Ernst Rode

Ernst August Rode (born August 9, 1894 in Wüstewaltersdorf in the Waldenburg district , † September 12, 1955 in Göttingen ) was a German major general of the police force as well as an SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS .

Life

Youth and First World War

In school he obtained secondary school leaving certificate. Then he went to Magdeburg and started an apprenticeship as a textile merchant. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War , he volunteered for the army as a gunner in the Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 49, of which he was a member from August 10, 1914 to December 12, 1918. After being promoted to private on March 1, 1915, at the end of the war on December 21, 1918, he was released from active service as a reserve officer candidate with the rank of vice sergeant in the reserve.

Freikorps and Schutzpolizei

From January 21, 1919 he was a member of the Freikorps Leib-Kurassier-Regiment “Großer Kurfürst” until July 25, 1919. He then continued his training as a textile merchant, but at the beginning of June 1920 he joined the police force, which hired him as a police sergeant. Here he took up the officer career and was promoted to police lieutenant on December 1, 1924. Until March 1926 he was appointed platoon leader of a police battalion in Liegnitz . He then received the same command in Schönberg until April 1927. This was followed by a command in Breslau , where he was promoted to lieutenant police on April 4, 1928 as platoon leader and deputy to the commander. In May 1928 he took over a new command as platoon leader and adjutant in a police battalion in Waldenburg .

On May 22, 1929, he became a training officer at the Frankenstein Police School , where he stayed until April 1930. He was then transferred to Dortmund , where he was employed as a teacher for several police units. On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.937.929). On November 9, 1934, he was promoted to captain. From the end of January 1936 he taught police tactics at the police school in Berlin-Köpenick as head of a teaching group. In May 1939 he took over the command of a department at the local police school as commander.

Poland 1939

When the Second World War broke out , he was appointed head of the police section at Army High Command 4 in September 1939 . His task in this position in Chojnice was to organize the political supervision of the Polish population with the help of the Polish police. However, there were disputes with the head of the civil administration (CdZ) at the command of the German armed forces, SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Hammer , so that he could not finish this task. He was then appointed in December 1939 to commander a battalion of the Security Police (Sipo) in Bromberg . He was also used in Białystok , but he did not comment on it.

Operations in occupied areas

From April 21, 1940 he was First General Staff Officer (Ia) with the Commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO) in Norway . In Brno he was appointed deputy commander of the Moravia police regiment at the end of August 1940. From February 6, 1941 to May 22, 1941, he commanded the police battalion 315 , where he led the battalion from April to May 1941 in the newly occupied Yugoslavia .

Counter partisans

From May 16, 1941 he was employed as the fourth general staff officer (Id; responsible for training and organization) and deputy of the first general staff officer (Ia) at the Reichsführer SS command staff in the main office for fighting partisans. The office was officially called the officers' staff of the Reichsführer SS . On July 1, 1941, he became a member of the SS (SS number 401.399) with the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer . He was appointed Ia of the Reichsführer SS command staff on August 9, 1941. On January 30, 1942, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the protection police and SS-Obersturmbannführer . He became Chief of Staff at the Reichsführer SS Command Staff on November 9, 1942. With this appointment he was promoted to SS Standartenführer on the same day . Retrospectively, he had received his promotion to colonel in the protective police on October 1, 1942.

In August 1943 he was temporarily given command of the Latvian SS Volunteer Brigade . In September 1943 he was appointed liaison officer to the command posts of the Wehrmacht in the staff of the chief of the gang fighting units (BKV), which led the fight against the partisans. With this, Rode was placed directly under the command of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski . At the beginning of November 1943 he was promoted to SS-Oberführer . The promotion to SS Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Waffen SS took effect on June 21, 1944. Promotion to Major General of the Schutzpolizei was also set for this date. He was appointed chief of the staff of Bach-Zelewski as the successor to SS-Standartenführer Heinz Lammerding in the summer of 1944, whereby he retained his command as chief of the Reichsführer SS command staff .

Warsaw Uprising

As a member of the Polish delegation to the International Military Tribunal (IMG) in Nuremberg , the Polish public prosecutor Jerzy Sawicki questioned Rode about the Warsaw uprising . Rode stated that he had already been informed of the preparations for an uprising in Warsaw in July 1944 from information reports from SS-Gruppenführer Wilhelm Koppe . The leader Tadeusz Komorowski was also mentioned in it. Two weeks before the start of the uprising, the reports also announced the start of the uprising.

On August 6 or 7, 1944, Heinrich Himmler called him from Großgarten about the uprising and asked him about police forces that could still be deployed in Warsaw. Rode reported that at the beginning of August there was a conference with Himmler in Poznan that dealt with the uprising in Warsaw. Himmler had given the Gauleiter of the Reichsgau Wartheland Arthur Greiser the order to send the police from Posen under the command of Heinz Reinefarth to Warsaw.

Rode also stated that he had in hand a handwritten copy, written in pencil, which contained Hitler's order that Warsaw be completely destroyed and razed to the ground. This order was transmitted to the Dirlewanger Brigade via Himmler . Rode stated that he had tried in vain with Bach-Zelewski at the Chief of the Army General Staff, Heinz Guderian , that the order would not be carried out. For this reason, Bach-Zelewski also submitted to Guderian in command, so that Guderian should be responsible for carrying out the order. Generals Nikolaus von Vormann and Smilo von Lüttwitz , as commander-in-chief of the 9th Army after Guderian, were in command of Bach-Zelewski. Rode also accused them of complicity in the destruction of Warsaw. Finally, Rode confirmed the statement that uniformed partisans were shot by German units after they had given up fighting during the Warsaw Uprising.

End of war

As a command officer served him in the staff SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Bühnemann . The headquarters of the staff was in Kruglanken until autumn 1944 and was then relocated to Elsbethen near Salzburg . This was followed by a move to Mittersill Castle for a few days. A farm near Hollersbach in Pinzgau was the next station of the staff. Rode was captured near Zell am See in May 1945. Officers of the US Army interrogated Rode several times and filed documents (3716-PS, 3717-PS) on January 1, 1946, which were used as evidence for the indictment at the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals .

See also

• List of SS brigade leaders

literature

• United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Dept. of State, United States War Dept, International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, United States Government Printing Office , 1946.
• Ernst Rode, Himmler's field staff (1941–44), Historical Division, Headquarters, United States Army, Europe [Foreign Military Studies Branch], Karlsruhe 1947.
• Jerzy Sawicki: Before the Polish public prosecutor. Berlin 1962.
• Martin Cüppers : pioneer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer-SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939-1945 . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005.
• Stefan Klemp : "Not determined". Police Battalions and the Post War Justice . 2nd edition, Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0663-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Rode in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Martin Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoa, Darmstadt 2005, p. 315.
2. ↑ Martin Cüppers, Trailblazer of the Shoah - The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer-SS Command Staff and the Extermination of the Jews 1939–1945, Darmstadt 2005, p. 68.
3. ↑ Jerzi Sawicki, Before the Polish Public Prosecutor, Berlin 1962, p. 71.
4. ↑ Jerzy Sawicki, ibid, p. 71.
5. ↑ Jerzy Sawicki, ibid, p. 72.
6. ↑ Martin Cüppers, ibid, p. 250 and p. 4315.
7. ↑ Jerzy Sawicki, ibid, pp. 71-83.
8. ↑ Jerzy Sawicki, ibid, p. 79.
9. ↑ Jerzy Sawicki, ibid, p. 72.
10. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.