Heinrich Reiser (Gestapo)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Josef Reiser (born October 17, 1899 in Ehingen ; † after 1963) was a German SS officer and employee of the Secret State Police and the SD . From 1950 on he was a secret service employee of the Gehlen organization and the resulting Federal Intelligence Service .

Life

Training and activities until 1930

Reiser was the son of a bricklayer. He was raised Catholic and first attended the local elementary school. Since the family lived under financially limited conditions, the gifted Reiser was sent in May 1913 for further training in an Italian branch of the men's order of the Fratelli delle Scuole Cristiane in Favria near Turin . There he learned alongside Italian and French and English . After Italy entered the First World War on the side of the Entente , Reiser was expelled from the country as an undesirable foreigner. In Germany he first worked for the Patriotic Aid Service . In 1917 he became a soldier and was taken prisoner by the English, from which he was released in 1919. Until 1920 he was in a military hospital .

After attending commercial school, Reiser learned the profession of electrician in Stuttgart . Afterwards he lived and worked as a technician and businessman abroad for several years, from 1927 in Brazil . Having become unemployed due to the global economic crisis , Reiser returned to Germany penniless in 1931. The attempt to become self-employed failed, Reiser was only able to interrupt his unemployment occasionally by doing temporary work.

SS man and Gestapo officer 1931–1945

In 1931 Reiser became a member of the SS (SS number 21.844) and on February 1, 1932 of the NSDAP ( membership number 887.100). He resigned from the church. On September 20, 1933, as an unemployed SS man, he was assigned to the Political Police , later the Gestapo , in Stuttgart as an auxiliary police officer. This is how Reiser's “real career” began, according to the historian Michael Stolle , because “he understood in good time to bet on the right horse in crisis-ridden Germany”:

According to the social historian Christoph Rass , Heinrich Reiser worked in the following years, despite his relatively low SS rank, “in important positions in the Nazi power apparatus”. In July 1935, he was as untersturmführer deputy head of the department Württemberg at Sicherheitsdienst , 1936 obersturmführer and on March 1, 1939 Chief Inspector. From March to September 1939 Reiser was then deputy head of the Jewish section of the Gestapo Karlsruhe . In 1939 Reiser was posted to the "Stossberg" task force in Tábor, Czech Republic . Until October 1940 he took over the management of the Gestapo branch there. He was then transferred to occupied Paris , where until 1942, as SS-Hauptsturmführer, he was in charge of the “Abwehr-Communism-Marxism” department at the commander of the Security Police and the SD .

From November 1942 on, Reiser was with the Paris Red Orchestra Special Command , which was headed by SS-Hauptsturmführer and Kriminalrat Karl Giering and was looking for Soviet spies. The suspects arrested during the manhunt were mistreated by the Sonderkommando. Reiser himself claims to have only “dealt with police matters” during the investigation. When Giering, suffering from cancer, had to give up his post in the summer of 1943, Reiser briefly took over the management of the Paris Special Command until Heinz Pannwitz, who had come from the Berlin headquarters, took over management in August 1943 .

From mid-1943 to 1945, after returning to the Gestapo Karlsruhe, Reiser was head of the special commissioner Reiser , with whom he took action against a resistance organization made up of Soviet forced laborers . This resulted in "extremely brutal torture" and " special treatment ", ie the murder of forced laborers. Shortly before the end of the war, he was still a few months in a Volksgrenadier division , with which he was taken prisoner by the French in 1945 .

post war period

Heinrich Reiser was transferred to France after his capture, where he was questioned by the secret service. In July 1949, however, he was released to Germany without trial. Due to an investigation initiated by the Karlsruhe public prosecutor on suspicion of abuse and murder of slave laborers, Reiser was arrested a little later, but released from custody in the spring of 1950 due to insufficient evidence. In 1951 he went through his denazification process without any problems .

Immediately after his release, at the beginning of April 1950, Reiser was recruited by Alfred Benzinger for the Gehlen Organization (OG) (as V-2629 , code names Hans Reiher, Hans Roesner, Hugo Reger, Hugo Hoss, Hans Reichardt ). Outwardly he appeared as an industrial clerk and electrician. Within the OG Reiser was at the Karlsruhe General agency L busy. Initially an investigator, he later became the deputy head of a branch and from February 1957 headed his own investigative group in Stuttgart.

