Otto von Oelhafen

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Otto von Oelhafen , full name Otto Emil Georg Sixtus von Oelhafen (born June 8, 1886 in Würzburg , † March 13, 1952 in Munich ) was a German officer , most recently SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police in World War II . Among other things, he was deputy chief of police in Munich and commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO) in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine . There he led mass murder campaigns against Jews.

Biography until 1933

After attending primary school in Munich, Oelhafen attended a humanistic grammar school in Bamberg from 1896 to 1899 . After finishing school, he started a career as a career officer in the Bavarian Army and initially joined the cadet corps in Munich. From there, in July 1906, he transferred to the 2nd field artillery regiment "Horn" in Würzburg . After attending the Munich War School for almost a year , he completed his officer training in February 1907. With the rank of lieutenant , he graduated from the artillery and engineering school in Munich from October 1909 to July 1910 .

At the First World War he took from August 1914 as adjutant first of I. department of its common Regiment as a Lieutenant in part. From March 1915 to November 1917 he was a battery leader in the 20th Field Artillery Regiment and then commanded the 2nd Division until the end of March 1918. Oelhafen, promoted to captain since September 1916 , was leader of the 4th battery of the regiment from the end of March 1918 and was a member of the regimental staff. In May 1918 Oelhafen joined the 84th Landwehr Brigade, shortly afterwards was transferred to the staff of Artillery Commander No. 125 and in June 1918 to the staff of Artillery Commander No. 129.

After the end of the war, from November 1918 to January 1919, he was initially used again with his main regiment and then with the 12th field artillery regiment . In spring 1919 he commanded the volunteer battery of Oelhafen in the Würzburg Freikorps , which put down surveys of Spartakists in Würzburg . From June 1919 he was employed in the Reichswehr Artillery Regiment 23 stationed in Bamberg , which took action against insurgents in Hof and Suhl in March 1920 . From 1920 to 1922 he was a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund in Bamberg.

After his discharge from the army, he switched to the police service at the beginning of October 1920 and was initially employed as a police captain at the Bavarian State Police in Bamberg. At first he was a Hundredschaftsführer and adjutant and was a member of the State Police in Bamberg from 1926 to 1931. He then moved to Munich as section commander of the police force.

National Socialism

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , Oelhafen was from the beginning of June 1933 until the end of September 1937, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, in command of the Munich Police and also from the beginning of July 1934 after the assassination of August Schneidhuber in the course of the Röhm Putsch as a substitute or deputy Munich police chief . From the beginning of October 1937 to the end of May 1938 he acted in the rank of colonel of the protection police as commander of the protection police in Dresden and then until the beginning of December 1939 initially as a representative and later officially as inspector of the Ordnungspolizei (ITE) Saxony.

In the course of the annexation of Austria he was leader of Police Group 8 and was then responsible for Styria , Carinthia and East Tyrol as an ITE until the end of April 1938 . After the occupation of the Sudetenland he was from the beginning of October 1938 to the beginning of December 1938 in command of the Police Regiment 1 and BdO in the section "North Bohemia" in Aussig .

At the beginning of May 1937, Oelhafen joined the NSDAP ( membership number 4,736,616). On April 20, 1939 Oelhafen was at his request, in the SS (SS no. 327493) as standartenführer added, where he in April 1940 to oberführer , in April 1941 the SS brigade leaders and finally in December 1941 to rose to SS-Gruppenführer.

Second World War

After the beginning of the Second World War , he was from the beginning of January 1940 IdO in Military District I with headquarters in Königsberg . In October 1940 he was promoted to major general of the police. At the beginning of May 1941 he succeeded Jürgen von Kamptz as BdO at the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia with his office in Prague and was replaced in this function by Paul Riege at the beginning of September 1941.

After the Barbarossa company , Oelhafen was BdO in the Ukraine from September 1941 to October 1942, with its headquarters in Kiev . Oelhafen was also significantly involved as a perpetrator in the Holocaust in the Ukraine : In November 1941, for example, he led the mass murder of Jews in Rivne , since Einsatzkommando 5 of Einsatzgruppe C was not yet operational. In cooperation with the local area commissioner Werner Beer , he set up a murder squad from police battalions 69, 315, 320, the Eastern Company and some members of the Einsatzkommando 5, which killed over 17,000 Jews near Sosenki. In December 1941 he was promoted to lieutenant general of the police and SS group leader. From the beginning of September 1942 to October 10, 1942, he was in charge of the "anti-gang staff" at the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Ukraine. His successor as BdO Ukraine was Adolf von Bomhard .

From October 1942 to the beginning of February 1944 he was ITE or later BdO at the HSSPF South in military district VII with headquarters in Munich. He then retired from the police force.

post war period

To what extent Oelhafen was interned and denazified after the end of the war is unknown. However, he was interrogated as a witness on May 5 and 28, 1947 as part of the Nuremberg Trials . He later lived in Lichtenfels .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 442
  2. ↑ Joachim Lilla states in the Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online: Minister of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) functionaries in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945 as the place of death in Munich, but points out that according to other information, Lichtenfels is also mentioned.
  3. ↑ a b Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online : Minister of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) functionaries in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945 - Oelhafen, Otto v.
  4. ^ Dieter Pohl : Scene Ukraine. The mass murder of Jews in the military administration area and in the Reich Commissariat 1941–1943 , in: Christian Hartmann , Johannes Hürter , Peter Lieb , Dieter Pohl: The German War in the East 1941–1944. Facets of a border crossing , Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, pp. 155-196, p. 176, ISBN 978-3-486-59138-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Oelhafen, Otto von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oelhafen, Otto Emil Georg Sixtus von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1952
Place of death Munich