Rudolf Mildner

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Rudolf Mildner (born July 10, 1902 in Johannesthal , Moravia ; † unknown) was an Austro-German Nazi lawyer, SS standard leader and department head in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

War volunteer and academic training

Mildner was the son of a carpenter and grew up under difficult economic circumstances. He spent his school days at the elementary and community school.

From 1916 he served in the Austrian army as a volunteer in the First World War . After the war he joined the Sudetenland Free Corps . He was trained as a police officer at the Salzburg Police Department . He deepened his education by attending an evening grammar school. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 614.080).

He studied law and political science in Innsbruck . The doctorate to Dr. jur. he obtained it in 1934. As early as 1935 he held a position in the political police in Munich . Here he also acquired German citizenship. This enabled him to become a member of the SS in 1935 (SS no. 275.741).

Career in the Gestapo

After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in March 1938, he was transferred to Linz , where he became deputy head of the Gestapo in Linz, and then in 1939 headed the Gestapo in Salzburg for four months. In December 1939 he became head of the Chemnitz state police station , where he stayed until early 1941.

From March 1941 he was appointed head of the Katowice state police station . In January 1942 a proposal was made to award the War Merit Cross , Second Class with Swords, because, according to the assessment, he had distinguished himself in the fight against public enemies of all kinds .

From around the middle of 1942 Mildner also took over the execution of the court jurisdiction for Upper Silesia with the administrative districts of Katowice and Opole . According to an ordinance on standing courts of June 1, 1942, the Gauleiter and Oberpräsident Fritz Bracht had ordered that a total of 21 crimes could be punished with death, including damage to property, fraud, theft and moral offenses. In this position he presided over the Gestapo's “police and court martial” in Block 11 of the main camp of Auschwitz .

At the main trial in Nuremberg on January 2, 1946, part of the indictment was a letter from the Attorney General in Katowice dated December 3, 1941 to the Reich Minister of Justice about police executions without criminal proceedings :

“ About 3 weeks ago in Tarnowitz, in connection with the smashing of a highly treasonable organization of 350 members, the 6 main perpetrators (some of them ethnic Germans ) were hanged by the police without the judiciary being aware of it. Such executions have already been carried out on criminal offenders in the Bielitz district without the knowledge of the competent law enforcement authority. On December 2, 1941, the head of the Kattowitz state police station, Oberregierungsrat Mildner , verbally reported to the undersigned that he had ordered these executions with the authorization of the Reichsführer of the SS as a necessary immediate measure by publicly hanging them at the scene of the crime, and that the deterrent measures would continue for so long would have to be continued until the criminal and activist anti-German forces in the annexed eastern area are crushed or other immediate measures, etc. U. also the courts, guaranteed the same deterrent effect. So today in the area in and around Sosnowitz 6 main ringleaders of another Polish highly treasonable organization were publicly hanged as a deterrent. "

Head of the stand court of the SS in Auschwitz concentration camp

SS-Unterscharführer Pery Broad , who belonged to the Political Department of the Gestapo in the Auschwitz concentration camp, characterized Mildner as follows:

This man was one of the most bloodthirsty butchers that existed in the Third Reich. Outwardly he represented the embodiment of a despot. Particularly striking was his massive, bull-necked skull, from which a pair of ice-cold, cruel eyes scrutinized.

His face was marked by smears .

Copenhagen and Head of Department at RSHA

On September 19, 1943, the RSHA transferred Mildner to Copenhagen . Ten days earlier he had been promoted to SS Standartenführer , the highest rank he achieved in the SS. Johannes Thümmler succeeded him as head of the Gestapo Katowitz . In Copenhagen he should take action against the resistance . When the planned deportation of the Jews in Denmark largely failed ( rescue of the Danish Jews ), Heinrich Himmler blamed Mildner. At the beginning of January 1944 he was replaced by SS-Standartenführer Otto Bovensiepen .

In January and February 1944 he was inspector of the Security Police and the SD in Kassel . From March to June 1944 he took over as head of department IV A 5 in the RSHA for special tasks. After Vienna Mildner came in December 1944, where he became head of the Security Police and SD commander department (previously state police control room) in the former Hotel Metropol on Morzinplatz was appointed. In Vienna, on April 8, 1945, he was also involved in the public execution of the Austrian resistance fighters Major Karl Biedermann , Captain Alfred Huth and Lieutenant Rudolf Raschke in Floridsdorf .

In mid-April 1945, when the Vienna office was relocated, a new command emerged in the Linz area, with Mildner becoming Franz Josef Huber's deputy .

Internment and escape

A few months after the end of World War II , he was arrested by the US occupying forces. During the interrogations, he succeeded in deceiving the inexperienced interrogators about the command lines within the Gestapo. On the other hand, since he showed himself to be cooperative, he was able to testify as a witness against the head of the RSHA, Ernst Kaltenbrunner , in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . Mildner was released from internment in 1949 and went into hiding.

In Argentina he was present at Willem Sassen's interviews with Adolf Eichmann at the end of the 1950s .

The public prosecutor's office in Vienna wanted to start investigations against Mildner again at the beginning of the 1960s, but he could not be found.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Weisz: The Secret State Police State Police Headquarters Vienna: 1938–1945; Organization, working methods and personal issues , Volume 7, University of Vienna, 1991, p. 2224.
  2. ^ Franz Weisz: The Secret State Police State Police Headquarters Vienna: 1938–1945; Organization, working methods and personal issues , Volume 7, University of Vienna, 1991, p. 2225.
  3. ^ David Cesarani : Eichmann. His Life and Crimes , Heinemann, London 2004, p. 219.
personal data
SURNAME Mildner, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-German lawyer, SS standard leader and department head in the Reich Security Main Office
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesthal , Austrian Silesia
DATE OF DEATH after 1949