Wilhelm Bonatz

Bonatz as a witness during the Nuremberg Trials.

Wilhelm Bonatz (born July 26, 1883 in Stendal ; † unknown, after 1946) was a German police officer and Gestapo employee .

Live and act

In his youth, Bonatz attended preparatory school and a humanistic grammar school. After graduating, he began to study law , which he completed in succession in Freiburg, Berlin and Halle, but eventually dropped out without a degree. Instead, he joined the police service: on November 1, 1910, he was accepted as a candidate for the police in Berlin . There he passed the commissioner's examination and was then employed as a probationary commissioner before he was permanently employed by the police in 1913. At that time, his area of ​​responsibility was in Department 7 of the Police Headquarters (Political Police), which in later years became known as Department 1 A.

From 1914 to 1917 Bonatz took part in the First World War , but returned to the Berlin police in autumn 1917 after receiving a complaint from them. From then on he worked in the Political Department of the Presidium from 1917 to 1933. Since 1918 he even held office there as head of inspection. In the post-war period, Bonatz was also involved in border protection in Upper Silesia in 1921 . He reached the high point of his career during the Weimar period when he was promoted to the Kriminalrat on July 1, 1928.

At the beginning of 1933, Bonatz, who had been a member of the National Socialist civil service since 1932 , was appointed head of the "Gun Protection Service, Trade Unions, Associations, Foreigners" inspection at the police headquarters. In March, he was appointed Head of Field Service in Department IA; after the establishment of the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) he was taken over in the same position. On May 1, 1933, Bonatz was admitted to the NSDAP ( membership number 2,593,789) and on October 29, 1935 he became a member of the SS (membership number 272,347).

In 1934 Bonatz took over the post of Head of the Foreign Office in the Berlin State Police. In 1935 he returned to the Secret State Police Office, where he was promoted to government councilor and criminal investigator to head the ID (organizational and business operations of the state police, field service and border services) and IF (non-Prussian political police) in Department I (administration and law) ) was ordered in the Gestapa. In this position he was responsible for managing the organization of the Gestapo and building up the individual agencies of the Gestapo. After the establishment of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in 1939, Bonatz worked there from that year until the end of the war. Bonatz reached the high point of his administrative career in April 1944 when he was promoted to the higher government and criminal councilor.

When the war ended Bonatz fell into Allied captivity. In 1946 he took part as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials , for which he prepared a "Declaration on the Classification and Handling of Classified Information".

Promotions

• April 20, 1938 SS-Untersturmführer
• October 10, 1938: SS-Sturmbannführer
• April 20, 1944: SS-Obersturmbannführer

literature

• Christoph Graf : Political police between democracy and dictatorship. The development of the Prussian Political Police from the state security organ of the Weimar Republic to the Secret State Police Office of the Third Reich. Colloquium, Berlin 1983.