Cogs In The Killing Machine #1

Cogs in the Killing Machine #1

 

Without the assistance of others, the holocaust could never have occurred the way it did.  Below is a small collection of individuals who were involved one way or another, in the persecutions and the extermination of men, women and children, including new born babies, that the Nazis deemed as a threat to the wellbeing of the German nation.  The Nazis saw the mentally and physically handicapped as some sort of dangerous pollution, alongside Jews, and other undesirables, and they believed that it was incumbent on them to get rid of all these undesirables!  For the Nazis, it was simply a process of cleansing the nation, and this became known simply as racial hygiene.  This racial cleansing of the nation started with the removal of Communists and other political malcontents, whom were put into concentration camps, Jews were also arrested and thrown into the camps simply because they were Jews, and only let out if they had been thoroughly been re-educated.  then, we saw the gradual removal of other peoples’ rights from the likes of the Jews, gypsies, half-breeds and the disabled, which then evolved into sterilisation technique being imposed onto the mentally and physically disabled, then nazi policy evolved again to enforced euthanasia [T4 Program] for those deemed mentally and physically disabled. These people were sent to special clinics [Sanitoriums] until three doctors decided each and every one of their fates. If deem worthy of death, they were either injected with either hydrogen peroxide, perhydrol, phenol or some other chemical     by a doctor and later some were gassed by the use of carbon monoxide which was funnelled into a specially built gas chamber.  German, men and children, were therefore the first victims of the Nazi’s gassing techniques, which when the war came, Zyklon B would eventually be the main substance used to kill millions of defenceless victims. 

However, before the advent of the death camps [Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chełmno, Belzec and Majdanek], the Nazis establish professional mobile killing squads [Einsatzkommandos], who would follow the Wehrmacht when they invaded an eastern, Slavic country.   Having acquired the expertise on how to slaughter thousands of unarmed men, women and children, many of those Nazis who had participated in the T4 Euthanasia programmed soon led these killing squads as they sought out every civilian the Nazis wanted to liquidate, regardless of age of sex.  These merciless killers, would shoot, hang, and burn their victims alive or simply beat them to death, and their bodies would be buried in mass graves scattered throughout the conquered eastern territories.  These heroes of Germany even defiled their own countries race laws when thousands of Jewish women and young girls were raped before being slaughtered.  To be a National Socialist, was to be inhume, was to have a cold heart and the iron will to kill even babies and toddlers without remorse. 

 

Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)

Heinrich Himmler was born into a middle-class family on 7^th October 1900 in Munich. 

At the outset of the First World War, Himmler was too young to enlist and had to wait until his 17^th birthday before being able to enrol into the 11^th Bavarian Infantry regiment as an officer cadet, but before he could see action, the war suddenly ended. 

Afterwards, he studied at the Munich Technical College where he gained a diploma in agriculture, and with the political upheaval in Bavaria, Himmler joined a far right-wing paramilitary organisation known as the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) or SA for short. The SA were also known as the Brownshirts.  It was his activities within the SA that he eventually came to the notice of Adolf Hitler, who made him business manager for the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) in Bavaria. 

In 1923, Himmler took part in the failed Beer-Hall Putsch in Munich.  Though the party and the SA were banned, Himmler continued to be an active member of the movement and as secretary to Gregor Strasser. 

In 1925, he was appointed to be the Gauleiter for the lower area of Bavaria and the upper area a year later.  From 1925 to 1930, he acted as the party's propaganda leader. 

He married Margarete Boden in 1928, and soon after that he and his wife set up a small chicken farm near Munich, which became a failed enterprise.  By now, Himmler was dabbling in homeopathy and he was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) [Assault/Storm Squadron] which had originally been established to act as Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit.

