Horst Böhme (SS member)

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Horst Böhme (born August 24, 1909 in Colmnitz ; † April 10, 1945  ? In Königsberg ) was a German SS-Oberführer , murderer and war criminal .

Horst Böhme (left), together with Reinhard Heydrich (middle) and Karl Hermann Frank (right).

Live and act

Böhme attended elementary school and later worked as a freight forwarder. Politically, he was involved in the Jungstahlhelm , in the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade and the Bund Oberland . Böhme joined the NSDAP in 1930 ( membership number 236.651). At the same time he became a member of the SS (SS No. 2.821). After being promoted to SS-Untersturmführer (July 4, 1934) and SS-Obersturmführer (November 9, 1934), he worked in the SD main office in Berlin from 1935 , where he soon became one of the closest employees of SD chief Reinhard Heydrich .

In the following years Böhme took on a number of special orders for Heydrich. On March 13 or 14, 1938, on the orders of the SD chief, he murdered the diplomat Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler , an attaché at the German embassy in Vienna , who was hated by the SS because of his anti-Nazi activities. In step with the growth of the SS, Böhme was promoted continuously during these years: on January 30, 1936, he was appointed SS-Hauptsturmführer , on April 20, 1937, SS-Sturmbannführer, and in 1938, SS-Obersturmbannführer and lieutenant colonel of the police .

After the occupation and the smashing of the so-called remaining Czech Republic in the spring of 1939, Böhme was appointed security chief of the police in Prague . In this capacity, he was responsible for commanding all Gestapo offices in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . His close colleagues in this office included the Gestapo leaders Hans-Ulrich Geschke , leader of the Stapo control center in Prague, and Wilhelm Nölle , leader of the Stapo control center in Brno .

In the course of the special campaign in Prague on November 17, 1939, Böhme played a key role in the destruction of the Czech university system and the deportation of 1,500 students to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . On October 10, 1940, Böhme took part in the meeting alongside Heydrich, Hans Frank , Adolf Eichmann and Hans Günther , in the course of which the measures to be taken for the purpose of the deportation of Jews in the Protectorate area ordered by Hitler - around 88,000 people in total - were determined.

After Reinhard Heydrich's assassination in May 1942, Böhme was in command of the execution commands for the “retaliatory measures” for Prague, with the rank of SS-Standartenführer since October 21, 1941 as commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS). At his suggestion, the village of Lidice was destroyed , with 184 men shot, 195 women deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and 105 children deported to the resettlement camp ( Łódź ), all but 17 of whom perished.

In September 1942, Böhme was transferred to Bucharest as a police attaché. From January to August 1943 he headed the Einsatzgruppe B of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD , with which he was significantly involved in the mass murder of civilians in the Soviet Union . From September 1943 to March 1944, Böhme was in the same position in Einsatzgruppe C before he returned to Einsatzgruppe B in August 1944 - now as a police colonel . On November 9, 1944, he was appointed SS-Oberführer .

In the last phase of the war he was in command of the Security Police and the SD in East Prussia . Since April 1945 Böhme, who was last seen in fighting near Königsberg, was considered missing. In the post-war period he was on the international wanted list as a war criminal for several years. In 1954 he was declared dead by the Kiel District Court on April 10, 1945, the day of his death. It was believed certain that he either died in combat operations or shot himself to avoid falling into Soviet hands.

Awards

Among the awards that Boehme received during his career, which included SS Death's Head Ring , the SS sword of honor , the Iron Cross II. Class and the War Merit Cross with swords.

literature

  • Bernd Diroll: Personal Lexicon of the NSDAP . Volume 1: SS officer A - B . Patzwall, Norderstedt 1998, ISBN 3-931533-38-7 .
  • Slavomir Horský: Crimes that do not expire . Orbis, Prague 1984.
  • Otto Lasch : This is how Königsberg fell. Battle and fall of East Prussia's capital . Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 1958, (new editions, including: Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-87943-435-2 ).
  • Sebastian Weitkamp: SS diplomats. The police attachés and SD officers at the German missions abroad , in: Deformations der Gesellschaft? New research on National Socialism . Edited by Christian A. Braun / Michael Mayer / Sebastian Weitkamp. wvb, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86573-340-5 , pp. 49-74.
  • Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office . Revised and updated new edition. Study edition. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-87-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Böhme was declared dead on August 12, 1954 by the Kiel District Court on this date. See Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 60.
  2. ↑ Identified by Lutz Hachmeister: Schleyer. A German story , 2004, p. 200.
  3. ↑ Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism . Munich 2002, p. 94.
  4. ↑ Lists of seniority of the NSDAP Schutzstaffel from July 1, 1935, December 1, 1938 and November 9, 1944.
  5. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister : The Opponent Researcher: The Career of SS Leader Franz Alfred Six , Munich 1998, p. 18.
personal data
SURNAME Böhme, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Oberführer
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Colmnitz (Klingenberg)
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1945
Place of death Koenigsberg