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Hitler's Henchmen: Nazi Executioners and How They Escaped Justice After WWII PDF

136 Pages·2022·3.773 MB·English
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Preview Hitler's Henchmen: Nazi Executioners and How They Escaped Justice After WWII

HITLER’S HENCHMEN HITLER’S HENCHMEN NAZI EXECUTIONERS AND HOW THEY ESCAPED JUSTICE AFTER WWII HELMUT ORTNER TRANSLATED BY GRAHAM HARRIS First published in Great Britain in 2022 by FRONTLINE BOOKS an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS Copyright © Helmut Ortner 2022 The right of Helmut Ortner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN: 978-1 - 52679-1 10- 8 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. CIP data records for this title are available from the British Library For more information on our books, please visit www.frontline- books.com, email info@frontline-b ooks.com or write to us at the above address. Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Typeset by Concept, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire Pen & Sword Books Limited incorporates the imprints of Atlas, Archaeology, Aviation, Discovery, Family History, Fiction, History, Maritime, Military, Military Classics, Politics, Select, Transport, True Crime, Air World, Frontline Publishing, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing, The Praetorian Press, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe Transport, Wharncliffe True Crime, White Owl and After the Battle. For a complete list of Pen and Sword titles please contact PEN & SWORD LTD 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E- mail: enquiries@pen- and-s word.co.uk Or PEN AND SWORD BOOKS 1950 Lawrence Rd, Havertown, PA 19083, USA E- mail: Uspen- and-s [email protected] The German perpetrator was not a special German. What we have to say here about his morality does not apply to him in particular, but towards Germany as a whole. Raul Hilberg CONTENTS Prologue The Past in the Present or: Mr Hanning on trial ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix Dossier I The “Honorable” Gentleman from Marburg How a military judge made a career after 1945 ���������������������������������������������������������1 Dossier II “There has to be an end at some point” The neighbor: a concentration camp murderer ����������������������������������������������������������19 Dossier III A Death Sentence or: The second career of Roland Freisler ��������������������������������������������������������������������33 Dossier IV The Man at the Guillotine A German executioner’s life ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������59 Dossier V The Forgotten Heroes Resistance Fighters Georg Elser and Maurice Bavaud�����������������������������������������������77 Epilogue The Führer Lives or: Hitler as a media pop star ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������85 Notes and References ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������91 Bibliography ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������103 THE PAST IN THE PRESENT OR: MR HANNING ON TRIAL In Detmold, Westphalia, a trial that had attracted worldwide attention came to an end in June 2016. In the dock was a 94- year- old man: the former Auschwitz SS guard Reinhold Hanning. Although the judges could not prove his direct involvement in the crime, he was sentenced to five years in prison on at least 170,000 counts of being an accessory to murder. An unusual verdict. During the trial, Hanning did what most of his generation had done for the last seventy years when it came to what they did and did not do between 1933 and 1945: he remained silent. He did not even tell his family about Auschwitz, his defense lawyer reported. Hanning’s grown-u p son sat in the back of the courtroom: perplexed, speechless, unsure. What did he know about his father’s actions? What could he have known? Had he ever asked him about Hitler’s Germany, about Auschwitz, about his time as a young soldier? Silence often involves two people: one who says nothing and another who asks nothing. After the war, many German families remained silent. “You were in Auschwitz for almost two and a half years and thus promoted mass murder,” said Judge Anke Grudda at the beginning of the verdict. The public prosecutor’s office had initially demanded a six-y ear prison sentence, seeing it as a proven fact that the former death camp guard and his unit had contributed to the functioning of the murder machine at Auschwitz. ix

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