After Hitler's release from prison, the party was reformed and in 1929, Hitler appointed Himmler head of the SS, which was still subordinate to Ernst Rohm's Brownshirts.   Himmler set about reorganising and enlarging the membership and focused on making it an elite organisation within the Nazi movement itself.  Himmler instructed Reinhardt Heydrich to establish a secret security apparatus within the SS which became known as the Sicherheitsdienst or SD for short.  The SD soon had a large database of personal and secret information on the party's hierarchy and civilians known to be hostile to the party. 

 After Hitler became Germany's Chancellor at the end of January 1933, Himmler was named as Munich's chief of police and as such, he established the country's first official concentration camp at Dacha, which was designed to hold enemies of the state, real or imaginary. 

On 20 April, 1934, he inherited Herman Goering's secret state police (the Prussian Gestapo) which he set up branches wherever he could.

In June 1934, Himmler's SS, under Hitler's orders, swooped down on Ernst Rohm and other high ranking SA leaders.  False reports created by Rohm’s enemies within the party, which included Himmler, had been shown to Hitler that Rohm was planning a coup a military coup against him, this affair became known as the Night of the Long Knives.  As a reward for his absolute loyalty and devotion to Hitler, the SS, became an independent organisation, answerable only to Hitler himself.  Himmler's powerbase increased still further in 1936, when Hitler gave him control over all of Germany's police forces. By now, Germany was awash with concentration camps where inmates were being brutalized.

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Hitler made Himmler Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums (Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of German Nationhood).  After the German war machine ploughed victorious into neighbouring countries, Himmler expanded his ghetto and concentration camp system into these occupied regions, prior to being shipped off to newly established death camps, such as Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz where they would receive special attention [Immediate death]. 

At the beginning of the war against Poland, and later the USSR, he had instructed Heydrich to establish Einsatzkommandos (special commandos) which would follow the Wehrmacht into those countries as a slaughter machine.  These commandos were tasked to identify and liquidate anyone deemed a threat to German rule, i.e., the intelligentsia, Jews, Communists etc. 

Himmler also had created a fully armed version of the SS [Waffen-SS] who would be used as elite German fighting force of ideologues, who would fight alongside the Wehrmacht, and who would be used to combat partisan activities.

On 25 August, 1943, Himmler was made Minister of the Interior alongside all his other offices.  This position gave him control over the civil servants and the country's courts.  By the time of the July Plot (an attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July, 1944), Himmler had become the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany.  A day after the plot, he was given command of Germany's Volkssturm (People's Army, a militia, similar to Britain's Home Guard, which was mainly made up of old men and members of the Hitler Youth).

When Himmler realised all was over, that Germany would lose the war, he approached Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg, to act as an intermediary between himself and the Western Allies.  He was willing to surrender the forces under his command, and the free Jews from the concentration camps.  Himmler believed that the Allies would be able to come to terms with him, thereby keeping himself in power in a post-Hitler Germany.  Of course, the Allies rejected such endeavours, and had his proposals broadcast on the BBC.  Hitler, on hearing Himmler's betrayal, he flew into a rage, and stripped him from all his offices, and ordered his immediate arrest and execution, which was simply impossible to be carried out.  After Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, and the German armed forces surrendered in May, 1945, Himmler, immediately shaved off his moustache, and placed a patch over one of his eyes and took the identity of a discharged Gestapo agent, by the name of Heinrich Hitzinger, in an attempt to try to avoid capture.

He was arrested near Bremen, by British soldiers because of his Gestapo papers, and taken to a nearby POW camp.  At this stage, he still hadn't been recognised, but for some reason, Himmler chose to reveal his true identity.

But later during a detailed medical examination, carried out by a doctor at Lüneburg, he bit into a cyanide capsule that he had hidden in his mouth, and died immediately. 

His was buried in an unmarked grave near Lüneburg, and the exact location is still a secret.

 

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942)

Heydrich, Reinhard Tristran Eugen was born on the 7^th March 1904 in Halle, Saxony, Germany

 In June 1931, Reinhard Heydrich, a former naval communications officer who had been dismissed after a court martial after it found him guilty of having an affair with a young girl.

