Helmut Brümmer-Patzig

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Helmut Brümmer-Patzig (born October 26, 1890 in Danzig ; † March 11, 1984 , also called Helmut Patzig ) was a German submarine commander in the First and Second World Wars .

Imperial Navy

Brümmer-Patzig joined the Imperial Navy as a member of Crew 10 in April 1910 and was promoted to lieutenant at sea on April 27, 1913 after completing the relevant training . Until November 1915 he served on board the Pomeranian liner . Then he switched to the submarine weapon. From November 1915 to September 1917 he served as an officer on watch on UA and on U 55 . On March 22, 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . On January 26, 1918, he took over the submarine U 86 as commander .

The name Brümmer-Patzigs is associated with a war crime of the First World War: after the sinking of the HMHS Llandovery Castle, marked as a hospital ship, on June 27, 1918, he ordered the survivors to be shot in the boats in order to eliminate the witnesses. On July 11, 1918, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords, after he had already received the Iron Cross Second (May 11, 1916) and First Class (March 6, 1917).

On August 1, 1918, he switched to U 90 , which he commanded until the end of the war. With these two boats he sank a total of 24 ships with a total of 89,318 GRT ; another ship with 5189 GRT was damaged.

After the end of the war he was adopted in November 1919, but in February 1920 he was still a lieutenant captain . D. promoted.

Prosecution

In 1921 Brümmer-Patzig was supposed to be brought to justice before the Reichsgericht for the war crimes committed in the context of the Leipzig trials , but escaped the trial by fleeing. He was initially in the absence sentenced to four years in prison, which he did not was serving. His officers accused of assisting in the bombardment of lifeboats, Oberleutnants zur See Karl Dithmar and John Boldt, were each sentenced to four years in prison for aiding and abetting manslaughter. As a justification, the Reichsgericht stated that the prohibition on killing defenseless enemies and shipwrecked people was to be regarded as a simple and generally known rule of international law, the applicability of which there could be no factual doubt, so that the officers could not refer to the orders of their superiors. A retrial against Brümmer-Patzig from 1926 was set on March 20, 1931, so that the war crime, as regards his person, went unpunished.

Navy

In September 1937 Brümmer-Patzig was reactivated as Kapitänleutnant dRzV and promoted to Korvettenkapitän dRzV on December 1, 1939 . From February to June 1940 he served in the staff of the BdU , then in other staff positions. On 28 January 1941 he took over the submarine U D4 , which on 14 May 1940 in Rotterdam fallen into German hands, and on 23 May 1940 by stacks spilled former Dutch Ø 26 . The boat was used as a training and test boat with the 1st U-Flotilla , from May 1941 with the 3rd U-Flotilla and from August 1941 with the 5th U-Flotilla , both in Kiel , and did not undertake any enemy voyages. On September 1, 1940, Brümmer-Patzig received the 1939 repeat clasp for the Iron Cross 2nd Class 1914. On October 15, 1941, he handed the boat over to Corvette Captain Rudolf Singule and was then back in the staff service until March 1943. From April 1943 to April 9, 1945 he was in charge of the 26th U-Flotilla , a training flotilla that was in Pillau until February 1945 and then in Warnemünde . In this position he received the War Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords on April 20, 1943 and was promoted to frigate captain on February 1, 1944 .

literature

  • Rainer Busch & Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945 , Bd. 1, The German U-Boat Commanders . Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg, 1996, ISBN 3-8132-0490-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerd Hankel: The prohibition of killing in war: An attempted intervention. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2010, p. 4 u. Note 8.
  2. ^ Walter Schwengler: International law, Versailles Treaty and the question of extradition. Prosecution for war crimes as a problem of the 1919/20 peace treaty . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1982.
personal data
SURNAME Brümmer-Patzig, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Patzig, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German frigate captain
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1984