttemberg durd1 das natio11alsozialistische Regime 1933-1945, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966). 125. 25. Denkschrift Himmlers "Ein ige Gedankcn ilber die Behandlung der Fremdvolkischen im Osten," May 1940, BArch. NS 19/3281, Nurnberger Dokurnent N0-1880, in

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Vierteljahrshefte fiir Zeitgescl1icl1te 5 (1957): 196- 98; as well as Vermerk Himmler. rvtay 28. 1940, Nurnberger Dokument N0-1881, ibid., 195- 96. See Browning, Origins, 69. For an English translation of this document, see "Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, a secret memorandum handed to Hitler by Himmler on 25 May 1940," in Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, vol. 13: United States of America v. Ernst von Weizsaecker. et al. (Case 11: "Ministries Case") (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1952), 147-50. 26. Magnus Brechtken, "Madagaskar fur die fuden": Antisemitische /dee und politische Praxis 1885-1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1997); Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen fudenverfolgung (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1998), 273-92; Browning, Origins, 81-89. 27. Browning, Origins, 82. 28. Memorandum "Zurn Judenproblem," BArch, R 58/956, Bl. 2- 19, in Michael Wildt, ed., Die /ude,.politik des SD 1935 - 1938: Eine D, Dicnstkalender Himmler, 473; Vermerk RSHA. VI C/Z. gei. Or. Roeder. Sept. 30, 1942, BArch OH. ZR 920 A 2. 99. Berichte RSHA VI C/Z iiber die Einsatze. Aug. JI, Sept. 10 and 23, 194i, BArch OH, ZR 920 A 2; see also the report of Sonderkommandos Hauptlagcr Krim, to RSHA VI C/Z, z. Hdn. SS-Stubaf. Grafe. Aug. 23, 194i, BArch DH. ZR 920 A 52. According to Mallmann. by the beginning of November 1944 there had been 44 deployments involving 126 "activists" ("Krieg im Ounkeln;· 335). 100. Grafe to Oebsger-Roder, May 7, 1943, in Mallmann. "Krieg im Ounkeln." 337. 101. RSHA VI C, Schellenberg. lo Luther, Nov. 13, 194>, Akten zur Deutschen Auswiirtigen Politik 1918-1945 (ADP). series E (Collingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1979). 4:369. Luther gave the report lo Ribbentrop a day later; Schellenberg wrote that Himmler had presented the report to the "supreme authority" (Hitler) and had also forwarded it lo other Reich's authorities (ibid., 4:369). 102. Cited in Angrick, Bes11tzungspolitik und Massenmord, 63in138. 103. Vermerk Schellenbergs fUr Kaltenbrunner, Mar. 10, 1943, BArch DH. ZR 920 A 49, Bl. 73 - 76. 104. Hans von Herwarth. Zwischen Stalin und Hitler (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein Verlag, 1982}. 288. 105. Protokoll der Besprechung im RMfdbO am 18.12.194>, lfZ. Nilrnberger Ookumcnl N0-1481. 106. Erlass Halders vom 24.3.1942, in Joachim Hoffmann , Die Ostlegionen 1941 - 194.1 (Freiburg: Rombach Verlag, 1976). 24. Al the beginning of June 1943 Hitler had called

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arming Russians an "illusion of the first degree" and declared categorically that he would never build up a Russian army (Besprechung Hitlers mit Keitel und Zeitzler, June 8, 1943, in Helmut Heiber, ed., Hitlers Lagebesprechungen: Die Protokollfragmente seiner militiirischen Konferenzen 1942-1945 fStuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1962), 252- 68). 107. On the background and the unfolding of the assassination, in particular the subsequent terror measures against the Czech civilian population, see Brandes, Tschechen, 251-67; for more detail on the assassination see Callum MacDonald, The Killing of Obergruppenfiihrer Reinhard Heydrich, 27 May 1942 (New York: Free Press, 1989). 108. Dienstkalender Himmler, 438- 39. 109. Ibid. no. Bericht Franks fiir die Zeit von Mai bis September 1942, in Die Vergangenheit

warnt: Dokumente iiber die Germanisierungs- und Austilgungspolitik der Naziokkupanten in der Tschechoslowakei, ed. Vaclav Kril (Prague: Orbis, 196o). 157. n1. Vermcrk BdS Prag, Bohme, June 12, 1942, Dienstkalender Himmler, 456. 112. The female relatives were to be brought to a concentration camp (Dienstkalender Himmler, 450-51). 113. Himmler's speech to SS-Gruppenfiihrer on June 9, 1942, in Heinrich Himmler: Geheimreden 1933- 1945 und andere Ansprachen, ed. Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson (Frankfurt am Main: Propylaen . 1974). 145- 61. n4. The two remaining RSHA office heads, Six and Siegert (who had taken over Office II after Nockemann's death). were not at the meeting. 115. Schellenberg, The Labyrinth, 293-94; Dienstka/ender Himmler, 455. Werner Best evidently hoped that he would be named Heydrich's successor. According to subsequent statements by Best, Himmler told him that he would not appoint him chief of the RSHA but did want to give him "new responsibilities; as Best stated in a letter of August 10, 1942. However. it remains unclear whether this meant the position of a Reich Representative in Denmark (Unterredung Himmler- Best am 22.6.194>, Dienstkalender Himmler, 463; Herbert, Best, 316- 22). n6. Himmler met with Six only once during the second half of the year, on June 22, 1942 (Dienstkalender Himmlers. 464). Prior to this Ribbentrop had submitted a written complaint to Himmler on June 6, 1942, stating that although tens of thousands of ethnic Germans had come to the Waffen -SS as a result of pressure from the Foreign Office, the Foreign Office itself had yet to receive "a single colleague of caliber from the SS." In the aftermath Six relayed Himmler's instructions to the Foreign Office and was appointed head of the cultural division there (Lutz Hachmeister. Der Gegnerforsclier: Die Karricre des SS-Fuhrers Franz Alfred Six !Munich: C.H. Beck, 1998J, 242- 43). n7. Himmler's speech to SS-Gruppenfiihrer on June 9, 1942, in Geheimreden 1933 1945, 159. As Christian Gerlach has pointed out, Himmler thereby employed precisely the formulation that Hitler, according to Goebbels, had used on December 12, 1941 ("Wannsee Conference," 791). 118. Dienstkalender Himmler, 465; Befehl Himmlers zur "Verantwortlichkeit des Reichssicherheitshauptamt~s fiir die Gleichrichtung aller politischen Angelegenheiten der SS," June 25, 1942, BArch, R 19/13, Bl. 38. 0191t1zed by

