In fact, Landsberg is one of the best operated prisons in Europe, and its inmates receive civilized treatment. While some perpetrators in the Holocaust claimed, and may have believed, that they would be physically harmed if they did not follow orders to participate in mass murder, historian Doris Bergen notes that the Nazis did not harm those who refused: Germans were not forced to be killers. Blobel, Braune, Naumann, and Ohlendorf had all been leaders of the Extermination Squads ( Einsatzgruppen ), which were the chief instruments devised by the Nazis for wiping out the Jews of Europe. [3] Believing their expertise invaluable, Ohlendorf, Ludwig Erhard, and other experts concerned themselves with how to stabilize German currency after the war. Within the RSHA, he directed Office III, which, tellingly, undertook surveillance on the German population, monitoring attitudes towards the Hitler dictatorship and producing reports about what it discovered. That sick feeling comes over me again. It consisted of fried chicken, potatoes, green peas, and carrots. Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust. Those who refused to participate were given other assignments or transferred. I agree. Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42: Die Ttigkeits-und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD. . Graham shakes his head. For some reason, Warrant Officer Britt seems just right for his job. He is a small, slight man with soft, kindly eyes. After the launching of Barbarossa on June 22, Ohlendorf could also turn to the Army for ammunition, maps, and telecommunications. There is a batch from German nationals offering to die in place of the condemned. Ohlendorf led the mobile SS death squad in Crimea. Heinz Jost: Jost was in charge of Einsatzgruppe A. 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. There is some new detail concerning Himmler's state of mind on May 6, 1945 after Hitler's Last Testament appointed Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz as the successor while expelling Himmler from the Nazi Party. The mass murder of Jews by Ohlendorfs men continued into 1942. In 1936, three years after Hitler and the Nazi Party came int Show more The. Himmler, Ohlendorf said, was anxious about the answer. The army executioner, Mr. Britt, suddenly puts in an appearance, trim and neat in his tight-fitting uniform. For dessert they had fresh cherries. Einsatzgruppen trial - Wikipedia ; 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. Tens of thousands of Roma and members of the Communist Party of the USSR were also slain. The Registrar sits very still, his legs crossed, staring at the gallows. 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. Forced at gunpoint to jump down into these pits, they were shot after pleading for their own lives and those of their families and neighbors. 2356: Seven minutes more. In the aftermath of the Battle of Kasserine Pass, US II Corps passed to the command of General Harold Alexanders 18th Army Group. The chief prosecutor was 27-year-old Ben Ferencz. . The following year he returned to economic research, becoming Ministerial Director and deputy to the State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics. Since Jews were automatically assumed to be ultra-Bolsheviks and to be the ruling class of the Soviet Union, they were singled out. [13], In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich appointed Ohlendorf to be commander of Einsatzgruppe D,[14] which operated in southern Ukraine and Crimea. He was sentenced to death on 08-04-1948 and. Mother Unavailable. Otto passed away on December 29 1896, at age 6 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I have suffered grievously at the hands of the Nazis. EinsatzgruppeDs zone of operations covered, initially, Bukovina and Bessarabia (territories seized from Romania by Joseph Stalin), then southern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. Mr. McCloy invited the delegation to advise him on some of the difficult cases he had to review. Browning, Christopher (with contributions by Jrgen Matthas). The apple trees are in full blossom. 2250: Warrant Officer Britt is discussing hangings with the medical officer. What insights do the Milgram experiments (see reading. 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. ON AUGUST 8,1945, in London, the governments of the USA, France, Britain, and the USSR resolved to punish "those German. Everyone present agrees that the only hope is John J. McCloy. There are 513 prisoners in Landsberg as of 2120 hours on June 6. The GI interpreter asks: Have you any last words? The prisoner replies: Jawohl!. 