Fritz Schmidt (Gestapo)

Fritz Schmidt , also Friedrich Schmidt and later Friedrich Schmidt-Schütte (born December 6, 1908 in Bochum ; † April 17, 1983 in Munich ), was a German Gestapo officer, SS leader and perpetrator of the Holocaust .

Early years

Schmidt, son of a prison inspector, studied law at the universities of Bonn and Münster after attending school . Schmidt co-founded the NS student union at the University of Münster in 1929 and joined the NSDAP ( membership number 455.700) at the beginning of February 1931 and, after the transfer of power to the National Socialists , the SA at the beginning of May 1933 . He finished his law studies in 1932 with the first state examination and was then a court assessor at the Hamm Higher Regional Court . Schmidt passed the second state examination in law in 1935.

After a period of unemployment, Schmidt joined the police force in the summer of 1936 and was assigned to the Berlin State Police Headquarters. In 1937 he became a member of the SS (SS no. 290.023), in which he rose to the rank of Sturmbannführer at the end of January 1939 . Schmidt was also a member of the SD . In 1938 Schmidt was transferred to the state police control center in Hanover, where he took over as deputy head of this department.

Second World War

In 1939 he moved to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and was entrusted with the deputy management of the state police headquarters in Wroclaw after the start of the Second World War in early 1940. As of May 1942, he was at the Reich Security Main Office as Councilor in the Official I (Personnel) Group D Unit 2 (SS-disciplinary matters) are used. In August 1942 Schmidt was seconded to the Osteinsatz and was deputy commander under Eugen Steimle at Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C , which was involved in the murder of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union . From January 1943 he was also temporarily head of Sonderkommando 4a. In the fall of 1943 he was used again in the RSHA. From the beginning of February 1944 until the end of the war , he headed the Gestapo in Kiel and succeeded Hans Henschke in this function . After taking office, Schmidt immediately set up the Nordmark labor education camp . On the instructions of the RSHA, Schmidt commissioned Johannes Post on March 29, 1944 to put together an execution squad, which on the same day shot and killed four Allied air force officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III and had been captured again . Schmidt obliged the participants in the firing squad to maintain absolute secrecy about this process. Under Schmidt, the Staeglich Einsatzgruppe was formed in October 1944 to pursue resistance groups . Schmidt himself was present at executions in the Nordmark labor education camp at the end of the war.

post war period

After the end of the war, Schmidt was able to go into hiding with forged papers and from 1946 worked under the cover name Fritz Schmundt in Soltau as a haulage contractor and then as a legal assistant to the Senator for Economics, Port and Transport in Bremen . For fear of being found out, he now adopted the alias Schütte and moved to Munich in the summer of 1947 , where he initially hired himself out as a construction worker. Due to his false name, Schmidt did not have to undergo any court proceedings and was not considered to have been affected by the denazification . From 1949 he worked as a clerk at Viktoria-Versicherung and from 1954 to 1961 in a managerial position at Hamburg-Mannheimer .

Schmidt alias Schütte allegedly worked for the Gehlen organization. The Ministry for State Security initially wanted to turn him around, but on November 11, 1961, Schmidt's identity and Nazi past in connection with his membership of the Gehlen organization was disclosed in the newspaper Neues Deutschland . Schmidt alias Schütte was also reported on GDR television. He finally lost his job at Hamburg-Mannheimer and in 1962 was sentenced to three months' imprisonment by the Munich District Court for "false certification, submission of a false affidavit and offense under the passport law", which he did not have to serve. From 1962 he was employed by lawyers as a “freelancer” and “with the approval of the government of Upper Bavaria, he was now able to live under the name Schmidt-Schütte ”. Schmidt-Schütte was due to an arrest warrant of the District Court Kiel arrested on 18 December 1963 and in custody taken. The background was investigations into the crimes committed in the Nordmark labor education camp , especially his responsibility for the murders of the four Allied officers on his instructions on March 29, 1944. Schmidt-Schütte was released from pretrial detention in 1965 and was able to resume his employment. The Landgericht Kiel Schmidt-Schütte was born on May 20, 1968 to two years in prison for the aid to murder sentenced to the allied airmen officers. The judgment was upheld on January 14, 1969 by the Federal Court of Justice . Due to the pre-trial detention, the sentence was deemed to have been served. Schmidt-Schütte then lived again in Munich. Investigations into his task force activities had already been discontinued.

literature

• Gerhard Paul : State terror and social brutality. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. With the collaboration of Erich Koch. Results, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-87916-037-6 .
• Detlef Korte : 'Education' in the mass grave. The history of the 'Arbeitsserziehungslager Nordmark' Kiel Russee 1944–45, publication of the Advisory Council for the History of the Labor Movement and Democracy in Schleswig-Holstein 10, Kiel 1991.
• Dachauer Hefte , Volume 5, Verlag Dachauer Hefte, 1989.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

• Fritz Schmidt - Head of the Gestapo from 1944 to 1945
• Ulrich Renz : Was he the third commissioner in the Elser case? Everything points to Friedrich Schmidt-Schütte - he died in 1983 , 2013 on the pages of the Georg-Elser working group

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Gerhard Paul: State terror and social brutalization. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. , Hamburg 1996, p. 104.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Fritz Schmidt on http://www.dws-xip.pl/
3. ^ ^{A b c d} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, pp. 544f.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus Eichner , Gotthold Schramm (Ed.): Attack and Defense. The German secret services after 1945 , Edition Ost, 2007, p. 85, ISBN 3-360-01082-5 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Detlef Korte: 'Education' in the mass grave. The history of the 'Arbeitsserziehungslager Nordmark' Kiel Russee 1944-45 , publication of the Advisory Board for the History of the Labor Movement and Democracy in Schleswig-Holstein 10, Kiel 1991, p. 74.
6. ↑ CF Rüter, Dirk Welmoed de Mildt: Justice and Nazi Crimes: Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966 , Volume 32, University Press Amsterdam, 2004, p. 87.
7. ^ Fritz Schmidt - Head of the Gestapo 1944 to 1945 at www.akens.org
8. ^ Gerhard Paul: State terror and social brutality. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. , Hamburg 1996, p. 220f.
9. ^ Gerhard Paul: State terror and social brutality. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. , Hamburg 1996, p. 53f.
10. ^ Gerhard Paul: State terror and social brutality. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. , Hamburg 1996, p. 223.
11. ^ ^{A b c d} Gerhard Paul: State terror and social brutalization. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. , Hamburg 1996, p. 238f.
12. ^ Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security - The Secret Past Policy of the GDR , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-35018-X , pp. 97, 314f.
13. ↑ Schmidt-Schütte, Friedrich ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on justice and Nazi crimes