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119. Dienstkalender Himmler, 464- 65. 120. Vermerk Danneckers, June 15. 1942, in Klarsfeld, Vichy - Auschwitz, 379- 80: CCHnpare with Hilberg, Destruction. 2:674- 75; Yaakov lozowick. Hitler's Bureaucrats: Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil, trans. Haim Watzman (London: Continuun1, 2002), 194- 200.

121. Vermerk Dannecker. May 13. 1942, in Klarsfeld, Vid1y-Ausc/1witz, 377; compare with Hilberg. Destruction, 2:673. 122. Hilberg, Destruction. 2:674-75. 123. Protokoll der Oienstbesprechung Eichmanns mil Dannecker. July 1, 1942, !fl. Nurnberger Dokument RF-1223, in Klarsfeld, ·vichy-Auschwitz; 390 - 91. 124. Through this concession the Vichy regime believed that it would be able to obstruct German access to Jews with French citizenship (see Michael Marrus and Robert 0. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews !New York: Basic Books, 1981], 228- 49). 125. Vermerk Danneckcrs, July 21, 1942, lfZ, Nurnberger Dokument RF-1233, in Klarsfeld, Vichy- Auschwitz, 416. 126. Yahil, The Holocaust, 391 - 94; Himmler's meeting with Reeder on July 8, 1942. Dienstka/ender Himmler, 481. 127. Vermcrk Rathke uber ein Telefonat mit Eichmann am 14.7.1942 IJuly 14, 1942], !fl, Nurnberger Dokument Rf 1226, in Klarsfeld, Vichy- Auschwitz, 406- 7. 128. Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945 (New York: Henry Hoh, 1990). 191-92; Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz 1270 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton. 1996), 305-6. 129. Dienstkalender Himmler, 491 - 93; Richard Breitman, The Architect ofGenocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 236-37. 130. Dienstkalender Himmler, 493; Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, 60-61. 131. Himmler to Kruger, July 19, 1942. BArch, NS 19'1757, Bl. 1. 132. Hilberg, Destruction, 2:520-27; Yahil, The Holocaust, 378- 89. 133. Dienstkalender Himmler, 502- 7; Breitman, Architect. 240. 134. Himmler, •N iedcrschrift uber meinen Empfang beim Duce Benito Mussolini am Montag, dem 11.10.1942 in Rom im Pala220 Venezia, 17.00 Uhr," in ADP, 4:148-51; Dienstkalender Himmler, 587; Breitman, Architect, 240. 135. Dienstkalender Himmler, 513. 136. Vermerk IV J Paris, Ahnert, iiber die "Tagung im Reichssicherheitshauptamt am 28.8.1942 ilber Judenfragen; in Klarsfeld. Vichy- Auschwitz, 447-48. 137. Hilberg, Destruction, 2:840. 138. Christopher Browning, The Final Sol11tion and the German Foreign Office: A St11dy o/Referat D Ill ofAbteilung Deutsch/and 1940- 1943 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), 126-27; Hilberg, Destruction, 2:841-45. 139. Browning, Final Solution, 133-34; Hilberg, Destruction, 2:802-4. 140. Rauter to Himmler, Sept. lO, 1942, lfZ, Nurnberger Dokument NO.z256. 141. Hilberg, Destructiott, 2:620- 21. 142. Verfugung Himmlers. July 29. 194z, BArch, BOC, SSO Bruno Streckenbach.

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143. Peter Black, Ernst Kaltcnbrunner: Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 144. Dienstkalender Himmler, 630-33. Prior to this H immler had had a meeting with Kahenbrunner only in mid-November (Dienstkalcnder Himmler. 616). 145. Himmler, "Aktennotiz Uber die kurze Besprechung beim Fuhrer am Donners· tag, dem 10. Dezember 1942 in der Wolfsschanze, 18.30 Uhr," BArch, BOC, SSO Bruno Streckenbach; Dienstkalender Himmler, 64 2. On December 12, 194 2, Himmler informed Bormann by telephone that Kaltenbrunner was to become the new chief of the RSHA

(Die11stkalender Himmler, 643). 146. Again, RSHA office heads with the exception of Siegert and Six. Dicnstk11lc11der

Himmler, 644. 147. Black, Ernst K11ltenbru11ner, 117-19. 148. Ibid., 130. 149. Schellenberg. The Labyr;,11h, 331. Schellenberg's subsequent characterization of

Kaltenbrunner leaves little doubt what the two thought of each other. 150. Streckenbach to Himmler, Dec. 14, 1942, and Himmler to Streckenbach, Jan. 19, 1943, BArch, BOC, SSO Bruno Streckenbach. 151. Der Kommandierende General des VI. SS-Freiwilligen-Korps, Beurteilung vom 31.12..44, BArch, BOC, SSO Bruno Streckenbach. 151. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of \Vorld \Var 11 (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1994), 437-39, 453-55. 153. Fernschreiben, gez. Brandt, to alle Hauptamtchefs, July 31, 1943, BArch DH, ZM 1469 A 5. 154. Himmler to Pohl. Mar. 11, 1944, BArch DH. ZM 1469 A 5. 155. On May 19, 1944, a truck with two trailers with a total cargo capacity of eighteen tons traveled from Fiirstenstein to Wolfelsdorf (Special Archive Moscow, 500-1 - 1302). The Soviet army captured the extensive files stored in \Volfelsdorf and transported them to Moscow where they were locked in a secret "special archive" for more than fifty years for reasons that can no longer be reconstructed. 156. RSHA, 1 Org. Verzeichnis samtlicher Ausweichdienststellen und Standorte des Reichssicherheitsamtes ausserhalb von Berlin, December 21, 1944, IfZ. Nurnberger Dokument 107-L. 157. Heinz Hohne, Canaris: Patriot im Zwielidrt (Munich, Bertelsmann Verlag, 1976), 396; Schellenberg. The Labyrinth. 347- 51. 158. Hohne, Cmraris, 491-94_ 159. Kahn, Hitler's Spies, 169. 160. "Draft of a Memorandum, Emanating from the Reich Security Main Offi.:e, March 1944," I MT, 35:358-65. 161. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: Tire Holocaust in H1111g11ry, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 510-41; Hilberg. Destruction, 2: 881- 84. 162. Braham, Politics, 674; Hilberg. Destrut'lion, 2:908.

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Notes to Pages JS2 -J57

163. Compare with Christian Gerlach and Gotz Aly, Das letzte Kapitcl: Der Atord an dc1111ngarischen fuden (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), 186-111. 164. Cited in Safrian, Eichmann-Manner, 306; Braham, Politics, 911-17. 165. Hilberg, Destruction, 2:914-19; Braham, Politics, 1295- 1301; on compulsory labor deployments see Gerlach and Aly. Kapitel, 375-414. 166. Aktenvermerk 111 D, Pressburg. Sept. 16, 1944, BArch Potsdam, Film SS Versch. Prov. 1941, Aufn. 9411973f.; Headquarters U.S. forces European Theater, Military Intelligence Service Center, Apo 757, Cl Consolidated Interrogation Report (Cl-CIR) No. 14, Subject: Amt I RSHA, Feb. 28. 1946, NA, RG 238, microfilm M1270, roll 31, fol. 831-48; see Tatjana T6nsmeyer. Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 19_19-1945: Politischcr Al/tag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensim1 (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1003). 167. Yahil, The Holocaust, 523- 24; Hi Iberg, Destruction, 1:788-92. 168. Aussage Roger Masson, May 10. 1948, lfZ, ZS 2423: Interrogation of Walter Schellenberg, Dec. 13, 1946, lfZ, ZS 291, Bd. Ill; Pierre-Theodor Braunschweig, Gehei-

mer Dmht nach Berlin: Die Nachrichtenlinie M=on-Schellenberg und der schweizerisc/1e Nachrichtendienst im Zweiten We/tkrieg (Zurich: Neue Ziiricher Zeitung, 1989). 169. Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, t940-1945, trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon and James Oliver (London: Hutchinson, 1956). 188- 97. 170. Richard Breitman, "A Deal with the Nazi Dictatorship? Himmler's Alleged Peace Emissaries in Autumn 1943," fournal of Contemporary History 30 (1995): 411 - 30. 171. Alexandra-Eileen Wenck, Zwischen Menschenhandel und •Endlosung•: Das Konzentratiot1slager Bergen -Be/sen (Paderborn: Schoningh Verlag, 1000), 366; Raymond Palmer, "Felix Kersten and Count Bernadotte: A Question of Rescue;' Journal ofContemporary History 19 (1994): 39-51. 172. Black, Kaltenbrunner, 139-41. In a letter to Himmler on March 20 Kersten confirmed Himmler's instruction to turn concentration camps over to advancing Allied troops rather than blow them up as Hitler had ordered. In letters from Himmler's personal referent Brandt to Kersten on March 21 and April 8, Himmler confirmed that he had appointed a special commissioner for the Bergen-Belsen camp and that the Red Cross could visit Theresienstadt (Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, 181-83, 284; Wenck, Bergen-Be/sen, 358 - 59). 173. Black, Kaltenbrun11er, 248- 49. 174. Ibid .. 256-57. 175. Protokoll der Vernehmungen Eichmanns. 1960/61, lfZ. Eichmann Trial Docu ment T/37; see Cesar.uti, Eichmann, 195. 176. Interrogation of Hans Ehlich, Dec. 17, 1946, lfZZS 877; Helmut Joachim Fischer, Erinnerungen (lngolstadt: Quellenstudien der 7.eitgeschichtlichen forschungsstelle lngolstadt, 1985), pt. 2:15t-53. 177. Fischer, Erinnerungen, pt. 1:160. 178. On the continuing discussion about whether Muller survived the war and even subsequently worked for the Allies, see Andreas Seeger, "Gestapo-Muller": Die Karriere eines Schreibtischti:iters (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 1996). 62- 73, 173-80. 179. Wachbuch des RSHA. Special Archive Moscow, 500 -3-42.

