Sylvester Stadler
Sylvester Stadler (born December 30, 1910 in Fohnsdorf , Austria-Hungary , † August 23, 1995 in Königsbrunn ) was the commander of the 9th SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen" of the Waffen-SS and previously the commander of the SS regiment whose 3rd Company responsible for the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre . At the end of the war, only 34 years old, he held the rank of SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Waffen SS .
Life
origin
The son of a Styrian miner learned the profession of electrical engineer after the elementary and state school in Judenburg .
Career in the SS
Entry into the SS
In May 1933 he became a member of the NSDAP and SS . Since he had completed military training in the SS camp in Lechfeld, he was expatriated from the Republic of Austria on charges of high treason . On July 31, 1933, he left for Germany, where a few months later he volunteered for the SS troops. After graduating from Junk School in Bad Tölz (from April 1935 to March 1936) he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer .
Second World War
After the beginning of the Second World War , he led a news company of the SS disposable troops. He then fought with the SS disposal division in France in 1940 , where he was wounded near Arras . He also took part in the Balkan campaign in 1941 . After being wounded again in the Battle of Moscow in 1941, he was briefly employed as a tactics teacher at the SS Junker School in Braunschweig .
From March 1, 1942 he commanded the 2nd Battalion of the Panzer Grenadier Regiment “Der Führer” belonging to the SS division “Reich” (mot.) . In May 1943 he was appointed commander of the entire "Der Führer" regiment with which he fought in Russia. For repelling an intrusion by the Red Army near Kharkov , he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on April 6, 1943 .
To freshen up, the “Der Führer” regiment, which had been severely decimated in Russia , was relocated to France in the Toulouse area at the beginning of 1944 - just like the rest of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” . The division was ordered north to combat the Allied landing forces in Normandy . On June 10, 1944, members of the “Der Führer” regiment burned the town of Oradour-sur-Glane and murdered 642 men, women, old people, children and babies. Soldiers of the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion were responsible under the battalion commander SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann . Stadler put in a "protest" against it and sought a court martial against Diekmann. However, this fell shortly after the massacre in the fighting after the Allied landing in Normandy .
At that time, Stadler was preparing to take over a new command, so that on June 14, 1944, he handed over command of the “Der Führer” regiment to Otto Weidinger . From July 10, 1944, Stadler was then commander of the 9th SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen" . With this unit he took part in the fighting in Normandy (see Battle of Caen ). He was later wounded again.
At the beginning of May 1945 he surrendered to the Americans in Steyr (Austria) with the remainder of his division and remained in American internment until 1948.
Comments on the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre
In order to justify the actions of his former regiment in Oradour-sur-Glane, Stadler stated after the war when he was questioned by a public prosecutor regarding the Oradour massacre that on the morning of June 10, 1944, he had information that a partisan staff was in Oradour and the public cremation of the kidnapped Sturmbannführer Helmut Kuchten was planned for the afternoon .
Stadler further claimed that on the morning of June 9th he had instructed his orderly officer Gerlach to look for quarters for parts of the regiment in Nieul. He was then attacked by partisans on the way there and taken to Oradour-sur-Glane, where he noticed brisk partisan activity and even claims to have seen armed women. Gerlach's driver was killed by the partisans, which is why Gerlach himself managed to escape and Stadler was able to report on it.
The later testimony of the survivors of the Oradour massacre and especially of the defendants themselves at the trials in Bordeaux in 1953 and in Berlin soon clearly refuted Stadler's statements.
literature
- Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Mohorjeva, Klagenfurt et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-7086-0578-4 , pp. 418-426.
- Bernd Wegner : Hitler's Political Soldiers. The Waffen-SS 1933–1945. Concept, structure and function of a National Socialist elite. 6th edition. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1999, ISBN 3-506-77502-2 (At the same time: Hamburg, University, dissertation, 1980: The leader corps of the armed SS 1933-1945 ).
- Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring (ed.): The SS. Elite under the skull. 30 résumés. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-78562-1 .
- Peter Przybylski , Horst Busse: Murderer of Oradour. Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1984.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 418f.
- ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals , Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, pp. 420f.
- ↑ http://www.oradour.info/appendix/dasorder.htm List of the units of the SS division Das Reich in June 1944
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stadler, New Years Eve |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Waffen SS |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 30, 1910 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fohnsdorf |
| DATE OF DEATH | 23rd August 1995 |
| Place of death | Koenigsbrunn |