Walter Groth (medical officer)

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Walter Groth (born September 12, 1883 in Berlin ; † April 12, 1947 in Mittenwald ) was a German general practitioner during the Second World War .

Life

Medical training / First World War

Groth joined the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot as a one-year volunteer on April 1, 1902 , was transferred to the reserve on September 30, 1902 and then studied until February 14, 1907 at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Akademie for military medicine Education . There he became a member of the Corps Franconia in 1902 . During the First World War he worked as a medical officer (since October 18, 1913) in various field hospitals . After the end of the war he was first regimental doctor in various regiments of the provisional Reichswehr and retired from military service on September 30, 1920.

Doctor in the Prussian police

He then joined the police service of the Free State of Prussia , where he held management positions in various police hospitals in the Berlin area until 1930 . From 1930 to 1935 he served as a police doctor and in training positions in Breslau , Burg and Magdeburg .

Promotion to general doctor of the air force

In the summer of 1935, Groth joined the army . In the same year, he joined the newly founded Luftwaffe , where Groth took on various management functions in the medical sector, initially until May 31, 1940 as a department head in the Reich Ministry of Aviation (RLM) in Berlin, and then (from September 1, 1941 to March 31, 1942) as general physician the medical service of the Luftgau VII (Munich). Under Groth's command, the Aviation Medical Institute in Munich , headed by Georg August Weltz , was incorporated into the Air Force in 1941 . In April and May 1942 Groth was a member of the personal staff of the Reich Aviation Minister (RLM) and Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Hermann Göring , and at the same time fleet doctor for Air Fleet 5 (Norway, Denmark, Finland). From June 1, 1942, he took command of Luftgau XII / XIII (Wiesbaden / Nuremberg). The geographical classifications and numbering of the Luftgaue corresponded to those of the military districts of the army.

Walter Groth took as the responsible Luftgau doctor for the Luftgau Nuremberg on 26./27. October 1942 in Nuremberg at the conference “Medical questions in distress at sea and winter distress”. a. SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst Holzlöhner and his assistants Rascher and Finke presented the results of the human experiments carried out in the Dachau concentration camp from August 1942 .

From December 5 to 6, 1942, Groth was a participant in the 22nd annual meeting of the Rhein-Mainischer Ophthalmologists Association, where his professional interest focused on the presentations on adaptation disorders, which were an increasing problem for air medicine.

A few months after the Nuremberg Conference, on March 24, 1943, Groth was transferred to the Air Force Command's Reserve Command (OKL) and retired on January 31, 1944 at the age of 60, which he retired in Bavaria until his death in April 1947 Mittenwald, which from 1945 belonged to the American occupation zone .

On December 1, 1943, the Luftgaue were generally disbanded as part of a reorganization of the Luftwaffe.

War Crimes Punishment

The extent to which Groth was directly criminally responsible for the crimes committed by Rascher (with whom Groth was in personal contact) and other crimes could no longer be legally clarified. One of the charges against Groth's direct military superior, Air Force Inspector Erhard Milch , during the so-called Milch trial in Nuremberg , which was concluded just five days after Groth's death on April 17, 1947 , was the suspicion that he was responsible for the Dachau human experiments under the authority of orders. However, this could not be legally proven to him during the process. Groth was responsible for assigning Rascher, who was both a member of the SS and the Air Force, to the Aviation Medicine Institute in Munich, but at the time the tests were carried out, he was no longer working in Munich, but in Nuremberg / Wiesbaden. A few months later, in August 1947, Groth's colleagues Weltz, Ruff and Romberg were also acquitted in the so-called Nuremberg Doctors Trial, and one of the investigations initiated by the Munich II public prosecutor's office in connection with the Dachau human experiments in 1959 in the course of the Nazi trials initiated by Fritz Bauer was discontinued .

Fonts

  • Contribution to the metastatic brain abscesses of pulmonary origin. Schade, Berlin 1910 (dissertation).

literature

  • Dermot Bradley (ed.), Karl Friedrich Hildebrand: The Generals of the German Air Force 1935-1945. Volume 1: Abernetty – v.Gyldenfeldt. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1701-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 60 , 384
  2. ↑ Hans-Henning Scharsach : The doctors of the Nazis. Orac, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7015-0429-6 , p. 161.
  3. ^ Thilo Marcus Held: History of the Association of Rhein-Mainischer Augenärzte (1913–1963), dissertation . Frankfurt 1997, DNB  959156259 , p. 58 .
  4. ↑ Hubert Rehm: The fall of the Rascher house. A documentary novel. With six portrait drawings by Frieder Wiech. LJ, Merzhausen 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Groth, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German general doctor in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1947
Place of death Mittenwald