Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police (1944)

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (born March 1, 1899 in Lauenburg in Pomerania as Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski ; from 1925 von dem Bach-Zelewski ; 1940 to 1945 von dem Bach ; † March 8, 1972 in Munich ) was a German SS -Obergruppenführer , General of the Waffen-SS and General of the Police . As Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Central Russia in the Holocaust and later as "Chief of the gang fighting groups", he played a key role in the mass murders in the Soviet Union. In August 1944 he ordered the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising . He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1962 for the murder of communists in 1933 .

Life

Early years

Erich von Zelewski came from impoverished Kashubian landed nobility from the coat of arms community of the same name with roots in Seelau . He was the son of the pension officer and farmer Otto Johannes von Zelewski (* May 20, 1859, † April 17, 1911 in Dortmund ) and his wife Amalia Maria Eveline, b. Schimanski (born April 16, 1862 in Thorn ). The family originally spoke Kashubian and Polish at home and for generations was connected to the Catholic parish in Linde (today Pl. Linia), although Erich von Zelewski joined the Protestant church as an adult . Since the father had to pay off several siblings, he was unable to keep the manor and became a traveling salesman. Zelewski, who had six siblings, grew up in poor conditions in Bialla in East Prussia, where he first attended elementary school. When he was ten years old, his father died, whereupon the children were distributed to foster families due to a lack of inheritance. Erich was taken in as the foster son of the manor owner von Schickfuß in Trebnig . He was the nephew of Emil von Zelewski , who died as commander of the protection force for German East Africa in 1891 in the fight against the Hehe near Iringa .

Erich von Zelewski's school days were changeable. He attended various high schools in West Prussia , such as Neustadt , Strasburg and Konitz , until he left school after the Obersekunda . It remains unclear why he did not attend school near where his foster father lived. He experienced the outbreak of World War I as a traumatic event during the summer holidays with his mother in Bialla. Although he was only 15 years old, he managed to enlist in the army in December 1914. Zelewski gained some fame as the youngest volunteer in the army at the time. He was shot through the shoulder in 1915 and was wounded a second time in a gas attack in 1918 . He received various awards for his assignments, including the Iron Cross II and I Class. At the end of the war in 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant .

After 1918, Zelewski initially joined the Freikorps with which he fought Polish militias under the command of Karl Hoefer during the uprisings in Upper Silesia . He was then accepted into the Reichswehr , which ensured the lieutenant a secure income for the family he had founded in 1921. Zeleweski endangered this through his political activities. As a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund , from 1924 the Stahlhelm , he openly acknowledged his hatred of both the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Republic . In 1924 he had to say goodbye because of " National Socialist activities". He then got by with odd jobs and then ran a successful taxi company in Berlin until he bought a farm in Dührungshof in the Landsberg an der Warthe district in 1928 .

Career as a National Socialist

In 1930 von dem Bach-Zelewski became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 489.101). On February 15, 1931, he joined the SS (SS No. 9.831). He was the first member of the SS in his district and in the following years not only built up the general SS for the administrative districts of Frankfurt an der Oder and Schneidemühl , but also an SS border guard formation . He rose quickly within the SS hierarchy. In December 1932 he was transferred to SS Section XII in Frankfurt an der Oder , and a year later he was promoted to SS Brigadefuhrer . In addition, von dem Bach-Zelewski ran for the Reichstag. In the elections of July 1932 he was elected as a member of the constituency of Breslau, but in the elections of November of the same year he lost his mandate again. In the elections of March 1933 he was re-elected and from then on belonged continuously to the National Socialist Reichstag .

After the National Socialist seizure of power , he ruthlessly used the means of power that he had as SS leader against opponents of the regime. In March 1933, for example, he ordered all communists in Woldenberg in New Mark to be arrested and two of them to be shot - as atonement for an SA man who had recently perished . In truth, however, he had fallen victim to a jealousy crime. In the summer of 1933 he had two SS men convicted of murder freed from the prison in Landsberg an der Warthe and went into hiding with false papers. He had communist prisoners who had witnessed this action shot. Also in the summer of 1933, he ordered his SS men to torture and shoot two brothers who were suspected of having participated in the 1931 murder of a Hitler Youth boy .