0001: Two soldiers wearing neatly pressed olive drab uniforms are first to arrive in the loft. Carlo Schmid, vice-president of the Bundestag, one of the principal Socialist party leaders, and a highly regarded anti-Nazi and enemy of anti-Semitism, then added that We wish to create a new moral climate in Germany. He said that if the U.S. and the other occupying powers in West Germany granted clemency, the Soviet Military Administration in Eastern Germany would in all probability follow suit. They murdered on their own.. Hanning declared he was sincerely sorry and ashamed that he had belonged to a criminal organization that committed mass murder and countless atrocities, and that he had never done anything to prevent such actions. I ask. I stare out into the lovely June night, watch the big searchlights swinging around the heavily guarded compound. 14 officials of other Nazi organizations that engaged in racial persecution. At the start, the Special Task Forces were charged with political security. This euphemism conceals more than it reveals. Ohlendorf. Even one of the most notorious architects of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann, organizer of the mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, portrayed himself as a mere. Ohlendorf described the broad extent of Himmler's "degrading" and "unworthy" efforts to gain a post in the Doenitz government and Himmler's real anger on hearing that he was an "encumbrance" who would do the new government more harm than good. Third mistake: Pohl was a man of many titles . This unit perpetrated mass murder primarily in Belarus and in Russian territory west of Moscow. Two of the defendants were found guilty on only count three. He talks about his law practice in Alabama, tells me how he once saved a man from the gallows. Erich Naumann: Naumann commanded Einsatzgruppe B. Army still awaiting receipt of confirming cable. In June 1941, Reinhard Heydrich appointed Ohlendorf to be commander of Einsatzgruppen D ((mobile killing unit D) which operated in southern Ukraine and Crimea. In a webinar in December 2020 with The National WWII Museum, historian Michael Geyer stressed the significance of those ideological fighters who implemented the Third Reichs vicious programs of mass murder. Holmes, the commandant of Landsberg Military sub-Post, is seated within speaking distance of me and next to the towns civilian (German) Registrar of Vital Statistics. After leaving Flensburg on the 9th, he regularly sent a man to Ohlendorf to see if Montgomery had replied. Ohlendorf's apparently reliable testimony was attributed to his distaste for the corruption in Nazi Germany and a stubborn commitment to duty. As Waitman Wade Beorn has argued, the, Holocaust by Bullets does not dominate our consciousness the same way as Auschwitz. Such actions continued right through December 1941. He studied at the University of Pavia, where he gained his doctors degree in jurisprudence; and by 1933 he obtained the position of a research directorship in the Kiel Institute for the World Economy(at that timeInstitut fr Weltwirtschaft und Seeverkehr Institute for World Economy and Maritime Transport). As Ferencz told me during an interview for my book The Nazi Hunters, he still vividly recalls the protestations of Otto Ohlendorf, one of those condemned to death, that he was only doing his duty. With Alexander Bickel of the Office of the General Counsel, I motored to Landsberg-on-the-Lech, in Bavaria, on Tuesday the 6th, in an army staff car with a GI driver, arriving at 7 P.M. An attorney from McCloys office was detailed to remain in the Frankfort headquarters of the High Commissioner, where he was in radio-telephone communication with the General Counsels office in the State Department in Washington. Quick access. After him are Konstantinos Karamanlis, Giovanna of Italy, Compay Segundo, Erich Mielke, Daniel Bovet, and Barbara Stanwyck. There is insufficient attention paid to the long history of the Roma within European culture. 10, Nuernberg October 1946-April 1949, Volume IV: The Einsatzgruppen Case & The RuSHA Case. CONTENT MAY BE COPYRIGHTED BY WIKITREE COMMUNITY MEMBERS. His only criterion was that justice must be done. This was not a small group, Geyer elaborated. 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. I wonder how he can sleep with himself. Like many German youth, the politics of the extreme Right attracted Ohlendorf with the promise to restore Germanys greatness after the events of 1918-19defeat in World War I after victory seemed so near, socialist revolution, and the imposition of the humiliating Treaty of Versailles. How are you feeling? Among people born in 1907, Otto Ohlendorf ranks 36 . Roughly 600 men (the smallest of the four), drawn from the SS and the various police agencies in the Reich, would serve under him. No newsmen will be admitted to the executions, by unanimous decision of the High Commissioners staff and General Handys advisers. [29] On 1 August 1941, Einsatzgruppen commanders including Ohlendorf, received instructions from Gestapo chief Heinrich Mller to keep headquarters (Hitler especially) informed of their progress in the East; Mller also encouraged the speedy delivery of photographs showing the results of these operations. We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. The Nazi system, however, did not work that way. Facing History & Ourselves, "Obeying Orders," last updated August 11, 2017. Gustav Ohlendorf (1892-1989) FamilySearch As a nonprofit, we offer free help to those looking to learn the details of their family story. He says, yes, yes, yes, right, OK, ONeill, thanks, OK. Ohlendorf said that Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller was "ordered to stay in Berlin as long as the FHRER remained there, as he shared responsibility for the FHRER's safety." Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938-1942. I am quite sick now, my hands are cold as ice. I wonder what they will be using these for now. Most of them are biblical quotations, others enclose pressed flowers. On July 29, 1947, the 24 defendants in the Einsatzgruppen Case were indicted for their role in murdering between 723,661 and one million people as part of a systematic program of genocide. The indictment listed three charges: Twenty-four Einsatzgruppen members were charged. In an office across the corridor from Colonel Grahams a few GIs are listening to a shortwave broadcast of a big league baseball game in New York. Defending his actions, Ohlendorf compared Einsatzgruppenactivities to the Biblical Jewish extirpation of its enemies; he likewise claimed that his firing squads were no worse than the press-button killers who dropped the atom bomb on Japan. Otto Ohlendorf ( German pronunciation: [to olndf]; 4 February 1907 - 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. There was one ordained minister who renounced the cloth to become a Sonderkommando leader. His pipe is fragrant. BillionGraves FREE Dr. Phil Otto Ohlendorf, 1879 - 1913 was born in 1879. [38] As far as Ohlendorf was concerned, the gas vans were impracticable for the scale of killing demanded by Himmler; namely, since they could only kill between fifteen and twenty-five persons at a time. My eyes are fixed on the rope. Each assumed the right to decide the fate of men, and death was the intended result of his power and contempt. [43], Ohlendorf devoted only four years (19391943) of full-time activity to the RSHA, for in 1943, in addition to his other jobs, he became a deputy director general in the Reich Ministry of economic affairs. Benjamin Ferencz, International Law Scholar and Former Nuremberg Prosecutor, shares his experience as Chief Prosecutor at the trial of the Einsatzgruppen commanders. . Otto Ohlendorf's Instagram, Twitter & Facebook on IDCrawl The Einsatzgruppen were special task forces of the SS and Police. [50], Ohlendorf was called as a witness by the prosecution during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg on 3 January 1946. Ohlendorf joined the SD in 1936 and became an economic consultant of the organisation. Ferencz called no witnesses and based the case on wartime SS reports that detailed mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen. I visit the latrine. I have photographs of the seven men in my hands. Report on the Otto Ohlendorf IRR File | National Archives Otto Ohlendorf was the Head of Amt lll of the Reich Main Security Office during the Second World War and organiser of mass murders in the Southern Ukraine in 1941 and 1942. Of the 28 death sentences, only seven were carried out in June 1951 Pohl and Ohlendorf among them. Someone is looking for Warrant Officer Britt, the official executioner. He married Lena Hausmann on 23 April 1921, in Belleville, St. Clair, Illinois, United States. 2045: Hulse calls Bickel. Then: Any news? Hulse tells him that counsel for the criminals in Washington has brought the case before the Supreme Court, in session at this moment3 P.M. Washington timeasking for another stay of execution. Schubert claimed that, unlike the radio transmissions, these reports contained exact details and descriptions of the places in which the actions had taken place, the course of the operations, losses, numbers of places destroyed and persons killed, arrest of agents, reports on interrogations, reports on the civilian sector, etc. Heydrich and others at the Reich Security Main Office parsed this material and assessed the success of the commanders. Nineteen nations expressed their adherence to this agreement, and the trials were conducted by quadripartite tribunals at Nuremberg in 1946 and 1947. All of the remaining convicted defendants in this case were released from prison in 1958. These trials are known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. Case #9 of these twelve trials is known today as the Einsatzgruppen Case. [5] By 1938 he was also manager in the Trade section of the Reich Business Board (Reichswirtschaftskammer[de]). 