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Notes to Pages 361- 364

Chapter 11. Postwar 1. Marlis Steinert, Die 23 Tage der Regierung Donitz (Dusseldorf: Econ, 1967). 363: Karl Donitz, Zehn /ahre und zwanzig Tage (Frankfurt am Main: Bernard and Graefe, 1967). 432. 2. Steinert. lJ Tage. 78; David Grier, "The Appoinlment of Admiral Karl Donitz as Hitler's Successor." in The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and its Legacy. ed. Alan E. Steinweis and Daniel£. Rogers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003). 182-98. 3. The total capitulation, however, put an end to his mandate three days later. Schei· lenberg remained in Sweden until mid-June, living at Count Bernadotte's residence be· fore he turned himself into the American military attache in Sweden (Steinert, 23 Tage, 273 - 75; Walter Schellenberg, The Labyrinth, trans. Louis Hagen [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956], 409- 10). 4. Steinert, 23 Tage, 144; Walter Llidde-Neurath, Regierung Donitz: Die tetzten Tage des Dritten Reiches, 3rd ed. (Gottingen: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1964). 91. 5. Interrogation of Werner Grothmann, June 13, 1945, NA, RG 319, box 85, File X6000132 Himmler; Peter Padfield, Himmler Reichsfuhrer-SS (London: Henry Holt, 1990), 608-12. 6. Denkschrift Ohlendorfs an den Leitenden Minister der Geschaftsfilhrenden Reichsregierung, Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, o. D. JMay 1945], BArch, R 62/11, Bl. 34- 51 , in Heinz Boberach, Meldungen aus dem Reich 19.18-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS, vol. 1 (Herrsching: Pawlak, 1984), 533- 39. 7. On this issue in general see Christian Goeschel, "Suicide at the End of the Third Reich; Journal of Contemporary History 41 (Jan. 2006): 153-73. 8. Beschluss Amtsgericht Berlin -Zchlendorf, 70/8 II 108/51, Dec. 2, 1951, ZStL 1 AR 383/59, Bl. 7; TO, Prasidialkanzlei to Dr. L., Aug. 22, 1952, StA Bremen. 3· B.10. b.v\1.23. 143. 64. Eidesstattliche Erklarung Alfred Faust, Sept. 5, 1947. USMTN. Case No. 9 Otto Ohlendorf et al .. Defense exhibit Schulz. No. 11 (roll 24). 65. Schulz to Faust, Aug. 3, 1952, StA Bremen, 4,13/!- P.1. c.1. Nr. 7. 66. Faust to Kaisen, Aug. 12, 1952, StA Bremen, 4,13/!- P.1. c.1. Nr. 7. 67. Bericht des Landesamts filr Yerfassungs'Chuti to Jnnensenator Ehlers, Sept. 4. 1952. StA Bremen, 4,13/!-P.1. c.1. Nr. 7.

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On9inal fron1

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Notes to Puges 384-390

531

68. Karl Dielri'h Bra,her. Die dt'utsd1e Dikt11tur. Entstc/11111g, Str11kt11r, Fo/g,·11 des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne and Berlin: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1969). 69. Ehlers 10 Kaisen, Aug. 18, 1952, SIA Bremen, 4,13/i-P.1. c.1. Nr. 7. In a subse· quent leller to Alfred Faust, Ehlers s1a1ed that he too "had had several encounlers with Schull 1ha1 speak for your judgment of the maller.... I personally believe that something must be done for lhe man" (Ehlers to Faust, Aug. 20. 195z. SIA Bremen, 4,13/1 - P.1. c.1. Nr. 7). 70. Kaisen lo Conelly, Nov. 20, 1952, StA Bremen. 3-B.10. b., Nr. 13 (143). 71. Kaisen to Conant, Mar. 30, 1953, StA Bremen, 3- B.10. b., Nr. 23 [143 ). 72. Office of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany to Kaisen, Nov. 21, 1953; Vermerk Senatskommission fur das Personalwesen, Nov. 21, 1953; Kaisen to Office of1he U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, Nov. 15, 1953, all in Senalskommission fiir das Personalwesen an Personalaml der Freien und Hansesladt Hamburg, Feb. 27, 1954, SIA Bremen, 3-B.10. b., Nr. 23 ( 143). 73. Willy Seiber! was released on parole in May 1954, Eugen S1eimlc in June 1954, \\falter Blume in March 1955, and Walter Haensch in Augusl 1955. Franz Alfred Six had already been released on parole in Oc1ober 1952 (Schwartz, Begnadig1111g, 411 - 12). 74. Heuss lo Dehler, Nov. 28, 1949, in Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik, 298. 75. Ci1ed in Tom Bower, Blind Eye to Murder: Britain. America and the Purging of Nazi Germany: A Pledge Betrayed (London: Andre Deulsch, 1981), 323. 76. See Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik, 177- 78; Pelra Weber, Carlo Schmid 1896 - 1979: F.ine Biograp/1ie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996), 476. 77. Cited in Frei, Vergcmgenheitspolitik, 299-100. 78. Heuss to Becker, July 26, 1955, ibid., JOO. The lerm "mass execulions" was omilled in 1he expose. 79. Heuss 10 Conant, Aug. 25. 1955. ibid., 101. So. Vorgang in BArch DH, ZR 544 A 13. 81. Eidess1a111iche Erklarung Dr. Eberhard Muller, Oct. 27, 1947, US~tTN, Case No. 9 Otto Ohlendorf et al .. Defense exh ibit Sandberger. No. 19 (roll 24, fol. 149 f.) 82. Barson lo Knapp. July )O, 1957; Bilro Meng to Knapp, Apr. 18, 1957, BArch OH, ZR 544 A 13. 83. Vermerk Buro Menges. Jan. 10. 1958; Parole- Plan for Marlin Sandbergcr. Jan. 13, 1958; Auswartiges Amt lo den Gemisch1en Auss,huss, Jan. 15, 1958; Barton 10 Knapp. May 14, 1958. BArch DH, ZR 544 A 13. 84. Reporl on Reichssicherheilshaup1am1. gez. Timmermann. Major, Jul)' 2. 1945, PRO, FO 1050/312, 80276, n.p. 85. Slephan Linck. Der Ordriung vcrpjlic/11et: Dt•utscllf Pt>li:ci 1933 - 1949: Der Fcutschcn Brmdt•stages, 5. \\lahlperiode, 161. Sitzung vom 3.27.1968, vol. 66. Bl. 8484-8502. 38. In January 1969 the lawyer who had applied for a suspended sentence for the for· mer head of the State Police Station in Berlin , Otto Bovensiepen, on December 16. 1968. wrote the following to \\lerner Best (who had himself participated in diverse amnesty campaigns for Nazi perpetrators since the 1950s): "If our understanding is established or confirmed, defendants could only be punished as accomplices if it cannot be demon· strated that they acted from base motives· (cited in Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische S111dien uber Radikalismus, We/1nescu , Ion. 207

Arfltiv jUr So:iafk·isSt'tl$fl11ifr u11cl So:iafpcl/i· tik. 67 Arendt. ~lannah,

s. 79. 117, 5310 100; natural

54.'.ience and. 429: Rii:l~ncr and. 394- 403. 446, S.\311119 Argttntina, 364 Ari~nism. 42:

l..a""' for lhs. 221 Reck. Lugwig.176 Bec.:ker. Carl Heinrich. 386 Bc: student radicalism and, 40, 47, 61, 63, 76 Bovensiepen, Otto, 415 Bracher, Karl Di~rich, 82 Bracht. Werner. 154, 344• 477n76 Brack, Viktor, 185 01g1tizea by

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Braen1er, Walter. 217- 28 Brandt. Karl. 185 Brandt, Rudolf, 362 Braune. Fritz, 274 Braune. \Valter, 202. 489- 900104

Brecht, Bertold, 26 Bremen Office for the Protection of rhe Constitution, 383 Britain, 17, 209, 441; Battle of the Somme, 22-23: Norway and, 2s1: Nuremberg trials and, 367- 77; spy network of, 208 British Second Army, 356 Brocke, Carl, 85- 86 Bromberg Bloody Sunday. 225- 29 Br()()(k, Heinrich Johann zum. 119 Brosi.at, Martin, 11, 125

Browder. George, 143 Browning. Christopher. 6, 8 Brown-Shirts. 84 Brunner, Alois, 312, 353

Buchardt. Friedrich, 273 Buchenwald, 4, 192 Bucher, Ewald, 414 Buhler, fosef, 317 Bulach, Hermann, 366 Bulgaria. 72. 325, 346 BUrckd, Josef. 260- 61 bureaucrats, 444; Eastc:rn European datahas.es and, 7; SchreibtiSol . 504n70 Darn\, Richa.rd Walther, 111 Daufeldt, Hans. 86, 209 dtath marches, 353, 355 Dehn, Gunther, 43 Deloncle, Eugene, 323 de Man, Heinrik, 78, 393 democracy: elitism and, 423: Freikorps and, 27; Mihenberg conference and, 63-67, 431: parliamentary, 36, 428: student radicalism and, 61, 63- 67, 69 Denmark, 104, 322 deporlations. Su expulsions Deppner, Erich, 254 desk murderers. 6, 77, 4t2- 13, 426 Destruction of the European fews. The (Hil· berg). 6 detainment camps. J6S-66 Deumling. Joachim, J6J. 413, 415. 419 Deutscher Ho. 455n5; reform and, 37- 38; Reich Se· curity Main Office and. 38- 40, 43- 45, 52- 55, 168; Sandberger and, 98: Schulz and, 280- 81; SD Foreign Office and, 205; shrinking lebensraum and. 41; SS leadership school and. 86; studenl malnutrition and, 40; student radicalism and. )7-55; Weimar Republic and, 37-38, 41, 47; Werner and, 178; women and. 37, 113- 19 Education and Religious l.ife Se,tion. 4S Ei:gcn, Hans-\\'ilhelm, 354 Egypt. 363-64 Origi~al

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546

Index

Ehk rs, Adult'. 384, )92 f:.hlers. F.rn s1. 260. 273 F.hlich, Hans, 45. 120, 103. )62. 3S>. 433: Ahilur o(. 102; irrcsl of. 36,\: bat·kgrounJ of. 102-4;

Eastern plan and. 3_\3- 34; ex1>ulsions and, 243- 45, 438: 1-lOhn and, 101- 3: postwar cart>er of. 423. 447; as raL·ial exp.:r1. 102-4~ Se(urit)' Servi..:e of the SS (Sicherheit,;Jienst dcr SS ISDJ) and, 102-4: Slovakia and, 314: suicide of, 3S6 Ehrlinger, Christian. 48

Ehrlinger, FJi»heth, 408 Ehrlinger. Erich. 55, 75. 80. 119, 4 19. 423. 433; ba..:kground of, 48-51; charactcrii.atic.1n c.1f, 198- 300; conviction of, 406; f.insatzgruppen and, 160- 61: ethnic clean!'1ngand, 442; inva· sion of Kie\' and, 297- 301; inva.~ion of Ptl·

land and, 118-10: invasion ofSovi't Unitln and, 171-73: occupation of Norway and, 253: post~·ar career of, 408: prosecution of, 408-10: radicalizalion and, 306; ReiC'h Se·

'urity ~tain Office and, 160; release of, 410; xcurity Sn·astika flag and, '431 Eichmann, Adolf. 5, 196- 97, 210. 403. 437; Austrian Jtw$ and, 121-; ethnic: clt:3nsing and, 136-38, 343, 345- 46, 353; expulsions and, 245, 249, 166~ final solution and. 311-12, 314, )18-19, 311, 315: flight of. 364, 419: Hitler's death and. 356: Nuremberg trials and, J99-400; rat line$ and, 364; Reich Securi1y Main Office and, 443; Wann.see Conference and, J17 Eichmann in /nu!.alem {Arendt), 399-403 Einsatz:gruppen. 3, 213- 14; Baatz and, 195- 96; Best and. 169; biological experiments and, 186; Blume and, 104, 106: Ehrlinger and, 160- 61; ethnic cleansing and, 184- 89, 303, 404, 441- 42; exttutions and. 184- 89; final solution and. 404; Gestapo and, 190; Hun ~ gary and. 351; intellectual riff-raff' of.174- 75; invasion of Kiev and, 197-301; i1t\'asion t.) f Poland and, 218-30, 233, 240- 41, 439 ... 40; new horizons IOr, 264-67; No,kcmann and. 109 .. 10; Nuremberg trials and, 104, 1o6, 176, 179-88. J71- 72. J76. 382-85. )88, 404- 5, 411, 419, 422. 445. 511n64, s12n9i. 52Rn44,

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535n10~ occupation of Estonia and. 289- 97;

OC( upation of France and. 255; occ:upalion

of Norway and. 151; Operation lntelligenlsi• and, 2)9: Op: Schulz and. 179-89 Elias. Alois. 310 elitism: Black Hand and. 59. 69-70, 91. 94, 431-)1; Criminal Polict and. 176- 78; culture·nalions and, 6-4; Eastern plan and. J)J-.)4: education and. )8-41, 68- 72; Frerer and, 61 - 61; Grafe and. 56- 80; Langemark students and, Leipzig and, 56-80: National Socialists Students Uague conflict and, 68- 71; Reich Security Main Office and, 38-40; runaway innation and, 31 - 36; soc.::iaJ climbers and, 38-39; work camps and. 72- 76: youth and, 38-41, 56- 8o, 430-)1 Elling, Georg. 99. 161 Engel, Siegfried, • 5· 15>. 252. 365, 366, 419 Erlanger Student Convention, 6o F,. 242-67, 342. 440-41, 447; Madagas· car Plan and, 247- 51, 303- 4; Poles an d, 217, 232- 39, 142- 67; population demographics of, 244-47, 321- 21. 494n21; racial sining and, 247- 50; Reich Commissioner's Office for the

of, 17; Battle of the Somme, 11- 23; catas~ trophe of, 21; disillusionment with~ 23-2s:

Strengthening of Germandom and, 143- 44;

Reich Security Main Office and_.242- 47; to Siberia, 334; Transportation Ministry and, 245, 247, 342-43; Wannsee conference and. J13· 19

extermination camps. See concentration can1ps extradition.s, 341. 364, 420, 469n60. 503n58

disruptive effects of. 21. 426- 30; economic effects of, 23-24, 31-36; experiences from, 21-36; extent of, 21; food scarcity and. 23- 26,

,11; Fraenkel and, 126; Freikorps and, 27- 30; French troops and, 31-32; Front!Gimpfer (frontline soldi. 274; Jagusch and, 189; Jewish Affairs Section and, 189; Jonak and. 193- 95;

23. 26, 18, 35 - 36, 41, 52. 56-57, 62, 107, 126, 172. 193, 426- 30; food scarcity and, 23- 25;

254- 49; invasion of Hungary and, 351-53; invasion of Netherlands and, 253-54; im·asion of Norway. 251-53; invasion of Poland and, 99, i63, 117... 41. 439- 40; invasion of Slovakia and, 353-54; invasion of Soviet Union and, 268- 307; Nuremberg trials and, 367-68, 371, 375- 76 (see also Nuremberg trials); Penal Code Commission and, 414; personalities behind war crimes in, 3- 8; Rhineland and. 31-32. 108, 120, 155, 179, 418; Saxony and,

32. 53, 56, 60, 63. 70. 84. 96, 100- 103. 120. 144, 149, 151, 169. 193, 203. 350. 378, 407. 433, 46m6. 463n22, 469n54; Third Reich and, 11, 110- 11.125- 29, 179, 198. 203; totalitarianisn1 and, 7, 79, 127, 138. 395- 96; volltisch-rac ism and, 9. 17, 32. 48, 62. 73-74, 85, 87, 136, 138, 144, 152. 164 (see al.so vOlkisch -racism); Volk-State dual system and, 126- 64; \\leimar constitution and. 29-30, 63. 129, 431; Weimar Republic and, 27. 31, 35- 37, 41, 47, 64- 65, 68, 76, 78. 102, 129, 139, 174, 177, 187-89. 197- 98, 211, 217, 370, 428, 454, 457n15, 46m5, 466m9, 467n39, 476n55 Gerometta, Alfons, 51 Geschke, Hans-Ulrich, 329, 352 Gestapo, 48on14, 48m31. 487n85, 488n91, 488n98, 488n99, 526n 18; amalgamation of police with SS and, t50- 51; Anti-Sabotage Section and. 189: Article 131 Law and, 377- 78. 380; Baatz and, 195- 96; Berndorff

