Erwin Tschentscher

Tschentscher during the Nuremberg Trials . Photo taken in January 1947.

Erwin Tschentscher (born February 11, 1903 in Berlin , † July 12, 1972 in Mengeringhausen ) was a German SS leader in the organization of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt .

Life

Tschentscher finished his school days in 1919 and after a bank apprenticeship worked as a bank clerk at the Reichshauptbank Berlin.

He joined the NSDAP on December 1, 1928 ( membership number 102,547). On May 1, 1930 he became a member of the SS (SS no.2447). From 1935 to 1940 he was the full-time administrative manager of the SS Upper Section Fulda-Werra under the Higher SS and Police Leader Josias zu Waldeck and Pyrmont .

On October 1, 1939, he was accepted into the Waffen SS as Standartenführer . From November 30, 1940 he was subordinate to Heinz Fanslau in the "Wiking" division of the Waffen-SS. Until the end of 1941 he took part in the war against the Soviet Union as a battalion leader of a supply battalion . A direct complicity in the murders of the Einsatzgruppen could not be proven. According to the verdict, he trained the SS soldiers in battalion lessons with statements about the alleged inferiority of the Jewish race. In the meantime Tschentscher was head of administration at Obersalzberg from the beginning of 1942 and then worked as divisional and corps director.

On October 1, 1943 he became head of the office BI for catering in the SS economic administration main office under Georg Lörner , the head of office group B - commercial enterprises. Tschentscher also became Lörner's deputy. Tschentscher managed the supply of around one million soldiers of the Waffen SS and 20 to 30,000 guards of the concentration camps. According to his own statement, he was not responsible for the food situation of the prisoners in the concentration camps of the SS.On the other hand, after an inspection of the Dora concentration camp in November 1943 - under the direction of Hans Kammler with Hermann Pister , the camp commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp , Otto Förschner , the commandant of Dora, the camp doctor Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky and the administrative manager Otto Barnewald - immediately improve the situation there, with the declared intention that the concentration camp prisoners would work more effectively. His knowledge of the conditions in the concentration camps and his ability to influence were therefore greater than he claimed.

After the end of the war

After his arrest, Tschentscher was arrested and indicted in the Nuremberg trials . On November 3, 1947, Tschentscher was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment in the trial against the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office , which was named because of the charges against the head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Oswald Pohl Pohl trial . His defense attorney was Hans Pribilla. Tschentscher was found guilty on the counts of war crimes , crimes against humanity and membership in criminal organizations because he was aware of the inhumane supply and nutrition situation of the concentration camp prisoners and he was involved in these conditions in concentration camps through administrative and organizational activities. He was released from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison on February 3, 1951. In the mid-1960s he moved from Duisburg to Arolsen-Mengeringhausen , where the SS leadership school for the economic and administrative service was relocated during the Second World War .

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2
• Affidavit concerning Erwin Tschentscher's career and positions in the SS and Waffen-SS, and his work in the WVHA. Document Date: 14 January 1947, and other documents at: Harvard Law School Library Nuremberg Trials Project [2]
• Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950. (Volume 5 of the " Green Series ")
• Berlin Document Center , Erwin Tschentscher's SS personal file
• Anke Schmeling: Josias Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont: The political path of a high SS leader. Verlag Gesamtthochschul-Bibliothek Kassel, Kassel 1993, ISBN 3-88122-771-7 ( PDF document from p. 107, 6.3 MB )

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 477.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Information on the curriculum vitae in the judgment "Process Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt der SS", in: Mazal, p. 1010ff [1]
3. ↑ Anke Schmeling: Josias Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont: The political path of a high SS leader. Kassel 1993, p. 67.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 630.