Heinz Cohrs

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Herbert Wilhelm Heinrich 'Heinz' Cohrs (born March 18, 1896 in Chemnitz , † after 1960) was a German political functionary and SS leader. He became known, among other things, as one of the defendants in the post-war trial for the murder of French Major General Gustave Mesny in January 1945.

Life and activity

Earlier years and World War I

Cohrs was a son of the businessman and factory owner Wilhelm Cohrs and his wife Hildegard. His maternal grandfather Theodor Wollmann was a privy councilor in the Foreign Office. As a child he was given up for education in the Prussian cadet corps: From 1909 to 1914 he attended the cadet institute in Karlsruhe, before moving to the main cadet institute in Lichterfelde in 1914.

When the First World War broke out , Cohrs joined the Field Artillery Regiment No. 18 as an ensign on August 2, 1914 , with whom he took part in the war on various fronts for four years until 1918. Among other things he came with the aforementioned regime on the Aisne (1914), in Soissons (1915), in Verdun, on the Somme and Champagne (1916), on the Aisne, in the Champagne, in Galicia (1917), La Ferde and in St. Quentin (1918). In 1915 he was briefly transferred to Field Artillery Regiment No. 17 with which he took part in battles in Poland. Due to injuries he spent the last months of the war buying horses in the Ukraine.

In January 1915, Cohrs reached the rank of lieutenant. He was wounded twice during the war - on November 2, 1916 near Verdun (gas poisoning and leg shot) and in March 1918 in St. Quentin (buttock) - and was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes and the Silesian Eagle of both classes.

Life from 1919 to 1930

After the war Cohrs was until 1920 a volunteer corps to, with whom he is on border patrol East in securing the disputed border areas between Germans and Poles in Silesia involved. 1920 Cohrs retired from the military with the rank of first lieutenant a. D. off.

During the Weimar Republic, Cohrs made his way as a commercial clerk, propagandist and journalist.

In 1928 Cohrs first came into contact with the NSDAP while traveling through Austria . He then joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), the street combat group of the NSDAP , in 1930 , before becoming a member of the party itself in 1931 ( membership number 363.179).

Activity in Austria (1930 to 1933)

Cohrs had been based in Vienna since October 1930, and from 1931 at the latest he appeared publicly as a propaganda and advertising speaker for this party at numerous NSDAP events. B. Nothing new at protest rallies against the film In the West . He also wrote articles for numerous National Socialist newspapers, in particular the battle cry .

At the beginning of 1931 Cohrs became a full-time functionary in the service of the NSDAP and the SA: In that year he became staff leader of the Vienna SA. On April 15, 1932, he was promoted to SA Sturmführer by the Führer order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 9. Cohrs retained his position as staff leader of the Vienna SA until the beginning of 1933, when he was deposed at the instigation of Karl Leon Du Moulin-Eckart, who had been appointed the new leader of the SA group in Vienna in autumn 1932 .

In May 1933 the Reich government appointed Cohrs as a member of the German embassy in Vienna with the function of an assistant to the press attaché Theodor Habicht . The background to this measure was that he was formally conferring the rank of official German diplomat in Vienna in his work in Austria - the undermining of the then existing political system in the Alpine republic to prepare the domestic political soil for a long-term from the Nazi leadership The planned annexation of the same by the German Reich and naturally included numerous illegal activities - better to protect against expected measures by the Austrian security authorities, since it was assumed that he would be immune from police measures and criminal prosecution due to the immunity traditionally associated with the diplomatic status which in turn would make him an even more effective agent in the German cause.

In connection with acts of terrorism committed by NSDAP supporters in Austria in June 1933, a house search of Cohr's apartment in Vienna was carried out on June 13, 1933, during which extensive propaganda material was discovered and confiscated. He was then arrested despite his diplomatic passport. After a short pre-trial detention, the government had him expelled from the country at the end of the month: on June 19 or 22, 1933, he was deported from Aspern Airport by express plane from Vienna to Berlin .

