Karl Schulz (detective)

Karl Friedrich Gustav Schulz (born July 12, 1908 in Magdeburg , † April 18, 1988 in Bremen ) was a German police officer. During National Socialism , he made a name for himself as an investigator against counterfeiters , white-collar crime and corruption . In the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) he headed the Economics group in Office V (fight against crime). When the head of Office V, Arthur Nebe , took command of a task force in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union in June 1941 , Schulz accompanied him as an adjutant . Not least because of his good pre-war contacts with the British criminal police, Schulz was again employed in the police service after the Second World War, despite his high SS rank. In 1952 he took over the management of the State Criminal Police Office in Bremen , which he held until his retirement in 1968. Various preliminary investigations against Schulz were set because no culpable involvement in the mass crimes of the Einsatzgruppen could be proven.

Life

The son of a master crockery master attended the Second Citizens' Boys School in Magdeburg and the Guericke Secondary School in Magdeburg. In 1921 he came to Berlin , where he graduated from high school in 1926 . He then studied law and political science in Berlin and Greifswald . In the summer of 1931 he broke off his studies for financial reasons and worked from August 1931 to the end of March 1932 as a research assistant at the Prussian Police Institute in Charlottenburg . Here he wrote the treatise The Criminal Police in England .

In National Socialism

On April 1, 1932 Schulz was Detective -Anwärter at police headquarters Berlin . He completed a corresponding course at the Prussian Police Institute in August 1934 with good . From autumn 1934 to May 1935 he took over various commissariats of the Berlin burglary and murder inspection. He was appointed detective detective on September 15, 1934, and for life on March 15, 1935. Until the end he headed the German Central Office for Counterfeiting , with which he was transferred to the Prussian State Criminal Police Office in May 1935 .

Schulz had good relations with the English criminal police. In June 1935 he accompanied Joachim von Ribbentrop and the German fleet delegation and established contacts with Scotland Yard . In January 1936 he traveled with the German delegation to the funeral of King George V and in March 1936 to the meeting of the League Council . From May to September 1936 he took part in the preparation of the criminal investigation for the Olympic Games in Berlin . During the games he was responsible for the surveillance of hotels and strangers' strips. From October 1936 to the end of March 1937 he was seconded to the German Embassy in London as a liaison to the English police .

Schulz then took over the Reich Central Office for the fight against international and interlocal pickpockets as well as traveling and commercial burglars and thieves in the Reich Criminal Police Office . On May 1, 1937, Schulz was admitted to the NSDAP ( membership number 5.917.967) and on May 31, also into the SS (SS number 290.376). He had been a member of the SA since February 22, 1933 . From September 1938 to January 1939 he worked in the organizational department and then in the international department. In this function he also worked on the International Criminal Police Commission . In November 1939 he took over Section B 2 (Fraud) in Office V ( Combating Crime - Reich Criminal Police Office) in the Reich Security Main Office , which was expanded in July 1944 to become an independent group on the economy (Central Combating White-collar Crime). This office group was also responsible for corruption cases in the Wehrmacht and the armaments industry both in Germany and in the occupied territories. According to his colleague Bernd Wehner , Schulz also investigated corrupt SS members in the concentration camps .

On June 1, 1940, Schulz was promoted to Kriminalrat and on August 20 to SS-Hauptsturmführer ( SD ). On January 30, 1944 Schulz was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer and in October 1944 appointed to the government and criminal councilor.

Adjutant to Arthur Nebe

When the head of Office V, Arthur Nebe , took over command of Einsatzgruppe B after the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 , Schulz accompanied him as a personal adviser and adjutant. Nebe informed the Army Group Center and the Commander of the Rear Army Area regularly with activity reports about his actions and through his liaison officer Schulz kept constant contact with the liaison officer of the Army Group Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff .

After the war, Schulz was accused as part of the proceedings against Albert Widmann of having driven to Mogilew in September 1941 with Nebe, Widmann and Hans Battista . There Nebe wanted to try out new methods of murdering the insane because he did not want his men to be shot. In Mogilew an attempt was first made to kill the mentally ill by blowing up a bunker. Then was gasification tested with engine exhaust. Schulz admitted in an interrogation that he drove and had been informed about the purpose of the trip. At the scene of the crime, however, he visited various army and police stations and only returned to the group after the action was over.

Schulz also admitted that he had knowledge of the murder of 632 mentally ill people in Minsk and 836 mentally ill people in Mogilev in September 1941, but did not want to have been involved. According to Christian Gerlach , the mass murder in Mogilew probably took place shortly before September 17, 1941 in the presence of interpreters Adolf Prieb, Widmann, Nebe, Schulz, Battista and apparently Otto Bradfisch in a previously prepared room of the institution using gas. Schulz admitted to having been present at the first attempts with a gas truck and stated: “I felt disgust, but I was not the officer in charge.” He also stated that he knew of mass shootings in the Minsk and Białystok area; but he was not present himself. From October 5, 1943 to July 1944, he was employed by the commander of the security police and the SD in Department IV / 1 in Bialystok . In interrogations after the war he did not want to have known about measures taken against the Polish intelligentsia, but reported on earthmaking measures in the Bialystok area.

