Wilhelm Hartenstein

Wilhelm Hartenstein (born October 1, 1888 in Schleiz ; † January 27, 1944 in Badenweiler ) was a German officer and leader of the Waffen SS . He was one of the first German police theorists whose findings on police combat were used by the German riot police until the 1970s. His concepts of defending against communist uprisings through partisan or (city) guerrilla tactics can be described as part of a strategy that is now known as asymmetrical warfare .

Life

His parents were the high school professor Edwin Hartenstein and his wife Marie, geb. Reichhold. After attending the Humanist Gymnasium in Schleiz, Hartenstein passed his Abitur in March 1909 and joined the 7th Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 96 in Gera-Rudolstadt on March 10, 1909 as a flagjunker. After attending the Potsdam War School, he was promoted to lieutenant in 1910. In the First World War Hartenstein was wounded twice and was used in various staff activities. On November 3, 1915, he married Traude de Georgi from Essen, who was the same age.

From the end of January to the end of August 1916, meanwhile promoted to first lieutenant, he was in command of the infantry and cavalry staff at the General Command of the XI. Army Corps . This was his first job, which brought him into contact with the police, because the staff guards, made up of normal units, carried out a military police activity. A military police in the sense of z. As the military police of the armed forces or the military police of the armed forces existed neither in the Prussian still Bavarian army . Military police activities such as B. Securing staffs and stage facilities, transporting prisoners of war or fighting crime in the rear area of ​​the front were usually the responsibility of the light cavalry; in Prussia the hussars and dragoons , in Bavaria the Chevaulegers .

After the armistice on November 11, 1918, Hartenstein remained in the Prussian Army and continued to work in the staff service. At the beginning of September 1919 he was transferred to Chief of Staff of the Greater Hamburg Security Service, the nucleus of the Hamburg Security Police (Sipo), which had to be renamed the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) as early as 1920 due to French intervention . On March 16, 1920 he was promoted to major in the Sipo, after he retired from active military service on January 30 and joined the Sipo Hamburg. Until 1934, Hartenstein worked in various functions at what was now Orpo, most recently as its commander. In 1924 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and in 1933 to colonel. In October 1923, Hartenstein was the leader of the police units that put down the Hamburg KPD uprising in Barmbek under the direction of Hans Kippenberger . In this uprising, the KPD used partisan or (city) guerrilla tactics for the first time. Presumably based on this experience, Hartenstein wrote a standard work on police combat in 1926 , The Combat Use of the Protection Police in Internal Unrest , which was used as a textbook by the other protection and order police of the federal states in the Reich. Hartenstein also wrote several basic articles with a police science character and worked out clearly that military and police forms of combat were fundamentally different despite superficial similarities. The aim of the police fight was always the arrest of a citizen and not the annihilation of a military opponent. In contrast to other police theorists such as Wilhelm Neese, Hartenstein took an offensive tactic and rejected de-escalating concepts. As a teacher at the Hamburg Police Seminar, he asked the officers to study war history literature in depth, especially on World War I, in order to improve tactical training. Concepts from the colonial wars during the German Empire were not processed, not even by the police of other states.

Hartenstein joined the NSDAP as early as February 1933 (membership number 1,864,296); his motives are not known. He remained briefly in what was now the State Police (Lapo) Hamburg, and then switched to the General SS as a full-time leader on October 1, 1934 . He joined the SS on June 18, 1934. In 1937/38 he worked as a standard leader as a tactics teacher at the SS leadership school in Braunschweig and then at the SS Junker School in Tölz. On April 1, 1941, he was called up as reserve leader for the Waffen SS. After serving as head of the Ober-Quartiermeister department in the command staff of the Reich Security Main Office , he was accepted into the active Waffen SS on January 1, 1942 as SS Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Waffen SS. He commanded the 1st SS Infantry Brigade (motorized), but was recalled from his post in July of that year, apparently due to a mental illness, and was head of the war history research department of the Waffen SS in Oranienburg until July 1943. Apparently for health reasons again he was transferred to the SS leadership main office. At the end of 1943 he was in cure in the Black Forest. He died on January 27, 1944 in a reserve hospital in Badenweiler. The cause of death is unknown. It is unclear to what extent Hartenstein became aware of war crimes and the murder of Jews in the occupied territories during his time as head of the senior quartermaster's department, or was indirectly involved in them.

literature

• Andreas Schulz: The generals of the Waffen SS and the police . Vol. 2: Hachtel-Kutschero . Bissendorf 2005, pp. 68-71.
• Hartenstein: The combat deployment of the police during civil unrest: with 5 simulation games and 42 practical exercises as well as a description of the Hamburg October unrest of 1923 . Berlin 1926.
• Police Lieutenant Colonel Harteinstein, Hamburg: Police types and forms of fighting . In: German Police Archive . 10th year 1931, no. 21, p. 318f.
• Hartenstein: Introduction to the nature and basic features of the use of the police . Berlin 1932/33.
• Hartenstein: The leadership and their means in the combat deployment of the protection police . Berlin 1933.