In February 1934, Bach-Zelewski transferred the SS upper section north-east to Königsberg . At the same time he became head of the state police station in Königsberg. In these functions he participated in the Röhm murders . In preparation, he was sent to Berlin in June 1934, where Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler informed him that the SA was planning a putsch , which Hitler had instructed the SS to suppress . East Prussia is particularly at risk, since Poland would try to annex it in the event of internal German unrest. Himmler ordered von dem Bach-Zelewski to occupy all SA offices and authorities run by SA men on cue, and to have persons executed or transferred to Berlin whose names he would still receive. When the key word and the list of names arrived in Königsberg on June 30, 1934, he interpreted his instructions very arbitrarily: although he had around 100 SA leaders arrested, he released them after receiving instruction. Only two of them were transferred to Berlin. Von dem Bach-Zelewski used the opportunity to get revenge on people who had nothing to do with the alleged SA putsch. He could not have the Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch , arrested because he had left for Berlin in good time. His former colleague Anton von Hohberg and Buchwald , who had triggered a conflict between the SS and the Reichswehr through an indiscretion and was therefore considered a traitor, he had murdered after he was named in another telex from the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. The act was carried out on July 2, 1934 by SS-Obersturmführer Carl Deinhard and the Bach-Zelewskis chauffeur, SS-Scharführer Zummach, in Dulzen near Preussisch-Eylau . Because of his services in suppressing the alleged SA conspiracy, von dem Bach-Zelewski was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer on July 11, 1934 .

Conflicts within the polycracy of the Nazi regime led to von dem Bach-Zelewski losing his post in Königsberg: for example, he had a district party judge of the NSDAP and a vice-president of the Königsberg Chamber of Commerce put into protective custody . Gauleiter Koch complained to Himmler about it in August 1935 in vain. Only after the deputy of the Fiihrer Rudolf Hess had been called in, the two were released. On August 18, 1935, von dem Bach-Zelewski caused a scandal when he ostentatiously left the hall during a speech given by Reich Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht at the German East Fair : Obviously, his anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic statements did not go far enough for him. This time Gauleiter Koch complained to Hermann Göring that Bach-Zelewski was “no longer acceptable”. He was then transferred to Breslau in February 1936 , where he took over the SS Upper Section Southeast. Here von dem Bach-Zelewski proved himself through diligence and conflict-free behavior. On June 28, 1938, he was promoted to Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in the SS Upper Section Southeast.

Second World War

Auschwitz concentration camp

After the invasion of Poland , East Upper Silesia was annexed by the German Empire and added to the Gau Silesia . As the local commissioner for the consolidation of German nationality , to which he was appointed on November 7, 1939, he suggested in the spring of 1940 the establishment of a first concentration camp for 10,000 prisoners in Auschwitz to accommodate the victims of the so-called AB-Aktion . The first Polish prisoners were in the camp on 14 June 1940 deported . As a result of a prisoner's first successful escape on July 6, 1940, he visited the Auschwitz concentration camp. He then ordered the expulsion of the Polish population within a radius of five kilometers around the camp, which was carried out by the Kattowitz branch of the central office for migrants . At the end of February 1941, Himmler visited the concentration camp on the way to Breslau, where he attended the birthday party of his protégé.

Shootings of Jews

von dem Bach during the acceptance of a parade by the police on Lenin Square in Minsk (approx. 1943), photo from the Federal Archives.

On April 10, 1941, at another meeting with Himmler, von dem Bach was appointed Lieutenant General of the Police and Higher SS and Police Leader Central Russia. His successor in Wroclaw was Ernst-Heinrich Schmauser . Shortly before the attack on the Soviet Union , he learned at an SS leaders' conference on the Wewelsburg that the plan was to wage the war as a “relentless harshness of the people's struggle”, in which “20 to 30 million Jews and Slavs due to the acts of war and food difficulties will perish ”.

After the start of the German attack, von dem Bach took up his post in Mogilev, Belarus , and organized the activities of the police and SS in the rear of Army Group Center (Belarus, eastern Poland and parts of northern Ukraine ), including the systematic shootings of Jews by the police and orderly police Arthur Nebe Einsatzgruppe B . At a meeting with Kurt Daluege and Himmler, which took place on July 8th in Białystok , von dem Bach had taken the position that the police could not be called in to shoot Jews, but he was unable to get his way. On this occasion, he later recalled, Himmler had declared “that basically every Jew is a partisan”, which he understood as a mission to destroy the entire Jewish population who were capable of military service. From now on, von dem Bach's main activity consisted in conveying the orders for the individual murders of the local Jews to the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, urging radicalization, monitoring the implementation and reporting the execution to Berlin.

