Walter Reder

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Walter Reder, here SS-Obersturmführer

Walter Reder (born February 4, 1915 in Freiwaldau , † April 26, 1991 in Vienna ) was an Austrian SS-Sturmbannführer in the Third Reich and holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . After the Second World War he was convicted as a war criminal.

Life

Youth and education

Reder came from a middle-class conservative family. After the end of the First World War and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , the family moved from the Silesian Freiwaldau to Garsten near Steyr , the hometown of the Reder family. His father Rudolf first worked in the Reders Söhne bread factory in Garsten and founded a calculating machine factory in 1925. According to the press at the time, the company turned out to be a "castle in the air" and went bankrupt in 1928 , whereupon Rudolf Reder had to serve a short prison sentence for negligent Krida .

For Walter Reder, the bankruptcy of his father was a decisive turning point. He had to leave home and move to his aunt in Vienna . In Vienna he attended the Bundesrealgymnasium in Diefenbachgasse. In 1932 he moved to Linz and attended the commercial academy there . In the same year he joined the Hitler Youth .

Period of National Socialism and military career

In December 1933 he was admitted to the SS , which was already banned in Austria , and included in the 37th SS standard. He made no secret of his membership in the SS, so that he was soon arrested for his membership and for other politically motivated offenses and was placed in custody. In 1934 he was expelled from school shortly before his final exam because of his commitment to National Socialism , his later NSDAP membership number was 5,020,869. In June 1934 he was interned in the Kaisersteinbruch detention camp by fleeing to Germany. In Germany, he first joined the Austrian Legion . In 1934 he took German citizenship and the following year he began training as an SS officer in the SS Junker School in Braunschweig . In 1936 Reder was transferred as SS-Untersturmführer to the SS-Totenkopfstandarte "Oberbayern" in the security team of KL Dachau .

The commander of the SS-Totenkopfstandarte “Upper Bavaria” was Max Simon , to whom Reder was later to report as commander. Reder, who described himself as “one of the best in the SS” in an interview with Italian journalist Enzo Biagi in 1969, soon climbed the career ladder. Daredevil and ruthlessness characterized him. In 1938 he took part with the SS-Totenkopfstandard "Upper Bavaria" in the invasion of German troops into Austria and in 1939 into Czechoslovakia . With the same unit he was involved in the attack on Poland at the outbreak of World War II .

After the raid on Poland was over, he was assigned to Heinrich Himmler as a liaison officer in the SS Totenkopf Division and posted to Berlin. In the spring of 1940 Reder was assigned as a staff officer to the SS Totenkopf Infantry Regiment 2 and took part in the French campaign. In 1941 he served with the Totenkopf Division on the Eastern Front, first as a company commander, then as a battalion commander. In September 1941 he was wounded on the Valdai Heights northwest of Moscow . After his recovery he returned to his unit in January 1942 and took part in the Demyansk Kessel Battle until the remnants of the broken division were withdrawn to France in October 1942. After occupying the southern zone of France in the Anton company in November 1942 and a subsequent training course in Paris, Reder was again deployed on the eastern front with the newly refreshed Totenkopf Division from February 1943 and took part in the Battle of Kharkov . At the beginning of March he was badly wounded by shrapnel near Kharkov. Reder lost his left arm, while the right one remained partially paralyzed. As a result, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer . After his wounding, he was assigned to the SS Panzer Grenadier Training and Replacement Battalion 3. After his recovery he reported to Max Simon in December 1943, who had taken over command of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS" .

Simon entrusted him with command of SS Panzer Reconnaissance Department 16 of the 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer SS". With this unit he was again involved in front-line missions in Italy near Grosseto and Livorno in Tuscany in the summer of 1944 . Subsequently, the SS Panzer Reconnaissance Unit 16 led by Reder was deployed between August and September 1944 in the so-called anti- gang fight in the Apennines north of Florence and involved in the massacres of Fivizzano and Marzabotto , which killed several hundred civilians.

After the end of the war

Reder was captured in an Austrian military hospital in 1945, was then interned in the Wolfsberg POW camp in Carinthia and extradited from Great Britain to Italy in 1948. In 1951 he stood before a military court in Bologna . His defense lawyers were the Italian lawyer Schirò and his German colleague Claus-Joachim von Heydebreck , later state minister in Schleswig-Holstein. The allegations against Reder were listed

Reder was sentenced to life imprisonment, of which he served 33 years. In the consciousness of the Italian public, his name - like that of the second Nazi perpetrator arrested in Italy, Herbert Kappler - became the “symbol of the war criminal par excellence” and significantly shaped the image of the German occupation.

Since the completion of the indictment against Reder, Austria regarded itself as a protective power for the war criminal, although the latter had already given up Austrian citizenship in 1934 in favor of the Germans . So the state of Upper Austria (on the intervention of the former district inspector of Upper Austria) took the legal position that Reder was Austrian. Appeals by officials from the Ministry of the Interior were prevented by an instruction from the SPÖ Interior Minister Helmer , making Reder an Austrian citizen again in 1956. At the beginning of the 1960s, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally determined that Reder had the status and treatment of a prisoner of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention on POWs.

