Bruno Müller (SS member)

Bruno Müller in occupied Krakow (1940)

Bruno Müller (born September 13, 1905 in Strasbourg , † March 1, 1960 in Oldenburg ) was a German lawyer , SS-Obersturmbannführer and senior councilor . During the Nazi era, Müller held the following functions: Head of Section III B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office , Leader of Einsatzkommando 2 / I in German-occupied Poland and Sonderkommando 11b in the Soviet Union, and commander of the Security Police and SD in Krakow , Rouen , Prague and Kiel .

Life

At the age of 26, Bruno Müller joined the NSDAP in 1931 (membership number 885.088). After studying law and obtaining a doctorate in international law as a Dr. jur. he was mayor on the North Sea island of Norderney in 1933/34 .

Müller passed his assessor examination in 1935 and in the same year took over the management of the Gestapo office in Oldenburg . In 1937 he worked in the same position in Wilhelmshaven .

With the start of the attack on Poland he was appointed leader of the Einsatzkommandos 2 (EK 2 / I) of the Einsatzgruppe I of the security police, which was responsible for the “fight against all elements hostile to the Reich and Germans backwards of the fencing troops” as part of the “ Operation Tannenberg ” the most comprehensive possible liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia .

From September 16 to 27, 1939, EK 2 / I was located in Jarosław am San . The order of the General Quartermaster at the Army High Command of September 12, 1939 for the deportation of all Jews in Eastern Upper Silesia via the San to the part of Poland occupied by the Red Army was passed on by the 14th Army to the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police with the instruction to " to purge all unreliable elements for defense reasons ”; d. H. "To deport the Jewish population [...] - as far as possible - over the San" (Defense report Ic / AOK III of the AOK 14 to Ic / AO III of the HGr Süd, 23 September 1939).

On September 25, 1939, the Einsatzkommandos of Einsatzgruppe I forced hundreds of Jews to leave Jarosław within an hour. Set on rafts and driven with gunfire, these crossed the San . Many drowned in the river, the others found themselves in a hopeless situation, as the Russians fended off unwanted arrivals with gunshots, while the retreating people from the west bank of the San were shot by the task force.

The arrest of the professors of the Cracow Jagiellonian University on November 6, 1939 as part of the " Special Campaign Cracow " was one of the other actions of EK 2 / I.

The EK 2 / I was dissolved on November 20, 1939 and Müller was used as the commander of the Security Police and the SD (KdS) in Krakow as the predecessor of Walter Huppenkothen until December 1939 . In the spring and summer of 1940 he was employed at the KdS in Holland .

From October 1940 to May 1941, Müller was head of Section III B 4 (Immigration and Resettlement) of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

Before the attack on the Soviet Union , task forces of the Security Police and the SD were again set up. Müller was initially employed as head IV / V in the staff of Einsatzgruppe D (EGr D) and from July 1941 was entrusted with the management of Sonderkommandos 11b (SK 11b). This special command, which arose from the division of Einsatzkommando 11 into SK 11a and SK 11b, belonged to EGr D, which was under the leadership of Müller's head of office, SS-Standartenführer Otto Ohlendorf , and in the area of ​​the 11th Army in the southern Ukraine was deployed. The Einsatzgruppe D reported by the end of 1941 92.000 murdered civilians to Berlin. While the Einsatzkommandos were used in the Rear Army Area , the Sonderkommandos were intended for use in the army's operations room. For this reason, the two special commandos mentioned were formed from the previous Einsatzkommando 11.

On July 22, 1941, the Army High Command (AOK) 11 ordered the use of the SK 11b in the area of ​​the Romanian AOK 2 in southern Bessarabia , in order to carry out political orders and confiscation there “according to the instructions of the chief of the security police in Ismail, Reni, Bolgrad, Akkerman and Odessa to carry out political booty ”. (AOK 11, Dept. Ic / AO to EGr D, July 22, 1941). In August 1941, SK 11b “looked after” the “operational area around Odessa ” in agreement with the Romanian Army and stayed there “in readiness for security police work” while awaiting the capture of this city. Since Odessa could not be taken until October 16, 1941, the SK 11b took part in the meantime from Großliebental with the "care of the ethnic Germans " (Ohlendorf to AOK 11, incident report 89 of September 20, 1941). After the fall of Odessa, the SK 11b moved to this city.

In an interrogation by the public prosecutor's office on May 11, 1962, the former SS-Obersturmbannführer Johannes Schlupper described the following incident on the occasion of the transfer of command on August 8, 1941 in Thigina. So "the first thing [...] Müller went to a Jewish woman who had a child of about three on her arm and who had been brought up by someone [...] and said something like this: 'You have to die so that we can live." Then he pulled out his pistol and shot the child first and then the woman. "

Müller led the SK 11b until October 1941 and was appointed head of the Stettin state police station from December 1941 . From October 1943 to March 1944 he was KdS in Volhynia , then after a brief assignment with the EGr E in Croatia in May 1944 as KdS in Rouen and in November 1944 in Prague to the commander of the security police and SD (BdS). Most recently he was KdS in Kiel . In this function he was also responsible for the Nordmark labor education camp in Kiel-Hassee.

After the war

In 1947, Müller was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment by a British military court for his responsibility for the events in the Nordmark labor education camp in Kiel-Hassee. In the wake of the amnesty wave triggered by the Cold War , Müller was also released from prison in September 1953. He then worked as an insurance salesman . Various attempts by the Polish judicial authorities to hold Müller accountable for his work at EK 2 / I ultimately failed.

Bruno Müller died on March 1, 1960 in Oldenburg.

literature

• Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 (also habilitation thesis at the University of Hanover 2001).
• Helmut Krausnick, Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: The troop of the Weltanschauung war. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD 1938–1942. DVA, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-01987-8 .
• Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Ed.): German East 1939 - 1945. The Weltanschauung war in photos and texts. WBG, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 978-3-534-16023-5 .
• Andrej Angrick; Peter Klein (Ed.): The Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89468-200-0 .
• Ralf Ogorreck: The task forces and the “Genesis of the Final Solution”. Metropol, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-926893-29-X .
• Andrej Angrick : Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. Task Force D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-91-3 .