State Police Headquarters Düsseldorf

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The State Police Headquarters (StaPo) in Düsseldorf was the second largest Gestapo office in the German Reich after Berlin at the time of National Socialism . She was responsible for the Düsseldorf government district (initially she called herself the “Prussian Secret State Police at the Düsseldorf District President”). In 1939 she was appointed State Police Headquarters and was thus also responsible for the administrative districts of Cologne , Aachen , Trier and Koblenz , i.e. their Stapo positions were structurally higher. This made Düsseldorf the central post office in the Prussian Rhine Province and in the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area .

Origin and responsibility

Since July 1, 1926, the Düsseldorf police were no longer subordinate to the Lord Mayor and the municipality, but to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. The administrative police, the criminal police and the protection police belonged to this newly established state police headquarters. Police chief was Hans Langels . Within the administrative police, there was Department IA in Düsseldorf , which, as the political Prussian secret police, was responsible for the protection of the state and the constitution, and monitored and fought against political extremists and enemies of the republic. Langels, who was considered a staunch Democrat (Center Party), was deposed in the spring of 1933 and put into provisional retirement. On May 1, 1933 , the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Göring , appointed SS group leader Fritz Weitzel as his successor . The Secret State Police was then formed from Division IA .

The Düsseldorf State Police Office (Stapo Düsseldorf) was established as a result of an executive order of the 1st and 2nd Gestapo Acts (April 26, 1933 and November 30, 1933) of March 8, 1934 and two subsequent circulars between the end of April and the beginning of May 1933 set up. From April 1, 1934, however, the state police stations in Prussia were finally detached from the police administration and thus from the internal administration. As a result, the Stapo Düsseldorf was assigned to the Regional Council of Düsseldorf , but was de facto only subordinate to the Prussian Prime Minister Göring and the Secret State Police Office in Berlin (Gestapa). With the independence from the district governments, the state police stations were accordingly only accountable to the Gestapa. Although the regional presidents or senior presidents were able to issue instructions to the state police, they were not allowed to contradict the rules of the Gestapa Berlin. In addition, the work of the Stapo could no longer be monitored or sanctioned by administrative courts as the superordinate regulatory authority. The Düsseldorf Stapostelle belonged to the main office of the Security Police (summary of Kripo and Gestapo) and, after 1939, as State Police Headquarters , to Amt IV ( Heinrich Müller ) of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).

Catchment area

The Stapostelle included the commandos (field offices ) in Essen , Mönchengladbach , Wuppertal , Duisburg- Hamorn, Oberhausen - Mülheim and Krefeld (from 1937), several positions on the German-Dutch border (border police commissioners in Emmerich , Kaldenkirchen and Kleve ) and the two branches in Remscheid and Solingen. There were over 4.15 million people after 1939 even 7.9 million people in the catchment area of the Düsseldorf Gestapo, because after September 1939 included namely the corresponding Stapo offices in Cologne , Aachen , Trier and Koblenz and their extension to Stapo leit put Dusseldorf.

tasks

The officials of the Stapo control center worked in the surveillance and criminal investigation of political opponents of National Socialism, to which according to the business distribution plan (1935) the following groups belonged: "Communism, Marxism, socialism, denominations, Jews, emigrants, Freemasons, reaction, opposition" etc. The people of Düsseldorf After Berlin, Stapo had the second largest workforce in the Reich. Nevertheless, the Düsseldorf office was largely dependent on information from the population (around 26% of the reports received) and close cooperation with other offices and police stations (OrPo, administrative police, KriPo). From 1938 onwards, Düsseldorf was also the seat of the Higher SS and Police Leader West (HSSPF, see below) and the Inspector of the Security Police and the SD in Military District VI, both of which were subordinate to the Düsseldorf Stapostelle on behalf of the Berlin Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Soon after the institutional formation of the Stapo, its officers took part in the persecution and suppression of political opponents, for example in the summer of 1933 in joint association with the Düsseldorf SA, the SS and the auxiliary police set up in spring 1933. In this phase and in the following months, officials such as Otto Bovensiepen , Josef Vogt and Rudolf Murray or the detective inspector Max Brosig made their mark. The Gestapo's area of ​​responsibility included house searches, post and telephone surveillance, interrogations and the use of informants for the comprehensive persecution of opposition members, Jews, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses and Bible Students . The prosecution of the "gypsies" was the responsibility of the criminal police headquarters in Düsseldorf, which, however, worked closely with the Gestapo. Numerous "protective custody proceedings" against political opponents, "defeatists", "treacherous", alleged "deserters", "work-shy" or forced laborers were initiated by the Stapo Düsseldorf; the persons concerned were interrogated and transferred to the police prison or the judicial prison in Düsseldorf-Derendorf (" Ulmer Höh ' "). Many cases from the catchment area were tried before the Düsseldorf special court, the Hamm Higher Regional Court ("high treason proceedings") or the Berlin People's Court (for example against the Düsseldorf chaplain Joseph C. Rossaint , against the communists Karl Schabrod , Rudi Goguel or Josef Schappe or against the Carnivalist Leo Statz ); many convicts were then transferred to concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück or Buchenwald.

Deportations

In 1935 the "Judenreferat" was set up under Viktor Humpert with his employees Georg Pütz, Heinz Illig and Hermann Waldbillig, who from autumn 1941 organized the deportations from the Düsseldorf administrative region and carried them out together with other police stations and the tax authorities. These abductions began with lists and dispositions, confiscation of assets, auctioning of apartments, furnishings and personal items, and the collection of people on the days before the deportation date in the large slaughterhouse at the Düsseldorf slaughterhouse and cattle yard , where Jews from other cities in the region were located arrived, counted and registered and searched by means of body searches. There were repeated abuse and theft by the Stapo law enforcement officers, as evidenced by the testimony of survivors. From the slaughterhouse on Rather Strasse, the group of around 1,000 people each was brought to the loading ramp on Monday morning via Münsterstrasse and Yorckstrasse to the corner of Tussmannstrasse and Augustastrasse. The report by the police major Paul Salitter about a deportation to Riga provides information about the details. Salitter, who and his men were responsible for monitoring the transport, forwarded his detailed report to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin (presentation by Adolf Eichmann).

From October 1941 to 1945, a total of more than 6,000 people from the catchment area (including over 2000 Düsseldorf citizens) were deported to ghettos or concentration camps from Düsseldorf-Derendorf train station (see Jews in Düsseldorf ). The Düsseldorf transports in detail:

  • on October 27, 1941 in the Litzmannstadt ghetto (1,003 people),
  • on November 10, 1941 in the Minsk ghetto (992 people),
  • on December 11, 1941 in the Riga ghetto (1,007 people),
  • on April 22, 1942 in the Izbica ghetto near Lublin (1,051), from where most of them were taken to the Sobibor extermination camp and immediately murdered there,
  • on June 15, 1942 in the Izbica ghetto (1,003 people), from Koblenz / Cologne with a stopover in Düsseldorf,
  • on July 21, 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (965 people) and
  • on July 25, 1942 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (980 people), coming from Aachen with a stopover in Düsseldorf.
  • on March 1, 1943 in the Auschwitz extermination camp (1,500 people from Stuttgart, Trier and Dortmund with a stopover in Düsseldorf),

The transports that then followed concerned "mixed race" or married couples who lived in a "mixed marriage". They were smaller transports, in which even individuals were accompanied by Stapo officers in a 1: 1 surveillance:

  • on June 25, 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (32 people),
  • on September 10, 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (9 people),
  • on December 16, 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (1 person),
  • on January 13, 1944 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (14 people) via Aachen,
  • on July 12, 1944 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (5 people),
  • on September 17, 1944 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (unknown number of "mixed spouses") via the Lenne-Vorwohle forced labor camp, Halle and Berlin,
  • on January 26, 1945 in the Theresienstadt ghetto (1 person).

From 1943 the community center at Bilker Straße 25 was also the collection point for these smaller transports.

There had already been smaller deportations from Düsseldorf in which the Gestapo and the Kripo had played a leading role: on October 28, 1938 to Bentschen / Poland (361 Düsseldorf Jews of Polish descent, " Polenaktion ") from the main station; on November 16, 1938 to the Dachau concentration camp (87 male Düsseldorf Jews, “Novemberaktion”) via the main train station and from around 130 Sinti from Düsseldorf on May 16, 1940 via the Cologne-Deutz-Messe train station to the Siedlce ghetto in the Generalgouvernement .

