Alfred Martin (police officer)

Alfred Peter Ignaz Maria Martin (born May 9, 1908 in Berlin ; † January 4, 1977 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German police officer .

Live and act

Youth and education

Martin was the son of the bailiff Theodor Martin and his wife Anna, née Weinrich. In his youth, Martin attended the preschool of the Friedrichwerder Gymnasium and this gymnasium itself in Berlin, which he left in 1927 with the school leaving certificate. In the summer semester of 1927 he enrolled at the Law Faculty of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. In addition, he worked as a bank apprentice in a private bank for two years . In 1930 and 1931 Martin was assistant to the coroner Strauch at the Forensic Medicine Institute of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität.

From an early age Martin was politically active in circles of the extreme political right: at the beginning of the 1920s he became a member of the Young National Federation . In the mid-1920s he joined the National Socialist movement: in 1926 he became one of the first members of the Berlin SA . The NSDAP he joined on April 1, 1930th In 1932 he was storm leader of storm 87 in Moabit.

In autumn 1932 Martin took over the management of the legal department of the Berlin-Brandenburg Gauleitung. In his capacity as legal advisor, he was actually less responsible for legal issues and more for managing the NSDAP's intelligence service in Gau Berlin. Even before he took up this position, he was working for the party as an intelligence service: Among other things, he was involved in an action against Werner Abel in the spring of 1932, who was involved in a legal dispute with Adolf Hitler at the time , which is why Martin wrote him a few letters had stolen.

Also in 1932, Martin was accepted into the staff of the Berlin-Brandenburg SA group led by Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff , in which, as SA-Obersturmführer, he carried out duties as adjutant and orderly without a portfolio.

time of the nationalsocialism

Career in the Gestapa (1933 to 1937)

Allegedly inspired by this activity at the Forensic Medicine Institute, Martin claims to have applied to the criminal police in 1932 as a candidate for a higher criminal career . In any case, he had been a member of the Berlin criminal police since spring or summer 1933 as a criminal assistant candidate at the Berlin police headquarters on Alexanderplatz. In some cases it was also alleged that the leader of the Berlin SA, Karl Ernst , helped enforce Martin's position.

On October 1, 1933, Martin was still transferred as a trainee detective to the Secret State Police , in which he quickly rose to become one of the closest confidante of the first Gestapo chief Rudolf Diel . According to the decree of December 13, 1933, he received a job as a probationary detective on January 1, 1934 . Shortly afterwards, from January 23 to May 4, 1934, he was assigned to a “crash course for detective inspector candidates of the political police” at the police institute in Charlottenburg: According to a certificate from May 4, 1934, he passed the detective inspector's examination , at which Arthur Nebe was one of his examiners with the predicate "good".

On July 1, 1934, Martin was arrested in the course of the Röhm affair on the orders of Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich . The background to the arrest was his membership in the SA and his connections to Karl Ernst. According to his own statements, he was sentenced to death by a court martial on the night of July 2, but escaped shooting due to the state leadership's order to stop all planned shootings shortly afterwards. After he was released on July 2, 1934, Martin resumed his service in the Gestapo.

In the Heydrich'schen Gestapa, Martin was employed under Heinrich Müller and Reinhold Heller as a department head for foreign affairs, especially those concerning the Soviet Union and the Russian emigrants in the German Reich. In October 1934 he was also the clerk of the connections to the Marseille assassination attempt on the Yugoslav king Alexander, the French foreign minister Barthou, which reached Germany .

In 1936, at Heydrich's instigation, Martin was appointed regular detective inspector. However , he did not join the SS .

Further police career and World War II

After conflicts with the management of the Berlin Gestapo headquarters - allegedly because of the "intent" of the office management - Martin was transferred to the state police station in Halle from there to the criminal police station in Halle. He was finally given leave of absence from the latter because of a “pending disciplinary investigation”.

Martin used the time of his leave of absence for constant exercises in the air force . He also enrolled at the Law Faculty of the University of Königsberg , where he in early summer 1940. Dr. jur. PhD.

On the mediation of his friend Arthur Nebe , Martin's leave of absence was lifted again in late autumn 1938 and he was transferred to the criminal police in Essen.

In the summer of 1939, Martin took part in an officer selection exercise that coincided with the Air Force maneuvers in northern Germany. When the Second World War broke out during these maneuvers , he stayed with his unit and took part in the attack on Poland as an aviator . On September 16, 1939, after an emergency landing in Poland, he made his way to the advancing Soviet troops, which at that time were allied with the German Reich: He was taken to Moscow, where he lived in the German embassy and in the Hotel National. Eight days after the Polish surrender, he was received by Josef Stalin in the Kremlin , along with several other German pilots who had had a similar experience .

After his return to Germany, Martin, now with the rank of lieutenant in the reserve, was reported by the police and returned to the criminal police in Essen. After his final release from the police, Martin took part continuously in the war since the summer of 1940, in which he was wounded several times, in particular he suffered a serious brain injury in Russia. In 1944 he was in the police service in the absence of the superintendent promoted without this position ever take.

post war period

In 1945 Martin was taken prisoner by the Americans in Austria. After his release at the end of 1946, he was placed in various hospitals. In 1954 he was retired as a 100% war disabled. He later lived with his wife Gundi, née Hasenkopf, and two children in Weißbach in the Berchtesgaden district . In April 1962 he moved to the community of Marzoll , which was later incorporated into Bad Reichenhall , where he died in 1977.

After he had already contributed to the writing of the memoirs of his friend Rudolf Diels ( Lucifer ante Portas ) at the end of the 1940s , Martin made himself increasingly available as a witness to contemporary history research since the 1950s: for example, he submitted reports to the Institute for Contemporary History his work and his experiences in the environment of various Nazi leaders in the 1920s to 1940s. He was also repeatedly questioned as a witness by various public prosecutors in connection with the investigation of Nazi crimes.

literature

• Fritz Tobias: The Reichstag Fire , 1961.

Archival material

• Institute for Contemporary History: Witness literature No. 268: Reports and interrogation protocols from Martin by the IFZ. ( Digitized version )