Otto Winkelmann (SS member)

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Otto Winkelmann (right) next to Kurt Daluege (1940)

Otto Winkelmann (born September 10, 1894 in Bordesholm ; † September 24 or 25, 1977 in Horn-Bad Meinberg  ) was a German officer, most recently in the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer , General of the Waffen-SS and Police . During the Second World War in 1944, Winkelmann was involved as Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in Hungary in the Holocaust against the Hungarian Jews and was temporarily city ​​commander of Budapest when the Red Army approached . After the war he was imprisoned in Hungary for three years as a witness in the Nazi trials . After his return to Germany, no proceedings were opened against him.

Life

Origin and occupation (1891–1932)

Otto Winkelmann was born in the then district town of Bordesholm (between Kiel and Neumünster ) as the son of City Administration Director Carl Freidrich Wilhelm Winkelmann. After dropping out of law school , Winkelmann took part as a soldier in the First World War from 1914-18 and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. After the end of the war he was a member of a volunteer corps . He married in 1922; the marriage resulted in two children.

In November 1919 Winkelmann joined the police service as a career officer . In December 1919 he was promoted to first lieutenant in the police, and in May 1923 to captain of the police force . From 1930 he was director of the city police of Görlitz . Winkelmann joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1,373,131) in November 1932 - before the " seizure of power " .

Police career during the Nazi era (1933–1943)

In June 1933 Winkelmann was promoted to major in the security police, and in June 1938 to lieutenant colonel in the security police. Winkelmann was accepted into the SS (SS-No. 308.238) in September 1938. In 1938 he was transferred from Görlitz to Berlin to the main office of the Ordnungspolizei in the Reich Ministry of the Interior , which from September 1939 was under the direction of Kurt Daluege . His new rank was SS-Obersturmbannführer , which corresponded to the lieutenant colonel.

In the spring of 1940 Winkelmann was promoted to SS-Standartenführer and Colonel of the Schutzpolizei, and in December 1940 he was appointed Chief of Office Group Command I in the main office of the Ordnungspolizei. Daluege was his direct superior. In December 1941 Winkelmann reached the first rank of general as major general of the police, and in August 1942 he was promoted to lieutenant general of the police. In November 1942 Winkelmann was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and appointed as the successor to Lieutenant General Adolf von Bomhard as head of the command office. With that, Winkelmann was the second man behind Daluege as chief of staff in the main police force . He kept this post until he was transferred to Hungary in March 1944, with his boss changing from August 1943: General Alfred Wünnenberg (1891–1963) followed Daluege, who was leaving for health reasons .

Deployment in Hungary (1944–1945)

On March 19, 1944, Hungary was occupied by German troops ( Operation Margarethe ). With the Führer decree of March 19, 1944, Hitler appointed the German ambassador to Hungary, Edmund Veesenmayer , "Plenipotentiary of the Greater German Reich" (Reich Plenipotentiary) and Otto Winkelmann as Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) of Hungary.

“Civilian German agencies of any kind that are to be active in Hungary are only to be set up with the consent of the Reich plenipotentiary, are subordinate to him and carry out their activities according to his instructions. For the tasks of the SS and police to be carried out with German forces in Hungary, in particular for the police tasks in the field of the Jewish question , a higher SS and police leader joins the staff of the Reich plenipotentiary, who acts according to his political instructions. "

- Leader's Decree of March 19, 1944 

The official relationship between Winkelmann and Veesenmayer - subordination of Winkelmann to Veesenmayer or equal cooperation for various aspects of the German occupation - was controversial during their joint service in Hungary; a competitive struggle developed, which grew into personal enmity between the two. The enmity was to continue during the legal coming to terms with the war after the war, both burdened each other heavily and “did not shrink from lying”.

Winkelmann was the direct superior of oberführer Hans-Ulrich Geschke , who in Hungary, the Security Police and Security Service initiated and as a prelude to the deportation of Hungarian Jews chose 200 people with Jewish-sounding names from the phone book and had them arrested. Geschke was in turn formally subordinate to the Eichmann Special Operations Command , which deported Hungarian Jews to extermination camps . Although the Special Operations Command was directly subordinate to Winkelmann, Adolf Eichmann received his instructions on factual issues directly from Kaltenbrunner and Müller from the Reich Security Main Office . This constellation later served as the main defense strategy of Winkelmann and Veesenmayer during the legal processing of the Nazi acts in the Federal Republic, in order to deny their own joint responsibility for the Holocaust of the Hungarian Jews.

Winkelmann was instrumental in the removal of Hungary's head of state Miklós Horthy . After the interim military government under Prime Minister Géza Lakatos stopped the deportation of Hungarian Jews at the end of August 1944, a German commando unit under the leadership of Otto Skorzeny , who had been in Hungary since August 1944, kidnapped Horthy's son of the same name, Miklós Horthy Jr, on October 15, 1944 in the " Operation Panzerfaust " . (1907-1993) to overthrow Lakatos. Thereupon Horthy gave a ceasefire declaration on the radio for Hungary, whereupon he was arrested by Skorzeny on October 16. On Winkelmann's initiative, the Arrow Cross member Ferenc Szálasi became the new head of state in Hungary.

