Richard Glücks
SS #58,706 | |
---|---|
Unit | SS-Totenkopfverbände |
Battles/wars | World War I World War II |
Other work | One of the primary organizers of The Holocaust. |
Richard Glücks (German:
Early life
Glücks was born 1889, in Odenkirchen (now part of Mönchengladbach) in the Rhineland. Having completed gymnasium in Düsseldorf, he worked in his father's business, a fire insurance agency. In 1909, Glücks joined the army for one year as a volunteer, serving in the artillery. In 1913, he was in England, and later moved to Argentina as a trader. When World War I broke out, Glücks returned to Germany under a false identity on a Norwegian ship in January 1915 and joined the army again. During the war, he eventually became the commander of an artillery unit and was awarded the Iron Cross I and II.[1] Glücks fought at the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme.[2] After the war, he became a liaison officer between the German forces and the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control, the allied body for controlling the restrictions placed upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles regarding re-armament and strength of their armed forces. Until 1924, he stayed in that position, before joining the staff of the 6th Prussian Division. He also served in the Freikorps.[2]
Rise under the Nazi regime
In 1930, Glücks joined the
From 6 September 1933 to 20 June 1935, Glücks was a member of the staff of the SS-Group "West" and rose to the rank of an SS-Sturmbannführer. While lacking in charisma, historian Nikolaus Wachsmann claims Glücks possessed an "abundance of ideological commitment".[3]
On 1 April 1936, Glücks became the chief of staff to
Concentration Camps Inspector
When Eicke became field commander of the
Glücks's responsibilities at first mainly covered the use of concentration camp inmates for
On 20 April 1941 Glücks was promoted to the rank of an SS-Brigadeführer and in November 1943, Glücks was made SS-Gruppenführer and a Generalleutnant of the Waffen-SS.[12][13] From 1942 on, Glücks was increasingly involved in the implementation of the "Final Solution", along with Oswald Pohl. To oversee the coordination of camp related activities, which varied from the medical concerns of personnel and prisoners, the status of construction projects, and the progress of extermination operations, Glücks, along with other senior SS camp managers, attended weekly meetings conducted by Pohl.[14] Glücks never attempted to outshine his superior and was quite aware of his subordination to Pohl.[15]
Just a few days after the
In July 1942, he participated in a planning meeting with Himmler on the topic of medical experiments on camp inmates.[20] From several visits to the Auschwitz concentration camps, Glücks was well aware of the mass murders and other atrocities committed there. Correspondingly, Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Höss routinely informed Glücks on the status of the extermination activities.[21] During one of his inspection-tour visits to Auschwitz in 1943, Glücks complained about the unfavorable location of the crematoria since all types of people would be able to "gaze" at the structures. Responding to this observation, Höss ordered a row of trees planted between Crematorias I and II.[22] When visits from high officials from the Reich or the Nazi Party took place, the administration was instructed by Glücks to avoid showing the crematorias to them; if questions arose about smoke coming from the chimneys, the installation personnel were to tell the visitors that corpses were being burned as a result of epidemics.[23]
Sometime in December 1942, after discovering 70,000 out of 136,000 incoming prisoners had died almost as fast as they arrived, he issued a directive to the camp doctors, which stated, "The best camp doctor in a concentration camp is that doctor who holds the work capacity among inmates at its highest possible level ... Toward this end it is necessary that the camp doctors take a personal interest and appear on location at work sites."[19]
Before the
Glücks was "the RSHA man responsible for the entire network of concentration camps", and his authority extended to the largest and most infamous of them all, Auschwitz.
Death
When the
After the capitulation of Germany, he is believed to have committed suicide on 10 May 1945 by swallowing a capsule of
Fictional references
Glücks appears as a character in the Frederick Forsyth novel The Odessa File (1972) along with its 1974 film adaptation. In the novel, which is set in 1963, he is depicted as still being alive and the head of ODESSA, which is determined to destroy the State of Israel nearly two decades after the end of World War II.[citation needed]
Glücks appears as a minor character in the Jonathan Glazer film The Zone of Interest (2023).[28]
See also
- List SS-Gruppenführer
- List of SS personnel
- Pohl Trial
Notes
- ^ Hamilton 1996, p. 145.
- ^ a b c d Wachsmann 2015, p. 193.
- ^ a b c Wachsmann 2015, p. 194.
- ^ Wachsmann 2010, p. 26.
- ^ Allen 2002, p. 41.
- ^ Koehl 2004, p. 183.
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 195.
- ^ Koehl 2004, p. 187.
- ^ a b c d Hamilton 1996, p. 146.
- ^ Snyder 1994, p. 117.
- ^ Yahil 1990, p. 364.
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 399.
- ^ Wistrich 2001, p. 76.
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, p. 398.
- ^ Wachsmann 2015, pp. 398–399.
- ^ a b Yahil 1990, p. 315.
- ^ Weale 2012, p. 115.
- ^ Koehl 2004, pp. 182–183.
- ^ a b Allen 2002, p. 150.
- ^ Kogon 2006, p. 164.
- ^ Tuchel 1994, p. 22.
- ^ Hilberg 1985, p. 234.
- ^ Hilberg 1985, p. 241.
- ^ Friedländer 2009, p. 417.
- ^ Black 2016, p. 112.
- ^ Broszat 1968, p. 461.
- ^ Yahil 1990, p. 542.
- Festival de Cannes. Archivedfrom the original on May 27, 2023. Retrieved May 7, 2023.
References
- Allen, Michael Thad (2002). The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps. London and Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-80782-677-5.
- Black, Jeremy (2016). The Holocaust: History and Memory. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-25302-214-1.
- Broszat, Martin (1968). "The Concentration Camps, 1933–45". In Krausnick, Helmut; Buchheim, Hans; Broszat, Martin; Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf (eds.). Anatomy of the SS State. New York: Walker and Company. ISBN 978-0-00211-026-6.
- Friedländer, Saul (2009). Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933–1945. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06135-027-6.
- Gilbert, Martin (1985). The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-0348-7.
- Hamilton, Charles (1996). Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 2. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 0-912138-66-1.
- Hilberg, Raul (1985). The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes & Meier. ISBN 0-8419-0910-5.
- Koehl, Robert (2004). The SS: A History 1919–45. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 978-0-75242-559-7.
- Kogon, Eugen (2006). The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-37452-992-5.
- ISBN 978-1-56924-917-8.
- Tuchel, Johannes (1994). Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager, 1938–1945: Das System des Terrors (in German). Berlin: Hentrich. ISBN 978-3-89468-158-6.
- Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2010). "The Dynamics of Destruction". In Jane Caplan; Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds.). Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41542-651-0.
- Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-37411-825-9.
- Weale, Adrian (2012). Army of Evil: A History of the SS. New York: Caliber Printing. ISBN 978-0-451-23791-0.
- Wistrich, Robert (2001). Who's Who In Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41511-888-0.
- Yahil, Leni (1990). The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504522-X.
Further reading
- Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (2009). "Richard Glucks as described by Rudolf Höss" at Holocaust Research Project.org.