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Ernst Hitzegrad (born December 26, 1889 in Fraustadt , † December 14, 1976 in Traunstein ) was a German police officer. During the Second World War he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer as well as Lieutenant General of the Police and was most recently employed as Commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO) in the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .

Life

Hitzegrad took part in the First World War and joined the police force after the war. He joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.050.605) in 1932.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he switched from the protective police to the state police . From mid-June 1936 to the beginning of April 1940 he was employed in the main office of the Ordnungspolizei . Then he was in the military district III inspector of the Ordnungspolizei (ITE) Berlin and from February 1942 ITE in the military district IV in Dresden . From the beginning of September 1943 to the beginning of February 1945 he was BdO in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, his successor in this function until the end of the war was Paul Otto Geibel . Hitzegrad, accepted into the SS in July 1938 with the rank of SS-Standartenführer , reached the rank of SS-Gruppenführer within this NS organization in January 1944 and at the same time became lieutenant general of the police.

After the end of the war, Hitzgrad was interned in the Soviet Union , from which he was transferred to Czechoslovakia in 1950 . After a trial before the Prague State Court on August 25, 1951, he and four other accused were sentenced to death for crimes committed in the German-occupied Czech Republic . However, Hitzgrad's death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in 1953 and to 25 years in prison in 1955. In January 1961, Hitzegrad's wife Hildegard asked Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in writing to exchange her husband for Czech agents. After an exchange mediated by the German Red Cross , Hitzegrad was exchanged for Czech agents in December 1961 by Czechoslovakia with the former commander of the 254th Infantry Division Richard Schmidt (1899–1977) and the then Wehrmacht commander in chief Rudolf Toussaint (1891–1968) and transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany. Documents from the Office for Documentation and Investigation of the Crimes of Communism (Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu, ÚDV) in Prague suggest that Hitzegrad was recruited by the Czechoslovak State Security Service (StB) and spied for Czechoslovakia after his release to West Germany.

literature

  • Andreas Schulz, Gunter Wegmann, Dieter Zinke: The Generals of the Waffen-SS and the Police , Volume 2 Hachtel-Kutscher a, Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2005.
  • “Special efforts” by the federal government 1962 to 1969. Detainees released, family reunification, exchange of agents, documents on Germany policy , Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70719-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ " Special Efforts" of the Federal Government 1962 to 1969. Detainees released, family reunification, exchange of agents, documents on Germany policy , Munich 2012, p. 39f.
  2. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Stoldt: D eckname Fritz. The present of the past . Series: Part 16 Traces in the East . In: Der Spiegel , issue 34 of August 20, 2001, p. 151.
personal data
SURNAME Heat level, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police general and SS group leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Woman city
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1976
Place of death Traunstein