Fritz Pleines

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Fritz Pleines (around 1932).

Fritz Pleines (born July 6, 1906 in Stolp , † June 30, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German SS man and concentration camp commandant . Pleines was best known as a short-term commandant of the concentration camp in Stettin and as one of those killed in the " Röhm Putsch ".

Live and act

Pleines originally worked as a painter's assistant and decorator. He later worked as a detective with the State Police in Szczecin. On March 1, 1930, Pleines joined the NSDAP ( membership number 205.331). He also became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the party's private army. From 1931 he was also a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS), in which he achieved the rank of SS troop leader.

From September 1933, Pleines worked as an overseer in the Bredow concentration camp , which the SA had set up on the site of the Vulkan shipyard in Stettin, which was closed in 1928 . In the following months he participated in the mistreatment and torture of the prisoners there, with his superior Joachim Hoffmann and his colleague Gustav Fink being among his closest accomplices. In March 1934, Pleines acted briefly as the successor to Karl Salis as the commander of the volcano camp.

In March 1934, Pleines - like Fink, Hoffmann, Salis and their colleagues Willi Herrmann, Heinrich Richter and Walter Treptow - was arrested for the attacks on Vulkan prisoners and in a trial that lasted from March 29th to April 6th before the regional court Stettin charged with dangerous bodily harm. Pleines, Hoffmann and Salis also had to answer because of the charge of willful bodily harm as civil servants in the exercise of or at the instigation of their office, as well as Hofmann and Pleines because of the use of coercive means to extort confessions or statements. While Fink and Hoffmann were given prison sentences, the district court sentenced Pleines at process end on April 6, 1934 for prisoner abuse to five years' imprisonment (under forfeiture of loss of civil rights for three years). To serve the same he was transferred to the Brandenburg prison. The conviction of Pleines, Hoffmann and Fink was noteworthy in terms of judicial history, as it is one of the few cases in which concentration camp personnel were called to account by the Nazi regime itself for mistreating prisoners.

After Pleines' pardon was falsely reported on June 26, 1934, he - like Hoffmann and Fink - was taken from prison on June 30, first to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin and from there to the grounds of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Brought to Berlin-Lichterfelde and shot there. The shooting of Pleines, Hoffmann and Fink was officially justified with the "prisoner abuse" committed by them. In addition to Anton von Hohberg and Buchwald and Othmar Toifl , the three were the only SS members who fell victim to the "Röhm Putsch".

Johannes Tuchel interpreted the murders of Pleines, Fink and Hoffmann as a politically motivated act, the order of which gave Hitler “room for a subtle, subliminal possibility”, “National Socialism and especially himself not as the guardian of the rule of law, but at least as to portray tough but just judges ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Year and place of birth according to Robert Thévoz / Hans Branig / Cécile Lowenthal-Hensel : Pommerm 1934/35 , 1974, p. 223.
  2. ^ Klaus Drobisch , Günther Wieland : System of the Nazi concentration camps, 1933–1939 . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 978-3-05-000823-3 , p. 98.
  3. ↑ Klaus Drobisch, Günther Wieland: System of the Nazi concentration camps, 1933–1939 , erlin 1993, p. 69.
  4. ^ Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich 1933-1940. 2001, p. 352.
  5. ^ Heinz Höhne: Mordsache Röhm, 1984, pp. 286 and 342; Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich 1933–1940 , 2001, p. 352. While Gruchmann's account suggests that Pleines, Fink and Hoffmann were killed in Brandenburg or Berlin, Tuchel writes that the three were killed in Stettin (cf. Johannes Tuchel : Concentration camp. Organizational history and function of the inspection ... 1991, p. 177). Höhne, on the other hand, based on an eyewitness report of the shootings cited by him, proves that they were carried out in Berlin-Lichterfelde.
  6. ^ Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich 1933-1940. 2001, p. 364.
  7. ↑ Tuchel: Concentration Camp , 1991, p. 177.
personal data
SURNAME Pleines, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS man and concentration camp commander
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Stumble
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1934
Place of death Berlin-Lichterfelde