Hanns Albin Rauter

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Hanns Rauter in the uniform of an SS brigade leader (1939)

Hanns Albin Rauter (actually Johann Baptist Albin Rauter ; born February 4, 1895 in Klagenfurt , Carinthia ; † March 25, 1949 near Scheveningen ) was an SS-Obergruppenführer (1943), general of the police (1943) and Waffen-SS (1944) ) as well as Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) of the occupied Netherlands . After the end of the Second World War he was arrested and executed as a war criminal after a trial in the Netherlands in 1949 .

Life

Hanns Albin Rauter was born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, in 1895 as the second of seven children of the Forestry Councilor Josef Rauter. He attended secondary school and graduated from high school in 1912 . He then began studying engineering at the Graz University of Technology . From 1913 Rauter was a member of the Corps Joannea .

When the First World War broke out , Rauter volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1914 . He served in the Carinthian Mountain Rifle Regiment 1 and was dismissed as first lieutenant in 1919 . From 1919 he took part in the Carinthian defensive battle , from May to July 1921 he fought in the Oberland Freikorps in Upper Silesia, in 1921 he was a founding member of the anti-Semitic group " Styrian Homeland Security ", whose chief of staff he became that same year.

In 1937 he married a woman 22 years his junior with whom he had five children.

Career in NSDAP, SA and SS

Rauter first met Adolf Hitler in 1927 and agitated in the interests of the National Socialists in Austria. With Theo Habicht , he planned the establishment of a combat group consisting of the NSDAP and Styrian Homeland Security in Austria. His participation in the Pfrimer Putsch and his continued appearance caused him to flee to the German Reich in 1933, where Hitler had come to power in the meantime. Rauter was initially active in the NSDAP regional leadership for Austria and until October 17, 1934 took over the leadership of the " Battle Ring of the Austrians in the Empire ". By Hermann Reschny he was a Standartenfiihrer in the rank SA acquired.

From autumn 1934 to March 1938, Rauter worked as a clerk for the Austrian relief organization at the NSDAP refugee aid organization. In April 1935 he switched from the SA to the SS (SS no. 262,958), to which he was accepted with the rank of SS Oberführer . Until 1940 he was the staff leader of the SS Upper Section Southeast in Breslau .

From 1938 Rauter was a member of the Reichstag as a successor for Alfred Krauss . Membership in the NSDAP has not been proven.

General Commissioner in the Netherlands

Hanns Rauter (left) with Seyß-Inquart and various collaborators , October 11, 1941

After the occupation of the Netherlands , Rauter became "General Commissioner for Security" and Higher SS and Police Leader "Northwest" with the Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands Seyß-Inquart on May 23, 1940 . In April 1941 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Police, in June 1943 to SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police.

In his position as police commander and the highest-ranking SS leader in the Netherlands, Rauter was responsible for the deportations of Jews to the extermination camps , the fight against the Dutch resistance and the harsh occupation conditions. Around 300,000 Dutch people were deported to the Reich for forced labor and their properties were confiscated. The general strike organized by the Dutch resistance in February 1941 was bloodily suppressed by Rauter. Several police raids against students took place from February to May 1943, and several thousand of them were deported. The reprisals for which Rauter was responsible also included imposing kin detention on Dutch officials. On September 5, 1943, he and the Commissioners Wimmer and Ritterbusch decided to introduce murder attacks by death squads of the Dutch Waffen SS as retaliation for attacks by the Dutch resistance . The Silbertanne special command under Henk Feldmeijer emerged from these groups .

In cooperation with Anton Mussert's National Socialist Movement , Rauter set up several voluntary associations, including the Landwacht Netherlands . At the beginning of June 1944 he was appointed General of the Waffen SS.

attack

Memorial for those shot dead by Woeste Hoeve

In the winter of 1944/45 there was a famine (" Hongerwinter ") in the Netherlands due to the inadequate food supply . Late in the evening of March 6, 1945, six members of the Dutch resistance stopped a car in the dark on a road between Arnhem and Apeldoorn , believing it was a truck they were about to use to pick up three tons of pork from the slaughterhouse in To steal Epe and transport it away. In fact, however, it was Rauter's company car, whose heavy engine had sounded like a truck. In the car next to Rauter sat his chauffeur and his adjutant.

