Paul Scheer (General)

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Paul Albert Scheer (born April 4, 1889 in Prüm , † January 29, 1946 in Kiev ) was a German police officer, most recently lieutenant general of the police and SS group leader in World War II .

Life

Scheer was the son of a pharmacist. He graduated from schools in his hometown and then became a professional soldier. At the end of August 1907 he joined the Rhenish Foot Artillery Regiment No. 8 , with which he participated in the First World War ; last in the rank of captain . After the war he became a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and from the spring of 1919 he worked for the Eastern Border Guard . In February 1920 he was officially discharged from the army. Then he attended a business school and completed a commercial training in Koblenz .

At the beginning of August 1921 he entered the service of the police in Koblenz and was in the following years as a Hundertschaftsführer, u. a. active in Dortmund and Düsseldorf . From October 1928 to December 1933 he was an instructor at the Bonn Police School.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he became a member of the NSDAP in early May 1933 ( membership number 3.144.248). From the beginning of January 1934 he was commander of the protection police in Duisburg , from April of this year in the same function in Mühlheim-Oberhausen and from the beginning of December 1937 in Bochum . As commander of a unit of the Ordnungspolizei, he took part in the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938 and, following the Munich Agreement, in early October 1938 in the invasion of the Sudetenland .

After the beginning of the Second World War , he was from mid-September 1939 commander of the police in the Katowice area . As an SS-Standartenführer in the SS at the beginning of August 1940 (SS-No. 337.753) he became the commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO) Saar-Lothringen, based in Saarbrücken , in the same month . From May 1941 he acted as BdO Wiesbaden. During the German-Soviet War he was from the end of October 1941 in command of the Ordnungspolizei (KdO) in Kiev under the Higher SS and Police Leader Russia South. From mid-March 1943 to July 1944 he was BdO France with his office in Paris . Soon after the Allies landed in Normandy , his office was closed and Scheer was transferred to his place of residence in Katowice. As an SS leader, in January / February 1945 he was in charge of the “Lower Silesian Borders” interception staff in the Kamenz / Zittau area. From February 20, 1945 he was BdO in the Army Group Center area . In this function he was taken prisoner by the Soviets near Tábor on May 9, 1945 and was interned in POW camp 27 in Krasnogorsk .

From January 17 to 28, 1946, Scheer and 14 other defendants, including Lieutenant General Karl Burckhardt (including Wehrmacht commander of Kiev), had to answer to a Soviet military tribunal for their involvement in war crimes. In particular, he was accused of participating in “the murder of 75,000 civilians, especially Jews, and the deportation of 25,000 Soviet citizens from the Kiev region for forced labor”. Scheer, at the time KdO in Kiev, stated in the proceedings in his defense that the murders of Jews had largely been completed by the time he took up his post and that he had only ordered isolated murders of Jews as part of his commanding activity afterwards. From February 1942 onwards, after the Einsatzgruppen had been transferred, the security police units under his control had been murdered. He was sentenced to death by hanging and executed with a further eleven accused in the show trial . Three other defendants were sentenced to 20 years in a labor camp. From February 1928 he was married to Marie-Theres Schulte (1905-1997).

Awards

Scheer's military, police and SS ranks
date rank
March 1918 Captain
August 1921 Police captain
April 1928 Police major
August 1936 Lieutenant Colonel of the Security Police
April 1938 Colonel of the security police
August 1940 SS standard leader
April 1941 SS-Oberführer
December 9, 1941 SS Brigade Leader
December 9, 1941 (with effect from October 1, 1941) Major General of the Police
February 26, 1944 SS group leader
February 26, 1944 (With effect from January 1, 1944) Lieutenant General of the Police

literature

  • Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann: The generals of the Waffen SS and the police. Volume 4: Podzun - Schimana. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2009, ISBN 978-37648-2595-2 , pp. 475-482.
  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the enclosed CD, p. 589 there.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gerd R. Ueberschär : The Soviet trials against German prisoners of war 1943 - 1952. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): National Socialism in front of court. The allied trials of war criminals and soldiers 1943 - 1952. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13589-3 , p. 246f., P. 257.
  2. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study , Göttingen 2015, p. 589
  3. ↑ Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann: The generals of the Waffen SS and the police. Volume 4: Podzun - Schimana. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2009, p. 480.
  4. ↑ Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann: The generals of the Waffen SS and the police. Volume 4: Podzun - Schimana. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2009, p. 475.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann: The generals of the Waffen SS and the police. Volume 4: Podzun - Schimana. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2009, p. 476.
personal data
SURNAME Scheer, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scheer, Paul Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer, most recently lieutenant general of the police and SS group leader in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Prüm
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1946
Place of death Kiev