Erich Walter Killinger

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Erich Walter Killinger (1914)

Erich Walter Emil Killinger (born March 21, 1893 in Schönau , † May 18, 1977 in Staufenberg ) was a German naval and air force officer.

Life

He was the son of the secret government councilor Emil Killinger and his wife Elisabeth, née Helfrich. Killinger attended a Grammar school that made high school at King's College London , studied law and economics at the Universities of Heidelberg , Hamburg and Berlin.

Imperial Navy

Killinger joined the Imperial Navy ( Crew IV / 13 ) on April 1, 1913 as a midshipman . From April 1st to May 15th he underwent basic infantry training, which was followed by almost eleven months of on-board training on the training ship SMS Vineta in the Caribbean and South America . The ship returned to Flensburg - Mürwik on March 25, 1914 , and officer training began on April 1, 1914. On April 3, Killinger was promoted to ensign at sea . In August 1914, Killinger was assigned to the SMS Berlin , an older small cruiser . Since Killinger, who was keen on war, did not suit the station duty, he applied for a transfer to the naval aviators. He then came to the sea flight school in Putzig and, after completing his training as an observer, was assigned to the station manager Oberleutnant zur See Karl von Gorrissen (1888-1918), the younger brother of Ellery von Gorrissen . In the period that followed, both flew reconnaissance missions over the eastern Baltic Sea.

During the month of November, Killinger and v. Gorrissen was entrusted with the supervision and implementation of the conversion of the former English freighter Glyndwr into a carrier ship for seaplanes. Killinger came up with the idea of ​​using a carrier ship to bring water-starting airplanes close to their location in order to increase their range considerably, after the normal range of the airplanes was not sufficient to reach their targets. From December 1914 to March 1915, Killinger underwent further training on board the SMS Glyndwr in Danzig . This special training in the Gdańsk Bay for pilots and observers of seaplanes served the training and development for missions on the high seas through and from these new carrier ships and experimented with the reconnaissance and search for submarines. For the officers, this training and development meant a delay in their frontline deployment.

At the end of March 1915, SMS Glyndwr was relocated to Memel with four aircraft on board . This is where Killinger and von Gorrissen started their first flight on March 28, 1915. After a mission over Libau on April 6, 1915, during which the city's station filled with Russian troops was bombed, the machine ("Kiel 51") of the two had to emergency watering in the Baltic Sea. Your Rumpler biplane had lost its propeller. Killinger and von Gorrissen were rescued and captured by the Russians.

Around noon on April 6, 1915, SMS Lübeck received a radio message that the "Kiel-51" from Killinger and von Gorrissen was overdue and had probably crashed. The master ordered the immediate termination of all pending work and ordered a large-scale search operation by the auxiliary minesweeping division "Neufahrwasser" as well as by SMS Lübeck and Glyndwr . Shortly before dark, one of the "Neufahrwasser" fishing trawlers discovered the destroyed aircraft. The cutter took the wreck on board, but found no trace of the crew.

Killinger and von Gorrissen were imprisoned together in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg . Both were accused of murdering innocent women and children. Under poor conditions, Killinger was held in solitary confinement for several weeks and interrogated intensively. He was pretended to be sentenced to death in order to break his will. After Killinger's transfer to a Siberian prison camp, he managed to escape on another train transport with three other prisoners of war. After an adventurous escape through China, Japan and the USA (neutral at the time), through the English naval blockade and neutral Norway, once around the world, he returned to Germany on March 6, 1916, after an eleven month flight. After training as a pilot, he was commanded at the Zeebrugge sea air station until the end of the war. 1916 Awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Zähringer Lion . From 1916 until the end of the war he was a naval aviator in Flanders . In 1917 his book The Adventures of the Baltic Sea Flier in World War I was published by Ullstein Berlin. For his services in battles in the canal, Killinger received the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern on May 3, 1918 .

Erich Killinger: The adventures of the Baltic Sea pilot in the First World War

After training as an aircraft pilot, he was in command at the Zeebrugge and Ostend sea ​​flight stations until the end of the war . For his achievements during the war, Killinger was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross and the Hamburg Hanseatic Cross.

Interwar years

After the end of the war , Killinger was adopted on November 24, 1919, but was reactivated on December 19, 1919. On January 7, 1920 he was promoted to first lieutenant at sea before he finally retired on March 9, 1920 from the military. After his departure, Killinger worked commercially, first in the Dutch East Indies (Java and Sumatra), then in East Asia. In 1923 he returned to Germany for a year and then visited the stations of his escape again. From 1926 Killinger worked in the aviation industry. He went to Madrid for Junkers and founded two airlines of his own: Union Aeria Hispaniola and Servizios Aerios Portugesis.

On April 11, 1930 he married Thea Margot Schroeder (born March 9, 1899 in London † May 24, 1990 in Gernsbach). At that time he was general agent for Armstrong Siddeley aircraft engines in Berlin, then head of the aviation industry business group in the Reich Ministry of Aviation in Berlin. From the plea of ​​the defense attorney Ure in the later Wuppertal Dulag Luft trial in 1945 it emerges that Killinger lost his position there in 1933 because he refused to join the NSDAP . From 1934 to 1939, Killinger headed the foreign trade department of the economic group of the Reich Association of the German Aviation Industry in Berlin, which he founded. Killinger had three children, Klaus (born January 19, 1931 in Berlin; † November 9, 1999 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein), Karin married. Grewing (born October 1, 1935 in Berlin) and Prof. Dr. Erich Killinger (born February 20, 1937 in Berlin).

In the meantime, his book was published in 1934 flight around the Earth in the New German publishing house , Berlin.

Second World War

With the beginning of the Second World War , Killinger was called up for military service and promoted to captain . There is conflicting information about its uses. Accordingly, Killinger is said to have flown missions in Poland or worked on Heligoland. What is certain is that until he was assigned to Oberursel, he was a major in the staff of Air Fleet Command 3 in Paris in Department Ic (Enemy Department), who was responsible for military support. At the end of 1941, Killinger took up his new position as commander of the Dulag Luft (transit camp) in Oberursel.

Erich Killinger, head of Dulag Luft from 1941

On September 6, 1944, a report to the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was submitted to the Gestapo in Frankfurt am Main , according to which Lieutenant Colonel Killinger, his deputy Major Heinz Jung and his immediate colleagues were undermining the morale of the Wehrmacht by being too lenient Prisoners of war would handle. The charge, which turned out to be true, was that Killinger allowed US and British airmen to attend local church services and dine in a local restaurant. In addition, Killinger was personally responsible for fraternizing with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring .

In fact, Killinger enforced an internationally agreed statute after the First World War that allowed captured officers to leave the camp on probation under the supervision of a German officer. The trial took place on December 7, 1944, but contrary to the expectations of the Gestapo, Killinger and his staff were acquitted on all points by the responsible department of the Aviation Ministry.

On November 26, 1945, Killinger was arrested by the English and on December 3 in Wuppertal by a British military tribunal for war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights of 1929 (mistreatment of British prisoners of war) he was sentenced to five years in prison, which he was in the Allied National Prison Werl should serve.

After the Killinger War Crimes Trial was written down in 1945, there were thirteen specific incidents in which RAF prisoners of war were locked up for interrogation in a small room where the temperature was kept very high. The periods in which the prisoners of war were exposed to these extreme temperatures ranged from one to ten hours. The prisoners of war were exposed to this condition once. Of the thirteen cases, eleven were eventually brought to trial. Ten related to the summer of 1943 and one to the summer of 1944. Accordingly, there were no statements about how high the temperature had been. US prisoners of war were not exposed to this treatment. According to the prosecution and the defense testimony, Killinger had not ordered this treatment and was only later informed. He then ordered that special excessive heat should not be used as an interrogation method. No member of the Dulag Luft employees was officially reprimanded or punished for using the heat treatment. Extensive statements in the logs confirm that Killinger and his staff deliberately falsified reports by turning prisoners into Allied airmen who they were not in reality. Some of the prisoners were German deserters, Allied prisoners of war who had fled before and had been sent back without any military identification and, in one well-documented case, five SOE agents, special operations executives . The wrong classifications were made to protect the men from extradition to the Gestapo.

It is interesting that Killinger subsequently took full responsibility for everything that took place in Dulag Luft from November 15, 1941 to April 15, 1945. He did not use the ignoring of orders and requirements in his defense, nor did he mention the false statements and classifications he ordered to mitigate himself. After three years, Killinger was released early from prison in Werl (British military prison during the occupation after World War II) near Wuppertal.

Post-war years

From July 1950 until his retirement, Killinger was managing director of the Swedish machine factory Hatlapa in Ütersen / Holstein near Hamburg. (technical ship accessories such as loading and loading systems, anchor winches and compressors). From the beginning of the 1960s, Erich Killinger lived in Staufenberg near Baden-Baden until his death at the age of 84 on May 18, 1977.

Publications

  • The adventures of the Baltic Sea pilot. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 1917.
  • Escape around the earth. German publisher, Berlin 1934.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Stefan Geck: Dulag Luft / Evaluation Point West. Air Force interrogation camp for Western Allied prisoners of war in World War II. Peter Lang GmbH. International science publisher. Frankfurt am Main 2008. Volume 1057. ISBN 978-3-631-57791-2 . P. 82.
  2. ↑ a b Marine Officer Association (Ed.): Honorary ranking of the Imperial German Navy 1914-18. Thormann & Goetsch. Berlin 1930, p. 430.
  3. ↑ a b Heinrich Rollmann: The war in the Baltic Sea. Volume II. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1929, pp. 32-35.
  4. ^ Heinrich Rollmann: The war in the Baltic Sea. Volume II, ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1929, p. 35.
  5. ^ Stefan Geck: Dulag Luft / Evaluation Point West. Air Force interrogation camp for Western Allied prisoners of war in World War II. Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag für Wissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main 2008, Volume 1057, ISBN 978-3-631-57791-2 , p. 83.
  6. ^ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, order number: 233 No. 42249
  7. ^ Marinekabinett (ed.): Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for the year 1918. ES Mittler & Sohn . Berlin 1918, p. 67.
  8. ^ Stefan Geck: Dulag Luft / Evaluation Point West. Air Force interrogation camp for Western Allied prisoners of war in World War II. Peter Lang GmbH. International science publisher. Frankfurt am Main 2008. Volume 1057. ISBN 978-3-631-57791-2 . P. 84.
  9. ↑ Eric Cuddon (Ed.): Trial of Erich Killinger. London 1952, p. 239: "I was informed that he was until 1933 employed by a German Government department and that he was forced to resign [...] on his refusal to join the Nazi Party."
  10. ↑ a b c d Stefan Geck: Dulag Luft / Evaluation Point West. Air Force interrogation camp for Western Allied prisoners of war in World War II. Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag für Wissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main 2008, Volume 1057, ISBN 978-3-631-57791-2 , p. 85.
  11. ^ European university publications, Dulag Luft / Auswertstelle West v. Stefan Geck, Verlag Peter Lang GmbH, 2008, p. 99.
  12. ^ European university publications, Dulag Luft / Auswertstelle West v. Stefan Geck, Verlag Peter Lang GmbH, 2008, chapter 2.3.3. follow
  13. ^ Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals. The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume III, p. 67. London, HMSO. 1948.
  14. ↑ Eric Cuddon (ed.): Trial of Erich Killinger, Heinz boy, Otto Boehringer, Heinrich Eberhardt, Gustav Bauer Schlichtegroll (The Dulag Luft Trial). (= War Crimes Trials Series 9). London 1952.
  15. ↑ Manfred Kopp: Airman without wings. Yearbook 2009, Hochtaunuskreis, pp. 267, 268
  16. ↑ Manfred Kopp: Airman without wings. Yearbook 2009, Hochtaunuskreis, p. 268 ff.
  17. ^ Charles Rollings: Dulag Luft. In: After the Battle. No. 106, 1999, pp. 1-27.
  18. ^ European university publications, Dulag Luft / Auswertstelle West. Chapter 2.3.2. Pp. 90 to 98 v. Stefan Geck, Verlag Peter Lang GmbH 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Killinger, Erich Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Killinger, Erich Walter Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval and air force officer
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Schönau in the Black Forest
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1977
Place of death Staufenberg