4, 1950, p. 30. Mueller vanished after the war, and for years it was surmised that Mueller offered himself to the U.S. or USSR for intelligence purposes. He joined the SA in 1925 when he was only 18, then Heinrich Himmlers SS the following year. The slaughter perpetrated by Ohlendorf and his fellow commanders was face-to-face, and the murdered usually perished relatively close to their homes. It is a report from Denmark, of all places, to the effect that the men have already been executed. Martin Holler has argued convincingly that Otto Ohlendorf became to a certain degree the trailblazer for the complete solution of the Gypsy question on Soviet soil. According to the ordinance of October 18, 1946, these judgments were final and not subject to review. 2355: Quite a few people are now in the loft. Defense attorneys of people accused of war crimes have looked hard for such a case because it would support the claim that their clients had no choice. Ohlendorf, Otto, born 04-02-1907 in Hoheneggelsen, the son of farm owners. This leaves me the only witness for the State Department. Altmeiers opening words came as a shock to the High Commissioner who, for the first time in the meeting, kept his eyes glued to the speaker. Otto Ohlendorf was born on the 4th of February 1907. 0003: The chaplain reads a prayer. Copyright 2023 Facing History & Ourselves. Accounts of Himmler's final days do not mention the letter, so one can only surmise what it said. 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. Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. Krausnick, Helmut, and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm. He was the leader of the SS in Austria prior to the Anschluss and played a principal role in the betrayal of his native country to the Nazi conspirators. Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, Case #9, The Einsatzgruppen Case Now not only Jewish men, whether in the Communist Party or deemed of fighting age, were targeted. 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. In this same prison Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, and was released for political reasons. He says he once had a case with a bad heartit took that one only ten minutes! 2242: Big clock is ticking. One task which Ohlendorf disdained was providing guards for the harvest at the behest of Army commanders, who wanted to prevent the Romanians from consuming any of the goods. Arrested by British officials in May 1945 along with members of the short-lived Dnitz government, Ohlendorf supplied much information about the SS and Nazi annihilation policy in Eastern Europe to interrogators. The other defendants had their sentences commuted or were paroled. 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. ), condemning a total of twenty-six men to death, fifteen under the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner and eleven under the jurisdiction of the army. When Otto Friedrich Ohlendorf was born on 31 January 1893, in Millstadt, St. Clair, Illinois, United States, his father, Friedrich Ohlendorf, was 24 and his mother, Maria Schwab, was 21. He didnt know what they were for a moment, suspected a suicide attempt. This was more than 100,000 men. 0003: Britt steps back, glances at Graham. 2346: Graham addresses us briefly. The executions are scheduled to start at three minutes past midnight. [31], Due to the Wehrmacht's insistence that Ukraine's agricultural production was needed to sustain its military campaign, Ohlendorf was asked during October 1941 to refrain from killing some of the Jewish farmersa request he honoredbut one which earned him Himmler's contempt. . They did not need commands. He wears black shirt, black trousers, leather belt and sandals. Students analyze images and film that convey the richness of Jewish life across Europe at the time of the Nazis ascension to power. Not to elicit a. That was the mentality.. Otto Ohlendorf (German pronunciation: [to olndf]; 4 February 1907 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. The commandant, Colonel Graham, cigar between his teeth, is darting about, a sheaf of papers in one hand. The 24 defendants in Case #9 were all leading members of Einsatzgruppen that operated on the Eastern Front during World War II. [18] Additional manpower for Einsatzgruppe D came from Ukrainian auxiliary police formations. Then he saw them off as they left Pretzsch to get ready for the invasion. Dehler indicated that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court would be based on these alleged mistakes. Otto Ohlendorf is born February 4, 1907 in Hoheneggelsen, Province of Hanover, Prussia, German Empire. He believes that the executions will do no harm politically and will prove that we meant to carry out our war aims, regardless of the fact that we now want the Germans to oppose Communism. and 5 received sentences that ranged from 10 to 20 years. Presumably they are working on McCloy. [7] Attached to the SS with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmfhrer, by 1939, he had obtained the rank of SS-Standartenfhrer and was appointed as head of Amt III (SD-Inland) of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA),[8][9] a position he kept until 1945.
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