He joined Himmler Black Order [the SS] and was tasked with organising an SS intelligence service so as to keep tabs on political opponents (known as Ic of the SS-Amt).  The service was later renamed the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführer-SS (Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS), or the SD.

In June 1932, Heydrich, now promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer established his headquarters in Munich. After Hitler won power in January 1933, Heydrich dramatically expanded the SD throughout the Reich. As soon as Himmler took over the Gestapo (security police), Heydrich, now a SS-Brigadeführer [ Brigadier] set about reorganising it and placed handpicked SD men to learn all about the activities of the political police so as to gain valuable knowledge and experience.

In 1939, the SD was almost completely absorbed into the security police itself. Soon the SD’s remit expanded to incorporate social, economic and religious matters. Detailed studies of communism and Judaism were made as well as a detailed list of so-called subversives. Other groups were added, such as religious sects and freemasons.

During the early days of the war, Wehrmacht troops, whom detested the security policemen, shot a number of them that they had conveniently mistook for resistance fighters. For their own protection, Heydrich ordered SD men to wear the grey SS uniform, which had the SD symbol sewn onto the collar and sleeve and which had police shoulder straps.

In 1940, Heydrich was elected to the presidency of the International Criminal Police Commission, in which he sought to establish a German system of espionage within other countries. He earned promotion again in 1941 when he was given the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer [Lieutenant-general]. Soon his ghettos and concentration camps spread throughout occupied Europe.

On September 1941, Hitler made him Deputy Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. On 20 January 1942, he informed other leading government ministers of the Final Solution at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin. Heydrich had been ordered by Hermann Goering to administer the systematic destruction of Europe’s Jews [The Final Solution] as well as other undesirables.

In Czechoslovakia, Heydrich ruled with an iron fist that cost many Czech patriots their lives. On 27 May, 1942, three men from the Czech resistance were parachuted back into their country from Britain with assassination as their goal and Heydrich as their target. They attacked two days later, and Heydrich died of his wounds caused by an explosive device that had been thrown at his staff car. At his funeral Hitler referred to him as a ‘man with iron heart’. The German reprisals were brutal and barbaric. An entire village (Lidice) in Czechoslovakia was wiped out and all males sixteen and over were shot and the children that the Germans believed could be Germanised were sent to German families within the Reich to be raised as Germans whilst the remainder of the children and women were sent to their deaths within the concentration camp system.

Heydrich was a sadist with a huge lust for power. Some of Heydrich’s opponents within the Reich believed that he had Jewish blood running through his veins but could not, or feared not, try to prove it.

 

Kurt Max Franz Daluege (1897–1946)

Kurt Daluege was born in Kreuzberg, Berlin. 

Was an engineer by trade, and after World War I, Daluege joined a right-wing paramilitary group known as 'Rossbach', and became an early member of the Nazi Party.

He established the SA in Berlin and became a member of the SS. In 1933, he became a member of the Reichstag and in 1936 was appointed as Chief of the Security Police within the Central Office of the SD. He was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer [Colonel General] and was made 'Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia' after the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich he was made ‘Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia'.

He was heavily involved in the murder and imprisonment of the citizens of the Czech town of Lidice as well as the town's destruction. He was extradited to Czechoslovakia after the war to stand trial for crimes committed against the Czech people. He was executed on the 24th October 1946.

 

Dr Karl Franz Friedrich Brandt (1904-1948)

Born on 8 January, 1904 in an address in Mühlhausen, a city in the north-west of Thuringia, Germany, and hanged on the 2nd June, 1948 after being found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial, which began on the 9 December, 1946. 

Brandt had joined the NSDAP in February, 1932, and enrolled in the SA in February, 1933.  Brant had been the Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation; he was also given charge of the country's biological and chemical research institutions.   He held the rank of SS- Gruppenführer [Major-general] within Himmler's Waffen-SS.

