Willi Rogge's murder

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The murder or manslaughter of Willi Rogge is a criminal case and end- stage crime from the last days of the Third Reich . On April 14, 1945, the farmer Willi Rogge was executed by a unit of the Adolf Hitler Freikorps on a road between Dötlingen and Neerstedt . The long-forgotten case of validly nominated as (on 24 October 1952 by the Supreme Court) homicide was classified, became public again in April 2014 when the journalist Cordt Schnibben in the news magazine Der Spiegel , the Nazi his father's past Georg Schnibben aufarbeitete.

prehistory

In April 1945 the German Reich was on the verge of surrender . A year earlier, Heinrich Himmler had called for the formation of so-called werewolf units that would operate behind enemy lines and attack enemies there. On March 28, 1945, Adolf Hitler gave the order to set up the "Adolf Hitler Freikorps". In the Weser-Ems Gau the leadership of the Hitler Youth functionary Heinz Günter Wichmann took over , his Volkssturm unit was also called "Kampfgruppe Wichmann". A week before the manslaughter, Gauleiter Paul Wegener ordered them to act ruthlessly against war-weary Germans.

“We'll make short work of them in our district and hang them up without going to court. Houses showing white flags are set on fire and looters are killed immediately. "

- Paul Wegener

For many years Dötlingen was considered a stronghold of the NSDAP and a model village. Farmer Willi Rogge, who was not on the party line, lived in the village. Before 1933 he was a member of the local council and was known as a democrat. The local group leader Heinrich Brockshus raised the charge that Rogge had stolen materials from a store of the Reich Labor Service (RAD). These allegations later turned out to be false.

Sequence of events

On April 13, 1945, Wilhelm Piening, Georg Schnibben and Heinrich Cordes met at their commandant Wichmann in Huntlosen near Dötlingen. Cordes brought the case forward. Wichmann decided on the basis of an order from Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz to punish the alleged traitor with death. Before doing this, however, he asked Cordes and Piening to speak to Brockshus again. This confirmed his story and expanded the allegation. So he suspected that Rogge could cooperate with the approaching British and endanger the plans of the combat group. Wichmann then gave the order to kill Rogge. Since an attack by tanks was feared on the morning of April 14, the act was initially postponed. Returned after a breast operation that was necessary at short notice, Wichmann reaffirmed his order around 4 p.m. and gave the order to Piening.

Piening and an unknown passenger arrived at the Rogge family's place of residence around 9 p.m. and asked Rogge to come with them to the combat group's command post. The surprised Rogge got into Piening's car. The three of them drove a short distance, then Piening asked Rogge to get out of the car to get into another car. As he got out of the car, Piening fired the first shot and hit Rogge in the head. An accomplice then fired at the staggering victim, followed by a second shot in the head by Piening. The corpse was deposited on the side of the road and a sign was hung on it that read "Whoever betrays his people dies" and that was provided with a handprint.

The next day, Wichmann was informed, who wrote a press article. This appeared on April 16 in the Oldenburgische Staatszeitung under the heading "Traitors judged". The article praised the perpetrators as "avenging German honor".

Processes

Shortly after the end of World War II , Cordes was arrested, who revealed his accomplices . The six perpetrators were arrested and after Oldenburg transferred, where they in detention remained. The British occupation forces handed the case over to the German authorities in December 1947. A total of four trials were necessary before a guilty verdict could be reached. In 1947 , the instigator Brockshus was sentenced to "life" before the regional court in Oldenburg , and seven other defendants received long prison terms. However, the process went through two other instances, with the prison sentences being considerably reduced. On June 18, 1953, the jury in Oldenburg sentenced Wichmann to three years' imprisonment for manslaughter. Schnibben, as his adjutant, was sentenced to two years and nine months for aiding and abetting. The remaining perpetrators, including the actual shooter, received two years and six months. Paul Wegener was acquitted.

Work-up

The crime was not forgotten in Dötlingen. Since 1995, the Dötlingen Citizens and Local History Association has been trying to create a memorial for the victims of the Nazi regime in Dötlingen and thus also for Willi Rogge. The memorial was inaugurated in 2009. Originally, the past was supposed to be further processed and the names on the memorial added. However, the work-up came to a standstill.

