Walther Schröder

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Walther Schröder

Walther Schröder , also Walter Schröder (born November 26, 1902 in Lübeck ; †  October 31, 1973 there ) was a German politician (NSDAP), SS brigade leader and police president in Lübeck and, as SS and police leader in Latvia, one of the main people responsible for the Murder of the Jews in the Reich Commissariat Ostland .

Life

Training and work

From 1909 to 1918, Schröder attended the St. Lorenz Boys' Middle School and the Oberrealschule zum Dom in Lübeck until 1919 , followed by three years of practical training in mechanical engineering at the Lübeck mechanical engineering company . From 1922 he studied at the Technical State Schools in Hamburg. In the same year he joined the Freikorps Oberland (member until 1925). In the fall of 1924 he passed his state examination. Until 1932 he worked as a designer and engineer at the shipyard of Henry Koch AG and the Lübeck mechanical engineering company.

Political beginnings

Schröder joined the NSDAP on May 5, 1925 (membership no. 6 288) and the SA in the same year . From 1927 to 1929 he was SA-Sturmführer 1 of the Gausturm Mecklenburg-Süd. He was the political leader of the Lübeck local group. From 1926 to 1928 he acted as the propaganda chairman of the Lübeck local group. From June 1928 to 1930 he was the local group leader in Lübeck. In 1930 he resigned from the SA and was then district leader, Untergauleiter, district leader until 1934 and until April 1, 1937 district inspector or district officer. In addition, since 1934 he was district group leader of the Reichsluftschutzbund Schleswig-Holstein as well as head of the Lübeck observer (in this capacity he was sentenced several times to three-digit fines). Because of his partisan activities, Schröder received a. a. the angle of honor of the old fighters and the golden party badge .

In 1929 Schröder moved into the Lübeck citizenship and was a member there until the state parliament was dissolved in 1933. In July 1932 Schröder was elected to the Reichstag for constituency 35 (Mecklenburg) . He retained the mandate after the next three elections. In the Reichstag election of March 29, 1936, however, he ran unsuccessfully and did not return to the National Socialist Reichstag until 1938.

From March 6, 1933, Schröder was acting police officer in Lübeck. On May 31, he was appointed Senator for Internal Administration and Police Officer by Reich Governor Friedrich Hildebrandt .

Schröder married on October 6, 1933, and the marriage resulted in a daughter (* 1937) and two sons (* 1935, * 1942). Schröder and his wife were members of the Lebensborn .

On September 8, 1936, Schröder joined the NSKK as Standartenführer in the staff of the Motor Obergruppe Nord in Hamburg , and on January 30, 1938 he was promoted to NSKK Oberführer. On April 20 of that year he was accepted as SS-Oberführer or SS-Führer (membership no. 290.797) in the Schutzstaffel (SS) at the SD main office .

After the incorporation of Lübeck into Prussia by the Greater Hamburg Law on April 1, 1937, Schröder was police chief and honorary councilor for the construction industry in Lübeck. As such, he was also the deputy chairman of the Lübeck municipal administration and chairman of the Lübeck cold store.

Activity in World War II

Schröder in 1941 as police chief in the Netherlands

When he was registered in the military in August 1940, Schröder asserted serious injuries, including an arm injury that he sustained during a battle in the Lübeck central hall in 1928, and a double broken arm in a car accident in 1932, which resulted in a joint joint . On September 4th, he was classified as only fit for work. Nevertheless, on September 23, 1940, he was awarded the War Merit Cross, Second Class with Swords. Until mid-1941 he was employed as police chief in the Netherlands.

On August 4, 1941, Heinrich Himmler appointed Schröder as SS and Police Leader (SSPF) in Riga and on August 11 as SS and Police Site Leader for the General District of Latvia in the Reichskommissariat Ostland , based in Riga. At the end of August, Schröder set up the post of commander for the Latvian Order Police, which he himself occupied, through which he directed the activities of the Latvian protection teams . On September 27, 1941, he was promoted to SS-Brigadführer by Hitler and appointed Major General of the Police. In this function he worked with the general commissioner Otto-Heinrich Drechsler and helped the BdS and task force leader Walter Stahlecker with his tasks.

Because of the air raid on Lübeck in the night of March 29, 1942, Schröder was ordered back to Lübeck by Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse , arrived there on March 31 and was Deputy Reich Defense Commissioner for Military District X from April 4 to 17 and then until May 6th again as police chief and councilor for the Lübeck building administration. To raise morale there were deliveries of coveted and otherwise hardly available goods to the population of Lübeck. The Lübeck chairman of the National Socialist People's Welfare , Wilhelm Janowsky , branched off large stocks for himself. But he also had extensive food parcels distributed to friends. Schröder was also one of the recipients of such packages. In the case of Schröder there was no trial. The matter was covered up. Janowsky was sentenced to death by judgment of the special court in Kiel on August 28, 1942. He was executed on December 15, 1942 in Hamburg.

On April 10, 1942, the head of the office group in the main office of the Ordnungspolizei, Wilhelm von Grolman , ordered Schröder to be reassigned as Police President and SSPF with a special assignment in Lübeck. However, due to organizational difficulties in Riga, the relocation did not materialize, and so the relocation was postponed indefinitely on June 23, 1942 by Grolman.

On August 24, 1942, Himmler sent a “last reminder” to Schröder (with copies to Friedrich Jeckeln , Wolff and the main personnel office). In it he reprimanded his "addiction to be mentioned in the newspaper all the time" and informed him that he would be deposed "the next time he was mentioned in a newspaper article in German or Latvian".

