Walter book

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Walter Buch (approx. 1934)

Walter Buch (born October 24, 1883 in Bruchsal , † September 12, 1949 in Schondorf am Ammersee ) was a German officer and politician ( NSDAP ). In the time of National Socialism he acted as the highest party judge of the NSDAP .

Life

Origin and military career

Buch's father was the Senate President at the Higher Regional Court of Karlsruhe Hermann Buch . Walter Buch attended elementary school and grammar school in Karlsruhe and Konstanz from 1890 to 1902 . After graduating from high school , he joined the 6th Baden Infantry Regiment in Constance as a flag boy in 1902 . In 1904 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1913 to first lieutenant. From 1914 he took part in the First World War as a company and battalion leader and as the commander of a machine gun sniper division . In March 1918 he took up teaching as a major at the Döberitz military training area . From September 1918 Buch worked in the Prussian War Ministry in Berlin. After the end of the war , Buch became a major on November 20, 1918. D. adopted.

In 1908 or 1909 Buch married. The marriage resulted in two daughters and two sons.

Member of the NSDAP

In civil life, Buch first ran a chicken farm in Scheuert near Gernsbach in the Murg Valley. From 1919 to 1922 he was a member of the national-conservative German National People's Party (DNVP). For the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund he was Gau manager in Baden until it was banned. At Easter 1920 he met Adolf Hitler when he brought him a book on behalf of his father. On December 9, 1922, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 13,726) and on January 1, 1923, the SA . From August 1923 to 1924, he and Helmuth Klotz organized the Franconian SA in Nuremberg. After the failed Hitler putsch in November 1923, in which he had participated, Buch worked temporarily as a sales representative for wine and spirits in Munich . After the re-establishment of the NSDAP, Buch rejoined the party in 1925 (membership number 7.733) and also the SA. Until January 1, 1928, he led and organized the SA in Upper Bavaria-Swabia.

On November 27, 1927, Buch took over as successor to Bruno Heinemann as head of the Investigation and Arbitration Committee (UschlA) at the Reich leadership of the NSDAP, the forerunner of the NSDAP's Supreme Party Court . On May 20, 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag as one of twelve members of the NSDAP and remained a member of the Reichstag until 1945. From June 1930 to October 1931 Buch was the head of the youth welfare office in the Reich leadership of the NSDAP and also editor at the Völkischer Beobachter until 1933 .

Buch's eldest daughter Gerda married Martin Bormann on September 2, 1929 , who became head of the NSDAP party chancellery in 1941 .

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists book on 1 July 1933 was a member of the SS with the rank of (81353 SS-No.) SS-group leader . On November 9, 1934, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer. From October 3, 1933 to 1944, he was a full member of the Academy for German Law , and also a member of the Advisory Council on Population and Race Policy in the Reich Ministry of the Interior .

Supreme party judge of the NSDAP

Some of the 18 Reichsleiter of the NSDAP at the 10th Reich Party Congress in September 1938 in Nuremberg, v. Right: Martin Bormann, Robert Ley, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Frank, Franz Ritter von Epp, Joseph Goebbels and Walter Buch

On January 1, 1934, the Investigation and Arbitration Committee (UschlA) was renamed the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP (OPG). Walter Buch became head of the OPG and chairman of the First Chamber. As early as June 2, 1933, he had been one of the Reichsleiter of the NSDAP reporting directly to Hitler .

As the highest party judge, Buch was responsible for purges within the NSDAP. The murders during the so-called Röhm putsch in 1934 were approved by him. Even before the seizure of power, in March 1932, Buch had arranged a failed murder plot against homosexuals like Hans Joachim von Spreti-Weilbach in the vicinity of Ernst Röhm . Assaults and offenses by party members during the Reichspogromnacht 1938 were punished by Buch only in exceptional cases and then with minor disciplinary measures. Shortly before November 9, 1938, Buch wrote in the magazine Deutsche Justiz : “The Jew is not human. He is a rotten phenomenon. "

Investigations by Buch against the Gauleiter of the Kurmark, Wilhelm Kube , led in 1936 to the fact that Kube was relieved of all his offices. During the investigation, Kube had accused Buch in an anonymous letter that his wife had Jewish blood. In December 1940, Buch informed Himmler that the real purpose of the Grafeneck killing center had become known. This jeopardized the secrecy of the National Socialist “ euthanasia ” program, Aktion T4 .

From 1942, Buch lost its influence and importance, because from that year onwards he had to present all resolutions of the Supreme Party Court to his son-in-law Martin Bormann for countersignature. The reason for this was the case of the Gauleiter of Silesia and Westphalia-South, Josef Wagner : Wagner was removed from office by Hitler on November 9, 1941 after his wife spoke out against leaving the church and the marriage of their daughter to an SS man would have. A party judicial committee made up of several Gauleiter, headed by Walter Buch, decided on February 6, 1942 that Wagner did not have any “party-damaging behavior” and left the former Gauleiter in the party. On October 12, 1942, Hitler overturned the judgment of the party court and expelled Wagner from the NSDAP.

Internment and suicide

Shortly before the end of the war , Walter Buch was captured by US troops on April 30, 1945. He was subsequently held in internment camps, including from May 1945 to August 1945 in POW camp No. 32 in Bad Mondorf, Luxembourg ( Camp Ashcan ). He was subjected to numerous interrogations by the American secret service and was also heard as a witness at the Nuremberg trials . During the denazification in August 1948, Buch was sentenced by a ruling chamber in Garmisch to five years in a labor camp and confiscated his property. In the revision proceedings on July 29, 1949 in Munich, Buch was classified as the “main culprit” (category I). The confiscation of all his property was confirmed, but the prison sentence was reduced to three and a half years. Since the internment counted towards the term of imprisonment, Buch was released.

About six weeks later, Walter Buch committed suicide by cutting open his wrists and falling into the Ammersee near Schondorf . His daughter Gerda had died in March 1946, his wife in October 1944.

literature

  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , pp. 68–69.
  • Ernst Klee: Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR, the members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism: political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. 3. Edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Jochen von Lang : The secretary. Martin Bormann. The man who ruled Hitler. Weltbild, Augsburg 2004, ISBN 3-8289-0558-7 .
  • Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923. Leibniz, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-87473-000-X , p. 439.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 79.
  3. ↑ a b Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographisches Lexikon zum Third Reich , 1998, p. 64ff.
  4. ↑ Burkhard Jellonnek: homosexuals under the swastika. The persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich. Paderborn 1990, ISBN 3-506-77482-4 , p. 69 ff.
  5. ↑ Götz Aly (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Vol. 2, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , pp. 388-393. (Document VEJ 2/134)
  6. ↑ quoted from Klee: Personenlexikon. 2005, p. 79 / see document VEJ 2/121, p. 358.
  7. ↑ Buch's letter to Himmler of December 7, 1940 in facsimile (Nuremberg Document NO-002).
personal data
SURNAME Book, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician, MdR, chairman of the party court of the NSDAP, Reichsleiter
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Bruchsal
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1949
Place of death Schondorf am Ammersee