Wilhelm Wiebens

Wilhelm Bernhard Paul Wiebens (born March 17, 1906 in Rüstringen / Oldenburg, † January 22, 1990 in Bad Pyrmont ) was a German SS leader. As commander of the Einsatzkommando 9, he was involved in a leading position in the mass shooting of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union .

Life

After attending school, Wiebens completed a commercial apprenticeship. He then settled in Varel, where he worked as a businessman until at least 1931.

Politically found Wiebens during the Great Depression following the Nazi movement: in 1931 he joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) ( membership number 546524) and the Schutzstaffel (HH) (SS No. 16,617.). In the latter he was employed, among other things, as adjutant to Sturmbanns II of the 24th SS standard.

In 1934 Wiebens was accepted into the security service of the SS (SD). From the beginning of 1935 until at least 1939 he was head of the SD section in Potsdam. In this position he reached his highest rank in 1939 when he was promoted to Obersturmbannführer.

During the Second World War , Wiebens took part in a leading position in the operations of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in Eastern Europe: In February 1942, he succeeded Oswald Schäfer as leader of Einsatzkommando 9, which was part of Einsatzgruppe B during the attack on the Soviet Union . In 1941/42 the command committed mass murders of Jews and political commissars in the wake of Army Group Center . In January 1943 Wiebens handed over the command to Friedrich Buchardt .

After the war ended, Wiebens was arrested in the British Zone and convicted of the murder of two British pilots . In 1955 he was dismissed for good conduct. In the 1960s he worked as an industrial clerk . In 1966 he was on trial again. The West Berlin jury court sentenced Wiebens to life imprisonment in two cases for jointly committed murder. Wieben's predecessor Filbert and other officers of the Einsatzkommando 9 were also accused. The first of the two accused cases concerned the murder of twenty Roma . At the end of March / beginning of April 1942, Wiebens had received a report that a number of “hostile elements” were on the way near Vitebsk . He immediately assembled an execution squad and ordered the entire group to be shot. As the court found, this was done on their own initiative, because the orders from Himmler and Heydrich left considerable leeway as to how to deal with " Gypsies ". An older woman begged him to spare her. Wiebens refused, remarking: It is better to shoot an innocent too many than to let a guilty go. His command also shot the old woman. After his release from prison he lived in Bad Pyrmont, where he died in 1990.

Promotions

• August 10, 1932: SS squad leader
• December 1, 1932: SS troop leader
• July 1, 1933: SS-Obertruppführer
• July 31, 1933: SS-Untersturmführer
• November 9, 1935: SS-Obersturmführer
• April 20, 1936: SS-Hauptsturmführer
• January 30, 1937: SS-Sturmbannführer
• September 10, 1939: SS-Obersturmbannführer

literature

• Helmut Langerbein: Hitler's Death Squads. The logic of mass murder . Texas A&M University Press, College Station 2003, ISBN 1-58544-285-2 .

Web links

• Minutes of the hearing of Wiebens in 1948 (PDF; 2.2 MB) in the archive of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 675.
2. ↑ Helmut Langerbein: Hitler's death squads . College Station 2003, p. 62.
3. ↑ Schnapps after the murder . In: Die Zeit , No. 20/1966.
4. ^ Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes . Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-16-147687-5 , p. 71. ( reference number of the process: LG Berlin Ks 1/65 )
5. ↑ Donald Kenrick (Ed.): The Gypsies during the Second World War . University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield 1997, ISBN 1-902806-49-2 , pp. 160-161.