Final phase

In the course of the war, the air raids on Düsseldorf increased . After the agency was bombed out in June 1943 and moved to Ratingen (see below), its approach was radicalized again. The focus of the persecution now increasingly shifted to "subversive" petty offenses (refusal of the Hitler salute, critical statements about the course of the war, etc.), economic crimes (embezzlement, forgery of food cards), "destruction of military strength", desertion and the disciplinary surveillance of forced laborers, prisoners of war or "Work strollers". In the administrative district of Düsseldorf - similar to Cologne or the Ruhr area - youth groups were persecuted who, in opposition , had evaded the grip of the Hitler Youth and were called Edelweiss pirates . These loose groups met in independent circles, took part in leaflet campaigns against the regime, maintained contact with the communist resistance or fought the Hitler Youth stripes. The Stapo was also responsible for several final phase crimes in the region, i.e. the murder of political prisoners, prisoners of war or forced labor in the last weeks before the liberation in 1945 (for example in the Kalkumer Wald near Ratingen , the Wenzelnberg Gorge near Solingen and the Nazi murders in Burgholz ) . The state police headquarters in Düsseldorf was finally closed in March / April 1945.

Organizational structure, management and employees

In 1934 there were departments for organization and administration (department I), the legal department (department II) and the executive department (department III). In 1939 there were departments for administration (department I), domestic political police (department II) and defense police (department III).

The Head of Service of the Düsseldorf Gestapo (leit) ask were:

  • Government Councilor Rudolf Murray (August 1, 1933 to September 1934),
  • Kriminalrat Franz Sommer (September 26, 1934 to July 31, 1939),
  • Oberregierungsrat Karl Haselbacher (September 1, 1939 to June 1940), Stapo control center since then,
  • Government Councilor Kurt Venter (acting, November 16, 1940 to October 1941),
  • Oberregierungsrat Walter Albath (October 11, 1941 to September 15, 1943),
  • Oberregierungsrat Gustav Adolf Nosske (August 1943 to September 23, 1944) and
  • Higher Government Councilor Hans Henschke (October 1, 1944 to January 6, 1945)
  • Higher Government Councilor Hans Kolitz (January 6, 1945 until liberation in April 1945).

The deputy head of department were:

The higher (mostly young) civil servants were mostly lawyers or came from an administrative career in the higher service. The staff of the Düsseldorf Stapo was relatively high. In 1935 there were 167 male employees and civil servants in the entire catchment area (for comparison: the Stapo counted 4,200 employees nationwide in 1935), the number rose from 291 (1937) to 349 (1941). In 1937, 126 of the 291 employees were employed in the Düsseldorf headquarters, in the field service in Essen 43, Wuppertal 43, Duisburg 28, Krefeld around 20, Oberhausen 14 and Mönchengladbach eleven. The border police station in Emmerich employed ten, Kleve and Kaldenkirchen each had eight.

Office of the Düsseldorf Stapo

The Stapo Düsseldorf had its official seat

  • in the police headquarters at Mühlenstrasse 29 , Stadthaus (Düsseldorf) , the current seat of the Düsseldorf memorial and memorial , which the regular police left by April 1934 (they moved to Mackensenplatz 5–7, today: Police headquarters at Jürgensplatz );
  • from March / April 1934 in the seat of the regional president from 1936 Ufer der alten Garde 2 and Alte-Garde-Ufer (today: Cecilienallee 2),
  • from March 1939 at Prinz-Georg-Straße 98 in the Pempelfort district ,
  • from June 1943 to February 1945 in Ratingen (move to the teachers' seminar there because of the danger of bombs), Mülheimer Straße 47 (today: Ratingen City Archives) and use of the former prison Wiesenstraße 1 for imprisonment. such as
  • briefly in Wuppertal at the end of the war in 1945 and in the SS-owned Wewelsburg in Niederhagen / Westphalia.

At the locations today, memorial plaques remind of the headquarters of the office.

Superordinate Sipo bodies

The Stapo control centers were integrated into a power system that was characterized, especially after 1936 and especially after the beginning of the war, by an increasing amalgamation of party and state offices, the SS and the police. The Düsseldorf chiefs were subordinate to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin, regionally but also to the Inspector of the Security Police and the Security Service and (superordinate to this) the Higher SS and Police Leader West, based in Düsseldorf. This office was held by:

  • SS-Obergruppenführer Fritz Weitzel (June 11, 1938 to April 20, 1940), became HSSPF North in Oslo,
  • SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Berkelmann (April 20, 1940 to July 9, 1940), became HSSPF at the Reich Commissioner for the Saar Palatinate and head of civil administration in Lorraine,
  • SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln (July 12, 1940 to May 1, 1941), was HSSPF in the "Army Area South" (occupied Ukraine), and
  • SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Gutenberger (May 1, 1941 to May 8, 1945) was previously the chief of police in Essen .

The HSSPF West had their office in the police headquarters at Mackensenplatz 5–7 (today Jürgensplatz).