While in French custody in 1948, Reiser spread the rumor that the Red Orchestra was only "seemingly dead" and could be reactivated by the Soviet Union at any time. The British secret service and the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) then tried in vain to recruit Reiser as "specialists". Reiser also succeeded in convincing the OG boss Reinhard Gehlen of the continued existence of this espionage organization and carried out investigations against former members of the "Red Orchestra" in the 1950s. To this end, he recruited other former Gestapo employees.

In 1963, Reiser was one of 146 members of the BND to be checked for his Nazi past by organizational unit 85, which was set up specifically for this purpose . Reiser admitted his involvement in the execution of forced laborers during his time with the Gestapo in Karlsruhe. However, he was not dismissed immediately, but rather on leave in the summer of 1964 until he reached the statutory retirement age in October 1964. Reiser was never held accountable for his role in the “Third Reich”.

literature

  • Christoph Rass: Life and Legend. The social profile of a secret service. In: Jost Dülffer et.al. (Ed.): The history of the Gehlen organization and the BND 1945–1968. Outlines and insights. Documentation of the conference on December 2, 2013 (UHK-BDN, studies; 2). Marburg 2014, pp. 26–41 ISBN 978-3-9816000-1-8 ( PDF , 2.2 MB).
  • Michael Stolle: The Secret State Police in Baden. Personnel, organization, effect and aftermath of a regional prosecution authority in the Third Reich. UVK Universitätsverlag, Konstanz 2001 ISBN 978-3-89669-820-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First name also as Josef Reiser and Josef Heinrich Reiser , nickname "Heini" according to Norman JW Goda: Tracking the Red Orchestra. Allied Intelligence, Soviet Spies, Nazi Criminals. In: Richard Breitman et al .: US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge 2005, pp. 293-316, here p. 207.
  2. ↑ According to Christoph Rass, the family emigrated to Italy ( life and legend. The social profile of a secret service. In: Jost Dülffer et.al. (ed.): The history of the organization Gehlen and the BND 1945–1968. Outlines and insights. Marburg 2014, pp. 26–41, here: pp. 27 f.)
  3. ^ A b c d Michael Stolle: The Secret State Police in Baden. Konstanz 2001, p. 166, 361.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Christoph Rass: Life and legend. The social profile of a secret service. In: Jost Dülffer et.al. (Ed.): The history of the Gehlen organization and the BND 1945–1968. Outlines and insights. Marburg 2014, pp. 26–41, here: pp. 27 f.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Complete reintegration? The former Gestapo employees from 1950 , on geschichtsort-hotel-silber.de (House of History Baden-Württemberg) (accessed on September 20, 2014).
  6. ↑ Quotes from: Michael Stolle: Die Geheime Staatspolizei in Baden. Konstanz 2001, p. 166.
  7. ^ A b Michael Stolle: The Secret State Police in Baden. Konstanz 2001, p. 361.
  8. ^ Donal O'Sullivan: Dealing with the Devil. Anglo-Soviet Intelligence Cooperation During the Second World War. New York et al. a. 2010, p. 255.
  9. ↑ Leopold Trepper : The truth. Munich 1975, passim, quotation p. 409; Heinz Höhne : 'ptx calls moscow'. The history of the "Red Chapel" spy ring . 3. Continuation. In: Der Spiegel No. 24 v. June 10, 1968, pp. 98-110, especially p. 109; Johannes Tuchel : The Gestapo special commission "Red Chapel" . In: Hans Coppi , Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel: The Red Chapel in the Resistance to National Socialism. Berlin 1994, pp. 145-159.
  10. ^ Michael Stolle: The Secret State Police in Baden. Konstanz 2001, p. 361 & p. 207 (there also the quote).
  11. ↑ According to Michael Stolle Reiser lived 1945-1947 "under the wrong job title in Ravensburg" ( Die Geheime Staatspolizei in Baden. Konstanz 2001, p. 361).
  12. ↑ Research Aid: Cryptonyms and Terms in Declassified CIA Files Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Disclosure Acts (IWG, June 2007), p. 50 ( PDF 412 kB; accessed on September 2, 2013).
  13. ^ Norman JW Goda: Tracking the Red Orchestra. Allied Intelligence, Soviet Spies, Nazi Criminals. In: Richard Breitman et al .: US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge 2005, pp. 293-316, here pp. 206 f.
  14. ↑ cf. Peter Carstens: Nazi criminals in the BND: a "second denazification" . In: FAZ v. March 18, 2010 (accessed September 12, 2014).
personal data
SURNAME Reiser, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reiser, Heinrich Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer as well as employees of the Secret State Police and the SD
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Ehingen
DATE OF DEATH after 1963