And Ive never ordered anyone to kill a Jew. That gave him a certain peace of mind, he added, although he was under no illusions about his ultimate fate. These discussions aimed at the creation of a new government that could procure a separate peace with the Allies. Articles describing the fine personal qualities of the war criminals were published by their wives, and a few mass-circulation magazines took to printing similar pieces by the families or former associates of top-rung Nazi leaders who had been executed long before. There were pleas from churchmen and politicians, university men and students, former soldiers, disinherited royalty. Britt adjusts the noose over the mans hooded head. COL. I am quite sick now, my hands are cold as ice. The numbers killed reached over 35,000 by early October. The High Commissioner therefore undertook a review of the sentences with the help of an Advisory Board on Clemency which began work in Washington early in 1950, and continued in Munich in July 1950. Otto Ohlendorf on Trial Chief among the SS officials put on trial following the conviction of the surviving Nazi government ministers were the commanders and senior staff of the four Einsatzgruppen that operated on the Eastern Front in conjunction with the Wehrmacht. However, the U. S. Military Governor (General Lucius Clay), and his successor (High Commissioner John J. McCloy) felt that the right of appeal should not be denied the convicted men. [41] His commitment to the Nazi cause kept him in Ukraine longer than any of his comrades, and while he may have disliked the political direction in which Germany was headed, he never registered complaints about murdering Jews. He had had no previous experience as a governor in such problems, although he was, as a lawyer, trained in legal procedures. We wait. [5] By 1938 he was also manager in the Trade section of the Reich Business Board (Reichswirtschaftskammer[de]). But were any of the defendants coerced into killing Jews under the threat of being killed themselves if they failed in their homicidal mission? We also can examine how the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, like Ohlendorf, summarized this barbarity. Essentially, they were to murder commissars attached to units of the Red Army, officials of the Communist Party, and deal with any overt resistance to the German presence. After the IMT trial, the United States conducted twelve additional trials on the basis of the Charter. There were threats, too, against McCloys life. 2249: Graham answers the telephone. Each month, a courier brought the written reports directly to Berlin. He nods. They matter particularly because there are only a dwindling number of Nazi war criminals still alive. 1900: Arrive with Bickel in army staff car. We were all so trained to obey orders without even thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would simply never have occurred to anybody, and somebody else would have done just as well if I hadnt. Gerwarth, Robert. I ask. The charter defined as crimes the following acts: The United States Military Government in Germany, on October 18, 1946, enacted an ordinance under which military tribunals were established in the American Zone of Occupation, with the purpose of trying and punishing criminals within that zone who had escaped prosecution at Nuremberg. The sentences were announced on April 10, 1948: Matthias Graf was released with time served. ; War crimes: atrocities committed against persons or property constituting violations of the customs of war; murder, ill treatment, deportation to slave labor camps, plunder of public or private property, killing of hostages, wanton destruction of towns, devastation not justified by military necessity, etc. He graduated in July 1933 with a doctors degree in jurisprudence. In the United States, there was sharp criticism of the decisions as having been too lenient, while in Germany, McCloy was attacked for having been too severe. Otto Ohlendorf served in the Nazi Party in World War II. Reference to telephone orders by Himmler days before Hitler's suicide. Yet they were not the only targets. It found 20 defendants guilty on all three counts. Blobel is dressed for death. All 22 defendants were found guilty of at least one charge. Their names were Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Naumann, Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Georg Schallermair, and Hans Schmidt. My eyes are fixed on the rope. . In fact, Landsberg is one of the best operated prisons in Europe, and its inmates receive civilized treatment. The Einsatzgruppen led by the defendants organized and conducted mass shootings of Jews, Communists, and others in territory that Germany seized from the Soviet Union. Of the 28 death sentences, only seven were carried out in June 1951 Pohl and Ohlendorf among them. [4] He participated in major debates between the SS, the German Labour Front, and the Quadrenniel Organization on economic policy. Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Allied Control Council Law No. OHLENDORF: From June 1941 to the death of Heydrich in June 1942, I led Einsatzgruppe D, and was the representative of the chief of the Sipo and the SD with the 11th Army. . He tweets @AndrewNagorski. They were the parents of at least 2 sons. Students explore the intertwined personal stories of Jewish refugees who attempted to flee to the United States and the American rescuers who intervened on their behalf. Ehlers called on the next speaker, Dr. Walter Strauss, of the Ministry of Justice. "Our aim," said Ohlendorf, "was not to put up any resistance, but to let the Allies advance as far as the ELBE, having first concluded a tacit agreement that they'd halt there and thus to cover our rear for the continuation of the struggle against the East. Learn how the Nuremberg defendants' argued that German leaders were following orders when committing atrocities during the Holocaust. 