Herbert Kappler

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Herbert Kappler (1946)

Herbert Kappler (born September 29, 1907 in Stuttgart , † February 9, 1978 in Soltau ) was the commander of the Security Police (SiPo) and the SD in Rome during the National Socialist era . As the person responsible for the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves (Fosse Ardeatine) on March 24, 1944, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1948 and became a symbol of German war crimes in Italy during the Second World War .

Life

After training and studying mathematics at the Technical University of Stuttgart , Kappler initially worked as an electrical engineer in various companies in Württemberg . He joined the NSDAP on August 1, 1931 (membership number 594.899) and became a member of the SA and later of the SS (membership number 55.211) before it "came to power " . After a short period of unemployment, he became an auxiliary police officer for the Württemberg Political Police in June 1933 and from 1934 headed the Tübingen branch. In 1937 he passed his exam as a detective commissioner at the Berlin Police Academy .

Kappler came to Rome as early as the spring of 1939 as a liaison officer for the Italian police. In November 1939 he was temporarily in Berlin to interrogate the Bürgerbräu assassin Georg Elser . In 1942 he became a police attaché at the German embassy in Rome.

On September 10, 1943, Kappler took command of the Security Police and the SD in Rome and began to confiscate Jewish property. He planned the deportation of all Jews in Rome (approx. 8,000 to 10,000 people). On the night of October 15-16, 1943, he had 1,259 Jews arrested and 1,007 of them deported to Auschwitz . In a telex dated October 18 to Karl Wolff , the head of the SS Main Office Personal Staff Reichsführer SS , he boasted of his approach: "The action against Jews started and completed today according to the best possible office plan."

On September 26, 1943, Kappler had accepted 50 kilograms of gold from the community leaders for the promise that no member of Rome's Jewish community would be deported. The SS used such a combination of blackmail and deception against Jewish communities in other occupied countries as well.

Even before the Allies landed at Anzio on January 22, 1944, the SD had tried to suppress any resistance to the German occupying forces in Rome. For this purpose, the SD maintained an external command in a residential building in Rome (Via Tasso 145/155) that was notorious as a torture center.

Herbert Kappler was also responsible for the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves , in which 335 hostages were shot in March 1944. He not only increased the previously agreed number of victims by 10 on his own initiative, but also had five other people shot. To give an example, he and other higher SS leaders, including Erich Priebke , Karl Hass , Carl-Theodor Schütz and Hans Clemens, killed the first victims with a shot in the neck .

Kappler surrendered to the British military police in Bolzano in May 1945 . In 1947 he was handed over to the Italian military. On July 20, 1948, an Italian military court sentenced him to 15 years for the extortion of Jewish gold and life imprisonment for the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves. The court found that murder had been committed in all 335 cases. His co-accused subordinates were acquitted because they could not have recognized Kappler's order as unlawful. The judgment was upheld on October 25, 1952 by the Supreme Military Court of Italy.

Kappler claimed: " I only found out about the 'final solution' and ' extermination camps ' after 1945." Protective claims during his trial that he selected Jews for shooting because he did not want to have "no innocent people" killed make this seem highly unlikely. He had to serve his sentence in the fortress of Gaeta . Later requests for clemency by the Federal President, the Federal Chancellor, the Federal Foreign Minister, but also the German Bishops' Conference and the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany initially failed due to the attitude of the Italian government. The pardon finally given in 1976 by a military tribunal was revised by an ordinary court after public protests in Italy. In 1977 he was transferred to the Ospedale Militare Celio in Rome because of cancer . From there he managed to escape to Germany on August 15, 1977 with the help of his wife, whom he had met as a supporter while in prison and who had married in 1972. There was wild speculation about the circumstances of the escape. It was said that Kappler's wife roped him out of the hospital room on the third floor and then drove him across the border to Soltau. It is more likely that Kappler, who had been on parole since March 1976, and his wife simply left the hospital. The story probably served above all to protect the carabinieri who had to guard the Kappler.

Kappler's escape triggered a wave of protests in Italy and strained German-Italian relations . Kappler died a few months later. Up to 800 people attended his funeral in Soltau.

Others

The Irish priest and chamberlain to the Pope, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty , succeeded in setting up a secret aid organization for Jews, Italian soldiers and other persecuted people, which hid several thousand people from the occupation forces in monasteries and other quarters. Kappler tried to have him arrested and murdered. O'Flaherty later visited Kappler every month in prison. In 1959 Kappler converted to Catholicism and was baptized by O'Flaherty

The resistance fight of O'Flaherty against Kappler was filmed in 1983 under the title In the tropics of the cross with Christopher Plummer as Standartenführer Herbert Kappler and Gregory Peck in the role of Monsignore.

literature

  • Felix Nikolaus Bohr: Escape from Rome. The spectacular end of the “Kappler case” in August 1977. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012), pp. 111–141 ( digital copy ).
  • Felix Nikolaus Bohr: Investigation not desired. The planned “remaining proceedings” in the Herbert Kappler case: A testimony to German and Italian politics of the past (1959–1961) . In: European History Thematic Portal (2012), URL , (accessed: July 25, 2014).
  • Felix Nikolaus Bohr: The war criminals lobby. Federal German aid for Nazi perpetrators imprisoned abroad , Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin, 2018, ISBN 978-3-518-42840-5 .
  • JP Gallagher : The Monsignore and the Standard Leader (Original title: Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican: Hugh Joseph O'Flaherty ). German by Margreth Kees . Verlag Styria, Graz, Vienna, Cologne 1968, 229 pp.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , entry on Kappler, Herbert , p. 299.
  • Joachim Staron: Fosse Ardeatine and Marzabotto: German war crimes and resistance. History and national myth-making in Germany and Italy (1944–1999). Schöningh, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-506-77522-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingrid Bauz, Sigrid Brüggemann, Roland Maier (eds.): The Secret State Police in Württemberg and Hohenzollern. Stuttgart (Schmetterling-Verlag) 2013, pp. 95f.
  2. ↑ Elser and the commissioners
  3. ^ A b Quote from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 299
  4. ↑ Bohr, Escape from Rome , p. 114
  5. ^ Via Tasso. German Resistance Study Group 1933–1945, accessed on October 5, 2014 .
  6. ^ Bohr, Escape from Rome , p. 115
  7. ^ Gerhard Feldbauer : From Mussolini to Fini - The extreme right in Italy. Berlin 1996, p. 88
  8. ^ Bohr, Escape from Rome , p. 116.
  9. ↑ Joachim Staron: German war crimes , p. 60 f.
  10. ↑ German bishops ask for mercy for Kappler . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 6, 1976
  11. ↑ Herbert Kappler died in Soltau . In: Böhme-Zeitung, February 10, 1978
  12. ^ Bohr, Flucht aus Rom , pp. 120–127
  13. ↑ After the church funeral service, Hitler salute at Kappler's grave . In: Frankfurter Rundschau, February 14, 1978
  14. ^ Brian Fleming: The Vatican Pimpernel - The Wartime Exploits of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty ( Memento December 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Kappler, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German commander of the SiPo and the SD in Rome
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1978
Place of death Soltau , Germany