Kurt Meyer (SS member)

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Kurt Meyer (February / March 1943)
Division commander Fritz Witt (center) in discussions with regimental commanders Max Wünsche (with head bandage) and Kurt Meyer on the French front (1944)

Kurt Meyer (* 23. December 1910 in Jerxheim ; † 23. December 1961 in Hagen ), also known as "Panzer Meyer," was since 1929 policeman since 1930 NSDAP - and since 1931 SS -member there since 1944 SS Brigade Commander and Major General of Waffen SS . For the murder of Canadian prisoners of war in June 1944, Meyer was sentenced to death by a Canadian court martial in December 1945. The death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment in the spring of 1946 and finally suspended on pardon in 1954. From 1959 Meyer was the national spokesman for the mutual aid community for members of the former Waffen SS (HIAG).

Career with the police, SS and Waffen-SS

The son of a factory worker attended elementary school in Schöningen and Offleben from 1916 to 1925 . From 1925 to 1928 he completed a commercial apprenticeship in Minden . Meyer joined the Hitler Youth (HJ) in May 1925 and switched from the HJ to the SA in April 1928 . When he started working for the Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Police in October 1929 , he left the SA. On September 1, 1930 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 316.714), in which he worked as a local group leader . On October 15, 1931 he became a member of the SS (SS No. 17,559) and initially belonged to the 22nd SS Standard in Schwerin .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, Meyer resigned from the police force in May 1934 and in the same month became platoon leader for the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LAH). In 1936 he was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer and chief of the 14th anti-tank company of the SS-Standarte. Meyer married in December 1934; the marriage resulted in five children.

During the Second World War , Meyer led the Leibstandarte's 14th anti-tank company as SS-Hauptsturmführer in 1939 during the German attack on Poland . According to an Allied investigation report, Meyer shot 50 Jews during the attack on Poland near Modlin .

In October 1939 Meyer switched to the Leibstandarte motorcycle rifle; In 1940 he took part in the western campaign. In September 1940 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer and took over as commander of the reconnaissance department of the Leibstandarte. Meyer also fought in the Balkan campaign and in the war against the Soviet Union . According to a lieutenant colonel who was taken prisoner by the Allies, Meyer reported during an officer training course that he had burned down a village near Kharkov and murdered all the residents.

Meyer (left) with SS officers Fritz Witt and Max Wünsche in 1944 in the Ardenne monastery near Caen

In May 1943 Meyer was transferred to the newly established 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" as commander of the 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment . Meyer belonged to a group of trainers who switched from the Leibstandarte to the "Hitler Youth" division, which - according to the historian Peter Lieb  - "symbolically became the first politico-military child of Hitler's former life guard". Lieb calls the division the "[...] most strongly indoctrinated National Socialist association of the entire German armed forces". In July 1944, Meyer himself ordered the division to be “fanatical soldiers” in a daily order and described them as “bearers of faith and attack” of the National Socialist idea.

After SS Brigade Leader Fritz Witt was killed on the eighth day of the landing of the Western Allies in Normandy , Meyer took over the leadership of the "Hitler Youth" division. He was promoted to SS-Oberführer on August 6, 1944 ; shortly afterwards he escaped the Battle of Caen with about 5,000 men from the original 22,000. These got into the Falaise cauldron . Meyer escaped with about 1,500 men and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with the swords on August 27, 1944 .

Meyer was arrested on September 7, 1944 near Liège, pretended to be a colonel and was taken to a prison camp near Compiègne . Possibly assuming that he had died, Meyer was appointed SS-Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Waffen-SS retrospectively from September 1st . After he was identified, he was flown to Great Britain; from November 17, 1944 to April 24, 1945 he was a prisoner of war in Trent Park . There Meyer advocated continued fighting for the German troops in December 1944, as the victors wanted to "exterminate" the Germans. After the failure of the Battle of the Bulge , Meyer changed his mind: He suggested that he be sent back to Germany to convince Hitler of the idea of ​​an armistice in the West. The historian Sönke Neitzel wrote in 2005 that it was obvious to see this plan as only one attempt by Meyer to escape captivity. Meyer had recognized, however, that returning to Germany would not prevent that he would soon have to answer before a court.

Convicted of murdering prisoners of war

Trial in December 1945

On December 10, 1945, Meyer was tried in Aurich for war crimes in a Canadian court. The prosecutor accused him of commanding his soldiers in Belgium and France in 1944 of the 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment to murder Allied prisoners. Furthermore, as commander of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 25 in Normandy, he had to answer for the murder of seven prisoners of war near his command post in the Ancienne Abbaye d'Ardenne monastery . The process was carried out according to simplified procedural rules; so hearsay evidence was allowed. Overall, the process was "still fair," according to historian Ruth Bettina Birn . Meyer was sentenced to death by shooting on December 27th . Similar to the trial against the Japanese General Yamashita Tomoyuki shortly before , the trial " considerably expanded the principle of the responsibility of military superiors in international law ".

In view of the high number of prisoners of war murdered by Meyer's division, an Allied investigation report in the fall of 1944 concluded that there was an explicit or implicit authorization from the divisional headquarters to kill prisoners of war. In the trial against Meyer it was not possible to prove the existence of a corresponding secret order. According to current research, it is unlikely that such an order existed, since not all units under Meyer shot prisoners of war. In contrast, "it is almost unequivocally certain" that Meyer gave the orders to kill prisoners of war in the immediate vicinity of his command post. Meyer's division murdered at least 187 Canadian soldiers during the Normandy invasion.

A number of personalities of the post-war period campaigned for Meyer's pardon, including the Münster bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen . The death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment on January 13, 1946 by order of Major General Christopher Vokes . The process was controversial within the Canadian military, as Allied troops had also killed prisoners of war. It was already evident during the court proceedings that the generals appointed as judges had sympathy for Meyer and shared a common code of conduct with him . Outside the military, Canada called for exemplary punishment of the murderers of Canadian soldiers. After the death sentence was commuted, Meyer was transferred to Dorchester in Canada. On October 17, 1951, he was taken to the Werl correctional facility in Germany. In July 1953, Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer visited Meyer in Werl. The election campaign prior to the 1953 Bundestag elections was dominated by the rearmament debate .

On September 6, 1954, after a total of nine years in prison, Meyer was released from prison. When he arrived in Niederkrüchten , where his wife had lived since the end of the war , he was greeted by a torchlight procession ; a church choir and a fire brigade band performed. Peter Dudek and Hans-Gerd Jaschke classify the “triumphal procession” for Meyer as a “reaction of the citizens” after politicians from all major parties had previously responded to the political claims of the aid community for reciprocity of members of the former Waffen SS (HIAG).

Network of the Waffen SS and glorification of war in the 1950s

After his release from prison, Meyer was hired as sales manager in the Andreas brewery in Hagen, whose owner Carl-Horst Andreas was a former officer of the Waffen SS.

Kurt Meyer's grave in the Delstern cemetery in Hagen.

Until the end of his life, Meyer campaigned for the rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS, which had been condemned as a “ criminal organization ” in the Nuremberg Trials , which, like his own condemnation, he regarded as injustice. In 1957 he wrote the bestseller Grenadiers , in which he described his war and imprisonment experiences and which the historian Wolfram Wette described as a "document of the 'war frenzy' of the Waffen-SS". According to the historian Charles W. Sydnor, Grenadiere is “ perhaps the boldest and most truculent of the apologist works ” (German: “perhaps the most brazen and most devastating of the apologetic works”).

In 1958, according to a Spiegel report in front of former Waffen-SS members, Meyer was “indignant” about portraying them as beasts, claiming that he “ knew nothing of the wretchedness in the concentration camps ”. Also, no one “sought God as much as the Waffen SS”.

Initially provisional from November 1958, Meyer became national spokesman for HIAG in 1959. Since his release from prison, Meyer had become one of the most important representatives of the organization of former members of the Waffen SS through numerous public appearances. During Meyer's tenure as federal spokesman, the federal association of the previously decentralized HIAG was founded in April 1959. Meyer maintained numerous contacts with politicians such as Fritz Erler (SPD) and Will Rasner (CDU), with whom it was intended to influence supply regulations and "at the same time achieve a 'rehabilitation' of the Waffen-SS". In June 1961, the Bundestag passed a law that improved the supply of veterans of the Waffen SS as so-called 131s . Within the HIAG, Meyer used authoritarian means to differentiate himself from the right-wing extremist German Reich Party (DRP). Meyer publicly distanced himself from the crimes of the concentration camp guards; At the same time, the HIAG worked together with the silent help for prisoners of war and internees , for example in the search for witnesses. According to his own statements, Gunter d'Alquen , editor of the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps , was Meyer's advisor and speechwriter.

In the book Weeping when the head is down, his son Kurt dealt critically with the life story of his father in 1998 and drew the picture of a person arrested in his “glorious past”. According to his account, after Meyer senior returned from prison, a picture of Hitler was hung in the living room next to a picture of Friedrich II.

Awards during the Nazi era

Publications

See also

literature

Biographical Approaches

Scientific secondary literature

  • Götz Eberbach:  Meyer, Kurt. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 362 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77235-0 , passim (also: Bielefeld, Univ., Diss., 2010).
  • The Abbaye Ardenne Case . Trial of SS Brigadführer Kurt Meyer . In: Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals . The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume IV, HMSO, London 1948, pp. 96-112.

Web links

Commons : Kurt Meyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical information from Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann, Dieter Zinke: Die Generale der Waffen-SS and the police. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 3: Lammerding - Plesch. Biblio, Osnabrück 2008, ISBN 3-7648-2375-5 , pp. 175-182.
  2. ^ According to Schulz: Generale , p. 177. According to Kurt Meyer: People cry when their heads are down. Approaches to my father "Panzermeyer", Major General of the Waffen SS. Herder, Freiburg 2000, ISBN 3-451-04866-3 , p. 261, Meyer joined the NSDAP in 1925.
  3. ↑ See: Peter Lieb: Conventional War or Weltanschauung? Warfare and fighting partisans in France in 1943/44 (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 69). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57992-5 , p. 159 (also: Munich, Univ., Diss., 2005).
  4. ^ Lieb: Conventional War or Weltanschauungskrieg , p. 159. Sönke Neitzel : Still worth researching? Notes on the history of operations of the Waffen SS. In: Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift , 61 (2002), pp. 403-429, here p. 426, ISSN  0026-3826 .
  5. ^ Lieb: Conventional War or Weltanschauung War , p. 114.
  6. ↑ a b Lieb: Conventional War or Weltanschauung War , p. 158.
  7. ↑ Daily order of July 3, 1944, quoted in Lieb: Conventional War or Weltanschauungskrieg , p. 159.
  8. ^ A b Sönke Neitzel : bugged. German generals in British captivity 1942–1945. Propylaea, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-549-07261-5 , p. 72 f.
  9. ↑ Ruth Bettina Birn: Late, but thoroughly. Investigations against war criminals in Canada. In: Norbert Frei (ed.): Transnational politics of the past. How to deal with German war criminals in Europe after the Second World War. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 , pp. 567-593, here p. 567.
  10. ↑ Cf. on the course of the process and the subject: Patrick Brode: Casual Slaughters and Accidental Judgments , Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, Toronto 1997; Ian Campbell: Murder at the Abbaye. The Story of Twenty Canadian Soldiers Murdered at the Abbaye dArdenne , Golden Dog, Ottawa 1996; BJS Macdonald: The Trial of Kurt Meyer , Clarke, Irwin & Co., Toronto 1954; Howard Margolian: Conduct Unbecoming: The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy , University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1998. P. Whitney Lackenbauer , Chris MV Madsen (Eds.): Kurt Meyer on Trial , Canadian Defense Academy Press, Kingston 2007 (see review by Michael R. Marrus . In: The Canadian Historical Review , 91/1, 2010, pp. 162–164, doi: 10.1353 / can.0.0273 / muse ( Memento of the original dated December 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / muse.jhu.edu
  11. ↑ a b Birn: Late, but thoroughly , p. 568.
  12. ^ Lieb: Conventional War or Weltanschauung War , p. 160.
  13. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor: the rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein, 1st edition 2004, ISBN 978-3-89244-658-3 , p. 482 ( books.google.de )
  14. ↑ Peter Dudek, Hans-Gerd Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. To the tradition of a special culture. Volume 1. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, ISBN 3-531-11668-1 , p. 100.
  15. ↑ Peter Dudek, Hans-Gerd Jaschke: Origin and development of right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic. To the tradition of a special culture. Volume 1. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, ISBN 3-531-11668-1 , p. 110. With torches, flags and music . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1954, pp. 7 ( online ).
  16. ^ Charles W. Sydnor Jr .: The History of the SS Totenkopfdivision and the Postwar Mythology of the Waffen SS . In: Central European History , 1973, 6, pp. 339-362.
  17. ↑ Kurt Meyer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1958, pp. 59 ( online ).
  18. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 73 ff.
  19. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 61.
  20. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 35.
  21. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, pp. 330, 336.
  22. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 119.
  23. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic. (= Publications of the Contemporary History Working Group Lower Saxony , Volume 22), Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-89244-658-3 , p. 582.
  24. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 420.
  25. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 93f.
  26. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 97.
  27. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. 2011, p. 74.
  28. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Conversation with a dead father: The son of SS general "Panzermeyer" faces his family history . In: Die Zeit , No. 3/1999.
  29. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 541.
  30. ↑ See the critical appraisal from P. Whitney Lackenbauer : Kurt Meyer, 12th SS Panzer Division, and the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy: An Historical and Historiographical Appraisal , in: Gateway, University of Saskatchewan, March 2001
  31. ^ Reviews: Rafael Binkowski, Klaus Wiegrefe : Brauner Bluff . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 2011, p. 44 f . ( online ). Wigbert Benz : Review of: Wilke, Karsten: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950-1990 . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , February 7, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Panzermeyer; Maiyā, Kuruto; Majer, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German major general of the Waffen SS
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Jerxheim
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1961
Place of death Hagen