Knochen and. 218; lawyers and, 193- 96; Lindow and, 197; Litzenberg and, 189, 197; Muller and. 132. 155, 161. 176. 189-99. 218- 19, 237, 324, 341-45, 355, 357: Nockemann and, 107-9: Nuremberg trials and, 367- 77; occupied terri1ories and, 193-96; as Office IV~ 12, 14- 15. 188-99; office personnel of, 189-90, 197-99; Panzinger and, 197; persecution of political opponents and, 189- 91: political fighters and, 152- 60; post,..ar conditions and,361-62,366-71,377-80,383,388:pro· paganda and, 189; prosecution of, 404- 5, 410, 413, 417, 410-21:

protective custody

and, 16, 133, 137- 38, 163. 191-9>. 196-97, 413, 487n85; Prussia and, 130- 31, 133, 145, 175; Reich Headquarters for Jewish Emigration and. 196- 97: religion and, 189; retreat of, 361; Schellenberg plan and, 154- 60; social climb· ers and, 40, 88; Soviet Union and, 190-91; SS marriage policy and, 116; staff siu of, 145; Streckenbach and, 144; Trinkl and, 28; Vogt and, 197; Volk·State dual system and. 128; \\'cinmann and. 193 Geyer, Martin, 34-35

ghe11os: disease and. 311; Einsatzgruppen and. 301. 303; final solution and, 309-15, 322, 325- 26; Jews and, 7, 232-34. 238, 24>. 265, 301, 303, 309 - 15. 322. 325- 26, 344, 368, 442, 496n65; objec tions to, 314- 15; Poles and,

and, 191-92. 197; Best and. 132- 33, 135- 36, 146: Blume and, 105-7: Communists and.

(;js.e\•ius. Hans Bernd, 175- 76. 4810.11

190, 197- 98; counterespionage and, 147- 48,

Globke, Hans. 447-48

218. 350-51; Counterfeiting Section and, 189;

Globocnik, Odilo, 314, 344 Goebbels, Josef, 23, 49. 248, 303, 313, 409 Gohler, Erich, 414- 15 Goldhagen, Daniel, 3. 8

decline of, 350; Eichmann and. 196-97: Ein· satzgruppen and, 190, 27 1- 77, 281 - 83, 289, 294, 298-300. 305; ethnic cleansing and. 2,\ 7. 442: expulsions and, 254, 261-6>; final solu-

tion and. 319 ... 20. J24 ... 25. J28• JO; Function Digitized by

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232-34, 238; Wannsce conference and. 313- 19

GOring. Hermann. 13. 83, 13]: an1ni:sty and, 137- JS; Criminal Police and. t75; expulsit)ns Ong1nal from

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Index

550

GOring. Hermann (t.'Ontinutnsch, Waher, 30. 274, 372- 74 Hatfner. Sebastian. 26- 27, JJ-JS. 81, 104 tiagen, Herbert, 1')6. 257 Hague, The, 116, 187, 154 , 341, 483n40, 501045 Hahn. Herbert, ;o Halder. Franz. 21}. 130- Ji, 268- 69, 338, 494012 h•lf·breeds (Mischlinge). 204, 21), 315, )18. 443, 516018

Haller, Johannes, 48 Hamann (guard). 3$7 Hamburg Justict Ministry, 404 Hamburg uprising. 3.i Hammer, Walter, 110. 365 Hamsun. Knut, 78, 39) Handb.Jok for Adtninistrntive Cil•il Servants, 443 Hanseatic; AppeUatc Court. 414 Harstcr, Wilhelm, 2o;4 f.lart l, Albert, 197, 171 Ha. 202 Hofmann, Otto, 317 HOhn, Reinhard, 19. 144, 437; Ehlich and, 102- 3; Grlife and, 94-96; Sandberger and, 98 ... 99; Security Service o( the SS (SD) and. 140 ... 41. 146. 203

Holllinder, Ludwig, 8.1 Heppner, Rolf-Heinz, 311. 356. 36_1. 364 Horn. Rudolf, 378 Horthy, Miklos, 352 Hoss. Rudolf. 344, 435 HOttl, \\'ilhelm, 206, 109- 10, 356. 381 Hotze!, Rudolf, 46, 120. 172, 189 Huber', Franz Josef. 131 Huch. Ricarda. Ss Hugenberg, Alfred. 8.1. 93 Humntitzsch, Heinz. 220. 220, 260 •.\81-82

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1

and, 199-103; stubbornness and, 355-56. 440; vt>Jk.isch-rai:ism and, 48.. 62. 431 (set also

v6lkisch-r.tcism); Volkskorp 411-18, s37n29, 538n50; Volk-State dual system and, 126- 64; Waldheim trial and, 405; Weimar constitution. 19-30, 63, 84, 128- 29. 431 Lehmann. Hermann. 19, )O Leibbrandt, Georg, 317 l.eibstandarte SS. 239, 251, 262 Origlr.al from

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Index

Leipi.ig: background of. 56; Ehlich and. 10>: Freyer and. 61- 62; Grafe and, 56- 80; Millen·

555

genealogical research for. 111-12; Race and

berg conference and, 61-71, 431; Natio1lal

Seulement Office and. 111- 14; Reich Security Main Office and. 112- 16; Schu11staffel (SS)

Socialists Students League conflict and,

poliS· )57;

