Franz Magill

Franz Hermann Anton Magill (born August 22, 1900 in Kleist, Köslin district , † April 14, 1972 in Destedt ) was a German riding instructor , SS officer and war criminal during the Nazi era .

Life

Franz Magill was the son of a day laborer, his father bought a small farm in Zuchen in 1908 , where Magill graduated from elementary school. He was still called up at the end of the First World War and then after the end of the war in 1919 he became a volunteer ( twelve donors ) in the Hussar Regiment No. 5 of the Reichswehr . In 1923 he was promoted to NCO and in 1928 to sergeant. In 1929 he passed the riding instructor examination at the riding school in Belgard and, after leaving the Reichswehr, went to the private "German riding school" at Gut Düppel in Berlin as a qualified riding instructor .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Magill joined the SS and directed the riding training of an SS Reitersturm . In the SS in 1935 he received the rank of SS-Hauptscharführer . From March 1935 he became a full-time SS leader riding instructor at the SS Junker School in Braunschweig and made a career there. At the end of 1935 he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer and, after joining the NSDAP in 1937 (membership number 4.137.171), to SS-Sturmbannführer on April 20, 1938 .

Shortly after the attack on Poland , Magill received the order in Berlin to set up SS cavalry squadrons in Gut Düppel and in September 1939 in occupied Poland in Lodsch and two months later in the Lublin district , which then formed the basis of the SS skull rider standards (two regiments) formed. In May 1940, Magill received the order from Hermann Fegelein to set up the 2nd SS-Totenkopf-Reiterstandard. Magill was not up to the task. In April 1941 he was recalled as leader of the 2nd regiment and commander of the cavalry division with four squadrons . Regimental leader of the 1st regiment was Hermann Fegelein and the 2nd regiment SS-Sturmbannführer Heimo Hierthes (1897-1951). In the 1st regiment, Magill's position was held by SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Lombard .

After the German attack on the Soviet Union , the two SS cavalry regiments systematically searched for Jews in the rear area of Army Group Center in Belarus in order to shoot them. Magill's units operated east of Brest towards Gomel . Several cities with larger Jewish communities were located in this area. The mission began on July 30, 1941. On the morning of August 1, Fegelein instructed the squadrons of the 2nd regiment after a meeting with Himmler and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski : “Express order from the RF-SS . All Jews must be shot. Driving Jewish women into the swamps. ”In the days that followed, Magill's horsemen murdered thousands of Jews in and around Pinsk . On August 12, Magill reported the shooting of a total of 6,450 Jews. Between August 11 and 13 alone, 2323 more victims were counted. Due to large gaps in the count of the perpetrators, an even higher number can be assumed. The historian Martin Cüppers estimates the total number of Jewish victims at around 14,000, almost exclusively men and boys. In contrast to other SS units, Magill had interpreted his orders narrowly and stated that the swamps were not deep enough to drown women and children.

Magill was seconded to the HSSPF Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski in September 1941 and deployed in the "fight against partisans". From December 28, 1942 to February 20, 1943, he led the SS special unit Dirlewanger on behalf of Oskar Dirlewanger , possibly involved in the Gottberg combat group . On April 20, 1943, he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer and was most recently in command of the divisional supply troops of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS .

After the war ended in 1945, Magill was interned by the British occupying forces until March 1948 because of his membership in the SS. When he was denazified , he was sentenced to six months in prison, which was considered served due to his internment. He was a riding instructor at the riding and driving club in Cremlingen near Braunschweig.

In November 1959, Magill was heard as a witness in the course of an investigation against Bach-Zelewski. He reported freely about the murder of the Pinsk Jews by his riding department. The Nuremberg public prosecutor's office thereupon opened investigative proceedings against members of the 2nd SS cavalry regiment, which were handed over to the Brunswick public prosecutor's office in June 1960. On February 17, 1964, the trial against the main defendant Magill and his former commanders Walter Dunsch and Kurt Wegener , scout troop leader Hans-Walter Nenntwich and regimental adjutant Walter Bornscheuer opened before the Braunschweig Regional Court . The nationwide sensational process ended on April 20, 1964 with a conviction of Magill for aiding and abetting murder in at least 5254 cases and attempted murder in at least 100 cases and sentenced to five years in prison . Dunsch, Wegener and Nenntwich were also sentenced to five and four years in prison, respectively, and Bornscheuer was acquitted. Despite further investigations into former leaders of the SS brigades, this remained the only trial against former members of the SS cavalry that ended in a conviction.

literature

• 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
• LG Braunschweig, April 20, 1964 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XX, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1979, No. 570, pp. 23–105 Subject matter of the proceedings: mass shooting of thousands of Jews in the Pripet region, including at least 4,500 Jews from the Pinsk ghetto
• Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , 2007, p. 386
• Konrad Kwiet : From perpetrators to recipients of orders. Legends and prosecution after 1945 , in: Jürgen Matthäus (Hrsg.): Training goal Judenmord? : "Philosophical education" of the SS, police and Waffen-SS within the framework of the "Final Solution" . Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003 ISBN 3-596-15016-7 .
• Henning Herbert Pieper: The SS Cavalry Brigade and its operations in the Soviet Union, 1941-1942 . Dissertation. Sheffield: University of Sheffield , 2012 PDF .

Web links

• Zech-Nenntwich. Women in the swamps . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1964 ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the registry office Destedt No. 14/1972.
2. ↑ Martin Cüppers : Trailblazer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer-SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939-1945 . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2005, pp. 151–153, cited above. P. 153.
3. ↑ Martin Cüppers : Trailblazer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer-SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939-1945 . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2005, pp. 151-165, cited above. 165.
4. ↑ Martin Cüppers : Trailblazer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer-SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939-1945 . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, pp. 164, 177.
5. ↑ Martin Cüppers : Trailblazer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer-SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939-1945 . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, p. 323 f.