Eberhard Herf

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Eberhard Herf (born March 20, 1887 in Krefeld , † January 30, 1946 in Minsk ) was a German officer , most recently an SS brigade leader and major general of the police in World War II . After the end of the war he was executed as a war criminal .

Life

youth

Eberhard Herf was the son of the notary and later legal counsel Heinrich Herf and his wife Adele nee Schött. He was the cousin of Maximilian von Herff . Between 1898 and 1896, Herf attended the pre-school of the Realgymnasium Krefeld and then until 1906 the grammar school up to primary school .

Herf joined the Hanoverian Jäger Battalion No. 10 as a flag junior in 1906 and was from there in 1911 as a lieutenant (appointment date was November 18, 1907) in the grenadier regiment "King Wilhelm I." (2nd West Prussian) No. 7 , which was stationed in Liegnitz . In 1912 he was transferred to Lower Silesian Pioneer Battalion No. 5 in Glogau for one year . In 1913 Herf took over the command to “combat flood distress in the Giant Mountains”. For this he was awarded the Crown Order IV class in 1913 .

In January 1914, Herf was posted to Berlin . There he took part in a " seminar for oriental languages", the aim of which was to learn the Kisuahelian language. This became necessary because Herf had applied to the protection force in German East Africa on command . But after the beginning of the First World War , Herf was used in Europe.

First World War

From August 1914 to the spring of 1915 Eberhard Herf was employed as an adjutant in the 2nd Battalion of the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 7, where he was appointed first lieutenant on January 27, 1915 . Between the spring of 1915 and 1918 he was also used as a company commander in this regiment. In addition, he was alternately used as an administrative officer, for example as a brigade adjutant. Herf received his appointment as captain on April 18, 1917. On the staff of the 121st Division , he was a division adjutant and, as a battalion leader in the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 56, was also used as a front officer.

At the beginning of 1918 Herf was transferred to the "Kraftfahrkampftruppe (tank gun)" and was in command of the heavy combat vehicle division No. 12 there until November 1918 . Herf received several awards during the war. In addition to both classes of the Iron Cross, he also received the Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Awarded class with the war decoration.

Freikorps and Police Service

After the end of the First World War, Herf was a member of several voluntary corps . For example, the dissolved Grenadier Regiment No. 7, with which he was used in the border guard of Upper Silesia from 1918 to 1919 . In 1919 Herf was dismissed from their service as a member of the Freikorps Lützow in Berlin and took up a position in the "Frodien" security police, whose headquarters were in Frankfurt am Main . There he was used as a police captain. From this association of former frontline soldiers, the new "Schutzpolizei Frankfurt" was formed in 1919, to which numerous police officers belonged. The police Frankfurt belonged Herf until 1926th On November 10, 1919, Eberhard Herf married his then fiancée Ilse Schulze-Horn. A daughter emerged from this marriage.

In 1926 Eberhard Herf left the Frankfurt Police and became a teacher at the police school in Hannoversch Münden for a year . From 1927 to 1929 Herf worked for the government in Magdeburg. In 1929 Herf became head of the Gelsenkirchen Police Inspection and was later also employed in Gladbeck . On April 1, Herf was promoted to police major there. Herf was transferred to a criminal offense due to leadership errors in the police fight against street riots in Gelsenkirchen in the summer of 1931. In 1932 he was employed as "Ia der Gruppe Süd", as chief of staff, at the Berlin Police. There he joined the NSDAP on September 1, 1932 ( membership number 1,322,780).

Time in National Socialism

After the National Socialist " seizure of power " in January 1933, Herf was deployed as a battalion leader in the Berlin State Police, and from 1934 to 1935 he was commander of the police in Weissenfels, Prussia . In 1935, Herf was transferred to the "Reichsetat Schutzpolizei Saarbrücken" after the Saarland referendum. In Saarbrücken , Herf built a local police force based on the Reich model, which replaced the French-oriented police there. Thereafter, Herf was officially appointed as commander in Saarbrücken retroactively to April 1, 1935. On August 1, 1935 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the police force and left the church . Herf now described himself as " believing in God ".

In 1936 Herf became interim commander of the Essen police force for six months and then went to the Hamburg police force for 1½ years, where he became the commander of the "Group East". There he applied for membership in the SS on August 25, 1938 . From the end of 1938 to the end of 1940, Herf took over command of the “Group North” of the Berlin police. In this capacity he was appointed Colonel of the Protection Police on September 1, 1939 . At the end of 1940 Eberhard Herf was seconded to the "Police Regiment Bohemia" and transferred to Prague . He remained in this post until June 1941.

In June 1941 Herf took over command of the “North Police Regiment”, and he was now also actively involved in the National Socialist policy of oppression and extermination in Eastern Europe. In October, Herf was transferred to Minsk as “Commander of the Ordnungspolizei ” (KdO) . In this capacity he was accepted into the SS on November 9, 1941 by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler (SS no. 411.970). Herf received the rank of SS-Oberführer in the SS and was at the same time listed as "SS leader in the RFSS staff". He was a member of this until April 1, 1944. At the same time he was given the character of Major General of the Police by Himmler , which entitled him to wear the badge of rank and the uniform of a police general as a colonel. On January 30th, 1942, Adolf Hitler granted Herf the right to wear the " Ehrenwinkel der Alten Kämper " with his uniform due to his acceptance as "SS leader in the RFSS staff" and his membership in the NSDAP in 1932 .

On January 30, 1942, Eberhard Herf received his appointment as SS-Brigadführer and at the same time was appointed Major General of the Police (with effect from January 1, 1942 and RAD from December 21, 1941).

On February 16, 1942, Eberhard Herf was relieved of his post as "KdO Minsk" and worked as the commander of the police order for the SS and police leader of Kharkov , Willy Tensfeld . He stayed there until July 1943. On July 16, 1943, Herf was appointed to the field command post of the Reichsführer SS and was employed there until July 28 as head of the so-called "gang fighting units" of the SS. But in this capacity he was replaced prematurely, since on July 19, 1943 he complained in writing to his cousin Maximilian von Herff about the situation there.

Herf was then also relieved of his position as chief of staff at the instigation of his superior Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski von Himmler because of his massive criticism of the Cottbus company (May 20 to June 23, 1943) . And already on July 29, 1943, Herf wrote another letter to his cousin, in which he informed him that he now wanted to leave the East and asked for a transfer.

Between August 2, 1943 and February 1, 1944, Herf was again used as commander of the police in the Minsk area. But due to his persistent criticism of Himmler's attitude and the actions of the SS with the " Slavic sub-human race ", he was expelled from the SS on January 10, 1944. This enabled Eberhard Herf's superior Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski to get Himmler's approval to remove this uncomfortable "senile and worn-out officer" from the SS. The certificate of discharge was issued on January 10, 1944 and was to be given to Herf a few days later. But here Herf's cousin Maximilian von Herff asserted his influence, who spoke out against his cousin's expulsion from the SS. And so the certificate of discharge that had already been drawn up was not signed by Himmler, the pronounced discharge was ineffective, and the certificate was sent to Herf's personal file in the SS Personnel Main Office. Instead of being expelled from the SS as planned by Himmler, Eberhard Herf was now put into “not earned, but retired” by Himmler on April 1, 1944. This ended Eberhard Herf's active military career in the Waffen-SS , but Herf remained a member of the General SS .

End of the war and execution

As a member of the General SS, Herf was employed between April 1, 1944 and May 1945 as "SS leader in the staff of the SS Upper Section Bohemia-Moravia ". There he was taken prisoner after the war and was transferred to the Soviet Union .

By a Soviet military tribunal was Herf with 17 other defendants, such as the Major General Johann-Georg Richert in Minsk process , which took place between 15 and 29 January 1946 of numerous war crimes accused (especially commanding the murder of Soviet citizens) and to death by train sentenced. Just one day later, on 30 January 1946 this ruling was made public on the racecourse in Minsk enforced .

Awards

literature

  • Andreas Hilger : Soviet justice and war crimes. Documents on the conviction of German prisoners of war 1941–1949. In: Quarter-year books for contemporary history. 54 (2006), pp. 461-515 ( PDF ).
  • Daniel Schmidt: Protect and serve. Policemen in the Ruhr area in democracy and dictatorship 1919–1939 . Klartext, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-929-5 .
  • Eberhard Herf. In: Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann, Dieter Zinke: The generals of the Waffen SS and the police. Volume 2, Biblio Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-7648-2592-8 , pp. 154-158.
  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the enclosed CD, p. 252 there.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ With Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann and Dieter Zinke: The Generals of the Waffen-SS and the Police 1933–1945. Volume 2, article Eberhard Herf. P. 154., an "kuk Military Merit Cross III. Class ( Order of the Iron Crown ) with the war decoration ”listed.
personal data
SURNAME Herf, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German military and police officer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Krefeld
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1946
Place of death Minsk