Fritz Zietlow

Fritz Otto Karl Zietlow (born August 24, 1902 in Schneidemühl ; † September 28, 1972 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer, journalist and, as SS-Hauptsturmführer, part of the commando leader in the special action 1005 . After the Second World War he worked from 1961 to 1968 as an employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

education and study

As the son of a chief train driver of the Reichsbahn, Zietlow attended elementary and secondary school in his place of birth. Zietlow moved to Poznan with his family in 1916 . There he graduated from high school by the end of 1918 . In the course of the new territorial changes after the First World War , he was arrested by Polish forces. He managed to escape to German territory, where he became a member of a volunteer corps and took part in battles in the Baltic States and Upper Silesia . In 1920 he went back to his parents, who had since moved to Stargard in Pomerania . There he obtained his Abitur in early 1921 and then began studying law at the University of Greifswald . Due to financial hardship as a result of the prevailing inflation , he broke off his studies in the winter semester of 1923/24. In the next two years he worked as an editorial trainee at two newspapers in Stargard, with which he was able to complete a journalistic training. Although he studied the old subject for two semesters from 1926 and registered for the first state examination in 1927, he was unable to complete the examination. He also had to give up the project to do a doctorate .

Political orientation

Zietlow first came into contact with the "National Socialist Movement" in Greifswald in the summer of 1923 . In autumn 1923 he applied for membership in the NSDAP . According to his personal file, he obtained membership with the number 9,464 on July 6, 1925. Because of this early NSDAP membership, he was the holder of the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP . At the beginning of 1924 he was active in Stettin during the May elections in the National Socialists' rally in Pomerania , the German National Electoral Association . He then moved to Kiel in the same year , where he became managing director of the National Socialist freedom movement . After the re-establishment of the NSDAP, he submitted a new application for membership in the NSDAP on March 1, 1926. His new membership number was 36,519.

Until 1929 he worked for the NSDAP in Stargard, where he trained members in evening courses. Zietlow came to Berlin in 1929, where his propaganda skills were valued in the NSDAP at party meetings. From 1929 he was also used as a gau speaker , soon also as a Reich speaker and as a speaker for Reich operational cells of the NSDAP. In Berlin he worked in the local editorial office of the Schlesische Zeitung , which was based in Breslau . From mid-1930 he went to what was later to become the Nazi Gau newspaper The Attack , where he was editor from 1931 to 1932. From March 1932 he was a brief member of the Prussian state parliament .

In mid-1932, when Zietlow was attacked, he was dismissed without notice because he had bought the postage counter. He found a new job towards the end of 1932 at the East Frisian daily newspaper of the NSDAP, which had its headquarters in Emden .

Since October 1, 1930 he belonged with the SS no. 6.126 to the General SS . In the following years he worked as a journalist for several Nazi newspapers as chief editor. After the National Socialist " seizure of power " in 1933, he worked as a consultant at the SS Sonderkommando Berlin zbV under SS Brigade Leader Max Henze , who was in charge of the Columbia concentration camp at the time .

From the beginning of 1934 until the middle of the year he worked on building up the press apparatus at the Reichsnährstand , before moving to Munich in the same position for the next two years. He then returned to Berlin and was briefly employed as a journalist in the sector of agricultural cooperatives in 1937. In 1937, the Reich Association of the German Press (RDP) was looking for three lecturers for the Reich Press School in the fields of economics, cultural and domestic politics, with Zietlow being a candidate. Zietlow was even listed in the list of positions, but there was no appeal. The reason was possibly that Zietlow did not receive his promised salary from the budget department of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVuP). In a letter to Joseph Goebbels dated August 28, 1937, the head of the RDP, Wilhelm Weiss , had spoken to Zietlow about a non-tariff salary payment for the subject of domestic policy , but could not get his way. In this case, Zietlow wanted to waive the appeal. From late 1937 to early 1938, Zietlow worked as an editor at the foreign news agency Transocean , which was subordinate to the Propaganda Ministry .

Article for Nazi propaganda

In the years from 1937 to 1942, Zietlow published several articles in Nazi magazines that dealt with domestic and foreign policy issues of Nazi propaganda .

