Hans Georg rifle

Hans Georg Gewehr (born May 19, 1908 in Berlin ; † September 4, 1976 ) was a German SA leader. The rifle was best known in connection with the fire in the Reichstag in February 1933.

Live and act

Youth and SA career

Gewehr was a son of the printer Johannes Heinrich Gewehr (born April 22, 1869 in Obersuhl, † July 19, 1910 in Brooklyn, USA, as a result of an accident) and his wife Emma, ​​nee. Schröder (born April 30, 1870 in Stettin).

After attending school, Gewehr completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith . He later passed the examination to become a mechanical engineer and then worked as an engineer.

In 1919 rifle belonged to the German National Youth Association and since 1923 to the Bismarck Order. On May 1, 1925, he joined the Frontbann Nord in Berlin, led by Paul Röhrbein .

On April 1, 1926, Gewehr became a member of the SA and a month later, on May 1, 1926, the NSDAP (membership number 36,913). In February 1937 he received the NSDAP's Golden Decoration of Honor due to his early membership in the party .

On March 1, 1929, Gewehr was deleted from the NSDAP's Berlin jugglery index due to a report from the Schöneberg Section because of unknown whereabouts as a member. On January 1, 1932, he was accepted again after a new application for membership. And in 1936/1937 his membership was subsequently recognized as uninterrupted on the decision of the Supreme Party Court , since it was established that he had continued to pay membership fees even while he was de-registered.

In the SA, Gewehr was promoted successively to SA-Scharführer (August 1, 1929) and SA-Truppführer (October 1, 1930) until 1930.

As a notorious "SA bully", the rifle, also known in SA circles as the Pistolen-Heini , played a major role in the street terror of the SA in the Reich capital in the early 1930s. In 1931, after the Stennes revolt, on the recommendation of his childhood friend Karl Ernst , who at that time rose to adjutant and then staff leader of the Berlin SA, he was finally appointed leader of the staff guard of the SA sub-group Berlin (later SA group Berlin-Brandenburg ). In this capacity, he was responsible for protecting the headquarters of the SA group headquarters in Berlin and the NSDAP Gauleitung in Hedemannstrasse 10 (Gauhaus).

On September 12, 1931, Gewehr was involved in the anti-Jewish Kurfürstendamm riot ("Ku'damm pogrom") : As leader of the staff guard in the Gauhaus, he drove together with Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff, who had been leader of the Berlin SA since August 1931, and the Staff leader of the Berlin SA with an Opel convertible up and down the Ku'damm at a slow pace, while Ernst and Helldorff gave several hundred SA men who had gathered there instructions on how to proceed with the riots they had organized. Dozens of passers-by were beaten up and shops and cafes demolished. On September 15, 1931, Gewehr, like numerous other participants in the riots, was arrested for their involvement in the events of September 12, 1931 on suspicion of a breach of the peace. In the same month, more than thirty SA men, including Gewehr, were charged with offenses such as breach of the peace and bodily harm before the rapid lay judge's court in Charlottenburg: Gewehr was found guilty of breaching the peace with incitement to violence and was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment. The appeal proceedings before District Court III began in November 1931. After Gewehr, like most of the other defendants, was provisionally released from custody on December 24, 1931 because of the Christmas holiday, he was found innocent by the appeal judgment that passed in early February 1932 found and waived his sentence.

After his acquittal, Gewehr did not take over the leadership of the staff guard in the Berlin Gauhaus. The background to this was that he had in the meantime had a falling out with his sponsor Karl Ernst, who had taken his girlfriend away from him while he was in custody. Instead, Gewehr was put in charge of storm 101 in Berlin-Wedding. In the summer of 1932 he then spent a few months with the SA group in the center of Saxony-Anhalt, only to go into hiding for a few weeks at the end of 1932 because of stalking communist opponents.

In January 1933, Karl Ernst, with whom he had since reconciled himself, handed over the command of the SA Storm 21/9 in Berlin-Steglitz (Storm 21 at Standarte 9). His office was in an SA home on Makelstrasse. On October 5, 1933, he was promoted to SA Sturmhauptführer in this position.

In the spring of 1934, Gewehr spent a few months in Rome, where he reorganized the local SA of the local NSDAP foreign group.

On June 30, 1934, as part of the Röhm affair , Gewehr was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the putsch against the Nazi government allegedly prepared by parts of the SA. He spent several months imprisonment in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp and in the Lichtenburg concentration camp. On August 31, 1934, he was released again. In the following years he was reported wrongly on various occasions as having been shot in the course of the action.

After his release from prison, Gewehr was assigned to an SA relief agency camp in Gütergotz on September 15, 1934. He finally left the SA on March 31, 1935 with the rank of SA Obersturmbannführer.

Career in the police force (1935 to 1945)

On April 1, 1935, Gewehr joined the Feldjägerkorps affiliated to the Prussian Police as a military police officer. From September 23, 1935 to March 21, 1936, he completed a field hunter-leader candidate course in Berlin-Schöneberg, and then on April 1, 1936, he joined the regular police force with the rank of sergeant .

In the Schutzpolizei, rifle was promoted to lieutenant (April 20, 1936), first lieutenant (April 20, 1937), captain (April 20, 1938) and major of the protection police (April 20, 1943).

In addition to the active protection police service, Gewehr taught in the summer and autumn of 1937 as a teacher at the police school in Berlin-Schöneberg .

In May 1940, at Heinrich Himmler's personal decision, rifle was included in the Schutzstaffel (SS), the date of admission being subsequently set as April 20, 1938 (the day of his promotion to captain of the police force). He had applied for admission to the SS for the first time in January 1937, but at that time and in 1939 his application for admission had been postponed for the time being due to fundamental considerations connected with the organizational implementation of the gradual merging of the SS and the police. Due to his police rank as captain, rifle was promoted to the rank of Hauptsturmführer immediately with effect from the day of his admission in accordance with the principle of the equalization rank (which provided that SS members in the police service should receive an SS rank corresponding to their police rank).

From March 13 to April 27, 1938, Gewehr took part in the invasion of Austria by the German Wehrmacht as the leader of the Hundreds of Police Marching Group 4. In the following years he took part - again as a company commander - in several similar missions: for example in the fall of 1938 in the invasion of the Sudetenland , in the spring of 1939 in the invasion of the rest of the Czech Republic and finally in September 1939 in the occupation of Poland . He was then used as a police officer in Poland.

Archaeological finds from the 1990s show that Gewehr was personally involved in the organization and execution of prisoner shootings at least during his work in Poland in 1940. In a report from the Berlin police chief to the commander of the police on February 2, 1940, it says:

“When he was on duty in Poland as an officer, the rifle personally shot Polish prisoners in such a way that he killed the prisoners with a shot in the neck and recorded his distance with notches in the barrel of the pistol. I ask that this fact be made the subject of a detailed investigation. "

It was also reported that rifles in Poland had injured legs and personally killed three Jews.

There is no reliable information about rifle's activities during the further years of the war. Benjamin Hett assumes that Gewehr, who belonged to Police Battalion 304 in 1943/1944 , took part in "partisan fighting" actions in the occupied Soviet Union - for which police units in the east were usually used. As part of these measures, several 100,000 people were killed as alleged partisans in Eastern Europe, the majority of which were actually killed because the people in question belonged to population groups (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, etc.) that the National Socialists disliked, and these victims then only for formal concealment officially declared as "partisans". In addition, many hundreds of thousands of other people were arrested by the police battalions and deported to Western Europe as work slaves .

In April 1944, the rifle unit in the Lviv area was destroyed, which is why the rifle was believed to be dead by some of the conspirators of July 20, 1944, who intended to use it as a witness to the criminal nature of the regime after a successful coup. As a result, Hans Bernd Gisevius testified before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1946 that after a communication from Arthur Nebe to him, Gisevius, in the summer of 1944, the rifle had perished shortly before in the east.

In the SS, after his admission to the SS, rifle was first formally listed in the staff of the SS Personnel Main Office, then, with effect from April 30, 1941, assigned to the staff of the SS Upper Section North Sea and then, with effect from January 1 In 1944, he was relieved of this position and instead led the staff of SS Section XIV until the end of the war.

post war period

At the end of the war, the rifle was captured by the Americans and initially housed in the Hammelburg camp near Kissingen . He was later interned in a camp near Moosburg near Freising . As a member of the Freising Bridge Construction Work Command (Zug Moosburg-Freising), Gewehr was finally able to flee from internment on March 4, 1947. Investigations about this were stopped on December 23, 1948. According to its own account, the rifle lived under the code name Peter Jäger until the amnesty of December 1949, after the judgment of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court "until 1950 with forged papers under the name Peter Schäfer" in Düsseldorf. After that he had proper papers issued in his real name again. Gewehr then lived as a building contractor in Düsseldorf , where he and a partner led the independent engineering association Gewehr-Morisse (without actually being an engineer himself).

