Georg Schallermair

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Adhesive sheet from Georg Schallermair

Georg Schallermair (born December 29, 1894 in Hebertshausen , † June 7, 1951 in Landsberg ) was a German SS-Hauptscharführer in the Mühldorf external command , a satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp . He was sentenced to death as a war criminal and executed .

Activity in the concentration camp and legal punishment

Schallermair, a trained concrete worker , served in the Wehrmacht until 1944 and was then drafted into the Waffen SS . From August 1944 to May 1945 Schallermair was deployed as a report leader under the camp commandant Walter Adolf Langleist in the Mühldorf concentration camp. On September 18, 1947, Schallermair was tried in one of the Dachau succession proceedings (000-50-2-121) before an American military court. It was a follow-up to the Mühldorf trial .

The prosecution accused Schallermair of having been jointly responsible for the general conditions and the lack of care for the camp inmates in 1944/45, as a report leader, which led to the death of a large number of them from starvation or illness. He was also accused of beating many inmates to death with his own hands and of going beyond what was expected of him. He was also accused of having supervised the removal of gold teeth from deceased inmates by an inmate doctor. All of the allegations were supported by a large number of testimonies. The deaths described by the witnesses could also be detected in the death books that were kept in the concentration camp. The historian Norbert Frei commented in retrospect: "According to numerous former prisoners, Schallermair was the prototype of the brutal thug."

Schallermair stated that he only punished for gross violations of the camp rules in order to maintain discipline and that there were never any deaths. To remove the gold teeth, he appealed to an orderly emergency and referred to a corresponding order from Office D III (Sanitary and Camp Hygiene) of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office .

On September 23, 1947, the military court found Schallermair guilty of war crimes and sentenced him to death by hanging . He was imprisoned in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison. The judges of the War Crimes Group of the European Command of the USA ( EUCOM ) reviewed the verdict. On January 7, 1948, in their "Review" they once again extensively acknowledged the evidence and confirmed the death sentence:

The evidence clearly shows that the accused was involved in the mass crimes in connection with the Dachau concentration camp as SS-Hauptscharführer and Rapportführer in the Mühldorf sub-camp. In addition, it is clearly proven that the defendant personally mistreated and beaten numerous inmates. Many of the inmates died as a result of the defendant's brutal beatings. The evidence justifies the guilty verdict. The verdict is not excessively harsh.

The German campaign for the "Landsberger"

In the years 1949 to 1951, a campaign against the execution of further death sentences by the US occupying power was carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany , in which the highest government circles of the Federal Republic participated. One argument was the fact that the 1949 by the Parliamentary Council adopted the Basic Law the death penalty had been abolished. The Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces in Europe, General Thomas T. Handy , initiated another internal review of all judgments falling within his area of ​​responsibility in 1950. For this purpose, a pardon department was set up at the "EUCOM War Crimes Modification Board", which has existed since 1949. The judgments in question also included the one against Schallermair, as it had been made in Dachau.

Handy published its decision on January 31, 1951 - at the same time as John Jay McCloy , who as High Commissioner for Germany was responsible for reviewing the judgments in Nuremberg. Handy commuted eleven death sentences to life imprisonment. He turned down two requests for clemency, one for the adjutant of the camp commandant in the Buchenwald concentration camp , Hans-Theodor Schmidt , and the other for Schallermair. His reason:

Georg Schallermair, as leader of a roll command, was directly responsible for the prisoners in Mühldorf, a subcamp of Dachau. He himself beat many prisoners in such a way that they died as a result. Of 300 people who were brought to the camp in autumn 1944, only 72 were alive after four months. Every day he visited the morgue with a dentist imprisoned to break out the dead gold teeth. There are no facts or arguments that can in any way justify grace in this case.

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on February 2, 1951, Thilo Bode said that "doubts could not be suppressed" in the confirmation of these two death sentences. The Federal Ministry of Justice was heard more sharply and saw “false statements” in these two cases. However, even the Heidelberg legal circle , which was called in by the ministry, found no objective starting point for an intervention in favor of Schallermair. Nonetheless, a delegation from the Handy Juristenkreis again raised “concerns”, and so did the specialist advisor for the Central Legal Protection Office in the Ministry of Justice, Margarethe Bitter . Justice Minister Thomas Dehler , however, wanted more pressure and wrote to Federal President Theodor Heuss that the execution of the death sentences against Schallermair and Schmidt would “mean serious, irreparable injustice”.

Admittedly, the arguments that Dehler provided were rather weak. He admitted what could not be easily disputed and what Schallermair himself had already admitted - even if in the subjunctive: "It should be true that Schallermair hit ... prisoners." On the other hand, the testimony does not provide "conclusive evidence" that this was the cause of the death of the abused. In addition, Rudolf Aschenauer , Schallermair's defense lawyer, later found three Jewish prisoners and ammunitioned Dehler with their statements. According to Dehler's letter, they are said to have testified "that they ... certainly know that Schallermair had not mistreated any prisoner in such a way that he died as a result of this mistreatment." In fact, Heuss wrote on Handy on February 23 that he could not handle the cases judge in detail, but the statements of "Jewish witnesses" should be heeded. At the same time, the Central Legal Protection Office in the Justice Department financed legal attempts by Warren Magee in the USA with DM 50,000 to prevent the execution of all remaining death sentences with habeas corpus motions and appeals for clemency.

On May 21, the Ministry of Justice tried again, this time with a visit from Margarethe Bitter and the cabinet secretary of Vice Chancellor and FDP chairman Franz Blücher , Georg Vogel, to Handy, who also brought a letter from Blücher. It turned out, however, that EUCOM itself had already included the testimony that was submitted afterwards in the examination, so that the legal objections were finally irrelevant. Bitter's political argument that the execution of the death sentences could favor right-wing extremist tendencies in Germany was rejected by Handy with the words: "You are on dangerous ground."

Magee's further habeas corpus applications resulted in another delay. On June 6, the United States Supreme Court finally dismissed the final petitions. On June 7, 1951, Schallermair was executed together with Schmidt and the five death row inmates who had remained in McCloy's area of ​​responsibility, namely Oswald Pohl , Erich Naumann , Paul Blobel , Werner Braune and Otto Ohlendorf , in the Landsberg war crimes prison .

literature

Web links

Commons : Georg Schallermair  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frei 1996, p. 226.
  2. ↑ Review and Recommendations (PDF; 1.4 MB) Section “Sufficiency of Evidence”.
  3. ↑ Frei 1996, p. 169 and p. 193.
  4. ^ Annette Wilmes: pardon of the Nuremberg war criminals .
  5. ↑ Frei 1996, pp. 224-225.
  6. ↑ Frei 1996, p. 226.
  7. ↑ Frei 1996, p. 230.
personal data
SURNAME Schallermair, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp guard and executed war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Hebertshausen
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1951
Place of death Landsberg