Compensatory murders
By balancing murders (Dan. Clearing murder ) was the German Reich resistance actions of the Danish resistance during the years 1944 and 1945 "balance". The anonymous murder of suspicious or exposed persons was intended to unsettle the population, take revenge and discredit and weaken the Danish resistance. The murders were carried out by the Peter group , consisting of SD personnel and Danish collaborators from the Schalburg Corps .
Decision making
After the violence in Denmark increased due to the Danish resistance in 1943 and there were further spectacular attacks in December, a delegation from Denmark consisting of the Reich Plenipotentiary Werner Best , the Higher SS and Police Leader Günther Pancke and the Wehrmacht commander Hermann von Hanneken took part in a meeting in the Wolfsschanze with Adolf Hitler , Heinrich Himmler (the initiator of the compensatory murders), Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl . It was decided to respond to every Danish resistance action with counter terror in the form of murders or acts of sabotage.
implementation
In preparation for the counter terrorism, the SS security service had already formed a “Sonderkommando Denmark” headed by Hauptsturmführer Otto Schwerdt, alias Peter Schäfer. This so-called Peter group initially consisted of Louis Nebel, Anton Gföller and Kurt Carstensen and arrived in Copenhagen on December 29th and was supposed to commit the deeds anonymously. The first assassination attempt took place on December 30th. The victim was the journalist Christian Dam, who survived seriously injured.
On January 4, 1944, the pastor and writer Kaj Munk , who had turned against the occupation in his writings and sermons, was murdered. The investigation by the Danish police quickly led to the perpetrators, who could not be questioned or arrested. A copy of the preliminary final report of the homicide squad was distributed as a leaflet by the resistance movement in 1944. Munk became a martyr of the Danish resistance.
On January 7, 1944, SS-Standartenführer Otto Bovensiepen replaced Rudolf Mildner , who had shown hesitant resistance to the murders, as head of the security police and security service in Denmark. In addition to the police fighting the resistance, there was now counter terror by the security service. The murder victims were selected at meetings at Bovensiepen called “coffee parties”. The Peter group was reinforced by Danish collaborators from the Schalburg Corps, and captured British or American weapons were used to create confusion.
During the post-war investigation, a personal congratulatory letter from Himmler was found on one of the accused for the deeds.
Work-up
The murders were tried at the Nuremberg Trials of the Major War Criminals , the Great and Small War Criminals Trials in Copenhagen, and other trials.
See also
literature
- Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 , Wachholtz 2011, ISBN 978-3-529-02817-5
- Whitney R. Harris: Tyrants in front of the court: the proceedings against the main German war criminals after the Second World War in Nuremberg 1945-1946 , BWV Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8305-1593-7 , pp. 209 ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Whitney R. Harris: Tyrants in front of the court: the proceedings against the main German war criminals after the Second World War in Nuremberg 1945-1946 , BWV Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-8305-1593-7 , p. 209 f.
- ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 . Wachholtz 2011, ISBN 978-3-529-02817-5 , pp. 158f.
- ^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against the swastika, The Resistance in Denmark 1940-1945 . P. 159 ff.
- ^ Nuremberg Trials, afternoon session February 5, 1946 , zeno.org, German translation, accessed November 18, 2016