Herbert Packebusch

Herbert Ernst Albert Packebusch , originally and later again Pakebusch (born February 4, 1902 in Schöneberg near Berlin , † missing since 1944) was a German SS leader.

Live and act

Early life

Packebusch was the son of the master carpenter Friedrich Ernst Pakebusch (sic!) (1861–1929) and his second wife Anna Johanna Emilie, geb. Leske. He attended the boys' middle school in Schöneberg and the elementary school, which he left in 1916. He then learned the carpentry trade in his father's business. He then took over and managed it until 1928 for economic reasons. He then worked as a factory manager in a furniture factory and later as an accountant at the Berlin publisher Der Attack, which was part of the NSDAP .

According to his own statements, Packebusch belonged to the Lüttwitz Freikorps in 1919, and later to the Graf Strachwitz Freikorps. In 1921 he fought in Upper Silesia and was a member of the "Union of National Soldiers". In particular, he was involved in the storming of the Annaberg . In 1922 Packebusch joined the Roßbach organization . It was there that he met the World War II veteran Kurt Daluege , a relationship that would determine his biography and career in later years. With the Roßbachern, Packebusch took part in the German-Polish border disputes that took place in Upper Silesia in 1920 and 1921. In addition, he was at that time, according to a letter from Daluege from later years, "involved in certain Feminine matters ". Also according to Daluege, he was with the Black Reichswehr, where he was "clerk and administrator of large arsenals".

In 1923 Packebusch was a member of the "Völkische Hundertschaften", which Roßbach organized as part of the German National Freedom Party (DvFP).

Career in the Nazi movement before 1933

In 1925 Packebusch was active in the Berlin section of the front ban under Paul Röhrbein , which in 1926 was absorbed into the Berlin section of the SA . In 1926 Packebusch joined the SA, in which he took over a formation in the north of Berlin (Sturm 2 and 29) as a storm leader. On December 1, 1928, Packebusch finally became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 105.785).

As SA-Sturmführer in Berlin SA-Sturm 21 and as a newsman on the staff of the Berlin SA chief Walther Stennes , Packebusch carried out spy services for Daluege in 1930/31, who had taken over the leadership of the Berlin SS in 1928. In particular, he informed Daluege in the spring of 1931 about Stennes' plans to split off the Berlin SA from the NSDAP and, if possible, to carry along with SA units in other regions of the Reich. Packebusch was also involved in the subsequent suppression of this SA uprising, known as the Stennes Revolt , which was mainly carried out by Daluege and the Berlin SS. Daluege informed the highest party judge of the NSDAP in a letter from 1938:

"He [Packebusch] was my newsman on the Stennes staff and was the only one through whose activity I was informed about the Stennes operation and who also enabled me to put down the Stennes operation at the time according to the order given to me by the Führer."

And at the same time Himmler informed Daluege that it:

"[...] one of Packebusch's main tasks during the fighting period was that he was my liaison man in the closest staff of Stennes and that without him the suppression of the Stennes revolt would not have been possible, or only with much less success."

As a reward for his role in the Stennes affair, Packebusch was accepted into the SS (membership number 18.038 or 18.088). As one of Daluege's closest confidants, he was also accepted into the staff of the SS Upper Section East, in which he headed the press department in 1933. Allegedly, from 1931 to 1933 he was exposed to constant stalking by the Stennes supporters - especially by an alleged Stennes terrorist group - who attacked him because of his role in spying on the Stennes group and the suppression of the Stennes revolt.

Activity in the Nazi state until 1939

In the spring of 1933, Packebusch is said to have led a staff reporting personally to Daluege for special tasks, which in the literature is occasionally associated with the Reichstag fire of February 28, 1933. The historian Christoph Graf described Packebusch as "one of the most unscrupulous agents of Daluege and Heydrich in Berlin" for this period.

In this context, Packebusch was also actively involved in the internal party power struggles within the National Socialist leadership group between spring 1933 and summer 1934: like his protector Daluege, he navigated between Hermann Göring on the one hand and Heinrich Himmler on the other. In particular , Packebusch took part in Daluege in agreement with Himmler and Heydrich against the first chief of the Secret State Police Rudolf Diels , the aim of which was to remove him from this post and Himmler and Heydrich to take control of the secret police: So he collected incriminating documents about Diels on Daluege's behalf. This intriguing mining work reached its climax when Packebusch and an SS troop forcibly entered Diels 'apartment at the beginning of October 1933: The then SS-Sturmbannführer and his companions locked Diels' wife in the bedroom of the apartment and then ransacked the other rooms for documents, which one hoped to be able to use against this. After Diels' wife managed to secretly notify him, he sent a command of devoted police officers equipped with heavy weapons to his apartment, who succeeded in arresting Packebusch and his subordinates there. The intruders were then taken to the Berlin police prison. This situation did not last, however, since the Prussian Prime Minister Göring, as Diels' superior, ordered the release of Packebusch and his people at the urging of Daluege and Himmler. As a result of the escalating power struggle between himself and the SS, Diels was briefly expelled from his post as Gestapo chief and fled to Czechoslovakia for a few weeks, but was able to take up his post in November 1933 after Hitler had decided this power struggle in his favor return as head of the Secret State Police Office and also received the post of Police Vice President of Berlin.