He was one of Hitler's personal physicians after he treated Hitler’s adjutant and niece after a car accident in 1933, thus, making him a member of Hitler's inner-circle. He aways believed that Dr. Theodor Morell, another personal doctor of Hitler’s, was poisoning the Führer with his quake remedies.

Brandt had played a vital role within the state's T4 Euthanasia programme, and also sanctioned medical experiments to be undertaken on concentration camp inmates.

He attained the rank of SS- Gruppenführer [Major general] within the Waffen-SS.

In April 1945, Hitler dismissed Brandt from all his offices after learning that he planned to surrender his family to the advancing Americans, and ordered a court martial take place.  The death sentence was imposed but he was saved when Heinrich Himmler intervened on his behalf. 

Ater the war, he stood trial on the 9^th December 1946 with 22 other doctors in what became known as the Doctor’s Trial, in Nuremberg.  He was found guilty for crime that he omitted whilst serving Hitler’s regime and was hanged on the 2^nd June 1948.

 

Walter Funk (1890-1960)

Walter Funk was in Est Prussia. He had served in the German army during the First World War but was discharged due to health problems. 

He became a member of the Reichstag in July 1933.

Became the Minister of Economics within Hitler's Germany between 1938-1945 and President of Reichsbank. He held other posts, such as, Press Chief of the Reich government, served under Joseph Goebbels within the Propaganda department.

In 1942, he colluded with Himmler to funnel all the stolen money, gold and jewels stolen from the Jews as they were murdered within the death camps in the east, and chose to never question the fate of the Jews. On the 20^th October 1945, Funk’s name appeared on an indictment and was sent to the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials.  Found guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg on 1st October 1946.  He was freed in 1957 from Spandau prison in Berlin.

 

Hans Frank (1900-1946)

Hans Frank was born on the 3^rd May 1900 in Karlsruhe, within the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Considering his age, Frank managed to see some action during the First World War, and after Germany’s defeat, like many disillusioned soldiers, he joined the right-wing group known as the Freikorps and fought against the Communists with Munich. 

In 1919, He Joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [DAP] and stayed with them when Hitler took over the party and later reformed it into the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [NSDAP, Nazi].

He was involved in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 as a member of the Sturmabteilung [SA].

After becoming a lawyer in 1926, he would go on and defend his fellow Brownshirts [SA] who appeared before the courts in Munich. Hitler, decided to make him his personal lawyer and appointed him the head of the party’s legal division.

In 1930, He won a seat within the German Reichstag.   When Hitler won power in 1933, Frank was made the Bavarian minister for justice, Reich minister of Justice and minister without portfolio.  He was also made a Reichsleiter [Reich leader) of the NSDAP, as well as other high offices. 

He was made the ‘chief civilian officer’ of Nazi controlled Poland on the 12^th October 1939 and soon after that appointed as Governor-General of the Polish rump state, i.e., What was left after some of its territories were absorbed into the Reich and after the Russians took their share as part of a secret agreement made with Stalin.

Frank was given the nickname 'Frank II' by some as he treated Poland as his own personal fiefdom and held court at Cracow, and treated the Poles as slave labour and seized most of their wealth.  He was deeply implicit in the murder of thousands of Polish citizens and he was key in isolating the Polish Jews from the rest of society by establishing ghettos throughout his little domain. 

After the war he was arrested by the Allies and put on trial for numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes.  He was found guilty at Nuremberg and hanged on 16 Oct 1946

 

 

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903-1946)

Kaltenbrunner was born on 4^th October 1903 in the Austrian town of Ried im Innkreis which is located some 37 miles (70km) north-west of Salzburg.  He followed in the footsteps of his father and became a lawyer, securing his degree in 1926 and opened a law office in Linz in 1927. He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1932.  He rose through the ranks of the Austrian SS and soon became the paramilitary group’s leader in 1935 but took his instructions from Berlin which helped organise the Austrian SS and help fund them.  He was fully in support of Hitler’s Anschluss in 1938.