In March 1937, for example, he took up the topic of thoughts and suggestions on agricultural propaganda in the monthly newspapers of the Reich Propagandaleitung of the NSDAP Our Will and Path , which mainly dealt with the consequences of the shortage of food that first appeared in 1935. He criticized the insufficient propaganda preparation for the shortage . He referred to the phenomenon of the last weeks of 1935 with their hamstering of considerable proportions, especially on the fat market . He also criticized the household list for fat purchases published in early 1937 . This could lead to memories of the card and voucher system of the World War II and to a mood setback .

He urged the Nazi propagandists on, to encourage consumers to a disciplined behavior because can not be satisfied at any time any of our desires for food, drinks and tobacco ... . In this context he pointed to the currently still existing nutritional gaps of around 15 to 20 percent. Hundred]. our needs . In order to achieve an improvement in general agricultural propaganda, he called for ongoing confidential information and workshops to control agricultural propaganda.

In 1941, the yearbook of the foreign organization of the NSDAP published an article by Zietlow under the heading MOB command of the economy , which dealt with the preparation and conversion of the economy of the Nazi regime to the war economy . The Reich leadership would have "foreseen and considered all, even the most serious, possibilities in the economic field ..." . He pointed to the changes in the economy between 1936 and 1939 with regard to the production of rubber , the move away from cotton and heavy metals towards viscose wool , light metals and plastics. In addition, at the beginning of the war "around nine tenths of all motor vehicles previously used by private individuals" would have been shut down . After the experiences of the war against Poland in September 1939, the then major general Adolf von Schell declared at the beginning of 1940 for the motor transport industry "as far as Germany's supply of fuel for car and aircraft engines is concerned, the war could confidently last ten years" . And with regard to the occupation of the Netherlands, Belgium and France, he reported that the Wehrmacht had "captured huge stocks of fuels of all kinds that the stocks of these would be greater at the end of the Western operations than at the start of the offensive" .

The material preparations with regard to the inventories created for the war would have been so great that the “depots and rooms would in part not be able to pile up increased supplies even with the greatest expansion” . He listed the following existing storage capacities for the years 1938 and 1939:

• Silo space for 1.6 million tons of grain
• Warehouses for the storage of 1 million tons of grain
• 8,500 makeshift grain stores
• Another silo room for several million tons was created by September 1939
• About 33,000 Reichslagerhallen set up for the storage of an annual production of rye and wheat before the grain harvest of 1939

For 1940 he reported a grain harvest of 25 million tons "despite the bad weather" , which would have been "only 2% below the average of the last 5 peace harvests" with their record yields . And Germany would be much better protected against failure of the grain harvest than England "thanks to the large proportion of root crops in the people's diet" . This would secure Germany in the "food far more crisis-proof than any other great power in Europe" . That would result from the following harvest dates in 1940:

• a potato crop of around 60 million tons
• a sugar beet harvest of around 20 million tons, about 1.3 million tons more than in 1939

He also referred to an “excellent fodder beet harvest ” , a higher harvest of vegetables and bread grain reserves of more than 6.3 million tons. Only the fruit harvest had fallen because of the bad weather. He also claimed that Germany is the "largest sugar- producing country in the world" and that the milk delivery by dairies is "by far the highest that has ever been recorded" . These successes would result from the increase in performance and intensification of the companies, for which he gave the following data:

• Increase in the consumption of nitrogen and potash fertilizers since 1932/33 to 700,000 or 1.2 million tons, which would have doubled
• Increase in expenditure on machinery and equipment within five years from 138 to 463 million RM
• Increase in the cultivation of oil and web plants by a factor of ten

In order to increase economic output, he stated that "another million workers from foreign sources" had been working for the economy since the beginning of the war, approximately 600,000 of them in agriculture and around 400,000 in industry and commerce. A tenth of the forces would come from Italy, the rest would be prisoners of war and workers from Denmark, Holland, Belgium and from countries in Southeast Europe. He also praised the stability of the cost of living, as the index would have "increased by only 5.1 points from September 1939 to July 1940" . Then he referred to a “solidarity action by trade and industry” , which had led to the temporary closure of companies in the textile and clothing industry, “in the trade of some branches and in the leather industry” . He justified these restrictions with a "preservation of productive power" .

