Karl Gutenberger

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Karl Gutenberger
Higher SS and Police Leader
, "West"

Karl Gutenberger (18 April 1905 - 8 July 1961) was a

Second World War, he was sentenced to prison for war crimes
.

Early life

Karl Gutenberger was the son of a manager of the

realgymnasium in Altenessen. From 1921 and 1923 he completed a bank apprenticeship and then became a bank clerk, working in banking and business, including at Rheinstahl AG, a steel manufacturer in Essen, where he worked as a finance clerk from 1928 to 1929.[1] He also worked briefly for a newspaper, the National-Zeitung from 1930 to 1931.[2]

Gutenberger was active in the Nazi Party very early on, joining it in 1923 and again in mid-December 1925 (membership number 25,249) after the ban imposed on the Party in the wake of the

Nazi seizure of power. He then returned as a Reichstag deputy from November 1933 until the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. He was a recipient of the Golden Party Badge.[3]

SA and SS career

A member of the

Rhineland and Westphalia. He would retain both posts until the end of the Second World War.[4]

Gutenberger was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of Police on 9 November 1942. This was followed on 1 August 1944 by advancement to Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS and the Police. From November 1944 he was appointed Inspector of Passive Resistance and Special Defense "West", heading the clandestine volunteer Werwolf forces in his jurisdiction. Toward the end of the war he was responsible for numerous extrajudicial murders, including on the instructions of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, having the Allied-appointed Oberbürgermeister (Lord Mayor) of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff, murdered on 25 March 1945.[5]

Postwar prosecution

After the end of the war, Gutenberger was captured by American forces in Schloss Lopshorn in Lippe and placed in internment from 10 May 1945. On 20 October 1948, a British military court in Hamburg sentenced him to twelve years in prison for the murder of foreign workers. Further trials before German civil courts followed. On 22 October 1949, he received a four-year sentence from an Aachen court for his role in the Oppenhoff murder.[6] A conviction on 16 March 1950 to a five-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity for his part in the murder of Allied airmen who had been shot down was later overturned on appeal in 1952. Due to an amnesty, Gutenberger was released from Werl Prison on 9 May 1953. After his release from prison, he worked in a wholesale business and died in 1961.[5][7]

External weblink

References

  1. ^ Williams 2015, p. 425.
  2. ^ Klee 2007, p. 211.
  3. ^ Yerger 1997, p. 50.
  4. ^ Yerger 1997, pp. 30–31.
  5. ^ a b Williams 2015, p. 426.
  6. ^ "Nazis Jailed in Aachen Plot". New York Times. 23 October 1949. p. 14.
  7. ^ Karl Gutenberger, German war criminal: released from Werl Prison on 9 May 1953; BBC... 1953.

Sources

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