After the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, he became chief of the ‘Reichssicherheitshauptamt [Reich Security Main Office] in January 1943.  In February 1944, he was given control of the German intelligence wing of the armed forces [Abwehr].

He would encourage German and Austrian citizens to lynch an Allied pilots they got their hands on after a bombing raid, and even ordered the execution of all known French prostitutes, and like his predecessor Reinhard Heydrich, his hands were covered in blood due to his role during the holocaust.

At the Nuremberg war crimes trials, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was hanged on 16 October 1946.

“I do not feel guilty of any war crimes.  I have done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an Ersatz [Substitute] for Hitler.”

Statement from Kaltenbrunner during his trial at Nuremburg (1945). 

 

 

 

 

Joseph Darnand (1897 -1945)

French collaborator with the Nazis during the German occupation of France during World War II and founder of the French Milice, which was set up with the assistance of the Vichy government on the 30^th January 1943 in Vichy France to fight the French Resistance.

He joined the Waffen SS as an Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) in August 1943. In December 1943, he became head of police and later secretary of the interior.

His militia didn’t just target French citizens who were active within the Resistance movement, they also went after the Jews and had helped secure the deportation of thousands of French and alien Jews to their deaths in the east.

Darnand was arrested after the war and stood trial for treason and war crimes. He was found guilty and was executed on 3 October 1945.

 

Julius Streicher (1885-1946)

Streicher was born on 12^th February 1885 in the village of Fleinhausen, located within the Upper Bavaria region of Germany.  He followed in the footsteps of one of his parents and became a school teacher in Nuremberg in 1909. 

Whilst serving as a volunteer soldier prior to World War One, it was noted in his paybook that under no circumstance should he ever receive a commission.  However, when war came, he did attain the rank of ‘Oberleutnant [lieutenant]’ and was even awarded the Iron cross, First and Second classes. 

When the war ended with Germany’s defeat, Streicher returned to the teaching profession but he also dabbled in right wing politics.

In 1919. he formed his own antisemitic political party but gave that up to join the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [Nazis] in 1921.

He founded the right wing, anti-Semitic newspaper ‘Der Stürmer’ in 1923 which was viewed as too extreme even for the antisemites within the Nazi party thereby gaining his reputation as being one of Germanys most fanatical antisemites.  In the paper, Jesus was even dejudifed.  And many opponents argued that the paper was nothing but a pornographic publication. 

He took over as Gauleiter [District Leader] for Franconia in 1925.  As a school teacher he forced his pupils to say the Heil Hitler, and promoted his right-wing ideology within the classroom.  In 1928, his school had had enough and he was sacked after charges were brought against him.

In 1929, he stood as a Nazi Party delegate for the Bavarian Landtag [Legislative assembly] within the Franconia seat and was duly elected.

He became a member of the Reichstag for Thuringia in January 1933.

He was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer [Lieutenant General] in 1934. 

Streicher made numerous powerful enemies within the party, which included Hermann Goering, who he had insulted by claiming that his daughter, Edda was conceived by artificial insemination.  He beat people up in the public square at random and even beat a young man who was in custody at the time.

In 1940, Hermann Goering triggered an investigation into Streicher’s activities, and as such was dismissed from all posts he held within the party. 

After the war he was executed after being found guilty on count 4 (crimes against humanity) during the Nuremberg Trials and was sentenced to death.  On the 16^th October 1946, as the rope was placed around his next, he uttered his last words, which were “Heil Hitler!”

 

Father Yosef Tiso (1887-1947)

Tiso was a Slovakian Roman Catholic priest who began dabbling in politics after the establishment of Czechoslovakia after the First World War where he joined the nationalist party known as the ‘Hlinka Slovak People’s Party’ ‘(HSĽS) and became the head of the party in 1938.  The party campaigned for Slovakian independence. Tiso’s ideology was firmly rooted in Christian antisemitism.  He was becoming a member of the Czechoslovakia Parliament and had even become the country’s minister for Health before Hitler started to get involved in Czechoslovakia affairs.

