Hans Ehlich

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Hans Ehlich (born July 1, 1901 in Leipzig ; † March 30, 1991 in Braunschweig ) was a doctor and SS standard leader in the National Socialist German Reich , head of Office Group III B "Volkstum und Volksgesundheit" in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and a member of Einsatzgruppe V. in German-occupied Poland .

Childhood, school and studies

Hans Ehlich was the oldest of five children. His father, an engineer by profession, started a new job in Heilbronn in 1905 for professional reasons , so that the family moved there in the same year. In 1911 the family moved to Chemnitz . Ehlich graduated from high school here in 1920 and then began to study medicine and dentistry in Leipzig and Würzburg .

In 1923 Ehlich joined the “ Reichsflagge ”, one of the numerous right-wing extremist associations that had set itself the goal of replacing the “Weimar System”. The "Reichsflagge" as the Bavarian military association also took part in the preparations for Hitler's November putsch in Munich in 1923. After taking over the "Reichsflagge" by the " Stahlhelm ", the largest of the military associations founded in 1918, Ehlich resigned from this association. In his résumé of September 30, 1936, he justified this with the distanced attitude of the "Stahlhelm" to the NSDAP and the prohibition for "Stahlhelm" members to attend NSDAP meetings.

Activity as a hospital doctor

After passing his state examination and doctorate as Dr. med. Ehlich took up a position as an assistant doctor at the city hospital in Dresden-Johannstadt in 1927 . He joined the NSDAP on December 1, 1931. In February 1932 he went into business for himself and opened a doctor's practice in Kötzschenbroda . The following month he married the daughter of a medical councilor.

At the security service and at the Reich Security Main Office

Increasing political commitment finally led Ehlich in June 1932 as a candidate for the SS , where he worked as a Sturmbannarzt and which he finally joined in 1934. In April 1933 Ehlich moved to Sebnitz and in the summer of 1935 accepted an offer to enter the civil service. Here he became a government medical officer in the health department of the Saxon Ministry of the Interior. At the same time he became an employee of the Racial Political Office of the NSDAP .

The ao. Professor of Constitutional Law and Head of the Office for Culture, University and Economy in the SD Main Office , Reinhard Höhn , became aware of Ehlich in 1936 and recruited him to join the SD. Ehlich wrote the following in his résumé of April 24, 1967:

“During my work as a doctor in Sebnitz, I was particularly concerned with school health care. This brought me into closer contact with the departments responsible for school health care in the Saxon Ministry of the Interior. This led to my being offered the position of health care officer in the Ministry of the Interior in 1935. I was taken on as a medical councilor. In 1937, on the occasion of a vacation trip, I got to know some gentlemen who were supposed to set up a domestic intelligence service in Berlin in the then SD main office in the various areas of life. I was proposed to take up this role in the public health and population policy sector . Since the working conditions in the ministry in Dresden were not very favorable due to the rivalries between state and party, I accepted and was assigned to the main department II 2 (SD-Inland) with the task of processing the messages sent by the SD-sections in the areas of public health and population policy came to the SD main office. "

In the SD main office in Berlin, Ehlich was entrusted with the management of Department II 213 “Race and Public Health”. After the establishment of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) on September 27, 1939, Ehlich headed Office Group III B "Volkstum", which comprised the following sections (as of March 1, 1941):

With Einsatzgruppe V in Poland

In September / October 1939 Ehlich took part in " Operation Tannenberg ", the "fight against all anti-Reich and anti-German elements backwards of the fencing troops" by the "Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police" during the attack on Poland, as a member of Einsatzgruppe V (leader Ernst Damzog ) . Already at the beginning of the “Volkstumskampf” he played a decisive role in the expulsion and resettlement policy of the SS. On October 31, 1939, he was appointed Special Advisor III ES (Immigration and Settlement) and in this capacity worked closely with Adolf Eichmann , the special advisor at the time IV R (evictions), together.

Volkstumsppolitik in the RSHA

In connection with the "implementation of the Baltic migration", the central immigration office in Gotenhafen (headed by Martin Sandberger ) repeatedly raised questions and problems that required central clarification by the RSHA. The examination of the "ethnic-racial suitability" of the Baltic Germans fell into the field of responsibility of the SD, in which Ehlich was regarded as a predestined expert. In a meeting of the head of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich, on January 30, 1940, it was decided that, following the proposal by Ehlich and Eichmann in favor of the Baltic and Wolhynian Germans, 160,000 Poles and Jews from the annexed Polish areas should be deported to the General Government . By mid-March 1940, however, only 40,000 people were deported under Eichmann's department IV D 4 , which was entrusted with the “central control of evacuation tasks” , the previous special department IV R.

