Heinz Graefe

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Heinz Paul Otto Gräfe (born July 15, 1908 in Leipzig ; † January 25, 1944 near Munich in a car accident) was SS-Obersturmbannführer as Oberregierungsrat in the Reich Security Main Office and leader of Einsatzkommandos 1 of Einsatzgruppe V of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police in German-occupied Poland .

Origin, school and studies

Heinz Gräfe was born on July 15, 1908 in Leipzig . His father Paul Graefe was a bookseller in the bookstore founded by his father Emil Graefe in 1884. Paul Graefe was killed on the Western Front in Flanders in November 1914 . The single mother had three children to support as a postal secretary in difficult times.

From 1915 Heinz Gräfe attended the Realgymnasium in Leipzig, which he left as the best of his class in 1928 with the Abitur. He financed his law studies at the University of Leipzig with a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation . There he was involved as a board member of the student body .

On August 31, 1929, he met his future wife at a birthday party. She came from a middle-class merchant family, graduated from high school in 1930 and began training as a librarian in the autumn of the same year. The engagement took place on August 31, 1932.

A group of friends of five young students, who were active in the economic self-help of the student body and named themselves “Black Hand”, met in the Graefesche apartment . Social and political issues also determined the interests of this circle. 1928 undertook Grafe a trip to Carinthia , Slovenia and in the Steiermark around here, ethnic German settlements to visit. In April 1929 he organized a 14-day conference in Miltenberg , on which u. a. as a speaker the sociologist Hans Freyer (1887–1969) spoke. Topics were terms such as “ people ”, “ state ”, “ democracy ” and “parliamentarism”. In 1930 another conference took place, this time in Wertheim , at which the sociologist Gunther Ipsen (1899–1984) discussed the subject of “ capitalism and the modern social order” with the students. Among the student participants were several fellow students whom Gräfe would later meet again in important positions in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA); so Wilhelm Spengler , who later headed Group C (Culture) in Amt III of SD-Inland, and Erhard Mäding , who from 1942 worked as a consultant for landscape planning at the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum on the “ General Plan East ” and finally in 1944 after the Death of Heinz Gräfe head of Section III A 3 (constitution and administration) in the RSHA.

The Wertheim conference was criticized by the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) as a waste of money. The dispute between the NSDStB and the "Black Hand" worked for Grafe to 1938 and 1943 in its assessment by the SD Oberabschnitt North-East from where it "as an intellectual with a pronounced pacifist direction" and as an opponent of Nazism before the " takeover " was called.

At the security service (SD)

After Hitler's "seizure of power", Graefe approached the new forces by joining the Nazi Lawyers' Association . On June 15, 1933, however, he did not join another Nazi organization, but the student group of the " Stahlhelm " in Leipzig. This was also critically noted before he was accepted into the trial service of the Prussian internal administration. When the “Stahlhelm” was transferred to the SA or SS in the fall of 1933 as part of the Gleichschaltung , Gräfe had reached the new rulers. Now he had to decide whether to take part or stand aside. Despite his opposition to the NSDStB at Leipzig University, he was able to identify with the content of the NSDAP program (membership number 3,959,575), even if he rejected certain aspects of the Nazi movement that he described as plebeian .

Through the mediation of Erhard Mäding , who did his legal clerkship with Graefe at the Pirna District Court in 1933 and later became his brother-in-law, Graefe ended up in the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD), the party's intelligence service , at the end of 1933 . The small and elitist Nazi organization appeared to be a suitable vehicle for a political career in the face of future prospects. In his résumé in 1934, Graefe wrote that he belonged to the SD “with body and soul”. Here Gräfe and Mäding contributed to the establishment of an information network in Saxony in the area of ​​so-called life area work, i.e. the systematic observation of all areas of society .

At the Secret State Police (Gestapo)

After passing the assessor exam in August 1934 with the exceptional grade of “good”, Graefe joined the Gestapo at the end of 1935 and was assigned to the state police station (Stapostelle) in Kiel . After a nine-month trial period, Reinhard Heydrich appointed him to represent the head of the Kiel police station, Hans-Ulrich Geschke, because of his “outstanding skills and achievements” . After taking over the Prussian state service as a government assessor, Gräfe was transferred to Tilsit in October 1937 . As early as November 1937, he took over the Stapo position there as the successor to Walter Huppenkothen and thus also the SD sub-section Gumbinnen . Here he made contact with the Lithuanian security police and, after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in autumn 1939, with the anti-communist underground movement. Graefe helped with the efforts to repatriate Memelland , which was separated from Germany by the Versailles Treaty and occupied by Lithuania in 1923 , so that on March 22, 1939, Lithuania returned the Memelland to the German Reich.