After Hitler’s takeover of the Sudetenland, Slovakia declared its autonomy from Prague but remained part of Czechoslovakia with Tiso becoming the Prime Minister of the assembly.

After Germany seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Slovak assembly declared its independence.  Czechoslovakia was now transformed into the Slovakian Republic with Tiso as its President, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia being governed from Berlin. Slovakia aligned itself with Berlin. 

With power firmly in Tiso’s hand, he began to arrest and deport his country’s Jewish population to the east.  Many of them would die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other camps.

In 1944, Tiso’s government faced an uprising and was forced to accept the intervention of German troops who quelled the revolt and then systematically began the round up of the country’s remaining Jewish population and had them dispatched to their deaths in the east.

When the Red Army swamped into Slovakia, Tiso fled, first to Austria and then into Bavaria.  He was later arrested by the Americans in June 1945 and was sent for trial in the reconstituted country of Czechoslovakia. He was convicted on all charges and sentenced to death.  Whilst awaiting execution, he tried to get reprieve from the country’s President, Edvard Beneš, but no such reprieve was issued and Tiso was hanged.

 

 

SS-General Oswald Pohl (1892-1951)

Oswald was born in Duisburg-Ruhrort, Germany on 30th June 1892.  In 1912, he joined the German navy and saw action during the First World War and in 1918, he became a navy paymaster. After German’s defeat in 1918, he remained in the country’s navy but joined the Freikorps "Brigade Löwenfeld" and became its paymaster.

In 1925, he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) and became a member of the Nazi party a year later. In 1929, he enrolled into the Schutzstaffel (SS) rose through its ranks. 

He later became the chief of the administration department in the staff of the Reichsführer-SS. He also became Chief of the SS Economic-Administrative Main Office and was heavily complicit in what happened within the concentration camp system.

He organised the despatch to Germany of the personal possessions of Jews murdered in the death camps- including, clothing, gold teeth, wedding rings, jewellery, women’s hair, etc. At his trial he told the court that everyone down to the lowest clerk knew what went on in the concentration camps. 

After Germany’s defeat, he fled to Upper Bavaria and worked on a farm. In May 146, he was finally arrested by British soldiers.

He was eventually tried by an American tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death.  He would appeal the sentence, whilst in prison, Pohl, reembraced Catholicism after jettisoning it in 1935. He was finally hanged at Landsberg Prison on the 7^th June 1951.

 

Heinrich Schmitz:

Deputy Commander of the Gestapo in Lithuania. Brought to trial in Wiesbaden, West Germany in 1962 or 63. Committed suicide in his cell before sentence was passed.

 

Hans Stark:

Gestapo member. Found guilty on 41 separate occasions of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hans was involved in the killing of over 200 camp inmates. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his crimes.

 

Helmut Rauca

On 28 October 1941, Helmut helped to select more than 10,000 Kovno Jews for execution. After Germanys defeat, he fled to Canada. Charged in 1984 by a Toronto court with entering Canada under a false declaration and was extradited to West Germany. Sent for trial in Frankfurt for the murder

of 11,500 Jews. Died in Hospital awaiting trial.

 

Victor Brack

Brack was born in Haaren in 1904. After joining the NSDAP, he joined the SS, reaching the rank of SS-Standartenführer (colonel).  He helped organise the building of the death camps within Poland, and was hanged in Landsberg Prison on 2 June, 1948, after being found guilty of crimes he had committed during the war.

 

Fritz Saukel

Saukel (1894-1946) was the Reich's plenipotentiary for labour mobilization (1942-1945).  He was hanged on 16 October 1946 after being found guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremberg.