Felix Benzler

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Felix Benzler (born March 10, 1891 in Hanover ; died December 26, 1977 in Gronau / Leine ) was a German diplomat under National Socialism .

Life

After studying law from 1909 at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen , where he became a member of the Corps Suevia , Benzler entered the Prussian judicial service in 1912 . From 1914 to 1918 he was a soldier in the First World War , but was taken prisoner by the French on September 2, 1914. In 1919 he joined the Foreign Service and until 1921 he was appointed to the embassy in Bern . The next foreign assignments were as Vice Consul in Amsterdam until 1925 and at the embassy in Budapest from 1926 to 1931 . In 1927 he was promoted to Legation Councilor , in 1934 to Lecturer in Legation Council . In Berlin in 1937 Benzler negotiated the extension of an economic agreement with the ČSR on hops imports . From 1937 to 1940 he went to the Netherlands again, now as Consul General . On January 1, 1940, he joined the NSDAP .

On 10 January 1941 he signed with the Soviet negotiator Vladimir Borisovich Bochkarev in Riga the "Agreement ... on the resettlement of Reich Germans and ethnic Germans from the territories of the Latvian and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics in the German Reich ". The agreement had become necessary because in July 1940 the Soviet Union had annexed Latvia and Estonia in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and now, following the resettlement previously agreed with the Estonian Republic and the Latvian Republic, the 64,000 ethnic Germans " home in the Reich." “ Had been resettled , 16,000 Germans were to be resettled. Benzler then came to the embassy in Bucharest .

During the invasion of Yugoslavia , the state of Yugoslavia was smashed and the legation there in Belgrade was converted into an “office of the Foreign Office at the military commander ”, the same was to happen with the legation in Athens and Benzler, who was assigned to the List Army Command , took over the management there. Before that, there was an exchange with Günther Altenburg and Benzler was appointed "Reich Plenipotentiary of the Foreign Office at the Military Commander in Serbia " by the Führer decree of April 28, 1941 . Its task was in particular to prevent the empire "from acting harmful to Serbian political elements".

Benzler now had the rank of envoy, was concerned with questions of the economic exploitation of Serbia and on November 5, 1942 expressed his concerns about the decline of the Serbian currency . Edmund Veesenmayer was assigned to support him. He was also involved in the resettlement campaign of the Slovenes from Carinthia and Styria on behalf of the Foreign Office . On May 6, 1941, for example, he prepared a report on the meeting under the leadership of Reich Governor Sigfried Uiberreither “regarding the evacuation of Slovenes” that had taken place in Marburg on the same day .

On August 24, 1943, the "hapless" Benzler was replaced by Hermann Neubacher , who was now on an equal footing with the Southeast Military Commander. From October 1943 to March 1944 he was deputy chairman of the inter-ministerial Italy committee in Berlin that controlled the Italian Social Republic . After the German occupation of Hungary, Benzler came briefly to the embassy in Budapest on March 21, 1944 as "Plenipotentiary for the Economy at the Plenipotentiary of the Greater German Empire in Hungary", this time he was assigned to Veesenmayer.

Murder of the Serbian Jews

In an attempt to break the resistance of the Serbian population and to contain the attacks on members of the Wehrmacht , there were arbitrary hostage shootings, in which, as Benzler summed up on August 1, 1941, the Serbian gendarmerie was forced by the German military into completely innocent people to shoot en masse . In their search for more suitable scapegoats and execution victims, the German Wehrmacht, SD and Foreign Office departments involved in Belgrade came across the Jews of Serbia. On September 8, 1941, Veesenmayer and Benzler demanded from the Foreign Office that at least 8,000 male Jews be deported to Romania , alternatively to the General Government or Russia . Adolf Eichmann , questioned by the Jewish Commissioner of the Foreign Office Franz Rademacher, considered this to be impossible at the present time, so that Foreign Office Undersecretary Martin Luther demanded a local solution from Benzler on September 16, 1941. Benzler, who, in misjudgment of the actual Yugoslav resistance, had identified the Jews as the main problem, but was thus moving in the line of National Socialist propaganda , still demanded that the Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop deport the Jews to the Danube Delta as the newly appointed authorized general in Serbia Franz Böhme had already drawn his own conclusions from the situation and, as atonement for German losses at Topola, had 2,200 Jews and " Gypsies " shot by the Wehrmacht, at a ratio of 100 hostages to a German killed. By November 1941, the majority of male Jews and “Gypsies” had been killed by the combined activities of the SD, the military administration, the military commanders and the embassy. There remained the "10,000 Jewish women and children" reported to Berlin by the head of the military administration, Harald Turner . These were first on Croatian soil into the concentration camp Sajmište deported where early March 1942, a Saurer - gas vans of the Reich Security Main Office arrived. On May 10, 1942, the gassing operation, which the responsible commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (BdS) Emanuel Schäfer had entrusted to the concentration camp commandant Herbert Andorfer , ended. The bodies were exhumed and cremated by Sonderkommando 1005 in November 1943 , when Benzler had already been recalled from Belgrade.

