Johannes Thümmler

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Johannes Hermann Thümmler , also Hans Thümmler (born August 23, 1906 in Chemnitz ; † April 28, 2002 in Eriskirch ) was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer and senior government councilor , head of the Gestapo Chemnitz and Kattowitz and leader of the Einsatzkommandos 16 of Einsatzgruppe E in Croatia .

Life

Johannes Thümmler was born on August 23, 1906 in Chemnitz as the son of the publisher Hermann Thümmler . He studied law and received his doctorate for Dr. jur.

In 1932 Thümmler joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1,425,547), in 1933 the SA and 1937 the SS (membership number 323.711). After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Thümmler first worked in the Dresden police headquarters and in the Schwarzenberg administration . Soon afterwards he was appointed deputy head of the Dresden Gestapo. In January 1941 he became head of the Dresden Gestapo, and in March 1941 he took over the management of the Gestapo in Chemnitz as successor to Rudolf Mildner . On April 20, 1943, he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer.

From July 3 to September 11, 1943, Thümmler led Einsatzkommando 16 of Einsatzgruppe E in Croatia, based in Knin .

Thümmler returned in September 1943 and was again appointed head of the Gestapo and commander of the security police and SD (KdS) in Katowice , Upper Silesia, succeeding Mildner . In this function he also took over the management of the SS court martial for Upper Silesia with the administrative districts of Katowice and Opole . This court martial met in block 11 of the main camp of Auschwitz .

After the conquest of the eastern territories by the Red Army and the withdrawal of the German troops, Thümmler took over a position as KdS in Stuttgart for the last time at Easter 1945 .

After the end of the war , Thümmler was initially in French captivity ; In 1946 he was transferred to the Ludwigsburg internment camp . In the internment camp he was the mayor of the camp self-government. In the denazification in 1948 he was classified as the "main culprit" and sentenced to two and a half years in a labor camp. The internment was counted towards the sentence, so Thümmler was released in the same year. In an appeal hearing in 1949, the sentence was reduced to 180 days in a labor camp and Thümmler was classified in the group of the “incriminated”. In October 1948 he took up a job at the Zeiss optical works in Oberkochen, Württemberg .

On November 2, 1964, Thümmler testified as a witness in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial about the court martial in Auschwitz. He stated that “several hundred” death sentences had been pronounced by the court martial. In 60% of all cases, the death penalty was pronounced, in the other cases an indefinite concentration camp. “An acquittal was practically impossible. In my time there weren't any innocents, ”said Thümmler in his testimony. "We asked the accused whether everything was correct, and they all said yes, yes." The court consisted of him as chairman and one representative each from the criminal police and one from the SD as assessor. An official from his department acted as defense counsel when - which seldom happened - the accused had requested a defense attorney. He determined the composition of the court as well as the person of the public prosecutor and the defense counsel. According to the findings of the court, the accused were civilians who had been arrested by the Gestapo in Katowice. The arrests were made for alleged resistance activity and crimes such as surreptitious trafficking , courier services or listening to enemy broadcasters. Trials rarely lasted longer than two minutes; The judgments were based on the defendants' previous "confessions". As a witness in Frankfurt, Thümmler stated that he had neither heard nor learned whether the "confessions" had been made during " intensified interrogations ". Such interrogation methods by the Gestapo were associated with abuse.

Preliminary proceedings against Thümmler did not lead to a conviction: in 1970 the Ellwangen district court refused to open main proceedings. The court said there was no perversion of justice in the stand trial in Auschwitz because the defendants signed confessions. Another murder trial was discontinued in 1999 by the head of the Central Office for the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg , Chief Public Prosecutor Kurt Schrimm , due to lack of evidence.

Thümmler was a member of the support group of the Evangelical Academy Tutzing . In 1996, Thümmler asked the city of Chemnitz to return works of art that had entered the city's museums after the end of the war. In the final phase of the Second World War , Thümmler's works of art were relocated to the Erzgebirge together with museum property. The city of Chemnitz refused to return them, referring to Thümmler's National Socialist past. The legal basis was Order No. 124 of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) on the confiscation of the assets of Nazi and war criminals from 1946 and the referendum in Saxony on June 30, 1946 .

literature

  • Ingrid Bauz, Sigrid Brüggemann, Roland Maier (eds.): The Secret State Police in Württemberg and Hohenzollern , Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 3-89657-138-9 .
  • Adolf Diamant: Gestapo chief Thümmler. Crimes in Chemnitz, Katowice and Auschwitz. The steep career of a henchman in the Nazi murders and crimes against humanity. Reports - Documents - Comments . Verlag Heimatland Sachsen, Chemnitz 1999, ISBN 3-910186-30-0
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Hermann Langbein : The Auschwitz Trial. A documentation. Frankfurt 1995, ISBN 3-7632-4400-X .
  • Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - helpers - free riders. Nazi victims from the Ostalb (=  perpetrators - helpers - free riders . Band 1 ). 2nd revised edition (licensed edition). Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2016, ISBN 978-3-945893-05-0 , pp. 221 ff .
  • Sybille Steinbacher : "... nothing more than murder." The Gestapo chief of Auschwitz and the West German post-war justice system. In: Norbert Frei et al. (Ed.): Exploitation, destruction, public. Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-24033-3 , pp. 265-298.
  • Peter Jochen Winters: Rapporteur in the Auschwitz Trial 1963/65. In: Alfred Gottwaldt , Norbert Kampe , Peter Klein (eds.): Nazi tyranny. Contributions to historical research and legal processing. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89468-278-7 , pp. 378-390.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of birth with Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 624. On www.leo-bw.de, the date of birth is also given as March 23, 1906 under the entry on Johannes Thümmler
  2. ↑ see http://www.leo-bw.de/web/guest/detail/-/Detail/details/PERSON/wlbblb_lösungen/12171554X/Th%C3%BCmmler+Johannes
  3. ^ State Archives Würzburg, Gestapo Würzburg, Sign. 10286
  4. ↑ a b Winters, Rapporteur , p. 390.
  5. ↑ Winters, Rapporteur , pp. 388f. Here are the quotes from Thümmler's statements.
personal data
SURNAME Thümmler, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thümmler, Johannes Hermann (full name); Thümmler, Hans; Thummler, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 2002
Place of death Eriskirch