2250: Warrant Officer Britt is discussing hangings with the medical officer. Erich Naumann: Naumann commanded Einsatzgruppe B. This type of evidence I have accepted in mitigation of the original sentence., The High Commissioner said that he had been struck by the extent of the misinformation in the letters and petitions which were being sent to him. The Tribunal rendered its judgment on April 89, 1948. 0014: The sergeant pulls up the body while from the floor below someone disentangles the rope. They did not need commands. 2400: Now we hear footsteps and the voice of a chaplain praying in sonorous German. I have suffered grievously at the hands of the Nazis. How silent it has become. Otto Ohlendorf, one of the most notorious SS officials in Nazi Germany, was captured and interrogated extensively after the war. Fourteen defendants were sentenced to death. Ferencz called no witnesses and based the case on wartime SS reports that detailed mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen. The executions are scheduled to start at three minutes past midnight. Otto Ohlendorf was born on the 4th of February 1907. Seven times I have listened as they swore, in their dying words, that they had merely carried out orders; that they had been fighting for their country; that the Americans were their enemies. He adds one thought, that none of us likes this business but weve got to go through with it. Montgomery had accepted the surrender of German forces in the Northwest on the 4th. Ohlendorf joined the SD in 1936 and became an economic consultant of the organisation. The army set up a parallel line of communication with the Pentagon, via General Handys Heidelberg head-quarters. 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-6272, Nazi War Crimes Interagency Working Group, Discussions held in Berlin in April 1945 between senior SS officials including Ohlendorf, SS-General Felix Steiner, and SS-General Richard Hildebrandt. He joined the SA in 1925 when he was only 18, then Heinrich Himmlers SS the following year. Colonel Graham, whose office is the nerve center, makes pointed reference to the possibility of suicide. 2226: Graham reports that the prisoners have had their teeth examined once more, and that false teeth have been removed. Moreover, West Germany had abolished the death penalty in the new constitution, and for the U. S. authorities to carry out capital punishment would show lack of respect for this constitution, with far-reaching consequences for American-German relations.. 2100: Graham is excited over report from Munich newspaper to the effect that there has been another stay of execution. In 1939 Ohlendorf was promoted within the newly constituted Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). View the list of all donors. There was one case in which the criminal admitted to having killed 60,000. Ohlendorf was married with Kthe Wolpers on 10-06-1934 and they had five children, two boys and three girls, Henning, born 11-02-1938, Behrend, born 18-09-1943, Irmtraut, born March 25-03-1936, Meinhard, born 30-10-1940 and Ulrike, born 11-05-1945. . Schallermair had been directly in charge of prisoners in a sub-camp of Dachau named Muehldorf where large numbers of beatings were personally administered by him. The men charged were: Paul Blobel, Ernst Biberstein, Walter Blume, Werner Braune, Lothar Fendler, Matthias Graf, Walter Haensch, Emil Hausmann, Waldemar Klingelhoefer, Gustav Noske, Adolf Ott, Waldemar von Radetzky, Felix Rhl, Martin Sandberger, Heinz Schubert, Erwin Schultz, Willy Seibert, Franz Six, Eugen Steimle, and Eduard Strauch. Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Behind him is Paul Blobel whose Sonderkommando SS unit was involved in sixteen instances of mass murder, including the killing of 33,000 Jews in the Kiev massacre alone. Only Ohlendorf, his deputy in EinsatzgruppeD, Willy Seibert, and the telegraphist, a man named Fritsch, could remain in the radio station when these happened. Crimes against peace: participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of invasions, aggressive wars, etc. He says a sergeant reported finding cherry pits in one of the death cells. Mueller vanished after the war, and for years it was surmised that Mueller offered himself to the U.S. or USSR for intelligence purposes. 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW In the end, only 22 of those charged were tried. 2356: Seven minutes more. [55], Despite his attempts to establish moral equivalency for atrocities upon the Allies, Otto Ohlendorf was convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during World War II. The trial ran from September 29, 1947, to February 12, 1948. The meeting took place in McCloys offices in a Frankfort building that had once been the headquarters of the I. G. Farben empire. Otto Rasch: Rasch led Einsatzgruppe C. This unit perpetrated mass murder in Ukraine, including the shooting of more than 33,000 Jews of Kiev at. For Germanys most famous Nazi hunter, the behavior of those relatively few mass murderers who were ever held to account for their crimes was exasperating for another reason. Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard who will go down in history as one of the last of Hitlers perpetrators to be charged for his role in the Third Reich, offered an apology. 