In 1934 Packebusch received a position in the Reich Aviation Ministry . In 1935 he was appointed managing director of the Reich Broadcasting Chamber on the basis of Daluege's intercession - which he advocated for the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who controlled the radio . Since 1937 - according to Bernt Engelmann - he was also a member of the Reichsführer SS (SD) security service .

As managing director of the Reichsrundfunkkammer, Packebusch resigned as a result of numerous personal disputes with other senior employees of this institution in 1938. Before that, he had fallen out in particular with the President of the Rundfunkkammer Kriegler and the department head Bertram Cappel: he had dismissed the latter from his post on September 16, 1936 after disagreements. At the instigation of the President of the Chamber, he revoked this measure on November 21, 1936, but gave Capelle another leave of absence on December 1, 1936. Due to alleged derogatory statements about Capelle, the latter finally filed a criminal complaint against Packebusch for defamation. Kriegler accused him of having disparaged him, Kriegler, in front of the Chamber's employees, thus disavowing him and undermining his authority. In addition, a party court case against him was initiated before the Gaugericht Berlin of the party court of the NSDAP: According to the files that have been preserved, this would probably have resulted in a warning and a temporary denial of Packebusch's ability to hold party offices. However, since the Gaugericht granted him due to his earlier services to the Nazi movement that in his case there would be mitigating grounds within the meaning of Hitler's amnesty decree of April 27, 1938, it was decided that the prerequisite for this amnesty to be applied to him given and the proceedings are discontinued accordingly.

Second World War

Shortly after the outbreak of World War II , Packebusch initially acted from September 18, 1939 to April 1941 as a leader in the self-protection of West Prussia and of SS-Sturmbannes I / 119 (Graudenz district). From April 1941 to July 1942 he then held the post of commercial director of the Flügel & Polter group at the Upper Silesian Rubber Works in Trzebinia .

On May 15, 1942, Packebusch changed its name to Pakebusch. From July of the same year he was appointed as the representative of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity in the Warsaw District . He held this post until 1944. At the same time, from the spring of 1943 onwards he acted as head of department Ia and Ic at the Higher SS and Police Leader in Warsaw and as a representative of the staff leader under SS group leader Jürgen Stroop and brigad leader Franz Kutschera . As a close associate of Kutschera, he was responsible for fighting gangs - d. H. the brutal crackdown on Polish partisans - responsible in the Warsaw ghetto. In this context he was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd Class in 1942 for his "services to the Einsatzgruppen in the formerly Polish territories" . In the course of 1944 he was employed in the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone for the local Higher SS and Police Leader .

After the suicide of his second wife in early 1944, Packebusch suffered a nervous shock. As a result, he was dismissed from his post as representative of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity. His personnel files end with the entry that he is on leave for several weeks on a recreational trip to the island of Rügen and that they are looking for a new use for him.

After the Second World War, an arrest warrant for Packebusch was issued by the Kiel District Court without his being able to be located. The historian Bernhard Sauer , who has written the most detailed work to date on Packebusch, states that Packebusch's whereabouts after 1945, as well as when and where he died, is still unclear today. In 1969, the protection of the constitution Fritz Tobias told the Berlin public prosecutor that Packebusch, whose whereabouts he had investigated, was no longer alive after his findings. Although he mentioned rumors that wanted to know that Packebusch had his face changed surgically at the end of the war and that he had settled under a false name in the Federal Republic after the war, he rejected them as untrustworthy. He also pointed out that Packebusch's divorced first wife had credibly assured him that she had never heard from him again after the end of the war.

marriage and family

Packebusch married for the first time on December 23, 1936. From this marriage the son Dieter (* 1938) emerged. This marriage was divorced on August 3, 1942 through his fault. His second marriage was on July 3, 1943 in Warsaw, Erika xy, who had previously been married to SS leader Helmut Bone . The best man was then SS Brigade Leader Jürgen Stroop . Packebusch's second wife committed suicide in Warsaw in early 1944.

Promotions

• December 6, 1931: SS-Sturmführer
• June 12, 1933: SS-Sturmbannführer
• April 20, 1941: SS Standartenführer

literature

• Bernt Engelmann : Great Federal Cross of Merit . 1976, p. 201.
• Christoph Graf: Political police between democracy and dictatorship. Berlin 1983, p. 373.
• Bernhard Sauer: Old fighters and solid ties. Kurt Daluege and Herbert Packebusch . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 62, 2014, pp. 977–996 ( digitized version ).
• Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .

Remarks

1. ^ Registry office Schöneberg I No. 342/1902.
2. ^ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer ante portas. ... it says the first head of the Gestapo ... . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1950, pp. 328-330.
3. ↑ See Sauer: "Packebusch", p. 996.
4. ↑ registry office Warsaw: marriage certificate No. 83/1943..