In Germany he was appointed a member of the national leadership of the NSDAP region Austria and political leader. In the following years he appeared as a speaker in connection with Austrian issues within the Reich.

At the end of 1934 Cohrs took a position at the Reich Propaganda Office of the German Labor Front (DAF). He remained in this position until August 1936. In this position he held the position of liaison between the DAF propaganda office and the Reich leadership of the NSDAP in Munich for six months.

In August 1936, Cohrs gave up his position at the DAF in order to take on a leading position in the Reich leadership of the National Socialist War Victims Supply (NSKOV). In addition to this, he had held the position of district chairman in Potsdam since October 1, 1936 .

In 1937 the leader of the war victims' supply, Hanns Oberlindober , proposed him as liaison leader between the NSKOV and the SS. After SS chief Heinrich Himmler had given his consent, Cohrs - who had been trying to be admitted to the SS since autumn 1936 - was admitted to the SS on January 30, 1938 by order of Himmler (SS no. 289,383), in who was promoted to the rank of SS Sturmbannführer on the same day in line with his SA rank. According to the list, he was listed within the SS with the staff of the SS main office (on November 1, 1941, he was assigned to the staff of the SS personnel main office).

Also from 1937 Cohrs was in cooperation with the Foreign Defense Office .

Second World War

On June 1, 1940 Cohrs joined the Reichsheer, in which he received the rank of captain. He then headed the Volkmann secret service before he worked at the Fremde Heere Ost headquarters in 1942 . He then did service in Panzer Army 1. In 1943 he suffered a serious car accident, as a result of which he spent a year in hospital treatment.

After his recovery, Cohrs was transferred to the Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief for Belgium and Northern France on September 8, 1944.

On October 26, 1944, Cohrs was assigned to the staff department of the SS Personnel Main Office in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, where he was assigned to Department IIa. The formal transfer to this department took effect on November 14, 1944.

With effect from December 12, 1944 [December 20], Cohrs resigned from the Wehrmacht at his own request in order to join the Waffen SS , in which he received the rank of Hauptsturmführer of the reserve.

On January 16, 1945, Cohrs participated in the murder of the prisoner- of- war French Major General Mesny , who was forced to leave the car while driving from Königstein Fortress to Colditz Castle after a simulated breakdown, whereupon he was shot at the roadside.

post war period

In November 1959, German authorities issued an arrest warrant against Cohrs for his role in the killing of Mesny in 1945. He initially remained in custody until February 1960. In May 1960 the chief public prosecutor in Essen brought charges against him and the former chief of staff of the German prisoner-of-war system, Fritz Meurer , who had planned the murder of Mesny, the former state secretary in the Foreign Office, Horst Wagner and a certain Schulze. While Meurer and Schulze denied their involvement in the crime, Cohrs admitted his role, but cited an orderly emergency . The investigation against him and the others dragged on and was eventually dropped without conviction.

family

Since August 11, 1934, Cohrs was married to Anna Elisabeth von Dressler (born December 3, 1912), a daughter of Rittmeister Walter von Dressler , who, together with Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn , the commander of the German occupation forces in the Ukraine, was with a Bomb attack in Kiev in the summer of 1918. From this marriage daughter Kathrin (born October 21, 1939) was born.

He had previously been married to his first marriage. This marriage, from which the daughter Gisela (born April 16, 1923) emerged, was later divorced.

literature

  • Michael E. Holzmann: The Austrian SA and its illusion of "Grossdeutschland" , 2011.
  • Sebastian Weitkamp: "Anatomy of a war crime - the murder of General Maurice Mesny in January 1945", in: Ders .: Brown diplomats. Horst Wagner and Eberhard von Thadden as functionaries of the “Final Solution”, JHW Dietz, Bonn 2008, pp. 327–370, also 371–386 and 409–416.