Walter Haensch

Walter Haensch during the task force process

Walter Haensch (born March 3, 1904 in Hirschfelde ; † after 1955) was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer who, as commander of Sonderkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe C, was involved in the murder of Jews in occupied Ukraine . Haensch was sentenced to death in the Einsatzgruppen trial in 1948 , but was released in 1955 after the death penalty was converted to prison.

Life

Training and beginning of career (until 1939)

The son of the doctor practicing in Hirschfelde, Dr. med. Heinrich Walter Haensch and his wife Elise Elsbeth (née Geissler) belonged to the Youth Association of Young German Orders from 1923-24 before it separated itself from the German national and National Socialist movement. Haensch studied law at the University of Leipzig . In June 1931, at the age of 27, he joined the NSDAP . (NSDAP membership no .: 537265) After completing his legal clerkship at various locations, he passed the second state examination in 1934 . In February 1935 he joined the municipal administration of Döbeln in Saxony , where he worked until July 1935. On August 1, 1935, he joined the SS (SS membership number: 272573) and in autumn 1935 joined the SD . Haensch received his doctorate in 1939 at the University of Leipzig with a dissertation on the restructuring of the police since the " seizure of power ".

Use during the Second World War (1939–1945)

In the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Haensch headed Division ID 2 (SS disciplinary matters). His direct superior was Bruno Linienbach . According to Haensch's testimony during his interrogation after the end of the war, Linienbach informed him by telephone in January 1942 that Haensch was to lead a special task force for a limited time in the war against the Soviet Union . This is a "probation" wanted by RSHA boss Heydrich for Haensch, who up to now has only dealt with internal disciplinary procedures and should familiarize himself with the conditions in the east.

At the end of February 1942, Haensch set out in Berlin and officially replaced his predecessor Fritz Braune as command leader of Sonderkommando 4b in Einsatzgruppe C on March 21, 1942 . The Einsatzgruppe C followed the Army Group South . As was established in the Einsatzgruppen trial, the Sonderkommando 4b under the leadership of Haensch captured 50 hostages in Shitomir on April 3, 1942 , and shot half of them; At the end of April / beginning of May 1942 in Gorlowka there were 1,038 prisoners, 727 of whom were sent to " special treatment " by the Sonderkommando . Among the 727 people killed were "461 partisans , members of destruction battalions , saboteurs , looters as well as communist activists and NKVD agents". (According to the report of Einsatzgruppe C of June 5, 1942.) After three months, Walter Haensch was relieved of the position of command leader of Sonderkommando 4b in mid-June 1942; his successor , August Meier , took up the post on July 5, 1942.

From 1943 until the end of the war in 1945 Haensch was stationed in occupied Denmark , where he was delegated from September 1, 1943 to the "Commissioner for Internal Administration at the Plenipotentiary of the Reich in Denmark" ( Werner Best ). From October 12, 1944 he headed the Aabenraa branch of the Reich Plenipotentiary.

After the end of the war (from 1945)

Between 1947 and 1948 Haensch was one of 24 defendants in the Einsatzgruppen trial in which lawyer Fritz Riediger represented him with the assistance of Max Krause. The judge was Michael A. Musmanno . Haensch's defense strategy was to deny any perpetrator and also his knowledge of the crimes. At the trial, he stated that he only learned of the planned and executed murder of the Jews after the end of the war. The Sonderkommando 4b led by him had verifiably shot at least 1,224 Jews in the months before the takeover by Haensch; Haensch did not want to know anything about it. For the shooting of 60 prisoners in Barwenkowo , which he ordered , it was proven that Haensch had heard details of the respective case for only 32 of the prisoners. Haensch was found guilty of all three charges on April 9, 1948 - (1) crimes against humanity , (2) war crimes, and (3) membership in a criminal organization - and sentenced to death on April 10, 1948 . Until the death sentence was confirmed, he was taken to the Landsberg War Crimes Prison .

In the course of the intensified discussion of the West German rearmament after the outbreak of the Korean War from the summer of 1950, former Wehrmacht generals and officers demanded the discontinuation of ongoing war crimes proceedings and the release of all imprisoned war criminals , insofar as they had acted on orders, suspension of the death penalty and a general " End of the defamation “of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS . With the Himmeroder memorandum , this demand, in exchange for a “German military contribution”, had an entirely official character. On January 7, 1951, 3,000 people demonstrated in Landsberg “loudly for the pardon of those who were murdered”. Walter Strauss , State Secretary in the Justice Department , urged the commander of the US troops in Europe General Handy and High Commissioner John McCloy for a pardon for those imprisoned in Landsberg , and Federal President Theodor Heuss also spoke to McCloy on the matter. On January 31, 1951, McCloy announced the decision of the Advisory Board on Clemency for War Criminals: Of the 15 death sentences, he commuted four to life imprisonment and six to terms of between ten and twenty-five years, while five death sentences were to be carried out. Haensch's death sentence was commuted to a prison term of 15 years. In 1955 Haensch was finally released after he was released from his remaining prison term.

literature

• Frei, Norbert : Politics of the Past: The Beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi Past . Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-41310-2 .
• Pohl, Dieter : The Einsatzgruppe C . In: Peter Klein (ed.): "The task forces in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42". Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1997, pp. 71-87, ISBN 3-89468-200-0 . (Volume 6 of the publications of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Education Center)
• Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10 , Vol. 4 : United States of America vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et al. (Case 9: “Einsatzgruppen Case”) . US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia 1950. In: National Archives Microfilm Publications, NM Series 1874-1946, Microfilm Publication M936. National Archives and Record Service, Washington 1973. (Excerpts from the interrogation of Walter Haensch, pp. 313 - 323, judgment against Walter Haensch, pp. 547– 555.)
• Wildt, Michael : The generation of the unconditional: the leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office . Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-87-5 .
• Birth and baptismal register Hirschfelde.

font

• The organizational path to the unified Reich Police since 1933 , Berlin 1939 DNB

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Wildt: The generation of the absolute . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2003, pp. 57–59.
2. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. 4, United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950, p. 547.
3. ^ Walter Hänsch: The organizational path to the unified Reich Police since 1933 . Berlin, 1939. (Legal dissertation, presented in Leipzig 1939.)
4. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. 4, US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia 1950, pp. 313-318.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Dieter Pohl: The Einsatzgruppe C . In: Peter Klein (ed.): "The task forces in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42". Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1997, p. 84.
6. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. 4, US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia 1950, pp. 547-549.
7. ↑ Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service, 1871–1945 , Volume 2: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 163.
8. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. 4, US Government Printing Office, District of Columbia 1950, pp. 547-555.
9. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, pp. 195-233.