Günther Herrmann

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Günther Karl August Ludwig Herrmann (born September 15, 1908 in Minden ; † February 17, 2004 in Cologne ) was a German lawyer and SS leader who rose to government council and SS standard leader at the time of National Socialism . Herrmann was head of the Stapo control centers in Kassel and Brno , leader of Sonderkommando 4b and Einsatzkommando 12 in the USSR and commander of Einsatzgruppe E in Croatia .

Life

Herrmann, son of a wholesale merchant, studied law and political science at the universities of Kiel , Göttingen and Münster . On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2,475,252). He became a member of the SS (SS no. 267.283) on June 25, 1935. On November 9, he was appointed SS-Untersturmführer .

At the Gestapo

From February 1935 Herrmann was deputy head of the Gestapo in Kiel. Herrmann was in charge of the state police headquarters in Kassel from 1936 to 1939, and since 1937 he has been in charge of the local security service (SD).

Herrmann was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer on August 1, 1938 and to SS-Hauptsturmführer on September 26, 1938 , before taking over the Stapo control center in Brno in southern Moravia from December 21, 1940 to March 1, 1941 .

He then worked as a scientific director at the driving school of the security police in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

With the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD

With the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union , he was appointed head of the Sonderkommando (SK) 4b Einsatzgruppe C ordered. Herrmann and his unit in the group of Einsatzgruppe C marched from the installation site Bad Schmiedeberg in what is now Saxony-Anhalt on June 23, 1941 via Upper Silesia to Galicia . On June 30, 1941, an advance command of SK 4b reached Lemberg . The chief of Einsatzgruppe C, SS-Brigadführer and Major General of the Police Otto Rasch , commissioned the latter to support the Ukrainian militia set up by the Wehrmacht . On July 5, 1941, the SK 4b was in Tarnopol and moved on to Vinnitsa via Proskurow . In early August, the unit reached Kirovograd in southern Ukraine . In September 1941 the SK 4b moved from Kremenchug to Poltava . Here Herrmann's unit shot 565 inmates of the local “lunatic asylum” because of the “extremely critical nutritional situation in the city [...] with regard to the supply of the hospitals [...] under the pretext of transferring the sick to another, better asylum in Kharkov” (incident report 135 of November 19, 1941).

In the meantime promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer on September 1, 1942 , from October 1942 to March 1943 he led the Einsatzkommando (EK) 12 of Einsatzgruppe D. By the end of 1942, EK 12 had penetrated into the Caucasus as part of the 11th Army . However, under Herrmann's leadership, it had to retreat again in February 1943 due to the military situation.

He was then transferred to the Balkans and from April 24, 1943 appointed commander of Einsatzgruppe E in Croatia , which he led until 1944. The last promotion to SS-Standartenführer took place on January 30, 1945.

After the war

From 1950 Herrmann worked as a commercial clerk in Ratingen . He was arrested in 1962 but was given parole. From 1964 to 1969 he was the managing director of a supermarket in Cologne. On January 12, 1973, Herrmann was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Düsseldorf Regional Court for joint complicity in murder (killing of Jews and mentally ill people in Poltava, Artemovsk, Vinnitsa, Kirovograd and Gorlowka (Ukraine) in 1941/42).

literature

  • Helmut Krausnick , Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: The troop of the Weltanschauung war. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD 1938–1942. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3421019878 .
  • 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 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death register of the Cologne registry office No. 1510/2004.
  2. ^ A b c Gerhard Paul: State terror and social brutalization. The Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein. , Hamburg 1996, p. 264
personal data
SURNAME Herrmann, Günther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herrmann, Günther Karl August Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Minden
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 2004
Place of death Cologne