Peter group

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The Petergruppe ( Danish Petergruppen ) was a terrorist group that carried out 94 compensatory killings and 25 attempts in occupied Denmark on behalf of the security service of Reichsführer SS VI B under the direction of Alfred Naujocks . The group was named after its German instigator Otto Schwerdt alias Peter Schäfer . Henning E. Brøndum joined the Peter group in 1944 . After the war, the group was also called Brøndumbande , as Brøndum was instrumental in numerous actions. The pastor's murder has become knownKaj Munk on January 4, 1944 and the destruction of the Odinstårnet observation tower in Odense on December 14, 1944.

Numerous explosive attacks in 1944 were directed either against people suspected of resisting the occupying power or against their property. Others should be blamed for resistors, e.g. B. the attack on the tram depot in Århus . At the population this type of sabotage was as Schalburg day called because it was soon suspected that the attacks by members of the Schalburg Corps , a Danish SS - Regiment , went out.

Seven Danish members of the Peter group (Henning E. Brøndum, Kaj Henning Bothilsen Nielsen, Ib Nedermark Hansen, Aage Thomas Mariegaard, Robert Lund, Helge Erik Lundqvist and Svend Thybo Sørensen) were sentenced to death in April 1947 and on the night of the 8th executed on May 9, 1947 .

In 1949 Otto Schwerdt was sentenced to death by the Copenhagen City Court in the minor war crimes trial. The Østre Landsret (Eastern District Court) changed the sentence to 24 years in prison. In 1953 Schwerdt was pardoned and expelled from Denmark.

Naujocks was sentenced to several years imprisonment for the murder of Danish resistance fighters in the minor war crimes trial. Due to the extremely mild approach of the Danish judiciary against German war criminals , he was released in 1950.

literature

  • Matthias Bath : The SD in Denmark 1940-1945. Heydrich's elite and counter-terror . Neuhaus, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-937294-03-2 .
  • V. Rauer Bergstrøm: Hellere hertug i helvede: Henning Brøndum, SS-mand in Rusland and Yugoslavia, besættelsestidens største terrorist in Denmark . Lynge, Bogan 1977, ISBN 87-87533-46-4 .
  • 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, pp. 351-369, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 .