Max Simon (SS member)

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Max Simon, 1940, here as SS-Standartenführer (Photo: SS Propagandakompanie )

Max Simon (born January 6, 1899 in Breslau , † February 1, 1961 in Lünen ) was a German SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS in World War II . He has been charged with involvement in war crimes in several states and sentenced to death twice, including one in absentia . In West Germany he was charged with the Brettheim murders in 1945 , but died before the end of the trial.

Life

From April 1, 1905 to March 1913, Simon attended the municipal Protestant primary school No. 46 in his hometown. He then completed training as a tailor in a clothing store. After this he worked at the Imperial Post Office 18 in Breslau. Due to the war, he was drafted into the Prussian Army on June 27, 1917 , where he was used as a nurse in the fortress hospital in Breslau. In the further course of the First World War , Simon took part in the fighting in Macedonia and in the west as a medical soldier , where he had the task of bringing wounded people who could be transported from hospitals close to the front for care back home. This was followed on October 23, 1918 , when he was transferred to the Territorial Inspection of the Voluntary Medical Service in Silesia , to which he was to belong beyond the end of the war.

On January 9, 1919, Simon was transferred to the 4th Squadron of the Leib-Kürassier-Regiment “Großer Kurfürst” (Silesian) No. 1 . With this he participated in the border guard of Silesia until his departure on October 20, 1919. In the meantime he had been made private on August 14, 1919 . From October 22nd to December 28th, 1919 he worked as a goods floor worker at the Reichsbahn before he returned to the military service with his old regiment and worked again in the border guard. There he was promoted to NCO on March 24, 1920 . After his regiment was dissolved, he was transferred to the Reichswehr in Hofgeismar , where he served with the 2nd Squadron of the 16th Cavalry Regiment from June 1, 1920 .

Simon married Martha Bartsch, the daughter of a Breslau merchant, on October 18, 1924.

In the same year he was promoted to sergeant . Since he was not officially capable of being an officer in the Reichswehr in terms of status and education , Simon retired from active service on September 4, 1929 and took a position in the public service . First he worked as a clerk in the finance department at the district administrator of the district Saalfeld operates. From March 1, 1930 he took up a three-year preparatory service at the Thuringian State Insurance Institute in Weimar . After its successful completion, Simon was accepted into the civil service as a civil servant on June 1, 1934 .

Career in the SS

Simon joined the NSDAP on April 1, 1932 ( membership number 1,359,546). On May 1, 1933, he was accepted into the SS as a candidate in Gera (SS no. 83.086) and assigned to the 47th SS standard. On December 3, 1933, he was promoted to SS-Oberscharführer and on March 8, 1934 to SS-Hauptscharführer . As such, Simon was given the task of leading the staff guard at the SS Central Section . He then moved to Dresden . In November 1934 he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer . Simon was camp commandant of the Sachsenburg concentration camp from August to October 1934 .

From 1935 Simon was leader of the Sturmbanns III / SS-Totenkopfverband Sachsen . From July 1937 he was commissioned to set up the 1st SS-Totenkopfstandarte Oberbayern . Simon was the closest advisor to Theodor Eicke for the military sector. He was appointed SS-Standartenführer in 1938 and with this association he took part in the occupation of Austria (March 1938) , the Sudetenland (October 1938) and the "remaining Czech Republic" (March 1939) .

World War II and war crimes

With the beginning of the Second World War he commanded a regiment of the SS Totenkopfdivision and took part in the German attack in the west in May and June 1940 and, from June 1941, in the attack on the Soviet Union . On December 1, 1942, Simon was appointed SS Brigade Leader. From mid-May 1943 to October 1943 he was in command of the SS Panzer Grenadier Division Totenkopf and then organized the formation of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" . In July 1944, his division was relocated to central Italy. From October 1944 he commanded the XIII. SS Army Corps . November 1944 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS. In March 1945 he commanded a section of the front southeast of Saarbrücken with three divisions (see Operation Undertone ). On April 10, 1945, he had the men from Brettheim , three citizens of the village of Brettheim , hanged after they had disarmed four Hitler Youths who wanted to put up senseless resistance. In early May 1945 he capitulated as commander of the XIII. SS Army Corps in front of the US troops in southern Germany.