Rifle's alleged role in the Reichstag fire of 1933

After the Second World War , Hans Bernd Gisevius brought the rifle into connection with the Reichstag fire of February 1933 in his book Until the bitter end : Gisevius claimed there that the rifle, as a technical expert, was part of a ten-member SA commando that was launched on February 28, 1933 through an underground tunnel between the Reichstag President's Palace was invaded and the Reichstag in the Reichstag building and the local fire had laid. Gisevius also presented his version of the Reichstag fire on April 25, 1946 under oath as a witness in the Nuremberg war crimes trial. His research had shown that all SA men involved in the fire had been murdered in the course of the Röhm putsch - except for Heini Gewehr, who was killed as a police officer on the Eastern Front.

The public prosecutor's office in Düsseldorf finally initiated an investigation against the rifle in 1960 for “suspected participation in the Reichstag fire”. After no further signs or evidence of involvement of the rifle in the fire could be found, the case was closed on January 4, 1962 by the public prosecutor's office. Gewehr took legal action against Gisevius 'allegations in the so-called "small Reichstag fire trial" by suing for the omission and revocation of Gisevius' allegations. The Düsseldorf Regional Court ruled that although publicists and scientists were allowed to refer to Gisevius' assertion, they were at the same time obliged to ensure that the protection of Gewehr's honor "is duly taken into account and that the circumstances in his favor are pointed out" . Claims for compensation by Gewehr against Gisevius, the Henri Nannen publishing house and the editor-in-chief of the time , Josef Müller-Marein , continued through various instances until 1969: On February 25, 1969, a settlement was finally made with the Nannen publishing house: After that The publisher paid Gewehr DM 30,000. On December 3, 1969, Gisevius was sentenced to pay Gewehr damages in the amount of DM 56,307 minus the 30,000 already paid by the publisher, i.e. a total of DM 26,307 plus interest. The cost of the trial was saddled to 8/9 rifle.

Promotions

Promotions in the SA :

• October 5, 1933: SA Hauptsturmführer

Promotions in the police force :

• April 1, 1936 with effect from April 20, 1936: Lieutenant in the protection police
• April 1, 1937 with effect from April 20, 1937: First Lieutenant in the Schutzpolizei
• April 20, 1938: Captain of the Schutzpolizei
• 1943: Major in the security police

Promotions in the SS

• April 20, 1938: SS-Hauptsturmführer (admitted to the SS with effect from this date - day of promotion to captain in the police force)
• January 30, 1939: SS-Sturmbannführer

marriage and family

Gewehr was married and had two daughters.

estate

Documents on the rifle have been preserved in the Federal Archives. In particular, the holdings of the former Berlin Document Center contain a PK file on the rifle (microfilm D 44, images 2649–2690), a file from the SS Race and Settlement Main Office on him and an SS personal file (SSO microfilm 11-A , Figs. 700 to 746).

literature

• Alexander Bahar , Wilfried Kugel : The Reichstag fire. How history is made . edition q, Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-86124-513-2 , especially pp. 564–587 (until the Reichstag fire) and pp. 787–792 (after the end of the war).
• Benjamin Carter Hett : Burning the Reichstag. An investigation into the Third Reich's enduring mystery . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-019932232-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Bahar, Wilfried ball: The Reichstag fire. How history is made . Berlin 2001, p. 566 f.
2. ↑ Alexander Bahar, Wilfried ball: The Reichstag fire. How history is made . Berlin 2001, p. 579.
3. ↑ Alexander Bahar, Wilfried ball: The Reichstag fire. How history is made . Berlin 2001, p. 788.
4. ↑ Alexander Bahar, Wilfried ball: The Reichstag fire. How history is made . Berlin 2001, p. 564, p. 574 and p. 582.
5. ^ The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946 , Vol. 12, Nuremberg 1947, pp. 276ff .; see Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel: Der Reichstagbrand. How history is made . Berlin 2001, p. 542ff.
6. ↑ Lars Broder-Keil: Deutsche Legenden , 2002, p. 53.
7. ^ Trial of the Reichstag fire, Before a Düsseldorf court: Heini Gewehr versus Hans Bernd Gisevius In: Die Zeit , December 9, 1960; Reichstag fire, The Last Witness At: DER SPIEGEL , January 25, 1961.