Wilhelm Sander (SA member)

Wilhelm Sander (around 1930)

Wilhelm Sander (1934).

Bernhard Julius Wilhelm Sander (born June 14, 1895 in Aurich ; † July 1, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German SA leader , most recently with the rank of SA brigade leader. He became known as the chief of staff of the Berlin SA in 1933 and 1934 and as one of the victims of the so-called " Röhm Putsch ".

Life and aftermath

Until 1933

After attending school, Wilhelm Sander took part in the First World War. His war comrades included the later Catholic leader Erich Klausener . After the war, Sander was a member of the Prussian police, from which he was retired police captain after an incident in 1922. D. was discharged.

He later worked at the Oberspree cable works in Oberschönweide.

At the end of the 1920s, Sander joined the Nazi movement: He became a member of the NSDAP and the SA . On May 15, 1931, Sander was appointed leader of SA Standard 5 (Horst Wessel) in Berlin. He led this unit until 1933, although he secretly continued to exercise this position between April and June 1932 during the SA ban by the Brüning government, but did not officially hold it, and was given it back when the SA was re-established in July 1932.

After the seizure of power

When Karl Ernst was appointed leader of the Berlin-Brandenburg SA group in March 1933, a few weeks after the National Socialists came to power , Sander was installed as the group's chief of staff. In the same year, Sander was reassigned to the Prussian police, but at the same time he was on leave due to his duties on the staff of Ernst. He also took on the role of liaison between the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg and the Prussian police.

On April 20, 1934, Sander was promoted to the rank of SA brigade leader.

assassination

On July 1, 1934, Sander was shot as the second highest functionary of the Berlin SA in the course of the Röhm affair .

The following is known about his fate that day: According to Heinrich Bennecke, Sander traveled by train to Munich on the night of June 29th to 30th, 1934 on the occasion of an SA leaders' conference scheduled for that day in Bad Wiessee near Munich. There he was supposed to represent his superior Karl Ernst, who was absent on leave, as a representative of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg. At noon on June 30th, he took part in a meeting in the Senate Hall of the Brown House , at which Hitler announced the removal of Ernst Röhm as Chief of Staff of the SA and the arrest of all SA leaders who were allegedly involved in a putsch against Hitler, allegedly planned by Röhm . Bennecke states that he himself witnessed how Sander was arrested shortly after the end of Hitler's lecture while leaving the Brown House. Shortly before, when he called in Berlin, Bennecke had been asked who would represent the Berlin-Brandenburg group at the planned Führer conference. Bennecke later concluded that by giving Sander's name he probably unwittingly prompted Sander's arrest.

According to another source, Sander is said to have experienced the events of June 30 in Berlin and believed that the arrests there were a special action by Göring who had gone mad. Only then is he said to have tried to travel to Munich to inform Adolf Hitler of the events in Berlin.

Sander was brought to Berlin in the early morning hours of July 1st, where he was shot dead by an SS commando on July 1st on the premises of the Lichterfelde cadet institution . In a diary entry Joseph Goebbels made a cursory note : “Ernst, Straßer , Sander, Detten †. One last action and everything is over. It's difficult, but you can't avoid it. "

According to a report by Sopade , Sander was said to have behaved "extremely cowardly" during the shooting in Lichterfelde: he threw himself on the ground several times in the face of the firing squad and was kept upright until he was finally shot in the face while lying on the ground .

The main reason for the execution of Sanders was probably his membership of the staff of Karl Ernst, whose environment was particularly badly affected by the purge of July 1st: In addition to Sander, Ernst's adjutant Walter von Mohrenschildt , his legal advisor Gerd Voss , his adviser Daniel Gerth were also appointed as well as his friend Erwin Villain .

Afterlife

After his murder, Wilhelm Sander was repeatedly associated with the fire in the Reichstag on February 28, 1933. His name appears in the so-called “Ernst Testament” as one of the alleged backers of the fire: This document, which was first published in French newspapers in autumn 1934, is a self-written declaration that Ernst had allegedly made abroad as a “life insurance” which should be published in the event of his violent death and in which he allegedly openly admits his arson in the Reichstag fire. The "Ernst Testament" was later exposed as a forgery from the workshop of the communist publisher Willi Munzenberg.

According to the "Ernst Testament", Sander was the one who gave up the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe, who was arrested by the police as arsonist in the burning Reichstag on February 28, 1933 and executed, in the days before the fire, on his task as arsonist (or igniter of a prepared source of fire). In addition, Sander took van der Lubbe to the Reichstag building on the evening of February 28 and monitored his entry through a window in the restoration area. In the white book on the shootings of June 30, 1934 , a few months after Sander's death, the real reason for his murder was therefore that the Nazi leadership had disliked him as an unwelcome confidante of the Nazi fire authorship.

Since the 1960s, the "Ernst Testament" has been viewed primarily as a forgery in historical research. The assertion there that Sander was involved in the Reichstag fire is therefore also rejected as incorrect by authors who dispute the authenticity of the Ernst Testament, such as Fritz Tobias , Hans Mommsen or Sven Felix Kellerhoff .

estate

Sander's personal documents are kept in the Federal Archives. In particular, there are some correspondence from Sander in the holdings of the former Berlin Document Center (SA microfilm 164-B, photos 3783–3810).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Aurich registry office: Birth register for the year 1895: birth certificate No. 1895/492.
2. ↑ Dates of death according to: Berlin-Treptow registry office: death register for the year 1934: death certificate no. 123/1934.
3. ↑ Leader Order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 7 of February 10, 1932, p. 2.
4. ↑ Führer order No. II of the Supreme SA leadership of September 9, 1932, p. 7.
5. ↑ Fuehrer order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 23a of April 20, 1934, p. 3.
6. ↑ Heinrich Bennecke: Die Reichswehr and the Röhm-Putsch , p. 58. The mention of Sander's arrest in Victor Lutze's diary, printed in the Frankfurter Rundschau from May 14 to 16, 1957, is consistent
7. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (arrangement): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels , part 1 (records), vol. 3 / I, p. 73.
8. ^ Social Democratic Party of Germany: Germany report by Sopade. Vol. 1, 1934, p. 193.
9. ↑ See the analysis of the “vertical” structure, according to which the shootings were carried out in the form found in Karl Martin Grass: Edgar Jung, Papenkreis and Röhmkrise 1933-34 , 1966, p. 293 and appendix p. 88. According to Grass, not all SA leaders of a certain (high) rank were shot in the same way according to a horizontal principle (e.g. all group leaders), but only a few certain higher leaders and also their personal ones were shot in the form of a vertical cut "Surrounding clans" (staff leaders, adjutants, etc.) shot. Corresponding information can already be found in the memoirs by Hans Bernd Gisevius : Until the bitter end: From the Reichstag fire to July 20, 1944. Special edition updated by the author , 1960, p. 155.
10. ↑ Alexander Zinn: On the social construction of the homosexual National Socialists. The "Röhm Putsch" and the persecution of homosexuals in 1934/35 in the mirror of the exile press. In: Capri. No. 18, February 1995, pp. 21-48.
11. ↑ The corresponding parts of the "Ernst Testament" can be found printed in the white book on the shootings of June 30 , Paris 1934, pp. 116f .; likewise with Fritz Tobias: The Reichstag fire: Legende undreality , 1962, p. 663; as well as summarized in Alexander Bahar / Wilfried Kugel: The Reichstag fire: How history is made , 2001, p. 562.
12. ^ White Book on the Shootings of June 30 , p. 106.
13. ^ Fritz Tobias: Der Reichstagbrand: Legende und Reality , 1962, p. 250f.