To support the families where the men were called up for military and labor service, the collections of the War Winter Relief Organization and for the German Red Cross would have resulted in more than one billion Reichsmarks (RM). That brought him to the question of financing the war. In this context, he listed forms of financing that would not be suitable:

• Taking out loans that would have to be 'paid' with the printing press
• Inclusion of interest-bearing bonds that would have to be “gradually paid off” within 30 to 50 years

In doing so, however, he got entangled in partial contradictions, as he then described that the government had "released the bond market for important companies such as public companies (such as the Reichsbahn) and large armaments factories that had and have to finance the necessary new facilities or extensions by borrowing" . He also stated that the "production of consumer goods and the consumption of goods and services that are not absolutely necessary" had been throttled . This freed up “a great deal of purchasing power” and “the state skims these funds with taxes” . He also commented on the currency in circulation and public debt. The means of payment in Germany would have increased within one year from the end of 1938 by 4.1 billion RM to about 14.5 billion. That would have been an increase of "a quarter" .

The national debt of the German Reich grew from 1934 to 1938 from 6.7 to 18.6 billion RM. The indebtedness of the cities and municipalities had fallen by 1.7 billion RM to 5.3 billion RM by March 31, 1940. But since the tax revenue had risen "to the same extent" , he stated: "The debt of the Reich has remained constant as high as the tax revenue of a single year" . However, Zietlow did not provide any verifiable details. At the end of the article he tried to cover up the fact that his statements could lead to contradictions. Because “the demand for all goods, which was planned in peacetime, has now been reduced considerably during the war” . He mentioned the areas of nutrition, clothing and housing. Furthermore, he led the closure of "non-war-significant enterprises" , the dismantling of extensive stocks and supplies and the postponement of "non-urgent investments" . The volume of consumption has thus been reduced, but wages would have been increased through more and expanded employment, as for women. This freed up “enormous purchasing power. The state skims this off with taxes and thus finances the war ” .

Use in war

From the beginning of 1934 Zietlow belonged to the SD Upper Section East in Berlin. In his various positions he was active in the intelligence service and sent messages to several NS agencies. Officially he was subordinate to Amt VI in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). In April 1939 he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer. He was drafted into the Wehrmacht from October 1, 1942 until the first quarter of 1943, and then returned to the RSHA. In 1943 with Einsatzgruppe C he received orders to march towards Kiev . According to his statements, he was first employed in Czernikow in press work and in the area of ​​wire radio, and then in mid-1943 he went to Kiev via Smolensk , where special campaign 1005 began. Together with SS-Sturmscharführer Fritz Kirstein as administrative leader, the special command 1005 B was set up there by the end of August 1943. In Dnepropetrovsk , the sub-command under the leadership of Zietlow was completed in early September 1943, including 40 to 50 police officers .

The first operation to excavate corpses was to begin in Krivoy Rog at the beginning of October 1943 , but had to be abandoned because of the proximity to the front. At the beginning of November 1943, the command marched via Cherson to Nikolayev , where the command was used with so-called demolition work until the end of January 1944. In his supervision of the excavations of the corpses, Zietlow showed an attitude that was rejected by his subordinates. He sat in a rocking chair with one or two Russian women and watched the earthworks. When he started telling jokes by Bonifatius Kiesewetter , he was nicknamed Bonifatius by his subordinates . When the excavation work at Nikolayev was over towards the end of 1943, some of the prisoners employed in the earthworks were shot in the neck. A subordinate of Zietlow executed the prisoners.

End of January 1944, Zietlow with the Sonderkommando 1005 B to Lviv laid. From there, Zietlow and Kirstein went on vacation to Zakopane . There Zietlow and Kirstein were arrested because they were charged with misappropriating food for members of the commando. Zietlow was relieved of his command and appointed as the successor to SS-Obersturmführer Walter Helfsgott . Zietlow was then used again from February 1944 in the intelligence service for foreign countries in Office VI of the RSHA. For a short time there was another command for him, e.g. V. in Slovakia , only to return to Berlin. At the beginning of April 1945 he marched via Pressburg and Klagenfurt to Graz , where he was taken prisoner by the British with false identification papers. This was followed by a stay in an internment camp in Italy and a recovery in a hospital in Westphalia , where he was released in April 1947.

