Max Häusserer

Max Ludwig Häusserer , also Häußerer , (born November 2, 1890 in Stuttgart , † November 16, 1956 in Wiesbaden-Biebrich ) was a German police officer and SS leader.

Life and activity

As a young man, Häusserer entered the civil service in 1907 as a municipal administrative officer. In 1912 he switched to the police force . Interrupted by his participation in the First World War , he was deployed in Mainz from 1912 to 1934 . In 1933 he reached the rank of captain in the security police.

In 1934, Häusserer joined the Secret State Police Office , where he took on the position of Josef Meisinger's deputy as head of Department II 1 H ("Party, SA , SS , HJ and BDM matters"). In addition, he was head of Department II 1 H 2 ("SS and SA matters") belonging to the department and deputy head of Department II 1 H 1 ("Party, HJ and BDM matters"). In 1935, the competence of his department was also expanded to include the processing of NSKK matters.

In the run-up to the Blomberg-Fritsch affair in spring 1938, Häusserer played an important role. In the course of this affair, Adolf Hitler succeeded in removing the Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg and the Chief of Army Command Werner von Fritsch from their offices through intrigues and then transferring their powers to his own person, with which he himself de facto had sole power of disposal over the army brought his hands. To this end, Häusserer organized the political "ammunition" with the help of which Fritsch was discredited and then forced out of his office: As early as 1936 he had the petty criminal Schmidt, who was being held in a concentration camp for homosexual activities , as a pressed witness in the event of an action won against Fritsch by persuading him to identify Fritsch from a collection of photos of high officers as the one with whom he had had homosexual contacts a few years before, although this had actually been a different man. The testimony of Schmidt wrested by Häusserer and his superior Meisinger Schmidt with the prospect of release from prison was finally used in 1938 as incriminating material to force Fritsch to resign from his position.

In 1933, Häusserer joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2.019.175). He was accepted into the SS in 1937 (SS no. 290.011). In the SS he was promoted to SS-Sturmführer, SS-Hauptsturmführer and finally, with effect from September 1, 1942, to SS-Sturmbannführer . In the civil service, he was promoted to senior government councilor in December 1944.

In later years, Häusserer temporarily headed the Gestapo office in Vienna. During the Second World War , he was Ernst Rassow's successor from January 1942 to July 1944 as Army Field Police Chief (Colonel) in charge of coordinating the actions of the Secret Field Police on the Eastern Front, which at that time served as a special unit of the police and the Wehrmacht (“Gestapo der Wehrmacht “) Was responsible for numerous war crimes , especially the execution of mass shootings.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the registry office Wiesbaden-Biebrich No. 212/1956.
2. ↑ Heinz Höhne: The Order under the Skull , 1967, p. 221.
3. ↑ Heinz Höhne: The Order under the Skull , 1967, p. 221 f.
4. ↑ Online register of SS members (sorted by membership number) .
5. ↑ orders of the chief of the Security Police and SD no. 50/44 of 2 December 1944.
6. ↑ Joachim Bornschein: perpetrators in secret. Wilhelm Krichbaum between the Nazi field police and the Gehlen organization , 2010, p. 122.