After the end of the war

By a British court martial Simon was in Padua because of massacres in central Italy, were numerous civilians killed ( marzabotto massacre , massacre Fivizzano ), sentenced to death , later to life imprisonment pardoned and from the 1954 prison Werl dismissed. After his release, he was charged with the murders in Brettheim in April 1945 in Germany. His defense lawyer was Rudolf Aschenauer , who specialized in proceedings against Nazi defendants accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes. In the first instance, the jury court at the district court in Ansbach decided on acquittal, among other things with the argument that the court martial judgments were formally correct. This acquittal and the further development of the procedure aroused great opposition in the democratic public. The CDU member of the Bundestag Ernst Benda Max Simon and his co-defendants publicly called the murderers of Brettheim, despite the acquittal . In this trial and other proceedings in this matter "it was literally swarming with personnel who had proven themselves in the Third Reich". In Ansbach, for example, a regional court director, Andreas Schmidt, who had already joined the NSDAP in 1927 and had made a career in the Nazi judiciary, was chairman . In addition, one of the two assessors in the Great Criminal Chamber had been a member of the NSDAP and numerous NS organizations from 1938 onwards. As a prosecutor, the public prosecutor himself applied for death sentences in a special court during the war. The acquittal was overturned by the Federal Court of Justice, as was another acquittal by the Nuremberg-Fürth Regional Court . This was followed on July 23, 1960 by a third acquittal by the district court of Ansbach. Just before the re-trial of the case, Simon died of heart failure.

character

The historian Carlo Gentile describes Max Simon as the "skull man". Simon was one of the few generals in the Waffen SS who came from the lower class. He was distinguished by his excellent organizational skills, as well as the hardness and ruthless commitment typical of the SS. However, he owed his rise in World War II to the SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS Theodor Eicke , who was also the "leader of the SS skull and crossbones and SS guards". Under him, Simon became a central figure in the SS skull and crossbones associations. Simon's brutality and harshness were expressed in the massacres of civilians in Poland, Russia and in the last years of the war in Italy, for example in Sant'Anna di Stazzema and Fivizzano .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 584.
  2. ↑ a b Johannes Tuchel: Concentration Camps: Organizational History and Function of the Inspection of the Concentration Camps 1934–1938. 1991, p. 391.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 197.
  4. ↑ Wolf Stegemann : View to Brettheim I: In the last days of the war, SS henchmen had civilians executed . on Rothenburg under the swastika , accessed on December 29, 2014.
  5. ↑ VINCA FIVIZZANO August 24-27, 1944 . Atlante della Strage Naziste et Fasciste in Italia, accessed August 27, 2019.
  6. ↑ Simon defense attorney pleads for acquittal. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . No. 215, July 16, 1960, p. 1.
  7. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70412-9 , p. 177.
  8. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70412-9 , p. 178.
  9. ^ Ulrich Renz : Piecework. The Nazi proceedings in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Tribüne - magazine for the understanding of Judaism . 49th year, issue 195, 3rd quarter 2010, pp. 130-138, here p. 136.
  10. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70412-9 , p. 179.
  11. ↑ Stand courts. Late victims . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1960, pp. 21-23 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Hang the guys . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1960, pp. 17-21 ( online ).
  13. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . P. 286
  14. ^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 288-290
  15. ↑ Franz Josef Merkl: General Simon - life stories of an SS leader. Augsburg 2010, p. 34.
  16. ^ A b Franz Josef Merkl: General Simon - Life stories of an SS leader. Augsburg 2010, p. 40.
  17. ↑ Franz Josef Merkl: General Simon - life stories of an SS leader. Augsburg 2010, p. 153.
  18. ↑ Franz Josef Merkl: General Simon - life stories of an SS leader. Augsburg 2010, p. 143.
  19. ↑ Franz Josef Merkl: General Simon - life stories of an SS leader. Augsburg 2010, p. 153.
  20. ^ Franz Josef Merkl: General Simon - Life story of an SS leader. Augsburg 2010, p. 179.
  21. ↑ a b c d Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 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. 706.
  22. ↑ The High Command of the Wehrmacht announces ... The German Wehrmacht report. Volume 3: 1944-1945. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1982, ISBN 3-7648-1282-6 , p. 170.
personal data
SURNAME Simon, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer and war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1961
Place of death Luenen