Willi Seibert

Willi Seibert during the task force process

Willi Seibert , also Willy Seibert (born June 17, 1908 in Hanover ; † March 30, 1976 in Bremen ), was SS-Standartenführer and from May 1941 to summer 1942 deputy commander of Einsatzgruppe D under Otto Ohlendorf . The members of Einsatzgruppe D murdered tens of thousands of Jews in the Crimea and the southern Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943. In 1948 Seibert was sentenced to death in the Einsatzgruppen trial , but released from prison in 1954.

Life

Training and advancement in the RSHA

Wilhelm Julius Heinrich Seibert attended school in Hanover and then completed an apprenticeship as a stonemason , where he attended lectures at the TH Hanover at the same time . From 1930 to 1932 he studied economics at the University of Göttingen , and obtained a degree in economics. On April 27, 1933 - after the National Socialist " seizure of power " - he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1,886,112). From 1932 to 1935 he served in the Reichswehr , where he was appointed lieutenant in 1935 after attending the Döberitz infantry school .

In November 1935 Seibert joined the SS as an Unterscharfuhrer (rank corresponds to NCO, SS No. 272,375) and was employed in the economic field in the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) in Berlin. As a result, he was continuously promoted until he achieved the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer in April 1939. In 1939 Seibert was appointed acting head of Office III D (Economy) in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) under Otto Ohlendorf , who headed the entire Office III. In August 1940 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer in this capacity.

In the war against the Soviet Union (1941–45)

From May 1941, the task forces of the Security Police and the SD were brought together in Pretzsch for the planned attack on the Soviet Union . Before the beginning of the war, the Einsatzgruppen were given the task of murdering the Soviet functionaries and the “Jewish intelligentsia” of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the order also included the extermination of all Jewish men of military age. In the course of the first three months of the war against the Soviet Union, the murderous activity of the Einsatzgruppen escalated in the east, so that at the beginning of October 1941 at the latest, Jewish men, women, children and old people were shot without distinction. Dispatched prisoners of war, "gypsies", psychiatric patients and hostages from the civilian population were among the victims of the task forces.

Otto Ohlendorf headed Task Force D, where Seibert assumed the same function as head of Office III (intelligence service) as in the RSHA under his superior. The Einsatzgruppe D was set up a little later than the Einsatzgruppen A – C (intended for Army Groups North, Central and South) after it was clear that Romania would also take part in the war against the Soviet Union with its own soldiers. Task Force D was to follow the 11th Army of the Wehrmacht and the Romanian and Hungarian units in the Ukraine south of the line Czernowitz , Ananjiw , Nikolajew , Melitopol , Mariupol , Taganrog , Rostov-on-Don . The densely populated Crimean peninsula was also part of the operational area. After the planned conquest of the Caucasus , Task Force C should take over the entire Ukraine, while Task Force D should concentrate on the Caucasus.

As the de facto deputy of Ohlendorf, Seibert was one of three SS men in Einsatzgruppe D, along with the radio operator, who was aware of the situation reports to the RSHA, which contained the exact numbers of Jews, commissars and “Bolshevik officials” who were destroyed. In the absence of Ohlendorf, Seibert wrote and signed these reports independently. On April 16, 1942, Seibert prepared a situation report that contained the sentence "The Crimea is free of Jews ." In his role, Seibert carried out inspections of the Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos (sub-units of Einsatzgruppe D) and, according to his own admission, took part in at least two executions. In June 1942 Seibert was transferred back to the RSHA in Berlin, where he resumed his old position under Ohlendorf. The members of Einsatzgruppe D murdered around 90,000 people in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union during Seibert's service from June 1941 to June 1942.

After the end of the war

From 1945 to 1946 Seibert was in a British internment camp. In 1947/48 he was one of 24 defendants in the Einsatzgruppen trial in which attorney Gerhard Klinnert represented him with the assistance of Heinrich Klug. When Judge Musmanno asked whether Seibert had shot his own parents on the orders of his superior, Seibert first refused to testify. After a day's interruption of the process, he finally stated that he could not do this and that he would not be able to carry out such an inhumane order. This statement seriously disrupted the defensive strategy of the emergency command . Judge Musmanno later referred directly to this in his judgment, stating that even a German soldier is not a “slave in chains”, but rather a “commissioner with his own mind” who has scope for his actions. Inhuman orders do not have to be carried out. But since they were carried out by the accused, they voluntarily participated in the mass murder.

In 1948 Seibert was sentenced to death , but in 1951 the sentence was commuted to 15 years' imprisonment by the High Commissioner John McCloy . Seibert was released on May 14, 1954. After his release from prison, Seibert settled in Syke , a small town near Bremen, in October 1956 after a stopover in Hanover . He was married and had two children. With reference to his quick pardon, Seibert was listed together with 1,800 business leaders, politicians and leading officials of the Federal Republic in the Brown Book first published in 1965 by the GDR for propaganda purposes . Seibert lived in Syke for twenty years until he died in Bremen at the age of 67.

literature

• Andrej Angrick : The Einsatzgruppe D . In: Peter Klein (editor): The task forces in the occupied Soviet Union 1941/42 . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-89468-200-0 . (Volume 6 of the publications of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Education Center)
• Michael Wildt : The generation of the unconditional: the leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office . Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2003. ISBN 3-930908-87-5 .

Web links

• Judgment in the Einsatzgruppen trial in Nuremberg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law no.10 , Vol. 12 . United States Government Printing Office , Buffalo NY 1951, pp. 536-539.
2. ↑ Erich Stockhorst: 5000 heads: who was what in the 3rd Reich , 2nd edition. Arndt, Kiel 1985, p. 359. ISBN 3-88741-117-X .
3. ↑ Kazimierz Leszczynsk (editor): Case 9: The verdict in the SS Einsatzgruppen trial, passed on April 10, 1948 in Nuremberg by the Military Court 2 of the United States of America . Rütten & Loening, East Berlin 1963, p. 246.
4. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader: The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-58341-7 , pp. 520-521.
5. ^ Statement by Otto Ohlendorf in the Nuremberg trial of major war criminals. In: Roderick Stackelberg and Sally Anne Winkle (editors): "The Nazi Germany Sourcebook". Routledge, London 2002, pp. 342-343. ISBN 0-203-46392-7 .
6. ↑ " Sklave in Ketten" as translation of fettered slave , "Commissioner with own thinking ability" from reasoning agent .
   Hilary Earl: Scales of Justice: History, Testimony, and the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Nuremberg . In: "Lessons and Legacies - New Currents in Holocaust Research", Vol. VI . Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL 2004, pp. 336-337. ISBN 0-8101-2001-1 .
7. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 576. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition)
8. ↑ ^{a b} City of Syke, residents' registration file Verierter - district Syke, extract April 2010. Death data according to the Bremen registry office, death book no. 1765 [1705 ?, microfiche illegible] from 1976.
9. ↑ Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Brown Book". War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science . Edition Ost, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-360-01033-7 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1968). List entry on Willi Seibert ( Memento from March 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). (Retrieved May 19, 2009.)