Erich Müller (SS member)

Erich Friedrich Otto Karl Müller (born August 30, 1902 in Munster ; † unknown) was a German lawyer in the municipal, police and ministerial administration as well as an SS standard leader at the time of National Socialism . He was district administrator in the Rees district , head of the Berlin state police control center, head of the personnel department in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP) and, during the Second World War in 1942, as head of Einsatzkommandos 12 of Einsatzgruppe D for mass murders in the North Caucasusresponsible. After the war he went into hiding and settled in Argentina . Müller was not prosecuted.

Erich Müller alias Francesco Noelke
1940s
Passport photo
Link to the picture (please note copyrights )

Origin, studies and career entry

Erich Müller was the son of the railway assistant Carl Müller and his wife Johanna, nee Otte. After graduating from high school in Gütersloh at Easter 1922 , Müller completed a law degree at the universities of Göttingen, Tübingen and Münster. After passing the first state law examination in July 1925, he began his legal clerkship. At the University of Göttingen he was awarded a Dr. jur. doctorate , the title of his dissertation was "The liability of a corporation under public law for its officials in the exercise of private law activities". After the second legal examination, he was a court assessor from 1929. He then worked as a lawyer and notarial representative. From July 1931 he worked as a public prosecutor in Essen .

time of the nationalsocialism

District Administrator in Rees

One year before the National Socialist seizure of power , Müller joined the NSDAP (membership no. 1.240.093). With the beginning of the National Socialism, he pushed his career in the Nazi state . From June 1933, he initially headed the district office in the Rees district on a provisional basis and was finally appointed district administrator on January 18, 1934 . At the end of July 1935, Müller left office at his own request.

From December 1935 he was married to Maria Elisabeth Hoehn.

Head of the Berlin Gestapo

Müller, who had been a member of the Schutzstaffel for about a year from January 1933 , rejoined the SS in 1935. By Reinhard Heydrich , he was in the Sicherheitsdienst taken (SD).

In early September 1935 he joined the state police administration in Berlin as a member of the government. From mid-January 1936 he took over the management of the Gestapo Berlin and was promoted to the senior government council. At the beginning of July 1936, Heydrich's protection gave him the definitive management of the Berlin Gestapo office. After the Berlin Stapostelle became the State Police Headquarters in March 1937, Müller's authority to issue instructions for state police matters extended beyond Berlin to the surrounding area. At the beginning of July 1937, Müller was appointed government director. A few weeks later he resigned from the police force and continued his career in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP). Heydrich, disappointed by Müller's move to the RMVP, could not prevent his delegation to the ministry.

Head of Human Resources in the Ministry of Propaganda

In August 1937, Müller finally moved to the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP), where he was made head of the personnel department. Rising to the top of the ministerial administration, he played "an important key role for the RMVP and its services" for several years. In November 1937 he was promoted to Ministerial Counselor and finally to Ministerial Director in April 1939. Within the SS, Müller rose to Standartenführer in May 1939, his highest rank within the General SS . In addition to his function as head of the personnel department, Müller was as SS leader temporarily liaison leader of the RMVP to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and thus "also the first choice as a forwarder as soon as the SS apparatus addressed requests and demands to the RMVP".

After the beginning of the Second World War , Müller was from October 1939 to February 1940 as a colonel in the secret field police in the Wehrmacht and then returned to his post in the RMVP.

Müller's request to take part in an "Eastern deployment" was initially rejected in March 1942 by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels . In order to still be able to implement his plan, Müller contacted the State Secretary in the RMVP Leopold Gutterer and Bruno Linienbach from the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). Ultimately, Müller was supposed to make "an important contribution to the police security of the rear area and the supply routes in the occupied eastern area". Straßenbach offered Müller the leadership of Einsatzkommandos 12 of Einsatzgruppe D, which Goebbels finally approved.

Head of Task Force 12 of Task Force D

Officially in February 1942 and actually on April 13, 1942, Müller replaced Gustav Adolf Nosske as head of Einsatzkommando 12. In addition to carrying out security police tasks in the German-occupied North Caucasus, Müller also pushed ahead with the implementation of the Zeppelin company there . In the operational area of ​​Einsatzkommando 12, Müller was responsible for the mass murder of the Jewish population . In August 1942 he delegated "the planning, the preparatory measures, and the actual execution of the execution" of the local Jewish population to SS leaders subordinate to him in Voroshilovsk and Pyatigorsk , where his office was temporarily located. The Jewish people were robbed of their valuables, had to undress and were then shot near Voroshilovsk or, as in Pyatigorsk, murdered in gas vans . Müller himself was not allowed to use gas vans, and told SS leaders that shooting was his preferred method of murder. Task Force 12 also murdered the Jewish population living there in the surrounding villages of Pyatigorsk. The Einsatzkommando 12 also committed war crimes in Kislovodsk ; so on September 9, 1942, patients and nurses in the sanatorium of the People's Commissariat for the Petroleum Industry were shot. Müller was actually released from the management of EK 12 in December 1942. According to later testimony, he is said to have commanded EK 12 until November 1942.

The background to his recall was a conflict with his superior Walter Bierkamp , who rejected Müller's ambitions to subordinate EK 12 to the Waffen-SS and to allow it to act more independently. Müller was awarded the War Merit Cross 1st Class with Swords and the Iron Cross 2nd Class .

Leaving the RMVP

After his assignment, he returned to his post in the RMVP in December 1942. He did not have to comply with the conscription to the Wehrmacht in the fall of 1942 , as the ministry made it indispensable . Due to personal differences with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the new State Secretary Werner Naumann , Müller left the RMVP in 1944. He then became the managing director of a magazine publisher.

post war period

At the end of the war, Müller settled in South Tyrol , where he, like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele , went into hiding and used the rat line to Argentina . In May 1948 he received proof of identity from Nazi escape helpers in Tramin with the alias Francesco Noelke , born on December 7, 1906 in Bozen . In November 1950 he applied for a Red Cross ID in Genoa, which enabled him to enter Argentina. In the application letter, he had stated that, due to the option at the time in South Tyrol, he probably had German citizenship. In Argentina he worked as an adviser to the army. In February 1952 he applied for the "correction of his name", which was confirmed by an Argentine court.

From the beginning of the 1960s at the latest, an investigation was made against Müller in the Federal Republic of Germany. There were indications of Müller's whereabouts and the suggestion of the Federal Criminal Police Office to issue an arrest warrant. On May 25, 1971, the investigation against Müller was discontinued because the public prosecutor at the Munich I Regional Court found no evidence of acts of killing committed by EK 12 in Stalino. The investigation was based, among other things, on the testimony of Müller's predecessor Nosske. The investigations of the central office in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the processing of National Socialist mass crimes in Dortmund, on the other hand, did give indications of homicide crimes by members of EK 12 in Stalino, which were not pursued further due to the subject matter of the proceedings.

In March 1998 the Argentine government asked the local judiciary to arrest three Nazi war criminals whom it suspected were still in the country. Applications have also been made to issue international arrest warrants. Erich Müller was among the three wanted.

literature

• Andrej Angrick : Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-91-3 .
• Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816-1945 , Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 (= publications of the Society for Rhenish History, Volume 69), p. 643.
• Stefan Krings: The Propaganda Ministry. Joseph Goebbels and his specialists . In: Lutz Hachmeister / Michael Kloft (eds.): The Goebbels Experiment. Propaganda and Politics , Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-421-05879-9 , pp. 29–48, here pp. 43–45.

Web links

• Erich Müller on the pages of the project officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Horst Romeyk: The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 , Düsseldorf 1994, p. 643
2. ^ Curriculum vitae of Erich Müller in his dissertation: The liability of a corporation under public law for its civil servants in the exercise of private law activities at the University of Göttingen, Münster / Westphalia 1926, p. 34
3. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 378.
4. ^ ^{A b} Stefan Krings: The Propaganda Ministry. Joseph Goebbels and his specialists . In: Lutz Hachmeister / Michael Kloft (eds.): The Goebbels Experiment. Propaganda and Politics , Munich 2005, p. 43
5. ^ ^{A b} Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 419f.
6. ^ ^{A b c d e f} Andrej Angrick: Occupation policy and mass murder. Task Force D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 420
7. ^ ^{A b} Max Bonacker: Goebbels' man on the radio. The Nazi propagandist Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953). , Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58193-5 , p. 93
8. ^ ^{A b} Stefan Krings: The Propaganda Ministry. Joseph Goebbels and his specialists . In: Lutz Hachmeister / Michael Kloft (eds.): The Goebbels Experiment. Propaganda and Politics , Munich 2005, p. 45
9. ^ Henry Leide : Nazi Criminals and State Security: The Secret Past Policy of the GDR. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, 2nd edition 2011, ISBN 3-525-35018-X , p. 363, FN 59
10. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 513f.
11. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, pp. 574ff., 613ff.
12. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 613ff.
13. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 646
14. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. The Einsatzgruppe D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, pp. 576, 672
15. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. Task Force D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 575f.
16. ^ Justificatif du titre de voyage de Erich Müller alias Francesco Noelke. In: ICRC Audiovisual Archives. April 7, 1950, accessed January 11, 2021 . 
17. ^ Justificatif du titre de voyage de Erich Müller alias Francesco Noelke. ICRC Audiovisual Archives, accessed January 11, 2021 (English). 
18. ↑ ^{a b} Gerald Steinacher : Adolf Eichmann: An Optant from Tramin , p. 331f. → online as a digitized version from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (PDF, accessed November 29, 2020).
19. ↑ Daniel Stahl: Nazi Hunt. South America's dictatorships and the prosecution of Nazi crimes , Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, p. 50f.
20. ↑ Daniel Stahl: Nazi Hunt. South America's dictatorships and the prosecution of Nazi crimes , Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, p. 179
21. ^ Andrej Angrick: Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. Task Force D in the Southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 , Hamburg 2003, p. 323
22. ↑ Arrest of Nazis requested . In: Neues Deutschland from March 14, 1998
23. ↑ Ingo Malcher: The Nazi assets at the Rio de la Plata . In: taz of April 6, 1994