denazification

Nothing is known about his denazification and interrogations in connection with the Nuremberg trials , although Veesenmayer was indicted in the Wilhelmstrasse trial and a number of the Wehrmacht officers had previously been charged with generals in Southeast Europe . In 1965, the public prosecutor's office at the Hanover Regional Court began investigations, Benzler was interrogated in 1968, and there was no trial against Benzler “for the killing of Jews in Serbia”.

literature

  • Christopher R. Browning : The final solution and the German Foreign Office. A study of referat D III of Department Germany 1940–43. Holmes & Meier, New York NY et al. 1978 ISBN 0-8419-0403-0 .
  • Eckart Conze; Norbert Frei; Peter Hayes; Mosche Zimmermann: The Office and the Past - German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 (here pp. 253-257)
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 .
  • Walter Manoschek : “Serbia is free of Jews”. Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42. Oldenbourg, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-55974-5 , pp. 102-108 ( contributions to military history 38), (at the same time: Wien, Univ., Diss., 1992).
  • Reich Foreign Minister to the Foreign Office, April 17, 1941. In: Walter Bußmann et al. (Ed.): Files on German foreign policy. 1918-1945. Series D: 1937-1941. Volume 12: The War Years. Half volume 2: April 6 to June 22, 1941. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969, ISBN 3-525-85219-3 , p. 478 f.
  • Karl-Heinz Schlarp: Economy and Occupation in Serbia. 1941-1944. A contribution to the National Socialist economic policy in Southeast Europe. Steiner-Verlag-Wiesbaden-GmbH, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-515-04401-9 ( Sources and studies on the history of Eastern Europe 25), (At the same time: Hamburg, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1983).
  • Public prosecutor's office at the Hanover regional court: minutes of the interrogation in the proceedings against Felix Benzler for the killing of Jews in Serbia. Js 129/65. (November 1968). In: Karl-Heinz Schlarp: Economy and Occupation in Serbia. 1941-1944. A contribution to the National Socialist economic policy in Southeast Europe. Steiner-Verlag-Wiesbaden-GmbH, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-515-04401-9 , p. 422 ( Sources and studies on the history of Eastern Europe 25), (At the same time: Hamburg, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1983 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 197 , 870
  2. ↑ Text of the agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany at the hungarian institute (PDF; 30 kB)
  3. ↑ Eckart Conze; Norbert Frei; Peter Hayes; Mosche Zimmermann: The Office and the Past - German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 , p. 252 / files on German foreign policy , XII, 2, p. 478f .
  4. ^ Schlarp, Economy and Occupation in Serbia , p. 394.
  5. ↑ resettlement 1941: karavanke limit .
  6. ^ Schlarp, Economy and Occupation in Serbia , p. 126.
  7. ^ Walter Manoschek, "Serbia is Jew-free" , p. 53.
  8. ^ Walter Manoschek, "Serbia is Jew-Free" , p. 103.
  9. ↑ Christopher Browning : The Unleashing of the "Final Solution" - National Socialist Jewish Policy 1939–1942 . Munich 2006, ISBN 3-549-07187-6 , pp. 481-499. Harald Turner claimed the initiative for the shooting of the Jews in retaliation.
  10. ^ Walter Manoschek, "Serbia is Jew-Free" , p. 107
  11. ↑ Christopher Browning: The Unleashing of the “Final Solution” - National Socialist Jewish Policy 1939–1942 , pp. 601–603.
personal data
SURNAME Benzler, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1977
Place of death Gronau