Command staff Reichsführer SS

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The Reichsführer SS command staff was created on May 6, 1941 by renaming the command staff of the Reichsführer SS at the SS Leadership Main Office, which Heinrich Himmler had already formed on April 7, 1941 as a commanding body for mobile killing units . Initially assigned to the SS leadership main office, the RFSS command staff was later directly subordinate to Himmler.

The two SS infantry brigades and the SS cavalry brigade , which consisted of the SS regiments that were renamed SS-Totenkopf-Standarten 7, 8, 9, 10, in SS-Infanterie- Regiments or the SS-Totenkopf-Reiter-Standarten 1 and 2 in SS-Kavallerie-Regiments 1 and 2 were created. Motorized units of the SS postal protection as so-called "SS security battalions" were subordinate to the command staff.

On June 30, 1941, the strength of the RFSS command staff is given as 18,438 men.

Structure and composition of the command staff Reichsführer SS (after Cüppers)

Chief of Staff: SS Brigade Leader Kurt Knoblauch
Department I (management department)
Ia SS-Obersturmbannführer Fritz Friday
Ic SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf May
Id SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst Rode
Ig SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Ernst Höhne
Department II (Adjutantur)
Head of the Adjutantur : SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfons Zeitler
IIa SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfons Zeitler, from November 1942 to probably 1943 Bernhard Frank
IIb SS-Hauptsturmführer Emil Reichherzer
Department III (judiciary)
Command judge: SS-Obersturmbannführer Horst Bender
Department VI (ideological training and troop support)
Head of department: SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl-Heinz Bürger
Quartermaster's Department
Chief Quartermaster : SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Hartenstein
Qu.1 SS-Hauptsturmführer Harro With
Qu.2 SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Liebermann
H-mot. SS-Obersturmbannführer Georg-Henning von Bassewitz-Behr
IVa SS-Sturmbannführer Josef Spacil
IVb SS Brigade Leader Ernst-Robert Grawitz
IVc SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann-Josef Held

The use of the command staff RFSS in Russia

By the end of 1941, at least 85,000 people had been killed by the RFSS command staff. In the years 1942 and 1943 the importance of the RFSS command staff declined steadily, while the units subordinate to it were more and more called in to "fight partisans and gangs" under the Higher SS and Police Leader Central Russia from Bach-Zelewski , which continues with extensive murder of Jews .

After the war, Bach-Zelewski appeared as a key witness in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals ; he incriminated Himmler (suicide May 23, 1945) and his former colleagues from the police leadership corps. In May 1951 he was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp by a court in Nuremberg.

Whereabouts

See also

literature

  • F. Baude u. a. (Ed.): "Our honor means loyalty." War diary of the RFSS Command Staff. Europe, Vienna 1965.
  • Yehoshua Büchler: Command staff Reichsführer-SS. Himmler's Personal Murder Brigades in 1941. In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies I, No. 1, 1986, pp. 11-25. ISSN  8756-6583 .
  • Martin Cüppers : pioneer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939–1945. WBG Darmstadt 2005. ISBN 3-534-16022-3 (also with the title: … Shoa .. without h); New edition ibid. 2011, additionally Primus-Verlag Darmstadt 2011 ISBN 3-89678-758-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. Wulff E. Brebeck (Ed.): Endzeitkampf. Ideology and Terror of the SS. (= Series of publications of the District Museum Wewelsburg. Volume 8) Accompanying volume to the permanent exhibition “Ideology and Terror of the SS” in the “ Wewelsburg Memorial and Memorial Site 1933–1945 ” of the District Museum Wewelsburg , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-02327-7 , p. 74.
  2. Der Spiegel 2/1959: The dead stand up . 5 years of pre-trial detention were credited to him - he did not serve the prison sentence