Wannste Confrrence and, 317 ~1Uller, Josef, 3;0 Mulltr·Emmeri. Adolf. 414

Murawski. Friedrich. 101 Murr. Wilhelm. 99 Musmanno, Michael A.. 3, J7) ~tussoli ni. Benito. 345 ~1utschmann. ~tart i n , 70 nationalism, 11-µ; All·Gtrman Lea8ue and. 48.; Naz.j Patl)' and. 83- 84; Ruhr occupation and. 41- 4}; student radicalism and, 41- 43 Natinal Socialist Battle League for Gcrma.n Culture. 48, so Na1ional Socialist College Group. S4 National Socialist German Students leagut (Na1ionaJsoi.ialistische OeutS; eleReich Securily 1\iain Office and. 4s-47, SJ-ss: Sandberger and. s1. 98; SS and, 44; student radicalism and, 44-47, so. 51-53, 69-70. 94, 98, 118, 15s. 430-31, 458031, 463n3}; Tempel and. 44; University of TU.bingen and, 50, 54- 55; von Schirach and, 44> \\'einmann and. 51 National Socialist German Workers' Party (Na· tionalsozialistischc Deutsche Arbe-iterpartei INSDAPI). 6, 16. 461n6. 461n1;. 463n33, 467043, 469060, 471n84, 481n31, 487074, 505079. 535011; Artic:Je 131lawand,377- 78. 380; Catholic Church and. as. 60- 61, 138, 197. 201. 364, 381; clemency boards and, 381- 86; decline of. 444- 48; deployment in \\'est· ern Europe and, 251-67; economic issues and, 31-36: elt·ctions of, s1-5~. 81; ethnic cleansing and, 117, 164-6i ( St'«.' also ethnic oigitlzea by

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cleansing); euthanasia murders and, 185-86. 407; flnaJ solution and, 308-38 (see also fi nal solution); First World War and, 19-3i.; freedom of assembly and, 83- S.,; frttdom ofihe press and. 83- 84: gassing and. 18s- 87. JOI, )14. 319. 344. )64. )68; Gauleiten and. 143-4'), 143, 146, 261, 264-65, 169, 304. )I I. )16. 339, 439-40, 459040. 47101: Gumbel c:asc and. 43: Hitler and. 81-82 (see also Hit· 1... Adolf); idrologi'annsee l.'.onft>rence and. 31}-19

P4.,li\:t, 4.\S: amalgamation with Schu11s1atfel

(SS) and. 9, 128, 141, 148- 60, 165- 66, 171, 2u, J,\9. 368-70. 437; Countcrc-spionagc Polii;c a11d . 14 7-48, 118; Crinlinal. t3- 14, 16, 13 (st•t• ,1/so C r iminal Polict); Gestapo and, 128 (secttlso Gestapo): Himmler and, 117-28, '"4: in"·asion of Soviet Union and, 271 ..75; Nazi reliance u pon, 86-87. 117; Police Leader (llSSPF) and, 100, 270-71, 314, 331. 342. H" H6 - 47, 375; political figh ters and. 151- 60; Political Pc>lice and. 11. 87-88 (set also Poli1ica.I Police); protective custody and, 16., 133. 137-38, 163. 191-91. 196-97, 318. 366. 413. 4R7nR5; Pru. 58, 4 5502. 455ns Rear-Army Area 580. n7 Red Arm)',62 Red Front Fighters League, 50 Red Orchestra1190 Rt-ds,27- 28.41-42.81 Reeder. Eggert, 260 Reformgymnasium. 21 Reich Army, 85 Reich Commissioner's Offi'e for the Stren~th · ening of Germandom (Reich.skornn1issariat filr die Fcsrigung des Deutschen Volkstums IRFKI). 243-44 Reich Criminal Police Otfice (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt IRKPAI), 149 Reich Headquaners for Con1bating Ju\'enilc: Ddinquency. 177- 78 Reich Headquarters for ). 236- 39. ~.also Reich Security Main Olli.;c Weimar constitution, 29- 30, 63, 431; Arti,lc 48

of. i 2 9; Reichstag Fire Decree and, 128 ... 29; suspension of rights and. 84 1 \\

ein1ar Republic. 102. 217, 370, 428. 4'>4·

457nis. 46rn5, 466ni9, 467n39, 476n55; edu· cation and, 37- 38. 41. 47; First World War

and. 17. 31, 35- 36; Millen~rg con fe rC'ncc

l'lidmann, Albert. 184-88. 406-7. 484n60

\Villms, Angelika, 115- 16 Winters. Peter Jochen, 408, 409 Wippcr. Alwin, 112

Wirsing. Giselher, 409 \'\'is)i,eny, Dieter, 106, 352. 356 i\1issen und /)icnst ( t\.n0\\1 IC"f.lg~ anJ Service), 255 \\'ittvogel, Karl A.. 63 YlOhrn. frirz. 4 t) Wolff. Karl. 320 women: edu,ation and, 37, 113- 19; execurion of. 287; Female Criminal Polie< and. 16. 177, 482n35, 526n21; horn• front of First World

War and, 23- 25; as house\\·ives. 118- 19; Jabc>r and. 115-18; SS marriage poli.;y and. 110-19; tall blond\' Urzburg constitution. 42

\\'undt, \'/ilhelm. 56

64- 65, 68. 76. 78 Weinmann. Ernst. 54-55, 469n60

Young German Order (fungJeutschcr Orden),

\\'cinmann. Erwin, 99, 103, IOJ, 272. 363. 4}~. 525n9: background of, 52; death of, 363; de·

29-30. 189 Young Militia (Jugend wchr). 24

plo}•ment in \\i'estern Europe and, 251; ex· pulsions and. 251, 26>: flight of. 419; Gcs1apo and. 193; invasion of Alsace· Lorraine and, 262; marriage of, 118: Reich Securit)' Main Office and. 118, 110. 193, 196; Security Servi.;e of the SS (SD) and. 99: student radicalism and.46, 52, 54- 55,75,80

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