The HSSPF West, based in Düsseldorf, had access to all units of SiPo and SD, OrPo, general SS and Waffen-SS (over 20,000 men in total) and took on all tasks of the Reichsführer-SS and chief of the German police in Wehrkreis VI (Rhineland, Lippe and Westphalia, from 1940 also parts of Belgium) true, this was the most populous and largest police area in the former German Reich. Two inspectors or commanders were subordinate to the HSSPF: 1. the commander of the Ordnungspolizei (BdO in military district VI) based in Münster and 2. the inspector of the security police ( SiPo) and the SD based in Düsseldorf (IdS in military district VI). The latter were responsible for the cooperation and coordination between the SiPo (including the Gestapo) and the central offices of general and internal administration, the Gauleiter of the NSDAP and the Wehrmacht offices in the armed forces and at the same time the highest representatives of the Gestapo, SD and the criminal police in this area . From May 28, 1941, the IdS was also responsible for supervising the labor education camps (AEL) in military district VI (labor education camps Recklinghausen, Gladbeck-Zweckel, Essen-Mülheim, Hunswinkel near Lüdenscheid). IdS in Düsseldorf and thus employers of the state police control center were:

  • SS-Oberführer Alfons Glatzel (October 1, 1936 to September 1, 1938)
  • SS Brigade Leader Hermann Freiherr von Schade (September 1, 1939 to July 15, 1940),
  • SS-Standartenführer and Colonel of the Police Hans Nockemann (July 15, 1940 to March 1, 1941),
  • SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Police Walther Bierkamp (March 1, 1941 to June 24, 1942),
  • SS-Standartenführer Walter Blume (June 30, 1942 to October 18, 1943),
  • SS-Standartenführer Walter Albath (October 18, 1943 to February 2, 1945), who was previously the head of the Stapo, and
  • SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Batz (February 2, 1945 to April 1945?)

The IdS was based in Prinz-Georg-Str. 44 (1940); Graf-Recke-Str. 55/57 (1942) and finally in Kaiserswerth, Leuchtenberger Kirchweg 73-75.

Both the IdS and the Gestapo worked closely with the security service of the SS (SD). Düsseldorf was the seat of one of the upper SD sections of the empire. The heads of the SD Upper Section West were:

(With the establishment of the RSHA, the SD Upper Section West was renamed in September 1939 as "SD Head Section Düsseldorf".)

  • SS-Sturmbannführer Fritz Glitz (August 16, 1941 to October 30, 1943)
  • Bruno Heder (October 30, 1943 to January 15, 1944)
  • Karl-Heinz Bendt (January 15, 1944 to May 1945)

The SD Upper Section West / Leitabschnitt Düsseldorf was located at Goltsteinstrasse 3.

Prosecution of the perpetrators by the judiciary

There were several trials against individual members of the Gestapo in Düsseldorf. In 1948, for example, a British military tribunal sentenced Albath to 15 years in prison, from which he was released in 1955. Subsequently, several preliminary investigations against him were initiated and closed, the last one because of his death. From 1963, the Berlin public prosecutor's office was investigating Bovensiepen . The subject of investigation was the deportation of the more than 50,000 Jews of the then Reich capital to the ghettos in occupied Eastern Europe. On April 10, 1948, Nosske was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Einsatzgruppen trial . His release from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison took place on December 15, 1951. Brosig , Pütz and Waldbillig were also indicted. Because of his later activities in Yugoslavia, Vogt was extradited by the Allies to the Yugoslav government, sentenced to death there and executed in July 1947. Gutenberger , the chief police chief of Rhineland and Westphalia, was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment by a British military tribunal in October 1948, but was released in May 1953. After his prison sentence, he worked as a sales representative.

Lore

No other state police headquarters has left such a large amount of undamaged personal files. More than 76,000 files on persecuted people, around 70% of the former total, were confiscated by US troops in April 1945 and later handed over to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia . Today they are kept in the main state archive in Düsseldorf and are available for research purposes. The mood reports of the Düsseldorf Stapo (1934–36) are stored in the Federal Archives in Berlin .