At first, his orders to kill were restricted. After a meeting with Himmler and Heydrich on July 11, 1941 in Grodno , he instructed the Central Police Regiment "to shoot all male Jews between the ages of 17 and 45 who were convicted as looters". That was already an extension of the original mission of the Einsatzgruppen, which were actually supposed to fight the expected "Bolshevik resistance". “Looters” now became synonymous with Jews. In the following weeks, however, the murders were expanded further: On July 12, 1941, von dem Bach visited the stadium in Białystok, where the city's male Jews who had escaped the June 27 massacre were locked up without any food . From there they were taken to a nearby wooded area and shot by law enforcement officers. Von dem Bach justified the massacre in a speech. On July 17, he organized the shooting of 1,159 people in Slonim . On August 15, he and Himmler watched a mass shooting of Jews by Einsatzgruppe B in Minsk . But then he complained to Himmler that such tasks turned the policemen who carried out the murders into "either nervous or brute": "Such men are ready for their whole life!" In August von dem Bach Herbert Lange reloaded Minsk: He wanted to have the gas vans demonstrated, as used by Lange to murder inmates of psychiatric hospitals in the Warthegau , but the visit did not materialize.

On July 31, von Bach and Standartenführer Hermann Fegelein , the commander of SS Cavalry Regiments 1 and 2 , met in Baranavichy with Himmler, who was dissatisfied with the results of the murder and urged expansion. The SS Cavalry Regiment 2 was then instructed by radio: “Express order from the RF-SS . All Jews must be shot. Jewish women are to be driven into the swamps ”. In the period that followed, the men under the Bach's command continued to expand their murders and began shooting not only possible partisans and looters, but without exception all Jews, including women and children. The American historian Christopher R. Browning sees the Mogilev massacre on October 2 and 3, 1941, which was commanded by the Bach, as the "turning point in the genocide in Belarus". On November 9, 1941, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police.

Even before the German attack on the Soviet Union, von dem Bach had contact with General der Infanterie Max von Schenckendorff , the commander of the Rear Army Area , in whose area he was to work. He made it clear to him that he and his people would by no means be subject to the Wehrmacht and thus Schenckendorff's authority. The relationship with the significantly older Schenckendorff, whom he had known since 1939, was nevertheless very harmonious and personal: Von dem Bach describes it as a father-son relationship in his diary, which was revised after the war. He regularly invited Schenckendorff to inspections of his battalions, visits that always ended with “comradeship evenings”. The consumption of alcohol caused kidney colic in von dem Bach . Von dem Bach Schenckendorff helped supply the state's own unions of volunteers unbureaucratically, albeit not entirely selflessly, by temporarily integrating them into the SS. He also used his good relations with Schenckendorff in other ways to increase the influence of the SS in the rear of the army, for example in the training of Wehrmacht members and their possible protests against the mass shootings of Jews: On August 3, 1942, Schenckendorff had an order that Terrorist measures against the civilian population were forbidden, to the associations subordinate to the brook want to expand what the brook turned. He was able to defuse a conflict between the Army High Command and the Reich Main Security Office over the unannounced stationing of gendarmerie officers by simply subordinating them to himself in November 1941. Schenckendorff agreed.

In January 1942 he was transferred to another colic and a nervous breakdown in the SS hospital Hohenlychen brought where he from Reichsarzt SS Ernst-Robert Grawitz underwent surgery on the gut. Although Himmler pushed for his speedy recovery, he had to be represented as Higher SS and Police Leader Central Russia until the beginning of May 1942. When he was ill, problems with the psychological processing of the mass murders he had ordered also played a role. Grawitz reported:

"Von dem Bach-Zelewski ... screamed at night and got entangled in hallucinations , haunted by the ghosts of his own guilt ... in connection with the shootings of Jews he directed and other difficult experiences in the East."

According to the historian Henning Köhler, this weakness of even one of his best men was an occasion for Himmler to search for a method of killing that would burden the murderers less. They were found in the poison gas Zyklon B .

After the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich , the deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia , on May 27, 1942 in Prague , Bach was initially to be charged with managing Heydrich's business: As Himmler informed Karl Hermann Frank a day later, Hitler had Bach gladly held this post, "because he saw in him the guarantee that he would be even more harsh and brutal than Heydrich and wade through a sea of ​​blood without any inhibitions." Instead, Daluege received the post.

Counter partisans

Report of the Bach in 1942 to Reichsführer SS Himmler
Erich von dem Bach bent over maps during a briefing. Photo taken in March 1944.

After Hitler had declared the fight against the "gang disorder" to be an urgent task in his "Instruction No. 46 for Warfare" of August 18, 1942 and had entrusted Himmler with its implementation, he appointed von dem Bach in October 1942 as "the Reichsführer SS representative for fighting gangs ”. This corresponded to his wish to be given responsibility for “the entire fight against partisans ”. He had carried out actions against the partisans as early as the spring of 1942, but these did not hit them themselves, but consisted mostly of repression against population groups who actually or supposedly supported the partisans. German losses were therefore rare. In September 1942, von dem Bach referred to his experiences in a letter to Himmler and asked for a centrally responsible post in the area of ​​fighting partisans. He received it now. Due to the associated expansion of his area of ​​responsibility, he was subsequently represented as HSSPF Russia-Center, initially by Georg-Henning von Bassewitz-Behr and then Gerret Korsemann (until he was transferred to the Waffen-SS). Hitler was very satisfied with the commissioning of Bach, to whom he had already been able to assign the most difficult tasks in the early 1930s: "If the communist resistance in one place could hardly be broken, I took him there and he thrashed them together".

Immediately after his appointment as "Plenipotentiary for Combating Gangs" von dem Bach consulted with Schenckendorff. On February 26, 1943, he issued guidelines for combating partisans, which were primarily based on orders from Schenckendorff in this regard, without making this clear in correspondence with Berlin. On the contrary, he indicated that Schenckendorff had problems with the discipline of his troops. In the winter of 1942/43 and in the spring that followed, von dem Bach had the 1st SS Brigade and Police Regiment 14 carry out the extremely bloody operations “Nürnberg”, “Hamburg”, “Altona” and “Hornung” against the Belarusian civilian population. In January 1943, he even personally took command of the "Franz" company because the responsible SS group leader Curt von Gottberg was ill. Support in his work was supported by von dem Bach, among others, from SS Brigade Leader Curt von Gottberg and the notorious “ Kampfgruppe von Gottberg ”. His own troops were also temporarily subordinated to him, so that he received house power within the SS . As an agent for combating gangs, he now also had authority in the areas of the other HSSPF, so that Hans-Adolf Prützmann , for example, complained to Himmler in June 1943.

On June 21, 1943, he was appointed "Chief of the Gang Fighting Associations" with renewed expansion of his competencies and thus the organizer of the fight against partisans with nominal responsibility for all "gang fighting areas" throughout Europe. He now had his headquarters in Hegewald near Zhytomyr , where Himmler also resided. For this purpose, von dem Bach task forces of the security police and SD as well as NSKK and Schuma units as well as army and air force units were subordinate . In the autumn of 1943, the brigade of Russian collaborators led by Bronislaw Kaminski was added. These units acted with unprecedented severity against the civilian population, many of whom were liquidated as “gang suspects”. Other civilians, including women and children, were handed over to Fritz Sauckel's apparatus as forced laborers . A common approach was to encircle "bandit-infested" areas, to put the villages in lists that were considered "band-hearing" or were in arrears with the forced delivery of agricultural goods. Then came the comeback: the houses were destroyed and most of the residents were murdered, unless they were enslaved as slave labor . Von dem Bach called this method "extermination by encirclement". In April and May 1944, a total of 7,011 people were murdered, 6,928 prisoners were taken and 11,233 people were deported to Germany as labor in the Polotsk area .

Despite the extremely brutal nature of these missions, the Soviet partisans managed to get large parts of the occupied territory under their control from 1943 onwards. Nonetheless, Himmler was of the opinion that von dem Bach had “proven himself very well” in fighting partisans. At the beginning of July 1944 he was appointed General of the Waffen SS. The question of whether fighting partisans would be the task of the Wehrmacht, the Einsatzgruppen or the SS and the Ordnungspolizei remained controversial. Von dem Bach strove to maximize the influence of the SS in the area of ​​operations, but the Wehrmacht did not want to give up command power. A compromise reached with General Erich Friderici in September 1943 regarding the Reichskommissariat Ukraine did not last long. In practice, the HSSPF increasingly acquired sole responsibility for combating partisans and were also supported in this by the civil administration of the occupied area.

Suppression of the Warsaw Uprising

Erich von dem Bach accepts the surrender of the commander of the Polish Home Army, Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski , October 4, 1944.

On August 5, 1944, Hitler commissioned him to suppress the Warsaw Uprising . Over 170,000 Polish civilians were killed in 64 days, mass executions without trial and systematic rape were the order of the day. Bronislaw Kaminski , the commander of a brigade of Russian collaborators responsible for these crimes, had von der Bach executed because he had had plundered on his own account. In mid-August, von dem Bach stopped the systematic murder of the Warsaw population and sounded out with the Home Army whether they should instead fight together against the Red Army , which was waiting on the other bank of the Vistula. At the end of September he agreed to treat the Home Army as opponents in accordance with international martial law : after their surrender , their relatives should be treated as prisoners of war . The cooperation between the Wehrmacht and the Home Army, which had hoped for the Bach, did not materialize. On September 30, 1944, he had already been awarded the Knight's Cross for his services in fighting the uprising .

Activity in Budapest and final phase of the Second World War

In October 1944 von dem Bach was sent by Hitler to Budapest in order to prevent the Hungarian government's armistice negotiations with the Soviet Union and thus a change of front . After the Reich Administrator Miklós Horthy was overthrown as a result of the Panzerfaust company , an Arrow Cross government under Ferenc Szálasi took power. In a telegram to Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop on October 18, 1944, Edmund Veesenmayer reports from Budapest about a meeting between the "SS-Obergruppenführer and Police General von dem Bach sent here", the "Ambassador Rahn " and himself on October 17, 1944 . Rahn had “expressed that for the first time he had experienced such an ideal interplay between the political, military and police forces. For this reason it was then also possible to carry out the operation [meaning: Operation Panzerfaust] smoothly and almost without bloodshed. "Above all, he was involved in the extermination of the Jews living there (see Jewish Hungarians during the German occupation ).

In autumn 1944 he set up the XIV SS Army Corps in the Baden-Baden area and later the X SS Army Corps in Pomerania . He then commanded the Oder Corps of Army Group Vistula from February 17, 1945 .

After 1945

After the war von dem Bach was arrested and interned in the Landsberg am Lech war crimes prison . In the Nuremberg trials he made himself available to the international military tribunal as the key witness for the prosecution, thus avoiding extradition to the Soviet Union. At the trial he declared that all those responsible for the occupied eastern territories - Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Frank, Rosenberg - were most guilty of the crimes, but not himself. With these and other statements, such as B., Himmler had already told SS group leaders before the war against the USSR that "the purpose of the Russian campaign was to decimate the Slav population by thirty million people," he refuted the defense strategy of the generals, the armed forces would not be in the Russian war Involved in crime ; as a friend of the Jews, he himself tried to humanize this struggle. Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel asked their lawyers to cross -examine Bach-Zelewski : he was by no means innocent, but Hitler had presented him to them as "a role model for a partisan fighter". Göring was extremely angry about Bach-Zelewski's accusations and self-justifications and cursed him as a "bastard".

The historian Christian Gerlach points out that Bach-Zelewski's testimony in Nuremberg can also be taken as an attempt to exonerate himself, since he had invoked a higher order. In the matter of fact, however, it is supported by other corresponding statements made independently of him, for example by a statement made shortly beforehand by the HSSPF- Ostland Friedrich Jeckeln in Riga in January 1946 . In Nuremberg, however, he ignored the fact that he himself, as the person responsible for the territorial area of ​​responsibility for Central Russia with headquarters in Moscow, fell to a large part of this extermination operation.

In order to present himself as a friend of Poland, von dem Bach-Zelewski had reassumed his Polish part of his name. Because the former commander in chief of the Polish Home Army, Tadeusz Komorowski , gave an exculpatory testimony about him, Bach-Zelewski was not charged. He later stated that it was he who slipped Göring the poison capsule with which the latter killed himself in Nuremberg in order to avoid execution. During an Allied internment, von dem Bach-Zelewski wrote a report on the partisan struggle in the Soviet Union for the American secret service. In the summer of 1950 he was released and worked as a sales representative for household items.

In March 1951 von dem Bach-Zelewski was classified as the main culprit in the context of denazification by the Munich main court and sentenced to ten years in a labor camp and confiscated property. In December 1951, an appeal chamber gave him credit for the five years he had spent in custody since 1945. Afterwards he was only under house arrest , which he spent in his apartment in the Franconian town of Laffenau (now a district of Heideck ). From 1954 he lived in Eckersmühlen near Roth and worked in Nuremberg as a night watchman for 400 marks a month, which was slightly above the average salary at the time .

