Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr

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Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr

Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr (born March 21, 1900 in Lützow , † January 31, 1949 in Magadan ) was a German SS group leader , lieutenant general of the Waffen SS and police during the Second World War .

Life

The landowner from the Mecklenburg noble family Bassewitz grew up with four younger sisters on an estate in Lützow in Mecklenburg . His parents were Count Adolph von Bassewitz-Behr (* July 15, 1849; † November 20, 1915) and his third wife Dorothee Krell (* April 24, 1873; † 1960).

At the age of 15 he lost his father. He passed his Abitur in 1918. After the end of the First World War , where he was no longer involved in the war, von Bassewitz-Behr managed the estates in Mecklenburg and looked after his family. In the winter semester of 1919/20 he studied agriculture at the University of Rostock . He married Ilse Countess von Pfeil and Klein-Ellguth (1900–1987), the daughter of a noble officer, and became a member of the Stahlhelm . After trying unsuccessfully to start a new life as a farmer in the former colony of German South West Africa in 1930 , he returned to Germany and became a supporter of the National Socialist ideology.

He joined the NSDAP on February 1, 1930 ( membership number 458.315) and in 1931 the SS (SS number 35.466) and the NSKK . In 1938, as a member of the staff of the SS main office, he became inspector of the motor vehicle combat troops.

As part of the planned Barbarossa operation , he was quartermaster at the Reichsführer SS command staff from the end of April to the end of July 1941 . Subsequently, during the war against the Soviet Union in Riga, he was "Agricultural Officer" on the staff of the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Hans-Adolf Prützmann . From mid-November 1941 to early August 1942 he was SS and police leader in Dnepropetrovsk , Ukraine, where he was responsible for the murder of thousands of civilians, partisans and Jews. From November 22, 1942 to March 24, 1943 he was HSSPF Russia-Center in Mogilew .

From February 16, 1943 to May 8, 1945 he was HSSPF of Wehrkreis X (HSSPF North Sea) in Hamburg. On July 1, 1944, he was appointed SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS, after he had already been promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Police on April 20, 1943. After Operation Gomorrah in August 1943 , Bassewitz-Behr was appointed General Commissioner for Security by the Hamburg Gauleiter and Reich Defense Commissioner for Military District X, Karl Kaufmann . Bassewitz-Behr also headed the prisoner-of-war system in military district X and was responsible for the repression against foreign forced laborers .

At the end of the war he was primarily responsible for the “evacuation” of the Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps . On the instructions or with the consent of Bassewitz-Behr, 71 prisoners from the Fuhlsbüttel police prison who were to be executed were murdered in the Neuengamme concentration camp in April 1945 during the final phase of the crime.

After the end of the war he was arrested in September 1945 and brought before a British military tribunal because of the crimes committed in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison as part of the Hamburg Curiohaus trials . After he was acquitted as a war criminal in the Curiohaus in August 1947 , he was handed over to the Soviet authorities on September 16, 1947. He was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor for the murder of 45,000 civilians in the Dnepropetrovsk area . He died two years later in a labor camp in eastern Siberia .

Ranks, awards

Bassewitz-Behrs SS and police ranks
date rank
September 1938 SS-Oberführer
June 1940 SS-Obersturmbannführer (Waffen-SS)
January 1942 SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Police
April 10, 1943 SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police
July 1, 1944 Lieutenant General of the Waffen SS

See also

literature

  • Tino Jacobs: Himmler's husband in Hamburg - Georg Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr as Higher SS and Police Leader in Military District X 1943–1945 . Dölling u. Galitz, Hamburg 2001, 191 pp. ISBN 3-87916-063-5 and ISBN 3-935549-74-1 (TB)
  • Tino Jacobs: "Has the aptitude to be a higher leader" - Georg Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr - an SS career . In: ISHZ , 44, October 2004, pp. 50–65
  • Linde Apel, Hamburg Authority for Culture, Sport, Media, in collaboration with the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg and the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (ed.): Sent to death - The deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from Hamburg, 1940 to 1945 . Metropol Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-30-5 .
  • Ruth Bettina Birn : The Higher SS and Police Leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1986. ISBN 3-7700-0710-7 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition).
  • Genealogical paperback of the noble and count family von Bassewitz. Fourth edition, 1909, p. 13.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Herbert Diercks : Documentation town house. The Hamburg police under National Socialism. Texts, photos, documents , Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial , Hamburg 2012, p. 48.
  2. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal , WS 1919/20, No. 279.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Tino Jacobs: Himmler's husband in Hamburg . akens.org
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 30.
  5. ↑ a b Short biography ( memento of October 26, 2009 on WebCite ) on Axis Biographical Research
  6. ↑ a b Ruth Bettina Birn: The higher SS and police leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. , Düsseldorf 1986, p. 331.
  7. ^ Research center for contemporary history in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. , Göttingen 2005, p. 137.
  8. ^ Research Center for Contemporary History Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the Third Reich. , Göttingen 2005, p. 533.
  9. ↑ Tino Jacobs: Has the aptitude to be a higher leader . akens.org
personal data
SURNAME Bassewitz-Behr, Georg-Henning Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH to Gut Lützow
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1949
Place of death Magadan