Post-war and new secret service work

The processing of the Nazi past was carried out in two proceedings against Zietlow. There was an arbitration chamber procedure in Recklinghausen, which was later handed over to Hamburg-Bergedorf. There it was decided whether or not to belong to an organization that had been declared criminal. Zietlow was sentenced in 1949 to a fine of DM 1000 for membership of the SS, which was considered served because of his internment. In Kiel found denazification place at the denazification Main Committee. The public prosecutor tried to have Zietlow also prosecuted as a war criminal after evidence emerged. The testimony of Zietlow's sister-in-law, who was filled with hatred of Zietlow, also contributed to this. The reason was her sister's death. At the end of the war, the Zietlows had decided to commit suicide with their child. When the wife and child were dead, Zietlow had resigned from his suicide attempt. He had chosen to go on living. The sister-in-law made statements against Zietlow, including handing over his SD card to the authorities. The war criminal conviction came to nothing. But Zietlow was placed in the group of perpetrators with the classification in Group III of those with a minor burden. In 1951 he was classified in group V of the exonerated.

At the beginning of 1949 Zietlow remarried and settled in a terraced house in Hamburg-Volksdorf . He was considered to be 60 percent disabled , received a small pension and unemployment benefit. He was soon back working in intelligence for the British Secret Service.

When the Volksbund for Peace and Freedom was founded on August 29, 1950 in Hamburg-Dammtor in the Gasthof Zum Patzenhofer at Dammtorstrasse 10, Zietlow was a co-founder. When the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues (BMG) published a series of publications against the GDR as part of the Bonn Reports office from the summer of 1950 , Zietlow was one of the authors. He took part in the German Congress of March 17 and 18, 1951 in Frankfurt / Main , which campaigned for active neutrality in the East-West conflicts. According to the organizer Wolf Schenke , Zietlow was working for the British secret service at the time.

In 1954 he published three writings, some of which were printed anonymously. In the phone book he had specified his occupation as “editor”. He worked as a foreign journalist at the Hamburg state press conference , but this was a camouflage at the beginning of the sixties at the latest. Because since 1961 he has been employed by the BND.

Zietlow was listed together with 1,800 business leaders, politicians and leading officials of the Federal Republic in the Brown Book first published in 1965 by the GDR for propaganda purposes . His work for the BND was not discussed in the publication, his post-war occupation was given as "Editor and correspondent in Hamburg-Volksdorf".

Indictment and Trial

In a hearing before the Stuttgart Regional Court (Ks 22/67) from December 9, 1968, Zietlow and SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Sohns , SS-Hauptsturmführer Walter Helfsgott and SS-Sturmscharführer Fritz Kirstein were charged with accessory to murder . During the trial, Zietlow denied any involvement in executions. He himself was never present at an execution and never issued an execution order to anyone. He left all the details to his miners during the executions. He also had no knowledge of the executions, but it could have been around 40 people. In addition, he only carried out orders given by SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel .

The executed people were "partisans and the like" . The execution would have been recognized under martial law for him, which is why he considered the order to kill the prisoners to be justified. His statements were refuted that the unearthed bodies of his command were killed soldiers and not Jews or other civilians.

Zietlow was sentenced on March 13, 1969 to two years and six months in prison because of his proven complicity in murder in at least 30 cases . He also had to bear the procedural costs including the necessary expenses. The application for revision of the judgment before the Federal Court of Justice (Az .: 1 StR 462/70) was rejected on August 17, 1971. However, instead of the prison sentence , he had to serve a prison sentence of the same duration. Furthermore, he was ordered not to accept any public office for a period of five years.

