Heinz Lammerding

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Heinz Lammerding

Heinz Bernard Lammerding , possibly Heinrich Bernhard Lammerding (born August 27, 1905 in Dortmund ; † January 13, 1971 in Bad Tölz ) was a German engineer and SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS . As the person primarily responsible for the massacre of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” against French civilians in Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle in June 1944 , he was sentenced to death in absentia by a French court; However, he went underground until 1958, when the federal government at that time did not extradite him to France , and after that there were no legal proceedings against him in the Federal Republic either.

Life

Lammerding studied civil engineering, but was initially unemployed. In 1931 he joined the SA and NSDAP ( membership number 722.395). In autumn 1933 he took part in a military sports course and became a consultant in the SA leadership in Berlin. He became head of the SA pioneer school. On April 1, 1935, he joined the SS (SS No. 247.062) and was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer in May . From November 1940 he was First General Staff Officer of the SS Totenkopf Division . After a brief period in the staff of a tank corps, he became chief of staff of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , the head of the gang fighting units.

Lammerding ordered the destruction of numerous villages and towns in the Soviet Union as a " measure of atonement " . At the end of 1943 he was given command of a combat group of the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" in partisan combat and on January 25, 1944, command of the entire division. According to Max Hastings , the appointment as division commander was due to his close personal relationship with Heinrich Himmler , as his military skills were insufficient. On July 25, 1944, Lammerding was wounded while inspecting the 2nd SS Panzer Regiment in Normandy. After his recovery he took over command of the 2nd SS Panzer Division again, until Himmler finally made him Chief of Staff of the " Army Group Vistula " on February 2, 1945 .

After the war he was charged with the massacres in Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle in France in June 1944 and sentenced to death in absentia by a military tribunal in Bordeaux for the murders in Tulle in 1951. In 1953, the French High Commissioner André François-Poncet sought extradition to the British High Commission and the request was the subject of a conversation between Foreign Ministers Georges Bidault and Anthony Eden . Eden showed little understanding for this and refused, saying that she had never heard of Lammerding. Nevertheless, Lammerding, at that time already a building contractor in Düsseldorf, saw it as necessary to go into hiding. When it was available again in 1958, the Basic Law forbade extraditing Germans abroad, and the transfer agreement that came into force in 1955 prevented, in the opinion of the German courts, for a long time an indictment for crimes that had already been tried before an Allied court (this regulation was not repealed until 1975 - after Lammerding's death). But that only concerned the Tulle massacre, in which Lammerding denied involvement; in the Oradour case he was investigated by the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office, but the proceedings were discontinued in 1964. There have been repeated diplomatic attempts by France to try him after all, especially after the historian Jacques Delarue published a book in 1968 on German crimes during the occupation of France with evidence of Lammerding's guilt. After the war, Lammerding lived as a successful building contractor in Düsseldorf and then enjoyed his retirement at Tegernsee . He died of cancer in 1971. 200 former SS comrades met at his funeral.

Awards

Promotions

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gregory L. Mattson, SS-Das Reich. The History of the Second SS Division, 1939-45. Staplehurst 2002. p. 182, ISBN 1-86227-144-5 .
  2. ^ Claudia Moisel: France and the German war criminals, Wallstein 2004, p. 189
  3. ^ Charles W. Sydnor: Soldiers of Death. The 3rd SS Division "Totenkopf" 1933–1945 , p. 117 u. P. 125, note 47.
  4. ↑ Max Hastings, Das Reich. The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division through France, June 1944. London 1981, p. 36, ISBN 0-330-48389-7 .
  5. ↑ James Lucas. The Empire. The Military Role of the 2nd SS Division. London 1991, ISBN 0-304-35199-7 , p. 138.
  6. ↑ Telephone from Tulle , Der Spiegel 48/1968
  7. ↑ Bruno Kartheuser: The inner front , Die Zeit 24/2014
  8. ↑ Claudia Moisel: France and the German war criminals, Wallstein 2004, p. 190
  9. ↑ Andrea Erkenbrecher and Martin Graf: Massacre in World War II - The day on which time stood still , Spiegel Online , June 10, 2014.
  10. ↑ Florence Hervé: Place of Pain. In: Junge Welt. Reprinted by the Federal Committee for Peace Research, June 7, 2014, accessed on May 16, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 490.
personal data
SURNAME Lammerding, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lammerding, Heinz Bernard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS group leader, war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1971
Place of death Bad Tölz