In post-war Germany

Schleswig-Holstein

In May 1945 Schulz reappeared in Flensburg , where he acted as a liaison with the British , became the deputy chief of police and headed the criminal investigation department. He claimed to have left Berlin illegally on April 22nd. Since his personal file was allegedly lost in the chaos of the war, he had certificates from the period from 1926 to 1931 authenticated in Flensburg on May 12th and also presented a certificate stating that he was transferred to the Flensburg criminal investigation agency on April 22nd and to have started his service there on May 3, 1945. On May 13, he was interrogated by the British military secret service FSS and was apparently able to impress with his knowledge of English and his reports on his contacts with Scotland Yard and Percy Sillitoe , the head of MI 5 , and thus avoid a closer examination of his activities during National Socialism .

On November 1, 1945 Schulz was a Major of the police in Rendsburg transferred to the police. Within a month he was seconded to the staff of the gendarmerie in Schleswig and on April 1, 1946 received a post with the chief of police. In August 1946, as a former member of the SS, he was re-examined for his work in the Reich Criminal Police Office and released from police service on August 23, 1946. He then worked for the investigative service of the Royal Air Force Police . Schulz also appealed to the military government against his dismissal and was hired in July 1947 as a criminal investigation inspector for a two-year probationary period at the state police administration because “there is convincing evidence that he was neither a convinced nor a fanatical Nazi and that his connection with the party was the only thing was due to his professional pursuit as a police officer ”. Until April 10, 1949 he worked as a consultant for the criminal police in the State Ministry of the Interior. From 1947 he was also the state government's special representative for corruption and the fight against black markets . Then he took over the management of the criminal police at the North Police Group in Schleswig-Holstein .

In 1948 Schulz was denazified as a "minor offender" in category IV and in 1949 as a "fellow traveler" in category V. On May 25, 1949, he was promoted to the Criminal Police Board and in August was hired for life.

Head of the State Criminal Police Office Bremen

In May 1952 Schulz applied for the position of head of the criminal police in Bremen , was selected in August 1952 and started his new service on September 1, 1952. In October 1955, at the request of Sir Percy Sillitoe, Schulz was given leave of absence for an investigation into a diamond smuggling ring in Sierra Leone . In September 1960 he was appointed criminal director. At the end of September 1968 he retired. Before he succumbed to a heart attack, he is said to have worked as a real estate agent and left his third wife in debt.

Preliminary investigation

In the course of the investigation against members of the Einsatzgruppen , against Schulz was also investigated towards the end of the 1950s. So he was led as a suspect in the preliminary investigations into the proceedings against Widmann. The attorney general of Bremen, Hanns Dünnebier, withdrew the investigation on December 22, 1959 and handed it over to the branch of the regional court in Bremerhaven . Schulz was heard as a witness on August 1, 1958 in the trial against Otto Bradfisch and on March 9, 1959 in the trial against Widmann. Since no witness confirmed his presence at the scene of the crime, the Bremerhaven public prosecutor dropped the proceedings against Schulz on July 18, 1960, as a criminal involvement in the crimes of Einsatzgruppe B could not be proven. Schulz was questioned in other proceedings, for example in the proceedings against Hans Battista in November 1962 in Vienna. At witness appointments in his investigation, he reported sick in Bremen. One procedure of the central office in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the processing of National Socialist mass crimes in Dortmund was discontinued on March 18, 1965 for lack of evidence, another on February 1, 1971 for lack of sufficient suspicion. The district court of Hamburg presented on 14 August 1978 an investigation for lack of evidence and looked at the 19 September 1979 for criminal statute of limitations on a charge from.

The historian Michael Wildt serves Schulzen's career as an example of the strength of the RSHA institution. “Only the amalgam of conceptual radicalism, new institutions and a practice of power that reached no limits in war was able to set free the process of radicalization that led to genocide. Conversely, it is true that these ideological perpetrators could have remained radicals without those specific institutions and without unbounded practice, but no longer have the power to make their worldview a reality. The fact that the former auxiliary adjutant Karl Schulz was able to become head of the Bremen State Criminal Police Office after the war is undoubtedly morally reprehensible; In his function, however, he was now integrated into a constitutional context that made no more delimitation possible. "

literature

• Stephan Linck: Committed to order. German police 1933–1949. The Flensburg case. F. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 9783506775122 .
• Karl Schneider: "Deployed abroad". Bremen Police Battalions and the Holocaust. Klartext, Essen 2011, ISBN 9783837505276 .
• Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. 2002th edition. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3930908875 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Schneider, Away from home , p. 705.
2. ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and annihilation policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 9783930908547 , p. 544; Schneider, employed abroad , pp. 723, 1106.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Schneider, Away from home , pp. 719–723; Wildt, Generation , pp. 330f., 795f.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Schneider, Away from home , p. 722.
5. ↑ Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde , p. 1069 f.
6. ↑ Dieter Schenk : Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-03034-5 , p. 178.
7. ^ Schneider, Away from home , p. 718.
8. ↑ Schneider, Away from home , p. 707.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Schneider, Away from home , p. 710.
10. ^ Schneider, Away from home , p. 711.
11. ^ Schneider, Away from home , p. 715.
12. ^ Schneider, Away from home , p. 717.
13. ↑ Schneider, Away used , S 717f .; Wildt, Generation , pp. 795f.
14. ↑ Schneider, Away from home , p. 717 f.
15. ↑ Wildt, Generation , p. 870 f.