literature

  • Holger Berschel: Bureaucracy and Terror. The Department of Jews of the Gestapo Düsseldorf 1935–1945. Klartext, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-89861-001-2 .
  • Bastian Fleermann / Hildegard Jakobs / Frank Sparing: The Secret State Police in Düsseldorf 1933-1945. History of a National Socialist special authority in West Germany (Small series of the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf 1), ISBN 978-3-7700-1486-6 , Düsseldorf (Droste) 2012.
  • Thomas Gebauer: The KPD department of the Gestapo Düsseldorf , Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-942109-74-1 .
  • Reinhard Mann: Protest and control in the “Third Reich”. National Socialist rule in everyday life in a major Rhenish city. Campus, Frankfurt / Main 1987, ISBN 3-593-33882-3 .
  • Joachim Lilla, Die Staatliche Polizeiverwaltung in Düsseldorf from 1926–1945 , in: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch 73 (2002), pp. 217–294.
  • Horst Romeyk, administrative and administrative history: der Rheinprovinz 1914–1945, Düsseldorf 1985, pp. 243–266ff.
  • Erika Münster-Schröer: An execution in the Kalkumer Forest in April 1945, the burial of the dead of St. Peter and Paul and the memory. In: Stadtarchiv Ratingen (ed.), People like us. Memorial for the forced laborers murdered in the Kalkumer Wald, Ratingen 2000, pp. 12–21.
  • Erika Münster-Schröer: Spring 1945: Executions in the Kalkumer Forest and elsewhere. The investigations of the British War Crimes Group in military district VI - Düsseldorf area , in: Ratinger Forum Heft 6 (1999)
  • Michael Zimmermann : Regional organization of the deportation of Jews. The example of the Stapo control center in Düsseldorf , in: Gerhard Paul, Michael Mallmann (ed.): The Gestapo - Myth and Reality. Darmstadt 2003, p. 358.
  • Uwe Kaminsky: The Gestapo in Ratingen 1943–1945 , in: Ratinger Forum Issue 2 (1991)
  • Holger Berschel: Police routiners in the service of anti-Semitism. The processing of 'Jewish affairs' at the Stapo control center in Düsseldorf , in: Gerhard Paul, Klaus-Michael Mallmann (ed.): The Gestapo in the Second World War. 'Home Front' and Occupied Europe, Darmstadt 2000, ISBN 978-3-89678-188-8 .
  • Bastian Fleermann: "... pursue until it is destroyed". Wave of arrests and violence against political opponents in the spring of 1933 in Düsseldorf , in: Rhein-Maas. Studies in history, language and culture 1/2010
  • Jan Ruckenbiel: Social control in the Nazi regime: Protest, denunciation, etc. Persecution. On the practice of everyday oppression in the interplay between the population and the Gestapo 2003. - VII, 268, XVIII S .: graph. Darst. Siegen, Univ., Diss., 2001 (available online)
  • Gisela Vollmer: The holdings of the Gestapo control center in Düsseldorf in the main state archive in Düsseldorf , in: Der Archivar, 16th year 1963, pp. 287–294.

General about the Gestapo:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Gebauer: The KPD department of the Gestapo Düsseldorf, Hamburg 2011
  2. ↑ The life paths of the "Düsseldorfer Kollektiv" in the Łódź ghetto have been reconstructed in a comprehensive research project by the Düsseldorf Memorial. Cf. ANGELA GENGER / HILDEGARD JAKOBS (eds.): Düsseldorf / Getto Litzmannstadt. 1941. Essen 2010.
  3. ↑ BASTIAN FLEERMANN: Deported from Dusseldorf to the ghetto in Minsk. The transport report of the police officer Wilhelm Meurin from autumn 1941, in: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch 83 (2013), pp. 261–296.
  4. ↑ BARBARA MATERNE: The Düsseldorf deportation to the Riga ghetto on December 11, 1941, in: Moment, ed. von der Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf, 20/21, 2002, pp. 10–12; KURT DÜWELL: “Riga is a very beautiful city in terms of urban planning…” The Düsseldorf deportations of Jews from autumn 1941, in: Moment 20/21, 2002, pp. 13–15.
  5. ↑ ALFRED GOTTWALDT / DIANA SCHULLE: The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich, 1941–1945. An annotated chronology. Wiesbaden 2005.
  6. ^ Alfons Kenkmann: Wild youth. Living environment of urban youth between the global economic crisis, National Socialism and currency reform, Essen 2002.
  7. ↑ City history of Ratingen 1943–1945: The Gestapo headquarters in Düsseldorf moved to the former teachers' college (today the city archive and Anne Frank School) due to bomb damage. Use of the former prison at Wiesenstrasse 1 for imprisonment. , on Chronicle, stadt-ratingen.de
  8. ^ LG Düsseldorf, May 27, 1949 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicides 1945–1966, Vol. IV, edited by Adelheid L Rüter-Ehlermann, CF Rüter . University Press, Amsterdam 1970, No. 142, pp. 631–659 Trial against Georg Pütz for crimes against humanity ( memento of the original from March 14, 2016 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. : eight years in prison @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl