Ernst-Günther Krätschmer

Ernst-Günther Krätschmer (* July 2, 1920 ; † May 26, 1984 ) was a German SS leader. After the Second World War , he helped to give the public a positive image of the Waffen SS . He published a continuously reissued representation of the knight's cross bearers of the Waffen-SS, participated in the revisionist mutual aid community of the members of the former Waffen-SS (HIAG) and organized support for Walter Reder, who was convicted and imprisoned in Italy for war crimes .

Live and act

Krätschmer joined the SS in 1937 (SS no. 324.367). As a member of the SS-Totenkopf standard "Upper Bavaria", he was initially one of the guards at the Dachau concentration camp . During World War II he took part in the campaign in the west and the war against the Soviet Union with the SS Totenkopf Division . In 1942 he attended the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz , but did not pass the course. Nevertheless, towards the end of the war, he was promoted to SS leader. According to the historian Jens Westemeier , Krätschmer achieved the rank of Untersturmführer . The German Cross in Gold had Krätschmer awarded itself.

With his book Knight Cross Bearer of the Waffen SS , published in 1955, Krätschmer tried to make the Waffen SS appear in a positive light. The first editions were published by the HIAG-related Plesse-Verlag and the Schütz-Verlag, both owned by Waldemar Schütz , himself a veteran of the Waffen SS, a member of HIAG and the right-wing extremist parties DRP and NPD . The publication, which was designed as a reference work and provided with a foreword by Paul Hausser , contained biographical portraits in which the knight's cross bearers of the Waffen SS were portrayed as “decent soldiers” who had only done their duty. SS members who were significantly involved in the National Socialist extermination policy, such as Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , Oskar Dirlewanger , Theodor Eicke , Curt von Gottberg and Bruno Linienbach , were also described uncritically or only with brief details of their lives. Eicke's biography, for example, described Krätschmer without using the term “ concentration camp ”, even though Eicke had been the concentration camp commandant and inspector. Convicted war criminals such as Walter Reder , Fritz Knöchlein , Bernhard Siebken and Jochen Peiper presented Krätschmer as an opera of a “victorious justice” while he denied war crimes. Further editions were published by Nation Europa- Verlag, which took over Schütz-Verlag in 1992, and after its purchase by right-wing extremist publisher Dietmar Munier in 2009, most recently in 2012 in Muniers Pour le Mérite- Verlag.

Krätschmer was also active in the HIAG and published regularly in their magazine Der Freiwillige . In 1957 he founded the so-called Gaeta-Aid with five other former SS men . He was lobbying for the release of Walter Reder, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1951 for his involvement in the Marzabotto massacre and was serving it in the fortress of Gaeta north of Naples .

Publications

The knight's cross bearers of the Waffen SS. Plesse-Verl., Göttingen 1955.
- 3rd edition, KW Schütz, Preussisch Oldendorf 1982.
- 4th edition, Nation Europa Verl., Coburg 1999.
- 6th ed., Ed. Contemporary history in the Pour le Mérite publishing house, Selent 2012.
with Heinz Roth: Le procès de Malmédy suivi de la déclaration de Jochen Peiper (Landsberg, 1948). Et de la biography de J. Peiper. Éditions du Baucens, Braine-le-Comte 1976.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen SS in war and post-war times . (= War in history 71). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 789.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period (= war in history 71). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 564.
↑ Karsten Wilke: Spiritual regeneration of the Schutzstaffel in the early Federal Republic? The “Mutual Aid Community of Members of the Former Waffen SS” (HIAG) . In: Jan Erik Schulte (ed.): The SS, Himmler and the Wewelsburg , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, pp. 433–448, here p. 437.
↑ Niels Weise: Eicke. An SS career between a mental hospital, concentration camp system and Waffen-SS. Zugl .: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2012, Schöningh, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-506-77705-8 , p. 19.
^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen SS in war and post-war times . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, p. 688.
^ Christian Jennings: At War on the Gothic Line: Fighting in Italy, 1944-45 . St. Martin's Press, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-2500-6517-9 , pp. 313 f.

personal data
SURNAME	Krätschmer, Ernst-Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH	July 2, 1920
DATE OF DEATH	May 26, 1984

[W1-1] A ^b Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen SS in war and post-war times . (= War in history 71). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 789.

[W2-2] Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period (= war in history 71). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 564.

[3] Karsten Wilke: Spiritual regeneration of the Schutzstaffel in the early Federal Republic? The “Mutual Aid Community of Members of the Former Waffen SS” (HIAG) . In: Jan Erik Schulte (ed.): The SS, Himmler and the Wewelsburg , Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, pp. 433–448, here p. 437.

[4] Niels Weise: Eicke. An SS career between a mental hospital, concentration camp system and Waffen-SS. Zugl .: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2012, Schöningh, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-506-77705-8 , p. 19.

[5] Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen SS in war and post-war times . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, p. 688.

[6] Christian Jennings: At War on the Gothic Line: Fighting in Italy, 1944-45 . St. Martin's Press, New York 2016, ISBN 978-1-2500-6517-9 , pp. 313 f.