Some Austrian newspapers, for example the Kronen Zeitung (“No hope for Walter Reder?”), And media from the right-wing extremist scene (e.g. Die Kameradschaft, Die Aula ) liked to address Reder's whereabouts in “prisoner of war”. In addition, the FPÖ in particular , but also prominent politicians from other parties and personalities from civil society, campaigned for his release. Serious German press organs also took a stand for Walter Reder; so Die ZEIT 1955 and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1985.

In 1984 Reder expressed his deep remorse in a letter to the citizens of Marzabotto. He was released from prison on January 24, 1985. Then Reder revoked all statements of repentance.

Upon entering Austria, Reder was greeted by the then acting FPÖ Defense Minister Friedhelm Frischenschlager with a handshake, which caused a scandal. It is often claimed that the discussion about the “Reder scandal” led to a broader discussion of the National Socialist past of many Austrians for the first time .

Once in Austria, Reder was the ÖVP - politician and landowner William Gorton received, prompting some criticism.

In 1991 Walter Reder died in Vienna.

literature

  • Carlo Gentile : Marzabotto. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Darmstadt 2003, pp. 136-146.
  • Carlo Gentile: Political Soldiers. The 16th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" in Italy in 1944. In: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries. 81, 2001, pp. 529-561.
  • Carlo Gentile: Walter Reder - a political soldier in the "gang fight". In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Gerhard Paul (Ed.): Careers of violence. National Socialist perpetrator biographies. (Publications by the Ludwigsburg Research Center at the University of Stuttgart. Volume 2.) Darmstadt 2004, pp. 188–195.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Christian Ortner : Using Walter Reder as an example. The SS crimes in Marzabotto and their "management". Vienna, undated
  • Christian Reder: Deformed bourgeoisie. Mandelbaum Verlag , Vienna-Berlin 2016 ISBN 978-3-85476-495-3 .
  • Barbara Tóth : The handshake. The Frischenschlager-Reder affair. Dissertation at the University of Vienna , Vienna 2010 ( full text [PDF; 1.5 MB], June 10, 2010).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 616.
  2. ^ Christian Reder: Deformed Bürgerlichkeit. P. 287
  3. ↑ Reisser and Reder. In: rechenmaschinenlexikon.de. Retrieved October 22, 2019 .
  4. ↑ A collapsed castle in the air . In: Linzer Volksblatt . tape 64 , no. 14 . Linz January 19, 1932, p. 8 ( Online at ANNO - AustriaN Newspapers Online ).
  5. ↑ Reisser and Reder calculating machine factory . In: Tagblatt . tape 17 , no. 16 . Linz January 21, 1932, p. 9 ( Online at ANNO - AustriaN Newspapers Online ).
  6. ↑ Barbara Tóth: The handshake. The Frischenschlager-Reder affair. Pp. 24-25
  7. ↑ Barbara Tóth: The handshake. The Frischenschlager-Reder affair. Pp. 25-28
  8. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. P. 314
  9. ↑ Barbara Tóth: The handshake. The Frischenschlager-Reder affair. P. 28
  10. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. P. 314
  11. ^ Enzo Biagi: Il boia Reder: “Nelle SS fui subito il migliore.” In: Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia (ed.): Patria indipendente n. 4 2012 , Rome 2012 pp. 16–21 (online PDF)
  12. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. P. 315
  13. ^ Hans-Jürgen Schlamp: Crimes of the Wehrmacht in Italy: 165 murders per day , Spiegel Online , December 19, 2012
  14. ↑ Carlo Gentile: I crimini di guerra tedeschi in Italia 1943-1945. P. 316
  15. ^ Carlo Gentile: Marzabotto 1944. In: Gerd R. Uerberschär: Places of horror. Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , p. 143.
  16. ↑ Tóth: The handshake. The Frischenschlager-Reder affair. 2010, p. 7 u. a., especially p. 46 with footnote 137
  17. ^ DIE Zeit of June 2, 1955; the FAZ of January 14, 1985 - Carlo Gentile: Marzabotto 1944. In: Gerd R. Uerberschär: Places of horror. Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 143 + 146.
  18. ↑ Prodigal Son. Vienna's Defense Minister greeted a released war criminal with great understanding. Now there is a crisis in the coalition , Spiegel Online , 5/1985, January 28, 1985
  19. ↑ for example here: www.demokratiezentrum.org
  20. ^ "The Reder affair remains of my political life" , conversation by Florian Wenninger with former Defense Minister. D. Friedhelm Frischenschlager on the FPÖ, the war and shaking hands. On the Memorial Service website , issue 1/08, interview of December 14, 2007. Accessed November 27, 2010.
  21. ↑ I am for tolerance and objectivity , accessed February 29, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Reder, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Sturmbannführer and war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiwaldau
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1991
Place of death Vienna