Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
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Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski | |
---|---|
Member of the Reichstag | |
In office 1932–1944 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski 1 March 1899 |
Political party | Nazi Party |
Spouse |
Ruth Apfeld (m. 1922) |
Children | 6 |
Parent(s) | Otto Johannes von Zelewski Amalia Maria Eveline |
Military service | |
Allegiance | Nazi security warfare Warsaw Uprising |
Awards | Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross |
Erich Julius Eberhard von dem Bach-Zelewski (born Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski; 1 March 1899 – 8 March 1972) was a high-ranking
Biography
Origins and family
Erich Julius Eberhard von dem Bach-Zelewski was born as Erich Julius Eberhard von Zelewski in
First World War
The outbreak of the First World War came during the school summer holidays of 1914, while Zelewski was staying with his mother in Bialla. He was only fifteen, but in December 1914 he succeeded in enlisting in the Prussian Army, gaining some notoriety as its youngest volunteer. He served throughout the First World War.[2] In 1915, he was wounded by a bullet in the shoulder and in 1918 suffered a poison gas attack. He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, and later First Class.[3][4] By the end of the war he had been promoted to Leutnant.[5]
Between the wars
Following the armistice of November 1918, Zelewski remained in the
Zelewski legally added "von dem Bach" to his family name on 23 October 1925.[8] On 28 November 1940, he removed the "Zelewski" part of his surname because of its Polish-sounding origin.[9] Bach-Zelewski manipulated his genealogy numerous times in his career to impress his superiors.[3]
In July 1930, Bach-Zelewski left the Grenzschutz, and joined the
A source of considerable embarrassment for him was the fact that all three of his sisters had married
A Nazi Party member of the
World War II
In November 1939, SS chief Heinrich Himmler offered Bach-Zelewski the post of "Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germandom" in East-Silesia (the Polish territories incorporated into Silesia in 1939). His duties included mass resettlement and the confiscation of Polish private property. By August 1940, some 18,000–20,000 Poles from Żywiec County were forced to leave their homes in what became known as the Action Saybusch (German name for Żywiec).[12]
Bach-Zelewski provided the initial impetus for the building of Auschwitz concentration camp[13] at the former Austrian and later Polish military barracks in the Zasole suburb of Oświęcim due to overcrowding of prisons. The location was scouted by his subordinate Oberführer Arpad Wigand. The first transport arrived at KL Auschwitz on 14 June 1940, and two weeks later Bach-Zelewski personally visited the camp.[14] In June 1941, he resumed his duties as HSSPF in Silesia.
Occupied Soviet Union
During
In February 1942, he was hospitalized in Berlin for treatment of "intestinal ailments" stemming from opium abuse, and was described as suffering from "hallucinations connected with the shooting of Jews".[17] Before resuming his post in July,[18] Bach-Zelewski petitioned Himmler for reassignment to anti-partisan warfare duty.[19] Von dem Bach was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer and General of Police on 9 November 1941.[10]
In June 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, acting Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, was assassinated in Prague.[20] Hitler chose Bach-Zelewski as his replacement, but Himmler protested that he could not be spared due to the prevailing military situation. Hitler relented and appointed Kurt Daluege to the position. Through 1943, Bach-Zelewski remained in command of "anti-partisan" units on the central front, a special command created by Hitler. He was the only HSSPF in the occupied Soviet territories to retain genuine authority over the police after Hans-Adolf Prützmann and Jeckeln lost theirs to the civil administration. [citation needed]
Genocidal tactics
At some time in June 1943, Himmler issued the Bandenbekämpfung (bandit fighting) order, simultaneously announcing the existence of the Bandenkampfverbände (bandit fighting formations), with Bach-Zelewski as its chief. Employing troops primarily from the SS police and Waffen-SS, the Bandenkampfverbände had four principal operational components: propaganda, centralized control and coordination of security operations, training of troops, and battle operations.[21] Once the Wehrmacht had secured territorial objectives, the Bandenkampfverbände first secured communications facilities, roads, railways, and waterways. Thereafter, they secured rural communities and economic installations such as factories and administrative buildings. An additional priority was securing agricultural and forestry resources. The SS oversaw the collection of the harvest, which was deemed critical to strategic operations.[22] Any Jews in the area were rounded up and murdered. Communists and people of Asian descent were murdered presumptively under the assumption that they were Soviet agents.[23] Under Bach-Zelewski, the formations were responsible for the mass murder of 35,000 civilians in Riga and more than 200,000 in Belarus and eastern Poland.[citation needed]
Bach-Zelewski's methods produced a high civilian death toll and relatively minor military gains. In fighting irregular battles with the partisans, his units slaughtered civilians in order to inflate the figures of "enemy losses"; indeed, far more fatalities were usually reported than weapons captured. The German troops would encircle areas controlled by the partisans in a time-consuming manner, allowing real partisans to slip away. After an operation was completed, no permanent military presence was maintained, which gave the partisans a chance to resume where they had left off. Even when successful in pacification actions, Bach-Zelewski usually accomplished little more than to force the real enemy to relocate and multiply their numbers with civilians enraged by the massacres.[24]
Bach-Zelewski told Leo Alexander:
I am the only living witness but I must say the truth. Contrary to the opinion of the
National Socialists, that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever. The mass of the Jewish people were taken complete by surprise. They did not know at all what to do; they had no directives or slogans as to how they should act. This is the greatest lie of anti-Semitism because it gives the lie to that old slogan that the Jews are conspiring to dominate the world and that they are so highly organized. In reality, they had no organization of their own at all, not even an information service. If they had had some sort of organization, these people could have been saved by the millions, but instead, they were taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone as unsuspectingly to its disaster. Nothing was prepared. Absolutely nothing. It was not so, as the anti-Semites say, that they were friendly to the Soviets. That is the most appalling misconception of all. The Jews in the old Poland, who were never communistic in their sympathies, were, throughout the area of the Bug eastward, more afraid of Bolshevism than of the Nazis. This was insanity. They could have been saved. There were people among them who had much to lose, business people; they didn't want to leave. In addition there was love of home and their experience with pogroms in Russia. After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing.[25]
In July 1943, Bach-Zelewski received command of all anti-partisan actions in Belgium,
In early 1944, he took part in front-line fighting in the Kovel area, but in March he had to return to Germany for medical treatment. Himmler assumed all his posts. [citation needed]
Warsaw Uprising
On 2 August 1944, Bach-Zelewski took command of all German troops fighting
After more than two months of heavy fighting and the
Last months of the War
In October 1944, he was sent by Hitler to the Hungarian capital Budapest, where he participated in the fall of Regent Miklós Horthy and his government, and its replacement by the fascist and highly anti-Semitic Arrow Cross Party with their leader Ferenc Szálasi. In particular, he was involved in the persecution of the Hungarian Jews.
In December 1944 he became commander of the XIV SS Corps in the Baden-Baden region and between 26 January and 10 February 1945 of the X SS Corps in Pomerania, where his unit was annihilated after less than two weeks. [citation needed] He then commanded from 17 February 1945, the Oder Corps under Army Group Vistula.
After the war
After the war in Europe ended, Bach-Zelewski went into hiding and tried to leave the country. US military police arrested him on 1 August 1945. In exchange for his testimony against his former superiors at the Nuremberg trials,[citation needed] Bach-Zelewski never faced trial for any war crimes. Similarly, he never faced extradition to Poland or to the USSR. During his testimony at the Nuremberg trials, Bach-Zelewski stated that he disapproved of Himmler's aim to exterminate 30 million Slavs,[31] but explained it thus: "when, for years, for decades, the doctrine is preached that the Slav is a member of an inferior race and that the Jew is not even human, then such an explosion is inevitable."[32] In saying so, Bach-Zelewski effectively linked the facts of mass murder on the ground to Nazi ideology, and established the connection between the Wehrmacht and the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union, which turned out to be of great value to interrogators and prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials.[33]
Bach-Zelewski left prison in 1949. In 1951, Bach-Zelewski claimed that he helped
Trials and convictions
In 1951, Bach-Zelewski was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp for the murder of political opponents in the early 1930s; however, he did not serve prison time until February 1961, when he was convicted of the manslaughter of Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald, an SS officer, during the Night of the Long Knives. He was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months imprisonment.[35] In November 1961, he was sentenced to another six months in prison for perjury.[36]
In 1962, Bach-Zelewski was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of seven German
Bach-Zelewski gave evidence for the defence at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in May 1961. His evidence was to the effect that operations in Russia and parts of Poland were conducted by Operations Units of the Security Police and were not subject to the orders of Eichmann's office, nor was Eichmann able to give orders to the officers in charge of these units, who were responsible for the murder of Jews and Gypsies. The evidence was provided at a hearing in Nuremberg in May 1961.[38]
Family life
He married Ruth Apfeld in 1922, had three daughters (Giesele, Ines, Ilse) and three sons (Heinrich, Ludolf, Eberhard). In 1947, while being a prisoner in Nuremberg, he took a Catholic church wedding with his wife. In 1957, Erich's two sons, Heinrich and Eberhard, emigrated to the United States. Eberhard joined the U.S. Army, where he worked as an organizational commissioner.[39]
References
Notes
- ^ Matthias Barelkowski, Vom „Schlagetot“ zum „Kronzeugen“ ja tionalsozialistischer Verbrechen. Die Karriere des Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski in Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Eugeniusz Cezary Król, Michael Thomae (eds.) Der Warschauer Aufstand 1944. Ereignis und Wahrnehmung in Polen und Deutschland (Paderborn/Vienna/Munich/Zürich: Schöningh, 2011), p. 132
- ^ Henrik Eberle, Matthias Uhl, Das Buch Hitler, p. 342
David T. Zabecki: Germany at war - ^ a b c Tomasz Żuroch-Piechowski. "Eryk z Bogdańca, niewinny w Norymberdze (Innocent man at the Nuremberg Trials)". Tygodnik Powszechny (in Polish). 39/2006 (24 September 2006). Archived from the original (Internet Archive) on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
- ^ Goldensohn, Leon, The Nuremberg Interviews: Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses, Random House Publishing, 2010.