Fonts

• "Thoughts and suggestions on agricultural propaganda ", in: Our will and path - Issue B, monthly sheets of the Reich Propaganda Management of the NSDAP . (Ed. J. Goebbels), No. 3, March 1937, pp. 88-91
• “No world economic war boom”, in: Wille und Macht, born in 1940, issue 7, Berlin, pp. 21–24
• “IRA and de Valera”, in: Wille und Macht, born in 1940, issue 9, Berlin, p. 14ff
• “MOB command of the economy”, in: Yearbook of the foreign organization of the NSDAP 1941, 3rd year part I, Berlin 1941, pp. 115-136
• "The anti-imperialist USA", in: Wille und Macht , born 1942, issue 1, Berlin, pp. 15-17
• “Army of the World Revolution”, in: Wille und Macht , born 1942, Issue 1, Berlin, pp. 27-27
• “Economic forces in the pacific region”, in: Wille und Macht , born in 1942, Berlin, issue 2, pp. 35–39
• “Plaek Pibulasonggram”, in: Wille und Macht , born in 1942, issue 3, pp. 36–39
• “South American economy is feeling the effects of the war”, in: Wille und Macht , born in 1942, issue 3, p. 39ff
• Under the pseudonym Hans Siegmar: (Abracadabra) methods and goals of Soviet propaganda before and during the Berlin Foreign Ministers Conference from January 25 to February 18, 1954 . Ed., F. Michaelsen, Großhansdorf 1954.
• (anonymous) From infernal machinist to State Secretary . Editor, "Freiheit-Aktion der Jugend", Bonn 1954. (A clandestine publisher of the All-German Ministry ) (The book deals with the GDR politician and head of the Ministry for State Security Ernst Wollweber .)
• (anonymous) kidnapping. Ambushed and kidnapped into the zone . Ed., "Freedom Action of Youth", Bonn 1954.

literature

• Christina Ullrich, "I don't feel like a murderer": the integration of Nazi perpetrators in post-war society , Darmstadt: WBG, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23802-6 , pp. 281–284 (short bio)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christina Ullrich, I don't feel like a murderer, Darmstadt, 2011, p. 284
2. ↑ CF Rüter, Justice and Nazi Crimes, Volume XXXI, Amsterdam 2004, p. 706.
3. ↑ Wolfgang Müsse, The Reich Press School - Journalists for the Dictatorship? - A contribution to the history of journalism in the Third Reich, Munich 1995, p. 178.
4. ↑ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Secret Service, Politics and Media - Opinion making UNDERCOVER, 2004, p. 32.
5. ^ Wilhelm Lenz, Archival sources on German history since 1500 in Great Britain, Boppard am Rhein 1975, p. 199.
6. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.), Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Part I, Volume 2, Munich 1987, entry from June 12, 1932, p. 182.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Müsse, ibid, p. 178.
8. ↑ Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie, Munich 2007, p. 234.
9. ↑ In the court case in 1968 Zietlow claimed that he had already been "appointed", see: CF Rüter, ibid, p. 707.
10. ↑ Wolfgang Müsse, ibid, p. 178 and 179 with FN 1.
11. ↑ MOB stands for mobilization here
12. ↑ If the funds in circulation increase by 4.1 billion RM to 14.5 billion RM, then it was previously 10.4 billion RM. An increase from 10.4 to 14.5 billion RM is 39.4 percent and not 25 percent, as Zietlow indicates.
13. ↑ CF Rüter, ibid, p. 727.
14. ↑ Christina Ullrich, “I don't feel like a murderer”: the integration of Nazi perpetrators in post-war society , Darmstadt: WBG, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23802-6 , pp. 90–96.
15. ↑ Alexander Gallus: The Neutralists - Advocates of a united Germany between East and West 1945-1990. Düsseldorf 2001, p. 237 FN 2.
16. ↑ Klaus Körner, “The Red Danger” - Anti-Communist Propaganda in the Federal Republic 1950–2000, Hamburg 2003, p. 25
17. ^ Rainer Dohse, The Third Way - Neutralist Desires in West Germany between 1945 and 1955, Hamburg 197, p. 119
18. ↑ Zietlow was obviously unable to break away from the Nazi vocabulary even after the war. "Editors" were determined by the editors of the law , the editors called on 4 October 1,933th See: Cornelia Schmitz-Berning, Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus, 2nd edition, Berlin 2007, p. 559
19. ^ Thomas Walde, ND report - The role of the secret intelligence services in the government system of the Federal Republic of Germany, Munich 1971, p. 315 FN 113
    cloud height . In: “Der Spiegel” No. 40/1968 of September 30, 1968.
20. ↑ Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Brown Book". War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science . Edition Ost, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-360-01033-7 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1968). List entry on Fritz Zietlow ( Memento from March 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). (Retrieved May 1, 2010.)
21. ↑ C. Rueter, ibid, pp 693-798
    cloud height . In: “Der Spiegel” No. 40/1968 of September 30, 1968.
    The> Aktion 1005 <in Riga by Jens Hoffmann