Otto Schwerdt (SS member)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Alexander Friedrich Schwerdt (born September 7, 1914 in Eisenberg (Palatinate) , † July 6, 1975 ) headed the so-called Peter Group as SS-Hauptsturmführer during the German occupation of Denmark in World War II .

Life

After attending primary school , Schwerdt completed commercial training. At the age of 18 he joined the NSDAP and SA . On January 1, 1935, he joined the SS guards "Elbe" as a volunteer SS candidate and was employed as a guard in the Lichtenburg concentration camp . From November 1936 to September 1938 Schwerdt did his military service with Flak Regiment 23 in Merseburg . Schwerdt then served in the 3rd SS Totenkopfstandarte "Brandenburg" based in Oranienburg , which was responsible, among other things, for guarding the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . After the outbreak of war, Schwerdt took part in the Death's Head Division in Poland and - until he was wounded on May 27, 1940 - in the campaign in the West and from 1941 on in the Russian campaign. After being wounded several times and staying in the hospital for a long time, Schwerdt reported to the SS hunting units under the command of Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny in the summer of 1942 . On September 12, 1943, Schwerdt took part in the liberation of Mussolini on the Gran Sasso as Skorzeny's deputy . Schwerdt was an employee of the Security Service (SD) under Alfred Naujocks in Office VI of the Reich Security Main Office . Under the alias Peter Schäfer , he headed the Petergruppe , a terrorist group made up of German and members of Danish SS units , which was responsible for 94 " compensatory killings " and 25 attempts. In November 1944 he was replaced by Hauptsturmführer Horst Paul Issel.

In 1949 Otto Schwerdt was sentenced to death by the Copenhagen City Court in the so-called Little War Crimes Trial . The Østre Landsret (Eastern District Court) changed Schwerdt's sentence to 24 years in prison. Schwerdt was pardoned in 1953 and expelled from Denmark.

literature

Web links

Frihedsmuseet (Museum of the Danish Resistance)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Bath: The SD in Denmark 1940-1945. Heydrich's elite and counter-terror . Neuhaus, Berlin 2015, p. 47
  2. ^ A b Matthias Bath: The SD in Denmark 1940-1945. Heydrich's elite and counter-terror . Neuhaus, Berlin 2015, p. 48
  3. ^ Matthias Bath: The SD in Denmark 1940-1945. Heydrich's elite and counter-terror . Neuhaus, Berlin 2015, p. 50
  4. ^ Karl Christian Lammers : Late trials and mild sentences. The war crimes trials against Germans in Denmark . In: Norbert Frei (ed.): Transnational politics of the past. How to deal with German war criminals in Europe after the Second World War. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, p. 365 ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9
personal data
SURNAME Schwerdt, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shepherd, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Hauptsturmführer, head of the Peter Group
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Eisenberg (Palatinate)
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1975