From January 1943 Schröder was involved in the political negotiations for the establishment of the Latvian Legion .

In a secret assessment of June 26, 1944, Jeckeln described Schröder as an “SS leader with very good character traits”, but he lacked “sometimes the necessary toughness” and that he “also tended to be somewhat lazy”. “His internal and external demeanor” is “very good”, but the soldiery leaves “a lot to be desired”, he is “not the tough SS man type”, political tasks are more suited to him than soldiery. Jeckeln thought it was inappropriate to use Schröder as HSSPF, "since he did not have the uncompromising attitude and rigor required for such a position in sufficient measure".

On October 19, 1944, Schröder reported back to the main office of the Ordnungspolizei in Lübeck to handle the business of SSPF Latvia. In November he asked the HSSPF Bassewitz to be used as police chief in Lübeck and as the successor to Bremen's mayor Johann Heinrich Böhmcker . However, he was appointed by Himmler on November 21, 1944 as the successor to the SS Brigade Leader Kurt Hintze , who had fallen in Upper Silesia . In January 1945, however, at the instigation of Bassewitz, Schröder was reassigned to Lübeck as police chief.

Surrender and Post War

At the end of the war, he agreed with the Lübeck combat commandant Major General Kurt Lottner , other officers of the site, as well as Mayor Otto-Heinrich Drechsler and district manager Otto Bernhard Clausen , that defending the city against the British tank units approaching from the Elbe was not sensible. The explosive charges placed in the bridges around the city were removed again. The city was therefore occupied on May 2, 1945 largely free of combat and without further damage.

After the British under Major Coolay had arrested Mayor Drechsler in the Lübeck town hall , Coolay went to the Lübeck police headquarters in the armory , where he arrested Schröder and the Lübeck police. While the police resumed duty the following day unarmed, Schröder was arrested by the military government that arrived on May 3rd in the person of District Resident Officer A. J. R. Munro.

The spell Court Bergedorf condemned Schröder to two years and nine months in prison. The board found that he was “untruthful denial” and “lack of insight”. Schröder did not want to know anything about the Holocaust or the undue hardship in the concentration camp.

In the denazification process , Schröder was only classified as a “fellow traveler”. Danker and Schwabe describe this classification as "absurd" against the background of Schröder's leadership role in Schleswig-Holstein and in the Reichskommissariat Ostland.

After the war ended, Schröder's service villa on Lübeck's Burgfeld was confiscated by the occupation authorities. In January 1956, Schröder, who was receiving a monthly pension of 1,100 marks, demanded compensation of 53,000 marks from the city of Lübeck on the basis of the Reich Services Act. In the absence of evidence, two preliminary investigations in 1955 and 1956 with the Lübeck public prosecutor's office were closed.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 561.
  • Uwe Danker , Astrid Schwabe: Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism . Wachholtz, Neumünster 2005, ISBN 3-529-02810-X ( time + history 5).
  • Antjekathrin Graßmann (Ed.): Lübeckische Geschichte . 2nd, revised edition. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1989, ISBN 3-7950-3203-2 , p. 705 ff.
  • Gerhard Schneider : Endangering and Loss of Statehood of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck and its Consequences. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1986, ISBN 3-7950-0452-7 , pp. 79-82 (on 1933).
  • Karl-Ernst Sinner: Tradition and Progress. Senate and Mayor of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck 1918–2007. Volume 46 of series B of publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck , published by the archive of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck , Lübeck 2008, p. 220 ff.
  • Jörg Fligge : Lübeck schools in the "Third Reich": a study on the education system in the Nazi era in the context of developments in the Reich. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2014, p. 983 ff. (Biographical information)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Valdis Lumans: Latvia in World War II (World War II: the Global, Human, and Ethical Dimension) . Fordham University Press 2006, ISBN 0-8232-2627-1 , pp. 176, 179, 267.
  2. ^ Frank Bajohr : Parvenus and Profiteurs. Corruption in the Nazi Era. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-004812-1 , p. 168.
  3. ↑ The three SS and Poliseifuhrer in Ostland. Document 49 of 209 ( Memento of January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ See the presentation in Gerhard P. Bassler: Alfred Valdmanis and the Politics of Survival . University of Toronto Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8020-4413-1 .
  5. ↑ The three SS and Poliseifuhrer in Ostland. Document 67 of 209 ( Memento of January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); The three SS and police officers in the Ostland. Document 69 of 209 ( Memento of January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ^ Gerhard Meyer (Ed.): Lübeck 1945 - Diary extracts from Arthur Geoffrey Dickens . Lübeck 1986, ISBN 3-7950-3000-5 , p. 96.
  7. ^ Graßmann: Lübeckische Geschichte. 1989, p. 730.
  8. ↑ Meyer: Lübeck 1945. 1986, p. 98.
  9. ↑ Meyer: Lübeck 1945. 1986, p. 101.
  10. ↑ Danker, Schwabe: Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism. 2005, p. 174.
  11. ↑ Danker, Schwabe: Schleswig-Holstein and National Socialism. 2005, p. 176.
  12. ↑ Kiss the fascists . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1956 ( online ).
  13. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty: the criminal prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic . Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-70412-9 , p. 409, fn. 225.
personal data
SURNAME Schröder, Walther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schröder, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, responsible for the murder of Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, SS-Brigadführer
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 1973
Place of death Lübeck