Bernhard Siebken

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Bernhard Siebken (born April 5, 1910 in Pinneberg ; † January 20, 1949 in Hameln ) was a German SS leader.

Life

Youth and education

After attending school, Siebken earned his living as a driving and riding instructor. In 1931 he joined the SS (membership number 44,894) and the NSDAP.

time of the nationalsocialism

A few weeks after the National Socialist " seizure of power " in January 1933, Siebken was assigned to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) in March 1933 , during which he had a continuous career as an SS leader until the outbreak of World War II : in the years leading up to the war Siebken was successively promoted to Untersturmführer (May 2, 1934), Obersturmführer (July 4, 1934) and Hauptsturmführer (September 12, 1937).

On September 1, 1939, Siebken was appointed chief of the light infantry column of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, with whom he took part in the attack on Poland . After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Siebken commanded the supply troops of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler until October 22, 1942. In 1944 he commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 26th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment (Hitler Youth), later the 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment. On June 21, 1944, he was appointed SS Obersturmbannführer.

On June 9, 1944, Siebken is said to have given SS-Untersturmführer Dietrich Schnabel in Le Mesnil Patry in Normandy the order to shoot three injured Canadian army members who were captured by the Allies shortly after the Allied invasion near Caen. Later investigations came to contradicting information about who had given the order for the shootings and to what extent Siebken had only carried general responsibility as section commander or the shooting represented a retaliation for comparable cases in an Allied manner during the fighting in Normandy: the most precise reconstruction The events came to the conclusion that it was not Siebken, but Siebken's superior Wilhelm Mohnke - who verifiably had numerous other similar shootings carried out at the time - passed the order to execute the three Canadians to Schnabel during Siebken's absence and that Siebken even himself beforehand repeatedly opposed Mohnke's order to shoot the prisoners. Mohnke is also said to have underlined his order to Schnabel at gunpoint after similar orders had not been carried out the day before.

In October 1944 Siebken was commissioned to head the SS Panzer Grenadier Training and Replacement Battalion 12.

In the spring of 1945 Siebken was appointed as the successor to Sandig as the commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on April 17, 1945 .

Captivity and execution

At the end of the war, Siebken was taken prisoner by the Allies and taken to a prison camp. Since he was on a British wanted list of potential war criminals in connection with the shooting of the Canadian prisoners in the summer of 1944, he was finally tracked down there and in the summer of 1948 together with Schnabel and three other SS members because of the shootings in Le Mesnil Patry in the summer of 1944 Charged as a war criminal before a British military tribunal in the Curiohaus Hamburg.

Siebken and Schnabel were found guilty on November 9, 1948, and executed by hanging on January 20, 1949 in Hameln prison. The death sentence and its execution were controversial at the time: The British war correspondent Basil Liddell Hart , among others, opposed the sentence.

Promotions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hubert Meyer: The 12th SS. The History Of The Hitler Youth Panzer Division , Vol. 2, 2005, p. 520.
  2. ↑ Howard Margolian: Conduct Unbecoming , 2000, 97-99 and passim.
  3. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 704.
  4. ↑ Chris Madsen: Another Kind of Justice. Canadian Military Law from Confederation to Somalia , 2000, p. 91.
  5. ↑ Samuel Michtam: The Desert fox in Normandy , 1997, p. 100.
personal data
SURNAME Siebken, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently SS-Obersturmbannführer in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Pinneberg
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1949
Place of death Hamelin