In December 1958 he was arrested again and charged with the murder order against Anton von Hohberg and Buchwald, which he had issued in 1934. In the trial that began in January 1961 before the Nuremberg-Fürth Regional Court , he was sentenced in February 1961 to four years and six months in prison for manslaughter. In November 1961 he received a six-month prison sentence for negligent perjury in the proceedings against the former SS-Obergruppenführer and police general Udo von Woyrsch and was therefore sentenced by the Nuremberg-Fürth district court to a total of four years and ten months. On August 3, 1962, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in another trial for the murders of five communists and the attempted murder in another case in the spring and summer of 1933 . He was never held accountable for his involvement in the Holocaust and the “fight against gangs” in the Soviet Union. In the judgments, however, there are references to his actions in the Soviet Union. The public prosecutor's office at the Nuremberg-Fürth regional court investigated this from 1951, but the proceedings were discontinued in December 1954 and Bach-Zelewski put out of pursuit. Although there was suspicion of participating in the murder of Jews and Russians, the investigating public prosecutor did not open any main proceedings due to a lack of evidence.

At the beginning of March 1972 he was given exemption from prison , seriously ill ; on March 8, 1972 - shortly after his 73rd birthday - he died in the Munich-Harlaching prison hospital. In Poland it was criticized that Bach-Zelewski was only prosecuted by the Federal Republican judiciary for the murder of another SS man and not for crimes against "many thousands" Poles and Russians in which he was involved.

Bach-Zelewski's service diary , which was kept from 1941 to 1945, is in the Federal Archives in Koblenz .

family

Bach-Zelewski married Ruth Apfeld on September 21, 1921 (born August 22, 1901 in Neisse; † 1967). The marriage resulted in three sons and three daughters.

See also

literature

  • Andrej Angrick : Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring (ed.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-78562-1 .
  • Ruth Bettina Birn : The Higher SS and Police Leaders. Himmler's representatives in the Reich and in the occupied territories , Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1986, ISBN 3-7700-0710-7 (not evaluated).
  • Ruth Bettina Birn: Criminals as manipulative witnesses: a case study of SS General von dem Bach-Zelewski . Journal of International Criminal Justice , 9 (2011), 2, pp. 441-474.
  • Dermot Bradley (ed.), Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann: The generals of the Waffen-SS and the police. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 1: Abraham – Gutenberger. Biblio, Bissendorf 2003, ISBN 3-7648-2373-9 , pp. 29-39.
  • Tuviah Friedman : Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski, SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police, Chief of the gang fighting units of the Waffen-SS: Document collection. Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa 1996 (not evaluated).
  • Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, p. 25 f.
  • Robert Wistrich : Who was who in the Third Reich. Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Harnack, Munich 1983, p. 14.

Web links

Commons : Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Full first name after: Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie . Volume 1: Aachen - Braniß , Munich 2005, p. 334.
  2. ↑ Matthias Barelkowski: From " deadly blows " to " key witnesses" of National Socialist crimes. The career of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. In: Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg , Eugeniusz Cezary Król and Michael Thomae (eds.): The Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Events and perception in Poland and Germany . Schöningh, Paderborn / Vienna / Munich / Zurich 2011, p. 132.
  3. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 28.
  4. ↑ Matthias Barelkowski: From " deadly blows " to " key witnesses" of National Socialist crimes. The career of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. In: Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg , Eugeniusz Cezary Król and Michael Thomae (eds.): The Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Events and perception in Poland and Germany . Schöningh, Paderborn / Vienna / Munich / Zurich 2011, p. 132.
  5. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 28 f.
  6. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 29 f.
  7. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 30 f.
  8. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 30 ff.
  9. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 30 ff.
  10. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, pp. 33-36.
  11. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 36 f.
  12. ↑ Alexandra Richie: Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York 2013, p. 32.
  13. ↑ Timothy Snyder : Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin . CH Beck, Munich 2011, p. 163 f.
  14. ↑ Angelika Königseder: Auschwitz . In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 257.
  15. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 38.
  16. ↑ Christopher Browning: The Unleashed 'Final Solution' - National Socialist Jewish Policy 1939-1942 , Munich 2003, ISBN 3-549-07187-6 , p. 355.
  17. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, p. 191 f.
  18. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 39.
  19. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, pp. 484-490.
  20. ↑ Christopher Browning: Ordinary Men. The Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the “Final Solution” in Poland. Translated by Jürgen Peter Krause, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, p. 34.
  21. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 39.
  22. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, p. 199.
  23. ↑ Robert Jay Lifton : Doctors in the Third Reich. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 188.
  24. ^ Peter Longerich : Heinrich Himmler. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2008, p. 565 f.
  25. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 490 f.
  26. ↑ Christopher R. Browning: The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy September 1939 – March 1942 , Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2004, pp. 288 f.
  27. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, pp. 168–178.
  28. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 175 f.
  29. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 40.
  30. ↑ Robert Jay Lifton: Doctors in the Third Reich. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, p. 188.
  31. ^ Henning Köhler: Germany on the way to itself. A history of the century . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, p. 392.
  32. ↑ Quoted from René Küpper: Karl Hermann Frank (1898–1946). Political biography of a Sudeten German National Socialist . Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, p. 261.
  33. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 40 f.
  34. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 178.
  35. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 41.
  36. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 178 f.
  37. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 438 f.
  38. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 41.
  39. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 439.
  40. ↑ Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin . CH Beck, Munich 2011, p. 243; Alexandra Richie: Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York 2013, p. 48 ff.
  41. ↑ Hamburg Institute for Social Research (ed.): Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Dimensions of the War of Extermination 1941–1944. Exhibition catalog. Hamburger Edition , 2nd edition, Hamburg 2002, pp. 429-460.
  42. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 40 f.
  43. ↑ a b Peter Broucek (Ed.): A General in the Twilight. The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau. Vol. 2: Minister in the corporate state and general in the OKW . Böhlau, Vienna 1983, p. 240.
  44. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943. Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 403 f. and 445 f.
  45. ↑ Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin . CH Beck, Munich 2011, p. 309 f.
  46. ↑ Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin . CH Beck, Munich 2011, p. 313 f.
  47. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 42.
  48. ↑ Peter Broucek: Military Resistance: Studies on Austrian State Conception and National Socialist Defense , Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77728-1 , p. 415.
  49. ↑ Randolph L. Braham: The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. A Documentary Account, Volume 1, New York: Pro Arte for the World Federation of Hungarian Jews 1963, p. 331.
  50. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 42.
  51. ↑ Robert Wistrich: Who was who in the Third Reich. Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Harnack, Munich 1983, p. 14.
  52. ↑ Alexandra Richie: Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York 2013, p. 38.
  53. ↑ Quoted from Christian Gerlach: Calculated Morde. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 , p. 52.
  54. ^ Gustave M. Gilbert : Nürnberger Tagebuch. Conversations between the accused and the forensic psychologist . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 116, quoted from Jörg Friedrich : Die kalte Amnestie. Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic . New edition, Piper, Munich / Zurich 1994, p. 62.
  55. ^ Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 , p. 52.
  56. ↑ Alexandra Richie: Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York 2013, p. 31 f.
  57. ^ Günter Böddeker : The capsule. The secret of Goering's death . Econ, Stuttgart 1979, p. 177 fuö.
  58. ^ Thomas Urban : From Krakow to Gdansk. A journey through German-Polish history. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51082-5 ( Beck'sche series 1580), pp. 257f.
  59. ^ Andrej Angrick: Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Himmler's man just in case. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (eds.): The SS. Elite under the skull. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 43.
  60. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 1998, p. 25 f.
  61. ^ Hannah Arendt : Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the banality of evil , Piper, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-492-96258-2 , (e-book edition, notes on the new edition 1986).
  62. ^ Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny: Historia Militaris Polonica. 1974, p. 273.
  63. ↑ Wolfgang A. Mommsen : The bequests in the German archives (with additions from other holdings) , writings of the Federal Archives, Volume 2 of the directory of the written papers in German archives and libraries , Oldenbourg Verlag, 1983, ISBN 3-7646-1816-7 , P. 598.
  64. ↑ This collection of SS biographies has been repeatedly published in various compilations, by different publishers (including Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft ) and with changing titles. The most sensible research is based on the names of the two editors.
  65. ↑ there wrong spelling Zalewski
personal data
SURNAME Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zelewski, Erich von; Bach, Erich von dem; Bach-Zelewski, Erich Julius Eberhard von dem (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Obergruppenführer and politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Lauenburg ( Pomerania )
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1972
Place of death Munich