Walter Heeß

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Walter Heeß (born December 30, 1901 in Ludwigsburg , † after May 1, 1945, declared dead by the Berlin-Zehlendorf District Court on December 2, 1951 ) was head of the Forensic Institute of the Security Police (KTI) in Amt V in the National Socialist German Reich ( Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (RKPA)) of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).

Life

Origin and studies

Heeß was born on December 30, 1901 in Ludwigsburg as the son of a superstructure inspector in a middle-class family. In Stuttgart , Heeß studied chemistry at the Technical University and joined the Stuttgart Wingolf in 1920 . He passed his diploma examination with the grade "good" and received his doctorate in May 1925 with distinction as Dr.-Ing. After a year as a lecture assistant, in September 1926 he took up an employment as a trainee in the chemical investigation office of the city of Stuttgart. Despite his training as a food chemist , his professional interest was in forensic technology , which he got to know in the relevant department of his office.

On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP and in the summer of 1933 the SA . He expressed his party political commitment through his function as block leader of the local group Weissenhof from 1936 until he moved to Berlin in 1938 . In February 1935, he took over the management of the department for forensic chemistry and forensic technology at the Stuttgart State Chemical Institute. Here he worked, among other things, on the chemical readability of hidden fonts and on the age determination of ink fonts using the sulfate image. Walter Heeß completed his habilitation in 1937 with a thesis on the latter topic .

In the Forensic Institute

The technical skills and his political proficiency were not only noticed by the National Socialist government in Württemberg , but also aroused attention in Berlin . In April 1938 he was appointed head of the new Forensic Science Institute (KTI) of the Security Police in the Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA) and remained in this post until the end of the war. The RKPA formed the Office V in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which was newly created in 1939, and was headed by SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Police Arthur Nebe .

The CTI emerged from the department for forensic chemistry and forensic technology of the Stuttgart State Chemical Institute, so that Heeß should take over its management. Within the RKPA located on Werderscher Markt in Berlin , the KTI located on the 4th floor, but spatially separated from it, assumed a special position. It was filled exclusively with doctorates, remarkably young scientists. Using the latest technical instruments and means, the institute worked on the identification of tool and fiber traces, on the investigation of incendiary and firearm traces, the forgery of documents, the analysis of blood and sperm samples and the like using modern scientific methods. In 1939 the CTI prepared over 1,100 reports, in 1941 it had already more than 2,500. The CTI was the supreme authority for all questions of forensic technology and was also dedicated to training criminal police officers from regional offices. This instruction in the latest forensic methods should enable an initial investigation on site.

After the reorganization of the Reich Main Security Office at the beginning of 1941, the KTI was organized as Office Group D in Office V (Combating Crime) under Arthur Nebe as follows:

  • VD (Kriminaltechnisches Institut der Sipo): SS-Sturmbannführer and Oberregierungs- und Kriminalrat Walter Heeß
    • VD 1 (trace identification): SS-Hauptsturmführer and Kriminalrat Walter Schade
    • VD 2 (chemistry and biology): SS-Untersturmführer Albert Widmann
    • VD 3 (certificate examination): Chief Detective Felix Wittlich

Heeß, who had also been a member of the SS since 1939 , fully proved himself in his function. His chief officer Arthur Nebe described him in his promotion proposal of January 30, 1943 to SS-Standartenführer as “a purposeful personality full of character. As a result of his special talent and his tireless diligence, he has achieved excellent results in all areas of modern forensic technology. Under his leadership, the Forensic Institute of the Security Police received a recognized leading position. "

Already in the late summer of 1938, Heeß brought the 26-year-old chemist Albert Widmann, who was already known to him as the federal brother of the Stuttgart Wingolf and who worked at the Organic-Pharmaceutical Institute of the Technical University, to his institute in Berlin and hired him as a research assistant for the Department of Chemistry. Widmann headed the relevant department, designated VD 2 (chemistry and biology) in 1941, until the end of the war.

Consultant and gas supplier for the T4 campaign

With the beginning of the planning and preparatory work for Action T4 , the scheduled killing of the mentally ill and the disabled, the CTI, especially Albert Widmann's presentation, was approached with suggestions for a suitable killing method and finally as a supplier of the large quantities of Poison and carbon monoxide gas were included for the first time in the inner circle of the National Socialist extermination policy.

Development of the gas truck

Heeß and Widmann also worked out an effective method of killing the mentally ill in the conquered eastern regions . The possibility was discussed of using car exhaust gases to poison the victims instead of the difficult transport of carbon monoxide gas cylinders over long distances . Arthur Nebe and Heeß therefore suggested to the head of the Reich Security Main Office, Reinhard Heydrich , to use mobile gas chambers by equipping trucks with a gas-tight box body. The car exhaust fumes could then be introduced into the box body with a hose. Heydrich accepted this proposal and commissioned the head of Office Group II D (Technical Affairs), SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff , with the technical implementation at the end of September or beginning of October 1941 . This forwarded the order to SS-Hauptsturmführer and captain of the Schupo Friedrich Padel, the head of the department II D 3 (motor vehicles of the security police). A few weeks later in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp with a prototype of the gas truck , Heeß took part in the first “test gassing”, as well as employees Theodor Friedrich Leiding and Helmut Hoffmann and other SS officers. Before the public prosecutor's office in Düsseldorf , Leiding described this process as follows in 1959:

“One day I was asked to go to Sachsenhausen. Besides me, Dr. Heeß and I believe other members of the CTI with ...

A large group of naked men came out of the barracks and had to get into the truck. It may also be that the men had to undress in front of the barracks. The men got into the truck as if you were getting into a bus. Apparently they had no idea what to do with them. The number of men who got into the car may have been thirty. Then the car drove away ...

I was also told that the people who got into the car were Russians and would otherwise have had to be shot. They wanted to see if they could be killed that way. We then went to another place where we found the car again. It now turned out that one could look into the car through a peephole or window, which was lit. You could see that the people were dead. Then the car was opened. Some bodies fell out, the others were unloaded by inmates. As chemists determined, the corpses had the pinkish-red appearance typical of people who have died of carbon monoxide poisoning. "

Together with Albert Widmann, Heeß wrote a report on the “trial gasification” for Heydrich, who then placed the order for the production of further gas vans. The necessary tests were carried out by the CTI, which Albert Widmann assigned for this purpose.

Heeß was a typical representative of a radical group of perpetrators in the KTI who made its special position in the RKPA and who neither knew nor accepted the conventional limits of police work. For example, Heeß said to his head of division VD 1, Walter Schade , that in total war one could not afford to feed the terminally ill if space and nursing staff were also urgently needed for hospitals. Heeß had previously attended a gassing of sick people in the T4 killing center in Sonnenstein .

Heeß left the Evangelical Church in the early 1940s.

After the war

Walter Heeß went into hiding at the beginning of May 1945. His wife and her children had previously killed themselves with poison. At the request of his sister, Heeß was declared dead by the Berlin-Zehlendorf district court by decision of December 2, 1951.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, Adalbert Rückerl (ed.): National Socialist mass killings through poison gas. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-24353-X , pp. 83f
personal data
SURNAME Heeß, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German policeman, head of the Forensic Institute (KTI) in Office V in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludwigsburg
DATE OF DEATH after May 1, 1945