- ^ a b c Miller 2016, p. 36.
- ISBN 978-3-506-78562-6
- ^ a b Blood 2006, p. 40.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4408-5897-0.
- ^ Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War, pp. 404-405
- ^ a b Miller 2016, p. 38.
- ^ Blood 2006, p. 41.
- ^ Mirosław Sikora (20 September 2011). "Saybusch Aktion - jak Hitler budował raj dla swoich chłopów". OBEP Institute of National Remembrance, Katowice (in Polish). Redakcja. Archived from the original on 6 November 2011. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ISBN 9788770360388.
- ^ Żuroch-Piechowski. "Innocent man at the Nuremberg Trials". Tygodnik Powszechny. Archived from the original (ibidem, page 2) on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
- ^ Blood 2006, p. 58.
- ^ Shalom Cholawski, The Jews of Bielorussia During World War II, Taylor & Francis, 1998.
- ^ Lifton 1986, p. 159.
- ^ a b Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: the banality of evil (New York: Viking Press 1963), p. 7.
- ^ Żuroch-Piechowski. "Innocent man at the Nuremberg Trials". Tygodnik Powszechny. Archived from the original (ibidem, page 3) on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
- ^ MacDonald 1989, p. 175.
- ^ Blood 2006, p. 121.
- ^ Blood 2006, pp. 152–154.
- ^ Longerich 2012, pp. 628–629.
- ISBN 1576380149. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
- ISBN 0-300-09592-9.
- ^ a b Davies 2004
- ^ "The Rape of Warsaw", Stosstruppen39-45.tripod.com; retrieved 3 February 2009.
- ^ Fellgiebel 2000, p. 119.
- ^ Miller 2016, p. 39.
- ^ Chopin's Heart, AFP, at The Chopin Society UK; retrieved 30 May 2012.
- ^ The Nuremberg Trial, Ann Tusa, John Tusa, p.162
- ISBN 978-0-8014-9275-4.
- ^ .
- ^ "Guard 'gave Goering suicide pill'", BBC News, 8 February 2005.
- ^ Hamburger Abendblatt, 4 August 1962. (in German)
- ^ Prittie, Terence (17 July 1962). "Nazi General to Stand Trial in Nuremberg". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 July 2023.
- ^ "Erich von dem Bach‐Zelewsky, SS Leader in Warsaw Razing". The New York Times. 21 March 1972.
- ^ The Trial Papers of Eichmann's Trial
- ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com) (5 September 2019). "Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Tatuś i "kanalia"". Deutsche Welle (in Polish). dw.com. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
Bibliography
- Władysław Bartoszewski (1961). Prawda o von dem Bachu (Truth on von dem Bach) (in Polish). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Zachodnie. p. 103.
- Blood, Phillip W. (2006). Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe. Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1597970211. Archived from the originalon 24 December 2015.
- MacDonald, Callum (1989). The Killing of SS Obergruppenfűhrer Reinhard Heydrich. MacMillian Publishing Company. ISBN 0-02-034505-4.
- ISBN 978-0-670-03284-6.
- Marek Dzięcielski (2002). Pomorskie sylwetki (Pomeranian Biographies) (in Polish). Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek. pp. 221–233. ISBN 83-7322-491-2.
- Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000) [1986]. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 [The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas. ISBN 978-3-7909-0284-6.
- Lifton, Robert Jay, The Nazi Doctors (New York: Basic Books 1986), ISBN 0-465-04905-2.
- Longerich, Peter (2012). Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
- Miller, Michael (2016). Knight's Cross Holders of the SS and German Police 1940-45, Volume 1. England: Helion & Company. ISBN 978-1-909982-74-1.
- Miller, Michael (2006). Leaders of the SS & German Police, Volume 1. California: R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-9329700372.
- Tomasz Żuroch-Piechowski. "Eryk z Bogdańca, niewinny w Norymberdze (Innocent man at the Nuremberg Trials)". Tygodnik Powszechny (in Polish). 39/2006 (2006–09–24). Archived from the original (Internet Archive) on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
- Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II [The German Cross 1941 – 1945 History and Recipients Volume 2] (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8.