2255: Borom, the lieutenant colonel from Heidelberg, is lighting his pipe. Left to right: Kthe Ohlendorf, wife of Otto Ohlendorf; Margot Schmidt, wife of Hans Theodor Schmidt, adjutant at Buchenwald concentration camp; von Ysenburg, who brought word to the wives of the reprieve; Magda Braune, wife of Werner Braune; and Elisabeth Naumann, wife of Erich Naumann. As higher SS and Police Leader in Austria after the Anschluss, he supervised and had knowledge of the activities of the Gestapo and the SD in Austria. Krausnick, Helmut, and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm. . Students are introduced to the enormity of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and look closely at stories of a few individuals who were targeted by Nazi brutality. He says: Do you know me by any other name? (code word was used for security reasons). Their names were Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Naumann, Otto Ohlendorf, Oswald Pohl, Georg Schallermair, and Hans Schmidt. The JAG lieutenant colonel seated next to me whispers, there but for the grace of God go I. It will be without levity, emotion, or demonstrations of any kind. Two of the men have fathers who were high-up servants of Hitler and soaked in the blood of the Holocaust. There is still debate about how much local initiative taken by the leaders of the Einsatzgruppenand other SS officials (like the Higher SS and Police Leaders) pushed Berlin to broaden and escalate the violence from mass murder to genocidal destruction. I took a cup of coffee and a couple of the doughnuts being handed out by the mess sergeant, and sat down to listen to the game. I learn that he was sent up for shooting captured paratroopers. This was not the unprecedented, continent-wide industrialized process of mass annihilation of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Jews, Roma, and other victims were transported from all over to Europe to ultimately be gassed and cremated. He studied at the University of Pavia, where he gained his doctor's degree in jurisprudence; and by 1933 he obtained the position of a research directorship in the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He had studied the cases not with any political considerations in mind but purely in judicial terms. By 1938 he was also manager in the Trade section of the Reich business board (Reichswirtschaftskammer). Later this expanded to include the Caucasus. Tens of thousands of Roma and members of the Communist Party of the USSR were also slain. There was one ordained minister who renounced the cloth to become a Sonderkommando leader. Seventy years after the Nuremberg trials, something truly extraordinary happened in a German courtroom last week. [37] After the victims' deaths, Jewish Sonderkommando were forced to unload the bodies, clean the excrement and feces from inside the van's gas chamber, and once the clean up was complete, were themselves immediately shot. I look for signs of the desperate hater, the ruthless killer, but I dont find any. Warrant Officer Britt then places the prisoner on the trap door. Start your risk free trial with unlimited access. The latter have invented stories about how their husbands are being mistreated. The High Commissioner listened intently, eyes fixed on his scratch pad. I cannot understand, he continued, how human beings can commit such crimes. This Board, consisting of New York State Supreme Court Justice David Peck, Commissioner Frederick A. Moran (the chairman of the New York Board of Parole), and Brigadier General Conrad E. Snow, was not empowered to review the decisions of the Military Tribunals on questions of law or fact, but to consider disparities among the sentences for comparable crimes and other matters which tended to show that the sentences imposed were excessive. The Board was directed to consider anything that might warrant mitigation of sentences.. Will there be another reprieve? [6], Ohlendorf joined the SD in 1936 and became an economic consultant of the organisation. Their own reports will show that the slaughter committed by these defendants was dictated, not by military necessity, but by that supreme perversion of thought, the Nazi theory of the master race. He devoted only four years (193943) to full-time activity in the RSHA, for in 1943, in addition to his other jobs, he became a deputy director general in the Reich Ministry of economic affairs. 2246: The sergeant has announced coffee and doughnuts. I look at him with astonishment. Showing real aptitude as a student, Ohlendorf attended Gymnasium in nearby Hildesheim. In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich appointed Ohlendorf to be commander of Einsatzgruppe D which operated in southern Ukraine and Crimea. 0003: The chaplain reads a prayer. [23] All forms of contact between the firing squads and victims were limitedper Ohlendorf's insistenceuntil the last moments before the killing started, and up to three rifleman were allocated to each person about to be shot. This was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance.Each of the defendants in the dock held a position of responsibility or command in an extermination unit. It is only now that at least one of them is admitting as much. Counted together, the four units numbered some 3,000 men. For dessert they had fresh cherries. He explained: Dont you see, we SS men were not supposed to think about these things; it never even occurred to us. ". [47][48] Himmler committed suicide shortly after being captured. Extending the Genocidal Program: Did Otto Ohlendorf Initiate the Systematic Extermination of Soviet Gypsies? In Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization. The rope dangles slightly, then suddenly is very still. A total of 265 have been hanged since the end of the war. Those damned Germans. Each chaplain is allowed all the time he needs in the cell with the condemned man before he is led to the gallows. Of three hundred people brought to Muehldorf in the fall of 1944, only 72 survived. Three times the gallows had been prepared, three times the official army executioner was instructed to have his gear ready, three times the wives of the condemned men visited their husbands for the last time. Three times the prisoners ate