Otto Reich (SS member)

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Otto Reich (born December 5, 1891 in Waldhausen, Insterburg district , East Prussia ; † September 20, 1955 in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel ) was a German SS leader and police officer during the Nazi era and a camp commandant in the Lichtenburg concentration camp .

Life

After eight years of primary school, Reich embarked on a career as a professional soldier. Reich attended the Bartenstein NCO School from 1907 and the Potsdam NCO School from 1909 . Reich entered the 4th Guards Regiment on foot in 1911 . With this he took part as a soldier in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 , in which he was promoted to Vice Sergeant on March 1, 1915. After the war he belonged to a volunteer corps . Reich started his own grocery wholesaler in 1921, but went bankrupt due to inflation .

Reich joined the NSDAP ( membership number 289.356) and the SS (SS number 9.948) in 1929. From 1931 he led SS-Sturm 1 / V / 6 in Berlin. After the seizure of power by the Nazis Reich was on 17 March 1933 as one of the first 120 men of Sepp Dietrich to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler offset (LSSAH). On the night of June 29th to 30th, 1934, Reich and Jürgen Wagner led about two thirds of the Leibstandarte, which was moved in a night and fog action with trains from Berlin to Bavaria in the context of the Röhm affair in order to be there under the To keep the command of Sepp Dietrich at the personal disposal of Hitler. In the early evening of June 30, Reich, as Dietrich's agent, commanded an execution squad made up of members of the LSSAH, which shot six prominent SA leaders on Hitler's orders in the courtyard of the Stadelheim prison . On July 4th Reich was promoted to SS-Standartenführer with effect from July 1st .

Soon afterwards he was appointed by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler as head of basic military training at the SS Junker School in Jüterbog . After arguments with the commander of the LSSAH Dietrich, he was recalled by the Leibstandarte on March 1, 1935 and became camp commandant of the Lichtenburg concentration camp until he gave up this position on March 30, 1936 at his own request and then led the "East Friesland" guards in the Esterwegen concentration camp . From July 1937 to October 1938 he led the SS-Totenkopfverband “Brandenburg” in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then the SS-Totenkopfverband “Ostmark” in the Mauthausen concentration camp .

From April 1941 to April 1942 he was commander of SS-Freiwilligen-Standarte Nordwest, then until mid-February 1943 commander of the weapons SS and police in Riga (North Russia), then with the police president in Breslau . From August 1943 to June 1944 he was the commander of SS Police Regiment 4, then briefly in the staff department of the SS Personnel Main Office. From August 1944 he was commander of the Ordnungspolizei in Agram and after the death of Willi Brandner briefly his successor as Police Area Leader Agram from December 28, 1944 to January 6, 1945. After that he was SS leader in the until the end of the Second World War Staff department of the SS Personnel Main Office set up.

After the end of the war, Reich was not prosecuted.

Awards

Reich's SS ranks
date rank
December 6, 1931 SS-Untersturmführer
June 28, 1933 SS-Sturmbannführer
January 30, 1934 SS-Obersturmbannführer
July 1, 1934 SS standard leader
September 1, 1941 SS Oberführer of the Waffen SS

literature

  • Karin Orth : The concentration camp SS. dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-34085-1 .
  • Dirk Lüerßen: "We are the Moorsoldaten" - The inmates of the early concentration camps in Emsland 1933 to 1936. Dissertation at the University of Osnabrück 2001, DNB 979287642 . (PDF; 2.8 MB).
  • Johannes Tuchel : Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. (= Writings of the Federal Archives, Volume 39). H. Boldt, 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dirk Lüerßen: "We are the Moorsoldaten". Osnabrück 2001, p. 71.
  2. ↑ a b c d Johannes Tuchel: Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. H. Boldt, 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 , pp. 386f.
  3. ↑ a b Karin Orth: The Concentration Camp SS. Munich 2004, p. 143.
  4. ^ Rainer Orth: The SD man Johannes Schmidt. The murderer of Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher? , 2012, p. 165.
personal data
SURNAME Rich, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS leader and concentration camp commander
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Waldhausen
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 1955
Place of death Düsseldorf-Oberkassel