On December 1, 1944, Hitler ordered Budapest to be a fortress ; he appointed SS-Obergruppenführer Winkelmann as town commander. With this, Winkelmann was subject to the IX. SS mountain corps under the command of Pfeffer-Wildenbruch and the III. Panzer Corps of the Wehrmacht . After just four days - on December 5, 1944 - Winkelmann was forced to resign as city commandant, since he had recommended the abandonment of the Pest bridgehead, which Hitler strictly refused. The new city commander was Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, who would also hold this post in the coming battle for Budapest .

Post-war period and legal appraisal (1945–1977)

Winkelmann became an American prisoner of war on May 1, 1945 , from which he was transferred to Hungary on October 27, 1945. From there, the Hungarian public prosecutor's office had requested him as a witness for the Nazi trials against Ferenc Szálasi , Emil Kovarcz , Béla Imrédy and Franz Basch . On April 10, 1946, the Hungarian Minister of Justice applied to Major General William S. Key , the highest US representative in the Allied Control Commission for Hungary , to extradite Veesenmayer and Winkelmann to try them as war criminals in Hungary. However, the American authorities did not give in to the application, but instead pushed through Winkelmann's return to Germany in September 1948, where he was released.

After his return to Germany, Winkelmann took up residence in his home town of Bordesholm . In April 1955 Winkelmann was elected to the council - the local parliament of Kiel - for the CDU . He was a direct candidate in constituency 26 and, as a member of the Kiel bloc (CDU, FDP, SHB and GB / BHE ), a member of several committees of the council. At the beginning of 1958 Winkelmann moved from Kiel to the suburb of Schulensee and thus resigned as councilor in February 1958 before the end of the legislative period . In May 1961 he was questioned in Germany as a witness in the Eichmann trial . 1961 Winkelmann went as "police colonel" in pension . With reference to the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews, he was listed together with 1,800 business leaders, politicians and leading officials of the Federal Republic in the Brown Book published in 1968 by the GDR for propaganda purposes .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Otto Winkelmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Source: Entry in the birth register with later addition: "H .: Deceased between September 24th and September 25th 1977 in Horn-Bad Meinberg. St. Amt Horn-Bad Meinberg No. 69/1777 / 29.9.77 G. "
  2. a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 679 (updated 2nd edition)
  3. ^ Igor-Philip Matić: Edmund Veesenmayer. Agent and diplomat of the National Socialist expansion policy. Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56677-6 , pp. 230-231.
  4. Ruth Bettina Birn: The higher SS and police leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1986, ISBN 3-7700-0710-7 , p. 348.
  5. ^ Friedrich Karl Kaul : The Eichmann case . Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1963, p. 251.
  6. a b c d Gerhard Seewann (Ed.): Files of the People's Court Trial against Franz A. Basch, Leader of the People's Groups of Germans in Hungary, Budapest 1945/46. Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486-56485-4 , p. 38.
  7. a b Peter Durucz: Hungary in the foreign policy of the Third Reich from 1942 to 1945. V and R Unipress, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-89971-284-6 , p. 282 (presented as a dissertation in 2005 at the University of Eichstätt).
  8. Alfons Kenkmann , Christoph Spieker (ed.): On behalf of the police, administration and responsibility. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-970-6 (volume accompanying the permanent exhibition of the same name at the historical site of Villa ten Hompel in Münster); Page is missing!
  9. a b Martin Moll (Ed.): “Führer-Erasse” 1939–1945: Edition of all the handed down, not printed in the Reichsgesetzblatt, issued in writing by Hitler during the Second World War in the areas of state, party, economy, occupation policy and military administration . Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-06873-2 , p. 404.
  10. ^ Igor-Philip Matić: Edmund Veesenmayer. Agent and diplomat of the National Socialist expansion policy. Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56677-6 , p. 13.
  11. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-16-147687-5 , pp. 100-101.
  12. Heinz Höhne : The order under the skull - The history of the SS. Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-89350-549-0 , p. 504 f.
  13. Krisztián Ungváry: The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II. Translated from the Hungarian by Ladislaus Lob. Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-300-11985-2 , pp. 43-44.
  14. Information from the state capital Kiel, Department for Press and Public Relations , from January 20, 2008. Allocation of seats over the legislative periods.
  15. ^ Statement by Winkelmann from May 19, 1961  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Simon Wiesenthal Center Document Collection, Haifa. File number 4 Js 1017/59 of the Oberstaatsanwaltschaft Frankfurt am Main, quoted from Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. 2007.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / motlc.specialcol.wiesenthal.com  
  16. Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Brown Book". War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science. Edition Ost, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-360-01033-7 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1968). Entry on Otto Winkelmann ( Memento from March 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive )