Wilhelm Harster

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Harster, Karl Maria Demelhuber , Erich Deppner and Hanns Albin Rauter

Wilhelm Harster (born July 21, 1904 in Kelheim , † December 25, 1991 in Munich ) was a German lawyer and at the time of National Socialism a high-ranking SS and police functionary, most recently with the rank of SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police. Harster was head of the Gestapo in Innsbruck and during the Second World War he was in command of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in the Netherlands and Italy . Harster was for thatResponsible for the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to the extermination camps . After the end of the war, Harster had to answer for his crimes in two Nazi trials and was sentenced to long imprisonment in each case, but both times pardoned early.

Early years

Wilhelm Harster was the son of the lawyer and police officer Theodor Harster . He grew up from childhood - as he later said - in "a certain environment of criminal work". His father died as a volunteer in the early stages of the First World War , on November 1st, 1914 near Wijtschate (Wytschaete) in Flanders .

Harster attended primary school in Munich from 1910 and was admitted to the humanistic Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich in 1913 , where he completed his school career in 1922 with the Abitur . While still at school, just 16 years old, he joined the right-wing extremist paramilitary Freikorps Oberland in 1920 . After the dissolution of the so-called military associations under pressure from the Allies in June 1921, he also belonged to the successor organization of the Freikorps, the Bund Oberland , until 1926. From 1922 to 1926 studied Harster at the University of Munich Law . During his clerkship doctorate he in 1927 at the University of Erlangen for Dr. jur.

On September 30, 1930 he married Maria Hirsch (* December 28, 1907 / member of the Nazi women's association ). The marriage resulted in two sons: Klaus (born August 5, 1933) and Gerd (born July 23, 1937).

Police service

At the beginning of 1929 he passed his assessor examination and began on October 16, 1929 as a government assessor at the police headquarters in Stuttgart , where he worked for the criminal police. From 1931 he headed the Political Police in Stuttgart and, after the transfer of power to the National Socialists in April 1933, took over the deputy head of the Württemberg Political Police. Convinced of Adolf Hitler , not least for career reasons , he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 ( membership number 3.226.954) and the SS on November 9, 1933 (SS number 225.932). He was a member of the SD from 1935. At the end of 1937 he moved to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin .

After the " annexation of Austria " to the German Reich , Harster set up the Innsbruck state police headquarters from March 1938 and was its first director from March 1938 to November 1939.

Second World War

After the attack on Poland on October 23, 1939, Harster became the commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in the Krakow military district. At the end of 1939, Harster became inspector of the security police and SD (IdS) in Kassel.

BdS in the Netherlands

On July 15, 1940, Harster was appointed BdS in the occupied Netherlands. As the successor to Hans Nockemann , he held this office until August 29, 1943, and in this function was jointly responsible for the deportation of over 100,000 Dutch Jews. He played a leading role in the evacuation of the Jewish clinic Het Apeldoornsche Bosch , whose more than 1200 patients and employees were murdered in Auschwitz . At the beginning of May 1943, Harster wrote a letter to the commanders of the concentration camps set up in the Netherlands : “Subject: Final solution to the Jewish question in the Netherlands” . The reason for this was discussions that he had held with representatives of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and instructions that he had received from his immediate superior, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Hanns Albin Rauter . In the letter, Harster announced the "general line" to be pursued in the future : "The Reichsführer SS [Himmler] wishes that in this year what is humanly possible is transported to Jews to the east." And on June 25, 1943 a representative reported of the Foreign Office to Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart in a letter to his headquarters in Berlin Execution: “ In a secret report to the Reichskommissar [Seyss-Inquart] the commander of the Security Police and SD [Wilhelm Harster] writes as follows: From the originally in the 140,000 full Jews registered in the Netherlands, the 100,000th Jew has now been removed from the national body (exact number around 102,000). “Harster was BdS in the Netherlands until August 28, 1943.

BdS in Italy

From the end of August 1943 until the end of the war in May 1945, Harster was BdS in Italy. Harster's office was in Verona , where Harster received his instructions from the RSHA and was therefore not subordinate to the Supreme SS and Police Leader in Italy, Karl Wolff . After the German occupation of Italy on September 12, the persecution of the Jews was intensified. Now they should be murdered. For example, the first "Jewish raid" was held in Rome on October 16 under Harster. 1007 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Of these, 811 died immediately in the "gas" . Only 149 men and 47 women survived. Part of this process was found in the report from the First General Staff Officer to the Commander-in-Chief South, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring , on October 19, in which he was able to report a “great success” to the OKH because it was the “Head of the Rome External Command of the BdS Herbert Kappler "And Harster succeeded in taking" 900 pure-bred Jews into safe custody ". The Jews were taken to camps that were also subordinate to Harster. One of these camps was the Fossoli transit camp , from which Jews and those politically persecuted were deported to concentration and extermination camps. On November 9, 1944, Harster was appointed SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police.

post war period

After the surrender of the German troops in Italy on May 2, 1945, Harster was arrested by British troops on May 10, 1945 near Bozen . He stayed in camps in Italy until the end of 1945, then was brought to London and held in a prison for war criminals until he was handed over to the Dutch authorities on August 21, 1947.

Trial in the Netherlands

After the war, the war crimes that Harster had committed during his time as BdS in the occupied Netherlands were tried before a special court ( Bijzonder Gerechtshof ) in The Hague . He was charged with preparing and carrying out the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, as well as complicity in the mistreatment and killing of prisoners in the Amersfoort transit camp ( “de Boskamp” ). On March 23, 1949, Harster was sentenced by that court to 12 years in prison. Given that Harster's immediate superior during his time in the Netherlands, HSSPF Hanns Albin Rauter , had already been sentenced to death on May 4, 1948 , and that two of his subordinates were subordinates in court decisions that were made shortly after Harster's conviction ( Ferdinand from Fünten and Willy Lages ) like Rauter, who were also sentenced to death, an extremely mild sentence.

Harster experienced further leniency. He served just under half of the twelve-year prison sentence. On October 14, 1955, he was deported from the Netherlands to Germany.

Bavarian Ministry of the Interior

After his release from prison, Harster was again employed in the civil service. In Bavaria he was classified as a minor offender in a denazification process and on October 27, 1956, he started a post-war career in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior - appointed as a member of the government of Upper Bavaria . This classification was based on several declarations of honor ( Persilscheine ), which later turned out to be personal favors or even falsified. Such a declaration allegedly came from an Italian lawyer from Trieste , but in reality from Erich Rajakowitsch , an Austrian lawyer who had worked for the Reich Security Main Office under Adolf Eichmann and who was later charged and convicted of deporting Jews. His real identity was revealed by the Vienna Jewish Documentation Center in the course of the public prosecutor's investigation into Harster in Germany .

On July 31, 1963, Harster was promoted to senior government councilor, because - according to Der Spiegel : “The former concentration camp supplier had meanwhile worked his way up to become an expert in community finances. Knowledgeable, amiable, busy - as before, Wilhelm Harster appeared as the ideal image of a civil servant. "

Center of an "internal intelligence service"

According to a "top secret" note released by the federal government in 2013, officials of the Federal Chancellery were informed by the management of the Federal Intelligence Service in 1963 that a network of former members of the SD security service met at Harster until the early 1960s. Employees of the Federal Intelligence Service with an SS past are said to have been involved in this network; there were also links to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . It is believed that the network also supplied explosives for separatist bombings in South Tyrol .

Trial in Germany

Through the investigation into the deportations of Dutch Jews initiated in 1959 against Harster's " Judenreferenten " Wilhelm Zoepf from the Central Office in Ludwigsburg , Harster also came into the focus of the West German judiciary. After the public learned of this investigation, Harster retired in 1963. The official reason was illness with proven incapacity. On January 13, 1966, Harster and Zoepf were sentenced to pre-trial detention. On January 23, 1967, a criminal trial began at the Regional Court in Munich II against both and against the former police employee Gertrud Slottke for aiding and abetting murder . This is how the deportations of 83,000 Dutch Jews were rated. Harster and Zoepf confessed that they knew the goal of the “ final solution to the Jewish question ” and that they were involved in the murder of Dutch Jews through the organization of the deportations. Only co-defendant Slottke denied her involvement. The trial was very short, only two witnesses were called. The trial ended on February 24, 1967, with Harster (15 years imprisonment), Zoepf (9 years imprisonment) and Slottke (5 years imprisonment) convicted. In 1969 Harster was released again.

Discussion about naming streets

The Dr.-Harster-Straße in Kelheim was not named after Wilhelm Harster, but after his father Theodor, who also had a doctorate. The risk of confusion was not a problem for the city administration for a long time. In 2015 there were repeated public discussions as to whether the street should be renamed or not. At the end of April 2015, the Kelheim City Council decided to keep the name of the street. At the same time, however, an additional sign should be attached to highlight Theodor Harster's services in order to avoid confusion.

literature

  • Ahlrich Meyer : Knowledge about Auschwitz. Perpetrators and victims of the 'Final Solution' in Western Europe . Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77023-3 .
  • Christian Ritz, desk offender in court. The proceedings before the Munich Regional Court for the deportation of Dutch Jews (1959–1967) . Paderborn et al .: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh 2012.
  • Ingrid Bauz, Sigrid Brüggemann, Roland Maier (eds.): The Secret State Police in Württemberg and Hohenzollern . Butterfly-Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 3-89657-138-9 .
  • Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, De SS en Nederland. Documents uit SS-Archieven 1935-1945. Detailed introduction by Dr. NKCA in 't Veld. 2 vols., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1976.
  • Jörg Friedrich, The Cold Amnesty. Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic. Frankfurt a. M .: Fischer-Tb 1984.
  • The indispensable harster. Oberregierungsrat accused of being a mass murderer . In: Die Zeit , No. 4/1966.
  • Verified . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1963 ( online - about Harster's post-war career).
  • This attitude . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1967, p. 33 ( online - about the process before the Munich Regional Court).
  • The proceedings before the Regional Court of Munich II. Are in the 50-volume collection of judgments on justice and Nazi crimes up to 2011 : Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide 1945-1999, Red. Fritz Bauer☨, Amsterdam Univ. Press and De Gruyter, partly Amsterdam Univ. Press, and Saur KG, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin 1968 ongoing, accessible. It bears the procedure number 645. This procedure is also available for a fee from the JuNSV website. A short form of the judgment can be found here.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Harster  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie De SS en Nederland. Documents uit SS Archieven 1933–1945. 2 vol., The Hague 1976, p. 460, F.2
  2. ^ Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie De SS en Nederland. Documents uit SS Archieven 1933–1945. 2 vol., The Hague 1976, p. 461.
  3. ↑ defense associations in Bavaria, 1918 / 19-1933 . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  4. ↑ Resident Services , 1919–1921 . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  5. ^ A b c Island Farm - Prisoner of War Camp: 198 / Special Camp: XI, in Bridgend, South Wales
  6. ^ A b c Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jochen Böhler and Jürgen Matthäus: Einsatzgruppen in Poland: Presentation and documentation . Scientific Book Society, Stuttgart 2008, p. 100.
  7. ↑ Places of the November pogrom 1938 in Innsbruck ( memento of the original from December 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / novemberpogrom1938.at
  8. ^ Claudia Steur / Gerhard Hirschfeld : Theodor Dannecker. A functionary of the "Final Solution" . Klartext Verlag , Essen 1996, ISBN 978-3-88474-545-8 , p. 115.
  9. ↑ Documents on Hanns Albin Rauter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center / here: Doc. 137,138, 139 ( Memento from August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Documents on Hanns Albin Rauter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center / here: Doc. 142, 143, 144 ( Memento from August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 229.
  12. ↑ Michael Wedekind: National Socialist Occupation and Annexation Policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945. Munich, 2003, p. 318.
  13. ^ Lemma Wilhelm Harster in Andreas Schulz , Günter Wegmann, Dieter Zinke : The generals of the Waffen-SS and the police. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 2: Hachtel – Kutschera. Biblio Publishing House. Bissendorf 2005. ISBN 3-7648-2592-8 , pp. 59-67.
  14. ↑ Reproduction of the quote in the Lemma Wilhelm Harster in Andreas Schulz , Günter Wegmann, Dieter Zinke : Die Generale der Waffen-SS and the police. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 2: Hachtel – Kutschera. Biblio Publishing House. Bissendorf 2005. ISBN 3-7648-2592-8 , p. 63.
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps: History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps , Volume 9, Beck, Munich 2005 ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 , p. 38.
  16. ↑ Harster at Island Farm Camp - Collection of personal data.
  17. ↑ on the events in KL Amersfoort s. also Karl Friedrich Titho and Erich Deppner
  18. ↑ - Proceedings against Wilhelm Harster Proceedings NL097 ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Dutch judicial and Nazi crime collection of judgments, also available online , in the Dutch criminal proceedings department against Germans and Austrians for Nazi crimes committed during World War II. Here is a short version. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  19. ↑ Procedure NL199 Dutch criminal proceedings against Germans and Austrians for Nazi crimes committed during World War II. Judgment of December 27, 1949 ( Memento of the original of February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Judicial and Nazi Crimes homepage , Dutch Trials Department, Abstract Online. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  20. ↑ Procedure NL171 ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Dutch criminal proceedings against Germans and Austrians for Nazi crimes committed during World War II. Judgment of September 20, 1949 , abridged version online. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  21. ↑ s. also four from Breda
  22. ↑ - Proceedings against Wilhelm Harster Proceedings NL097 ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Dutch judicial and Nazi crime collection of judgments, also available online , in the Dutch criminal proceedings department against Germans and Austrians for Nazi crimes committed during World War II. Here is a short version. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.jur.uva.nl
  23. ↑ a b Christian Ritz: Desk perpetrator in court. The proceedings before the Munich Regional Court for the deportation of Dutch Jews (1959–1967) . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77418-7 , p. 90, 124 ff .
  24. ^ Christian Ritz: Desk offender in court. The proceedings before the Munich Regional Court for the deportation of Dutch Jews (1959–1967) . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77418-7 , p. 157 .
  25. ^ Fabrizio Bacolla: l'infame Enrico Rajakovic. In: Giornale La Voce. March 29, 2017, accessed May 31, 2018 (Italian).
  26. ↑ This attitude . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1967, p. 33 ( online ).
  27. ^ Spiegel Online on March 10, 2013: Sixties: Former SS members formed their own intelligence service (last checked on March 10, 2013)
  28. ↑ Carol Ann Lee : Otto Frank's Secret. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-492-04477-8 , p. 390.
  29. ↑ cf. Harald Fühner: Follow-up. Dutch politics and the persecution of collaborators and Nazi criminals, 1945–1989 , Münster 2005, p. 220ff.
  30. ^ Bitter truth about a street , in: Kreisanzeiger Wochenblatt, April 1, 2015
  31. ↑ Elfriede Bachmeier-Fausten: Kelheim: Name Dr.-Harster-Straße remains. The city council decides unanimously. The committee distances itself from Theodor Harster's son, a war criminal. In: www.mittelbayerische.de. April 28, 2015, accessed April 28, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Harster, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and high-ranking Nazi official
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Kelheim
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1991
Place of death Munich