Franz Schädle

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Franz Schädle (born November 19, 1906 in Westerheim , † May 2, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German SS leader. Schädle was the last commandant of the Führer Accompanying Command , Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard .

Life

After attending commercial school, Schädle earned his living as a construction technician.

Since 1930, Schädle was a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 73.023) and the SS (membership number 2.605, February 1, 1930).

On March 1, 1932, Schädle was selected by Heinrich Himmler as one of eight men who from then on acted as Hitler's personal bodyguards under the name of "Accompanying Command of the Fuehrer" and who until 1945 were to form the tightest circle of personal protection for the dictator. As a result, Schädle spent thirteen years, from 1932 to 1945, as a bodyguard in the immediate vicinity of Hitler.

In December 1944, Schädle was appointed to succeed Bruno Gesche as commander of the escort unit and guard commander of the Reich Chancellery . He retained this position until Hitler's suicide on April 30, 1945. According to Otto Günsches memoirs , Schädle was one of the men who carried the body of Adolf Hitler after his death from the Führerbunker to the garden of the Reich Chancellery and burned it there.

Schädle took his own life on the night of May 1 and 2, 1945 by killing himself with a shot in the head in the premises of the Reich Chancellery bunker. The background to this step was that on April 28, 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, he was wounded in the leg by a shrapnel and therefore felt unable to participate in the attempts of the other bunker inmates to escape from the government district Suicide seemed the only way to avoid capture by the Red Army .

In the film The Downfall from 2004, Schädle is played by Igor Bubenchikov . His suicide can be seen in a scene in the final part of the film.

Promotions

  • SS-Sturmführer: July 9, 1933
  • SS-Obersturmführer: July 1, 1934
  • SS-Hauptsturmführer: April 20, 1935
  • SS-Sturmbannführer:
  • SS-Obersturmbannführer:

estate

Schadle's personal files have been preserved in the Federal Archives: a file from the Race and Settlement Main Office (RS microfilm F 183, images 315–459) and an SS leader personnel file.

literature

Secondary literature:

  • Henrik Eberle , Matthias Uhl : The book Hitler. NKVD secret dossier for Josef W. Stalin, compiled on the basis of the interrogation protocols of Hitler's personal adjutant, Otto Günsch, and the valet Heinz Linge, Moscow 1948/49 , 2005. (Short biography on p. 613f.)
  • Peter Hoffmann : The security of the dictator. R. Pieper & Co., Munich 1975. ISBN 3-492-02120-4 .
  • Anton Joachimsthaler : Hitler's End: Legends and Documents , Munich 1995, p. 490.

Memoir literature:

  • Rochus Misch : The last witness. I was Hitler's operator, courier, and bodyguard. With a foreword by Ralph Giordano , 3rd edition, Zurich and Munich 2008. ISBN 978-3-86612-194-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The Myth of the Führerbunker: Hitler's Last Refuge. Berlin Story Verlag 2006, ISBN 3-929-82943-6 , p. 95. According to the findings of Johannes Tuchel, Schädle was still in an emergency hospital between 1:00 and 2:00 on the morning of May 2, 1945, together with the Gestapo chief Müller In the vicinity of the Reich Chancellery, he could not have killed himself until May 2nd (see Tuchel: "And all of you are waiting for a rope". The Lehrter Strasse cell prison , 2014, p. 215).
  2. ↑ On Schädle's injury, cf. Andreas Schulz / Günter Wegmann: The Generals of the Waffen-SS and the Police , Vol. 5 (= Lammerding-Plesch), 2008, p. 262.
personal data
SURNAME Schadle, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Westerheim
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1945
Place of death Berlin