The Board of Trustees for Folklore and Regional Geography as a collection point for various institutes and working groups that dealt with this topic was headed by Ehlich as chairman from the summer of 1944. The managing director was the historian and geographer Wilfried Krallert , who already headed Office Group IV G "Scientific and Methodological Research Service" at the RSHA. Ehlich was also co-editor of the journal Der Biologe, which was taken over by the “ Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe eV” in 1939 .

"General Plan East"

Ehlich's Office Group III B created the “ General Plan East ” for the RSHA , which was developed alongside or in competition with the existing plan of the same name of the “ Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity ” (RKF). While the planner of the RKF, the head of the main staff office there, the agricultural scientist Konrad Meyer , presented the first planning bases in January / February 1940, the plan of the RSHA was only created in the second half of 1941. Since the original no longer exists, its content can be understood in the mirror of the opinion of the racial officer of the East Ministry, Erhard Wetzel , of April 27, 1942 as well as the minutes of the meeting of February 4, 1942. After that, Ehlich set a planning period of about 30 years, during which about 10 million Germans were to be settled in the conquered eastern areas. Of the approx. 45 million “ foreigners ” in the planning area, approx. 31 million were to be resettled. By this Ehlich understood the deportation to Siberia or the " special treatment "; d. H. the assassination. The remaining 14 million had to be “ free of Jews ” and “capable of Germanization”. The organization plan for an "office of the Reichsleiter of the NSDAP for nationality issues" also came from Ehlich. With the appointment of Himmler as "the NSDAP's representative for all ethnic issues" by Hitler on March 12, 1942, the relevant main office was established . The SS had thus clearly taken the leading position in the dispute over the competence of the eastern settlement. Ehlich as the head of the office group III B of the RSHA, which functions as a switching point, presented the task and problem solution of the eastern settlement at a meeting of the Volkstumsreferat of the Reich student leadership on 11/12 December 1942 in Salzburg as follows:

In the German sphere of influence, in addition to the Germanic population, there are around 70 million people who are related but not of the same blood, such as B. Czechs , Poles, Balts , Ukrainians , etc. The disappearance of the entire Jewish part of the population is taken for granted, so that, in his opinion, four possibilities would come into consideration in the future for the aforementioned peoples:

  1. Racially and ethnically identical ethnic groups live together,
  2. Conversion of foreign nationality into German nationality ,
  3. Spatial displacement of the foreign nation and
  4. Physical destruction of the foreign and undesirable nationality in the German Reich.

The displacement or elimination of the share according to numbers 3 and 4 of these 70 million is currently not yet possible, as they are required for labor and the development of the new settlement areas.

At a meeting of Office Group III B on 1/2. February 1943 in the SD school in Bernau on "Umvolkungsprobleme" (population problems), the "total capacity" of the eastern area to be settled was put at around 24 million people. A first attempt to establish an ethnic German settlement base in the General Government with Aktion Zamość in the Polish district of Zamość failed due to the Polish resistance triggered by the associated expulsions (see Polish Home Army ). However, all settlement plans were not discontinued until the beginning of 1944, after plans for a settlement on the Crimean peninsula had been drawn up even after the Stalingrad disaster .

In the news office of the Dönitz government

Shortly before the end of the war, the parts of the RSHA that remained in Berlin destroyed their files and equipped their staff with new identities. A part of the SD office tried to get through to Munich , a smaller part stayed with Otto Ohlendorf in Berlin. In mid-April 1945 the decision was made to move to Schleswig-Holstein . In his capacity as a doctor, Ehlich was commissioned to obtain cyanide capsules from Office Group D of the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) in Oranienburg . In Flensburg , Ehlich worked in the news office of Admiral Dönitz's " Executive Government ", which was set up on May 13, 1945 , until the latter and all of her relatives were arrested on May 23, 1945. Ehlich was initially able to evade his arrest, but was picked up by British investigators in July 1945 with other office group leaders of the former RSHA.

After the war

After being released from detention , Ehlich returned to work as a doctor. In October 1948 he was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison as a member of the SS, which had been declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trial . Since the sentence was considered to have been served during the internment period, Ehlich was finally able to settle back in Braunschweig as a general practitioner. Several preliminary investigations in the 1960s ultimately did not lead to a new charge. Ehlich continued to work and live in Braunschweig, where he died on March 30, 1991.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Curriculum Vitae, April 24, 1967, Central Office of the State Justice Administrations, Ludwigsburg, 415 AR 1310/63, E 8 (Ehlich), quoted from Michael Wildt "The Generation of the Unconditional" , page 180, note 103
personal data
SURNAME Really, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and SS standard leader
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1991
Place of death Braunschweig