their last meal.. His murderous activity certainly influenced the decision-making process of the other Einsatzgruppenleaders, insofar as Ohlendorfs formal transgressions were obviously in no way restricted, neither by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt[RSHA] nor by the relevant military commander. In September 1941, the earliest known murder of Soviet Roma by EinsatzgruppeD occurred at Nikolayev. Categories: Death by Hanging | Executed | Nazi Party, World War II | Nazis, WIKITREE HOME | ABOUT | G2G FORUM | HELP | SEARCH. Photos and Memories (0) Do you know Gustav? Britt removes it, places it back on the mans head for the second time, tightens it with the knot at the nape of the neck. It would be bad for the soul of the German people, McCloy went on, to put these things under the carpet. Mr. McCloys mail was marked by an increasingly large number of appeals for clemency, both signed and anonymous, and soon these appeals assumed the proportions of an avalanche. They said that when an individual follows an order that is illegal under international law, he is responsible for that choice, except under certain circumstances. Among those brought to trial were. And for providing the also rapidly dwindling number of Holocaust survivors the chance to face their tormenters. Schmidt had participated actively in these atrocities and it had been necessary to restrain him because he frequently assumed greater authority than he actually possessed. [11] Routine public opinion surveyswhich were under the purview of Ohlendorf and SS-Major Reinhard Hhnconstituted some of these reports. The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. Hitler envisioned Barbarossa as a modern crusade against Jewish Bolshevism and the Einsatzgruppenwould be at the forefront of this war of subjugation and extermination against the Soviet Union. Allied Control Council no. . Referring first to the charge that the delay in carrying out the death sentences was inhuman, he said that if they had been carried out within four weeks after the final verdict, many men might have been unjustly executed: a good number of war criminals had already been released, after reviews of their sentences and their trials. Klein, Peter, ed. Fritz Bauer, a German prosecutor from a secular Jewish family who had spent most of the Nazi era in exile, returned after the war determined to make his countrymen face up to the horrors committed in their name. The waiter is a former Malmdy murderer, one of Pfeiffers flunkeys. 3. American officials finally executed Otto Ohlendorf in June 1951. They are brought in on huge trays by a young prisoner whose face could be that of a friendly, smiling Kansas farmer. The Bundestag adopted a unanimous resolution condemning the execution of any of the prisoners. He thinks the reason is that people no longer believe the USA will carry out the executions. Allied Control Council no. In the aftermath of the Battle of Kasserine Pass, US II Corps passed to the command of General Harold Alexanders 18th Army Group. The crimes they committed were crimes against you. Oswald Pohl, who received more support than any of his fellow prisoners, although his crimes (i.e., the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto) were among the worst, had great success with a booklet called The Way to God in which he explained his reason for converting to the Catholic faith. Ohlendorf's comment that Mueller was ordered to remain adds weight to the probability that Mueller died in Berlin. Excellent. A former Newsweek foreign correspondent and editor, Andrew Nagorski is the author of The Nazi Hunters, which will be released on May 10. After him are Konstantinos Karamanlis, Giovanna of Italy, Compay Segundo, Erich Mielke, Daniel Bovet, and Barbara Stanwyck. Have you ever done this before? Otto Ohlendorf was a German SS-Gruppenfhrer and head of the interior division of the SD. For example, Otto Ohlendorf commanded Einsatzgruppe D while it committed mass murder in territories that are part of Romania and Moldova, as well as in Ukraine and around the Crimean Sea. . .. Are there some basic moral teachings that are so fundamental that every person should be expected to know and try to follow them, no matter what society they live in. 1920: Bickel reports to Fred Hulse, in McCloys office in Frankfort. What kind of tasks did Heydrich have in mind for this group? There is a batch from German nationals offering to die in place of the condemned. An economist by education, he was head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Inland, responsible for intelligence and security within Germany. The Einsatzgruppen were special task forces of the SS and Police. Writer was one Frederick Wiehl, Pohls counsel in Germany: There will be no execution on Tuesday. . They acted on their own. His wrists are tied behind him. Mr. McCloy emphasized that the cause for delay was a humane one: There are probably no prisoners anywhere in the world whose cases have received the same painstaking attention given to the Landsberg cases. Students deepen their thinking about memory and identity by reflecting on the stories of Holocaust and Armenian Genocide survivors and their descendants. The official cameramen photograph the prisoner after one of the GI assistants places the nameplate across the condemned mans chest. Explore the scintillating May 2023 issue of Commentary. Showing real aptitude as a student Ohlendorf studied economics and lawat the University of Leipzig and the University of Gttingen, and by 1930 was already giving lectures at several economic institutions. In some of these cases, I found that the defendants could establish their resistance to superior orders, which resulted in no instance of the individuals being punished by their Nazi masters.
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