Hans-Theodor Schmidt

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Hans-Theodor Schmidt in April 1947

Hans Hermann Theodor Schmidt (born December 25, 1899 in Höxter ; † June 7, 1951 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and adjutant of the camp commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp . After the war he was executed.

Life

Schmidt was the son of a cement manufacturer and building materials wholesaler. He finished school in his hometown at the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium with the Abitur . He took part in the First World War between 1917 and 1918 and after the end of the war he joined a volunteer corps . From 1919 to 1920 he did military service in the Reichswehr . He then completed a commercial apprenticeship and then worked as a businessman in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Schmidt joined the NSDAP and the SS in 1932 . In 1935 he moved to neighboring Holzminden . After switching to the Waffen SS , Schmidt served in the SS special camp in Hinzert from 1940 to 1941 , and in November 1941 he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. Schmidt served as an adjutant in the guard battalion from April to September 1942. When Schmidt's former superior in the Hinzert camp, Hermann Pister , took over as the successor to Karl Otto Koch , Schmidt became adjutant to the camp commandant in September 1942 and remained in this position until Buchenwald was liberated in April 1945. In 1944 he retained the rank of SS until the end of the war - Hauptsturmführer . In May 1945, Schmidt was arrested by members of the US Army . On September 14, 1945 he was brought from the Bad Aibling POW camp in Bavaria to the Civil Internment Camp in Freising and on September 17, 1945 to a US office in Oberursel .

From April 11, 1947, Schmidt was a defendant in the main Buchenwald trial as part of the Dachau trials . The other 30 accused included the Higher SS and Police Leader Fulda-Werra, responsible for Buchenwald , Josias zu Waldeck and Pyrmont , the camp commandant Hermann Pister and other members of the camp personnel. Schmidt was sentenced to death by hanging on August 14, 1947 for his responsibility for overseeing and directing all executions between 1942 and 1945 .

The death sentence against Schmidt was one of two that the commander of the 31 January 1951 US forces in Europe , Thomas T. Handy , were confirmed (the other was against George Schallermair ). US General Handy commuted eleven other death sentences to life imprisonment at the same time . In his reasoning, Handy referred to Schmidt's high position in the camp administration, who had represented Commandant Hermann Pister in his absence. According to Pister's statements, Schmidt took a very active part in the riots in the concentration camp and assumed greater authority than he was entitled to. Handy then went into the murders committed in the gunshot in the neck of the Buchenwald concentration camp:

“Admittedly, Hans Schmidt was an adjutant in the Buchenwald concentration camp for about three years. [...] He had all the executions of inmates under himself; among them were several hundred prisoners of war who were killed by a special unit, the so-called Kommando 99 . These executions took place in what used to be a horse stable, which was supposed to give the appearance of a hospital pharmacy. When the unsuspecting victims were placed against a wall, apparently to measure their height, they were shot in the back of the head with a powerful air pistol hidden in the wall. Sometimes up to thirty victims were killed in this way. Other executions supervised by Schmidt took place in the camp crematorium; the victims were hung from hooks on the wall and slowly strangled to death. In this case I cannot find any reason for mercy. "

On June 7, 1951, Hans-Theodor Schmidt was executed in the prison yard of the Landsberg War Crimes Prison after unsuccessful pardon requests from the Höxter Main Committee, newspaper appeals and a mercy campaign that led to the Supreme Court of the USA and then on June 9, 1951 in the cemetery in his home town of Höxter buried on the wall. Over 5,000 people are said to have attended the funeral, including many former SS members. 800 police officers were present to prevent the funeral service from being instrumentalized by the Socialist Reich Party (SRP). The SRP achieved around 30 percent of the votes cast in the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1951 in Holzminden.

On June 12, 1951, the Federal Press Office received the obituary notice from Holzminden with the words asserting his innocence:

“I declare that I have done nothing but what you, gentlemen, are doing now. I have carried out orders that were rightfully given to me. I am leaving as the last of the Landsberg death row inmates. I'm dying innocently. "

Schmidt and his wife came from Holzminden, were married and had two children.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Robrecht: The criminal from Buchenwald / author Ernst Würzburger is working on a biography about the SS man Hans Schmidt from Höxter . In: Westfalen-Blatt of February 22, 2014.
  2. ↑ Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Göttingen 1999, p. 309.
  3. ↑ quoted from: Annette Wilmes : pardon of the Nuremberg war criminals . The declaration of cell phones in full by: Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–1948. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-593-34641-9 , pp. 179ff.
  4. ↑ quoted from Bundesarchiv B 122/648 and Wolfram Werner (ed.): Theodor Heuss: Honored Mr. Federal President !: The exchange of letters with the population 1949-1959. Walter de Gruyter-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-25126-9 , p. 147.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Hans-Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Hans Hermann Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Hauptsturmführer and adjutant to the camp commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Höxter
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1951
Place of death Landsberg am Lech