There was a firefight in which more than 200 shots were fired and the chauffeur and the adjutant were fatally wounded. Rauter was badly wounded by several shots. The perpetrators fled and five hours later Rauter, who pretended to be dead, was found and taken to the hospital. He survived the attack. The very next day, the commander of the security police and SD (BdS) in the occupied Netherlands , Karl Eberhard Schöngarth , who was now responsible, announced “retaliatory measures”. On March 8, 1945, 263 prisoners who had been arbitrarily selected from prisons and concentration camps were shot: 117 at Woeste Hoeve (the site of the attack), 38 in Scheveningen ( Oranjehotel prison ), 53 in Amsterdam , 49 in the Amersfoort transit camp and 6 in Utrecht .

Condemnation

Hanns Rauter before the special court (1948)

After the end of the Second World War, Rauter was extradited to the Netherlands. A special court in The Hague sentenced him to death on May 4, 1948 . His appeal was dismissed by a court of cassation on January 12, 1949 , and on March 25, 1949, Rauter was executed by firing squad in the dunes of the Waalsdorpervlakte (Waalsdorfer Senke) near Scheveningen . The location of his grave is a state secret in the Netherlands .

The main reason for the death penalty imposed on him was the deportation of around 110,000 Dutch Jews , of whom only around 6,000 survived. Rauter denied his knowledge of the fate of the deportees: "If I had had any idea [...], I would have taken off my skirt a hundred times and let myself be shot to death." Since the public prosecutor did not bring up Rauter's presence at Himmler's speeches in Poznan for unexplained reasons, no evidence of his knowledge was brought before the court. The conviction also came for his role in the murder of large numbers of non-Jewish Dutch people. Rauter rejected the advocacy of the then State Secretary Karel Johannes Frederiks on the grounds that the “Jewish question was a purely German matter”. At the same time, the special court found that the retaliatory measures for which Rauter was responsible were not justified because the unprovoked attack by Germany made the occupation of the Netherlands illegal, which is why the Dutch population had an obligation to resist. The Court of Cassation also agreed with the Special Court's view and ruled that the German occupying power had no right to retaliation for violating the provisions of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations .

During his imprisonment, Rauter held talks with two Dutch historians about his service in the occupied Netherlands. He pleaded imperative to order, but did not incriminate former subordinates or anyone else. However, he claimed not to have known about the Holocaust .

Awards

Rauter's SS and police ranks
date rank
February 1935 SS-Oberführer
December 1939 SS Brigade Leader
April 1941 SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police
June 1943 SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police
June 1944 SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen SS

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography of Hanns Albin Rauter from GO2WAR2NL
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 49 , 177
  3. ^ Gehler, M .: Student Corporations in Austria and the Right: A Historical Outline . In: Bischof, G. / Pelinka, A. (ed.): Austro-corporatism: past, present, future . Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1996. pp. 289-303, esp. P. 296
  4. ↑ Hans Schafranek: Summer party with price shooting: the unknown story of the Nazi putsch in July 1934 . Vienna, Czernin Verlag, 2006, p. 13
  5. ^ A b SS Personnel Office: List of seniority of the NSDAP Schutzstaffel, as of December 1, 1937, serial no. 125 Oberführer, no party number given
  6. ↑ Portrait and biography in Hanns Albin Rauter in the database of members of the Reichstag
  7. ↑ Ruth Bettina Birn: The higher SS and police leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. Düsseldorf 1986, p. 343.
  8. ↑ The 'SILBERTANNE' murders and Sonderkommando Feldmeijer , Nederlanders in de Waffen-SS, accessed January 1, 2016
  9. ↑ Onbedoelde aanslag op Rauter bij Woeste Hoeve. In: go2war2.nl. Retrieved May 29, 2018 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ a b "Living with the Enemy". Amsterdam under German occupation 1940–1945 . Hanser, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-23996-8 . dtv-Taschenbuch 2016, ISBN 978-3423348904 , p. 341.
  11. ↑ Slachtofferlijsten / Executies 1945
  12. ↑ Article on the executions on March 8, 1945 in Amersfoort ( Memento of the original of February 26, 2009 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kampamersfoort.nl
  13. ↑ Detailed article on the course of the attack and the subsequent retaliatory measures (Dutch)
  14. ↑ Brief information on the judgment ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  15. ↑ Dick de Mildt, Joggli Meihuizen: "Our country must have sunk deep ..." . In: Transnational politics of the past . Ed .: Norbert Frei, Wallstein 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 , p. 300 ff.
  16. ^ AR Albrecht: War Reprisals in the War Crime Trials and in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. In: The American Journal of International Law Vol. 4 (October 1953): 590-614.
  17. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 243f.
personal data
SURNAME Rauter, Hanns
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rauter, Hanns Albin; Rauter, Johann Baptist Albin (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (NSDAP), MdR, General of the Waffen-SS, HSSPF of the occupied Netherlands
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Klagenfurt
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1949
Place of death at Scheveningen