Richard Schulze (SS member)

Richard Julius Ferdinand Schulze (born September 20, 1898 in Mainz , † December 24, 1969 in Buxtehude ) was a German detective and SS-Obersturmbannführer who was convicted as a war criminal.

Career until 1945

Richard Schulze received his doctorate as Dr. rer. pole. and served as head of the Gestapo in Darmstadt in 1933 . In 1937 he became head of the criminal police in Gleiwitz . In September 1939 he was employed in the staff of Einsatzgruppe II in Poland, after which he worked as a police chief in Kattowitz and from 1941 in Königsberg (Prussia) . In August 1942 he held the rank of senior government councilor as a detective and group leader in the Reich Criminal Police Office . There he led Group C (Deputy Kurt Amend ) in Office V , which searched among other things for escaped prisoners of war and also held the function of a liaison officer of the RSHA to the head of the prisoner-of-war system. Schulze, together with the diplomats from the Foreign Office, Horst Wagner and Eberhard von Thadden, was involved in the murder plans against the French General Gustave Mesny .

Schulze had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1937 ( membership number 4,705,810) and in the SS since 1938 ; Between June 7 and 16, 1944, he was promoted directly from the lowest level of SS-Staffelmann to SS-Obersturmbannführer .

After the end of the war

After the end of the Second World War , Schulze fled from Soviet captivity, stayed in Berlin under a false name and was arrested by Americans in May 1946. He was under investigation because he was involved in the murder of an American airplane pilot in March 1945. Schulze was sentenced to death in 1947 during the aviation trials that took place as part of the Dachau trials . In 1951 he was pardoned and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In mid-December 1956 he was released from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison .

The German authorities recognized Schulze as a late returnee and granted him the retirement benefits of a senior government council. Schulze also worked for French press agencies and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

At the end of 1959, an arrest warrant was issued against Schulze and other suspects who were accused of participating in the murder of the French general Gustave Mesny . After numerous investigation mishaps - among other things, the French authorities refused to hand over investigation files - the main proceedings against Schulze were postponed several times and the defendant's ability to stand trial was contested. There was no longer any conviction.

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Sebastian Weitkamp: Brown diplomats. Horst Wagner and Eberhard von Thadden as functionaries of the Final Solution . Verlag JHW Dietz, Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-8012-4178-0 .
• Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-71843-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the Buxtehude registry office No. 336/1969.
2. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 224f
3. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 569; Sebastian Weitkamp: Brown diplomats. Bonn 2008, p. 354 (more detailed information on RSHA group and war crimes against Mesny)
4. ↑ Sebastian Weitkamp: Brown diplomats. Bonn 2008, p. 354
5. ↑ Dachau-trials Case US223 (US vs. Georg Baumann et al) ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Sebastian Weitkamp: Brown diplomats. Bonn 2008, p. 409f.
7. ↑ Sebastian Weitkamp: Brown diplomats. Bonn 2008, p. 415.