“'For me this is prehistory,' said Mayor Heino Pauka at the time [2004]. Better to let the dead rest. Not good prerequisites for finding out what happened in the village during the Nazi era. "

- Jürgen Hinrichs : A murder that doesn't go away , Weser-Kurier, April 19, 2014

The local researcher Karsten Grashorn researched the exact circumstances at the time, but he has not yet released his 20-page essay for publication.

On April 14, 2014, the 69th anniversary of the crime, the article My Father, a Werewolf by Cordt Schnibben, Georg Schnibben's son , appeared as the cover story of Spiegel issue No. 16 . The cover picture shows the father with the caption My father, the murderer and the subtitle SPIEGEL reporter Cordt Schnibben about his Nazi parents and the flight from the truth . In the article itself, Schnibben describes on several pages on the one hand the course of events and the legal preparation, on the other hand his way of coming to terms with the past. When describing the process and the judgment of June 18, 1953, Schnibben confused the then presiding judge August von Döllen with his younger brother, the ministerial director Alexander von Döllen.

The online version on Spiegel Online followed on April 15, 2014 . At the same time, a website also appeared on Spiegel.de which presented the crime with various original documents, including original excerpts from Radio Werwolf and various court files.

literature

radio play

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Bauer, Justice and Nazi Crimes: Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966. Volume 11, University Press Amsterdam 1974, p. 135.
  2. ^ Hermann Speckmann: Overview of the fighting in Ganderkesee . In: Hermann Speckmann (ed.): Memories of contemporary witnesses: The end of the war in Ganderkesee. Supplementary volume . Ganderkesee July 2004, p. 7 ( gannerseer.de [PDF]).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Cordt Schnibben: My father, a werewolf . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , April 14, 2014, p. 62-73 .
  4. ↑ Volker Koop: Himmler's last line-up: the Nazi organization “Werewolf” . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20191-3 , p. 166 .
  5. ↑ quoted from Beatrix Herlemann: "The farmer sticks to the traditional". Rural behavior under National Socialism in the area of ​​today's state of Lower Saxony (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen, ISSN  0933-3320 , 39th year, Volume 4: Lower Saxony 1933–1945 / Historical Commission for Lower Saxony, Volume 4). Hahn, Hannover 1993, ISBN 3-7752-5877-9 , p. 335 ff.
  6. ↑ a b Karsten Röhr: Murder files are stored in the State Archives. Trial of Dötlinger Bauer's death documented in NWZ from 1947. Nordwest-Zeitung , April 16, 2014, accessed on February 19, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Jürgen Hinrichs, A murder that does not pass, According to a report in "Spiegel", an old story is boiling up again in Dötlingen, in: Weser-Kurier, April 19, 2014
  8. ↑ History on the website of the citizens' and homeland association Dötlingen ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bhv-doetlingen.de
  9. ↑ Hauke ​​Gruhn: Specifications for memorial in a sensitive place. Nordwest-Zeitung , February 23, 2007, accessed April 18, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Presentation of the "Memorial for the Victims of National Socialism in Dötlingen" on the website of the Dötlingen Citizens and Homeland Association ( Memento from November 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ The terms persecution, forced labor, expulsion, escape and murder have been cut into a metal base plate. "The murder - that means Willy Rogge." - A murder that does not go away, In: Weser-Kurier , April 19, 2014.
  12. ↑ Ulrich Suttka: The murder of 1945 is discussed again. Nordwest-Zeitung , April 24, 2014, accessed on April 18, 2014 .
  13. ↑ The career of both lawyers and their opposed role in the Oldenburg Dominican Trial of 1935/36 is described in Maria Anna Zumholz: The Foreign Exchange Trial against the Dominican Fathers Laurentius Siemer, Titus Horten and Thomas Stuhlweissenburg in Oldenburg. In: Baumann / Hirschfeld: Christian cross or swastika. On the relationship between the Catholic Church and National Socialism in the state of Oldenburg. Vechta 1999, pp. 275-312, there in particular fn. 140
  14. ^ Official website for the Spiegel Online case
  15. ↑ Radio play: "Rogge". In: ndr.de . Retrieved April 22, 2020 .