In November 1938 Gräfe was appointed to the government council and in April 1939 promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer . In the personnel report of March 1939 by Graefes superior, the inspector of the Security Police (IdS) northeast and leader of the SD upper section northeast, SS-Brigadführer Jakob Sporrenberg , reservations were still expressed about his National Socialist convictions. According to this, Gräfe “definitely wanted to be considered NS, but perhaps wasn't completely convinced inside”. His professional achievements were fully recognized, but a more National Socialist and SS-like attitude was demanded.

At the task force of the security police in Poland

With the start of the attack on Poland , Graefe was used as the leader of the Einsatzkommando 1 / V in the context of the security police and SD operations in Poland with the code name “ Operation Tannenberg ”. The Einsatzkommando 1 (EK 1) marched as part of the Einsatzgruppe V after it was set up in the area of Allenstein / East Prussia under the leadership of SS-Standartenführer Ernst Damzog in the association of the 3rd Army of General Georg von Küchler, which belongs to the Army Group North ( Fedor von Bock ) from East Prussia into Poland in order to fulfill his task of liquidating the Polish leadership circles. In the uniform of the SS disposal force with the SD diamond on the left sleeve, Gräfe, as SS-Sturmbannführer, led his approximately 120-strong EK 1 to northern Poland. On September 7, 1939, Graefe reported that he had ordered a list of persons to be created by authorized Jewish representatives for the 600-member Jewish community of Graudenz in order to prepare for the emigration of the remaining Jews and to create an emigration fund . The male Jews had already fled Graudenz. Two Poles captured while looting were shot on instructions from Berlin. After four weeks (on September 28, 1939), Graefe was transferred to the RSHA in Berlin.

Between September 1939 and the spring of 1940, the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police liquidated 60,000 to 80,000 people in Poland.

In the Reich Security Main Office

At the beginning of February 1940, Walter Schellenberg named Gräfe as the chief authorized representative of Office VI (SD abroad) for the Baltic states. A year later, on April 1, 1941, Graefe became head of Office Group VI C (Russian-Japanese area of ​​influence) in the RSHA. At the end of June 1941, Graefe tried in vain to win over the Lithuanian General Rastikis , who emigrated to Berlin after the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States , for a collaboration government in Lithuania .

On October 21, 1941, Graefe was delegated to Amt IV of the RSHA, only to return to Amt VI C, which was located at Berkaer Strasse 32, by Heinrich Müller's order of March 4, 1942. Here he was assigned to the special section VI C / Z with the preparation and implementation of the " Zeppelin Company ". For this purpose, at the turn of the year 1941/42 he drafted the “Plan of an action for attempts at political disintegration in the Soviet Union”. Based on the knowledge that there were a large number of "valuable forces" among the Soviet prisoners of war who had declared their readiness for an anti-Soviet operation behind the front, Graefe presented a plan for recruiting, training and using agents to act as sabotage troops should deliberately destroy Soviet infrastructure facilities. The management of this action under the code name "Company Zeppelin" should lie exclusively with the RSHA. Hitler agreed to this plan. In close coordination with the High Command of the Wehrmacht , specially appointed SS leaders of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD selected suitable volunteers from prisoners of war from non-Russian peoples. After training in basic and special courses, a total of 104 agents were deployed from June 1942 to the end of September 1942, primarily as parachutists over the Caucasus . The ordered destruction of high-voltage lines, traffic routes, oil production systems, etc. could not be carried out without major technical effort, so that the action was only moderately successful. In July 1942, Gräfe handed over the management of Special Section VI C / Z to Dr. Rudolf Oebsger-Röder , which was finally headed by Walter Kurreck from March 1943 . On December 18, 1942, Graefe took part in a meeting in the East Ministry on future policy in the occupied eastern territories. a. also with the later conspirators of July 20 , Tresckow , Wagner , Schlabrendorff and Stauffenberg . Here he also shared the criticism put forward by the military of the policy practiced in the occupied eastern territories, which had failed all attempts to win the anti-Bolshevik forces for the German cause. At the time , however, Hitler categorically rejected armed combat or security groups from residents of the occupied territories .

At the end of 1943, the "Zeppelin Company" increasingly lost its importance, but was still organizationally maintained until 1945.

Graefe continued to maintain his connections to the Army High Command and the Eastern Ministry and gave a lecture on 19/20. January 1944 in Königsberg on the subject of "Intelligence work in the eastern area". A week later, he and the head of Office Group III A (legal system) of the RSHA, Karl Gengenbach , had a fatal accident in a car accident near Munich. After the accident, SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Hengelhaupt continued Gräfe's work.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Gräfe, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gräfe, Heinz Paul Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Obersturmbannführer and senior government councilor in the Reich Security Main Office
DATE OF BIRTH July 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1944
Place of death near Munich