Ludwig Goering

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Ludwig Göring (born December 18, 1923 in Ittersbach , Baden-Württemberg ; † January 20, 2011 ibid), also written variously to Goring , was an SS-Hauptscharführer of the Waffen-SS who served with the 6th Company of the II Battalion / Panzergrenadier -Regiment 35 of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" was involved in the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema . A total of around 560 civilians were killed in this massacre. For this, Göring was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Italian military court in La Spezia .

Ludwig Sonntag, who admitted to having shot several women in the course of the massacre , was neither brought to court nor extradited to Italy after the Stuttgart public prosecutor had put down the proceedings , despite a conviction in Italy .

Military career

Göring joined the SS voluntarily in 1941 and was assigned to a unit of the Waffen SS . His military training took place in Arolsen , then he was assigned to the Reichsführer SS escort battalion stationed in Berlin. From October 1941 to April 1942 his first combat mission took place in the Soviet Union . He became seriously ill and was hospitalized for several weeks. After his recovery he was transferred to the SS reserve battalion in the Netherlands, where he was promoted to SS-Unterscharführer . He stayed with this unit until the end of July / beginning of August 1943. He then worked as an instructor in a training camp in Bohemia , where he was promoted to SS-Hauptscharführer . In February 1944 he was posted to Hungary and finally he came to Pisa with a motorized unit at the end of April / beginning of May . In Italy he defended his position as a Goth in the 2nd Battalion / SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 35 of the 16th SS-Panzergrenadier-Division against the advancing US forces. His division had to withdraw further north and the 2nd Battalion camped just a few kilometers from Sant'Anna di Stazzema. On the further withdrawal of the German military, he was wounded by shrapnel in the Verona area on September 22, 1944 and was taken to the military hospital in Merano .

massacre

prehistory

The 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" had been short of personnel and material since it was established in Ljubljana in autumn 1943 . In the course of their battles they could never reach their required division strength. In their combat missions there were high losses, which also meant that leading NCOs were missing. At the beginning of August, the 2nd Battalion only had a combat strength of around 300 men and was therefore withdrawn from the battle front on August 5, 1944, and the Stazzema was relocated near Sant'Anna. This battalion was led by Anton Galler on August 12, 1994, the day of the massacre , because Karl Gesele had failed. At the beginning of August 1944, the division got into an exchange of fire with partisans during a gang purge, in which several partisans were shot and five men of the Waffen SS were wounded. Thereupon the division commander Max Simon decided to fight so-called "gangs" in the area of ​​Monte Gabberi and in the village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema, which was a murder of civilians.

procedure

The order was carried out on August 12, 1944. The 8th Company at that time was 35 to 40 men strong. She had the order to ascend to the area of ​​Monte Gabberi and to cordon off the left wing of the operation. Goering had taken up position with a heavy machine gun in the position assigned to him. Two hours after the company had taken their assigned positions, they received the order to descend from the area of ​​Monte Gabberi to the settlements of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. The armed Goering arrived in the hamlet of Coletti, which consisted of two houses. In the front of these houses there were about 15 to 25 women sitting in a circle, who were guarded on two sides by 6 to 8 soldiers. A high-ranking SS officer was also present, possibly a company commander of the division. When the latter gave the order to be shot, Goering fired his heavy machine gun into the crowd. The other soldiers, who were about 5 to 6 meters away from the women, also shot. According to Göring, no more shots in the neck were necessary. Then the corpses were poured with fuel and infected. After it was ignited, a child is said to have risen from the pile of corpses and ran away as a “living torch”. The high-ranking officer ordered two SS men to follow the child. This failed.

responsibility

At his interrogation, Göring stated that he was aware of his responsibility. Although he was guilty of the shooting of up to 25 women, it was an act of emergency .

Late legal work-up

Judgments in Italy

In 2002, the military prosecutor in La Spezia opened a case against alleged perpetrators of the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema. This was made possible because there were files that had been created after the end of the Second World War and were hidden in the so-called closet of shame . In 2004 the trial began at the La Spezia Military Court. Ludwig Göring, Ludwig Heinrich Sonntag and Werner Bruß , Karl Gropler , Gerhard Sommer , Alfred Schöneberg , Heinrich Schendel, Georg Rauch and Alfred Mathias Concina were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. These judgments were upheld in 2006 by the Court of Appeal in Rome in the second instance and in 2007 by the Supreme Court of Cassation in the third and last instance.

Investigations in Germany

Since 2002, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office has been investigating nine of the people convicted in Italy, plus another five who were not indicted in La Spezia. The proceedings were closed in 2011. A reopening of the investigation was rejected by the Stuttgart public prosecutor.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pforzheimer Rundschau - Online newspaper: -. Retrieved June 27, 2020 .
  2. ^ A b c 10. La posizione degli imputati (Italian), on Ministry of Defense, Italy. Retrieved October 6, 2019
  3. ^ Carlo Gentile : Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 215-219
  4. ↑ Silvia Buzzelli, Marco De Paolis, Andrea Speranzoni: La ricostruzione giudiziale dei crimini nazifascisti in Italia. Questioni preliminari. Giappichelli, Turin 2012, ISBN 978-88-348-2619-5 . Pp. 145-146
  5. ↑ Nazi war crimes: proceedings on SS massacre in Italy discontinued , October 1, 2012, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 6, 2019
  6. ↑ Felix Bohr: German Justice rejects the reopening of the investigation , from May 21, 2013, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved October 6, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Goering, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goring, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer and convicted war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Ittersbach
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 2011
Place of death Ittersbach