Johann Christian Suess

Johann Christian Süß (born November 21, 1923 in Hüttenheim (Duisburg) , † May 11, 1945 in Flensburg ) was a German marine. Süß was one of the last victims of the National Socialist naval justice . A few days after the unconditional surrender by the Wehrmacht, he was sentenced to death under German martial law and executed.

As a journeyman locksmith, Süß was a corporal on a warship. Suss' father, the miner Johann Suss († 1960), had already been asked by his son's commanding officer in 1943 to educate his son, who had no discipline, as he had already received numerous fines. On May 7, 1945, Suss made a derogatory remark when he received the order to heat up a warship, but carried out the order. Two days later, he refused to honor a chief petty officer and left the room in a non-military posture. A day later, he was sentenced to death for "undermining male discipline".

In a pardon, he wrote about his four brothers, all of whom were either fallen or missing, and his pregnant wife. Vice-Admiral Bernhard Rogge rejected the request and Johann Suss was executed on May 11 at 6:55 a.m. at the Twedter Feld shooting range in Flensburg in the Mürwik special area and buried on the spot. The British decree issued on May 4, 1945, according to which every death sentence should have been approved by the British, was allegedly unknown to Rogge. The Suss parents were not notified.

Johann Christian Suess was probably the last soldier to be executed directly in the Mürwik special area. Cases after that were at least not known. The high command of the Navy in Meierwik (in the special area Mürwik) confirmed death sentences in northern Germany and Norway until May 15, 1945, with the subsequent demand that they be carried out. Only on the day in question did the high command announce that death sentences, corporal punishment and the mere use of German weapons were prohibited on the basis of an order from the British occupying forces . After that, some members of the Wehrmacht in the Angelner hinterland still believed that they would have to continue to maintain “naval breeding” by means of shootings. From May 22nd, the shooting of Hugo Standte by members of the Navy near Grundhof is known. The formal dissolution of the naval war courts in Schleswig-Holstein finally took place on May 31, 1945.

In early 1952, the registry office in Flensburg accidentally learned that the bodies of executed German soldiers were in Mürwik. Suss was then exhumed and buried in the Friedenshügel cemetery together with Corporal Karl-Heinz Freudenthal , Günther Kaellander and Willi Albrecht , who had been executed a few days earlier . After the burial, the registry office informed the German Office (WASt) , which in turn informed Johann Suss's parents about the execution of their son in December 1952.

When the date of the execution was noticed during a routine inspection of the Berlin Wehrmacht processing center in December 1964, Johann Suss's file was handed over to the central office for the prosecution of Nazi crimes in Ludwigsburg. From there, the public prosecutor's office in Flensburg was called in, which in 1965 initiated an investigation against Rogge. Rogge appealed to his task to maintain “discipline and order” and to “avoid military disintegration”. The case against him was ultimately dropped.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ S. Currently shot . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1965, p. 30th f . ( online ).
2. ↑ Gerhard Mauz : You don't just sign something like that . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1965, p. 69 f . ( online ).
3. ↑ Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 109 f.
4. ↑ Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 110.
5. ^ Jörg Hillmann: Rogge, Bernhard . In: "New German Biography" (NDB). Vol. 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, pp. 755 f.