The hierarchy of the Third Reich surname. Political leaders of the Third Reich. Territorial division of enslaved territories

The book "Who Was Who in the Third Reich" is a revised and supplemented edition of the guide "Leaders and Commanders of the Third Reich". The new edition clarifies many dates - birth and death, conferring a title, appointment to any post. More than 200 completely new biographies are included - now there are over 800 of them. All whose biographies are listed in the directory were the elite of the Nazi regime. Here are the leaders of the NSDAP - the Nazi party, and ministers and their deputies, and major military leaders, and commandants of concentration camps, and diplomats who ensured world recognition of the regime, and industrialists who raised the military economy, and aces of air and submarine warfare, and film actors, and designers , and many others. All of them - from the ambassador to the overseer of Auschwitz - created and defended this regime and ruled Germany undividedly for all twelve years of the existence of the "thousand-year Reich". Therefore, on the pages of the book, the aristocrat Prince Josias Waldeck-Pyrmont and the former hotel corridor Karl Ernst, the brilliant documentary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and Frau Schmidt, better known as the owner of the "Kitty salon", were next to each other ...
The book deliberately does not include biographies of anti-fascists. The reader will not find here either Ernst Thälmann or Karl von Ossecki. There are also no prominent German writers, actors and scientists who left Germany, preferring to emigrate to the Nazi regime. Only the participants in the conspiracy who organized the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944 entered here. And that is only because many of them were quite prominent figures in the country and their activities directly influenced the very development of the Nazi regime. The rest are those who, in fact, were the regime itself. Some created a military economy and gave Hitler money, others - in the black uniforms of the SS - drove millions to death camps and carried out a bloody occupation regime, while others, at the head of a well-armed army, seized more and more territories for Hitler and organized fierce resistance, prolonging the agony of the regime.
For the convenience of using the handbook, at the end there are appendices with information about the structure of the highest party and state bodies in Germany, about Nazi awards and numerous ranks, lists of Gauleiters, and senior officers. The supplements were also significantly supplemented: the institutions of the Third Reich are more widely represented, previously unpublished information about the command personnel of the German Air Force and Navy, lists of German diplomatic representatives abroad, a full list of knights of the Knight's Cross with oak branches and swords has been published, and much more. Also in Appendix # 3, the full text of the NSDAP program.

For twelve years, from 1933 to 1945, Germany was under Nazi rule. The country that gave the world great writers and composers, scientists and inventors plunged into the darkness of Nazi terror. Nazism, suppressing all dissent in his country, began the bloodiest war in world history - World War II. Nazism and the war brought innumerable misfortunes not only to the people of Germany, but to the whole of Europe: millions died on the fronts, millions died of hunger, millions were killed in cold blood in concentration camps. When the regime fell in 1945 and all the facts of Nazi politics were made public, the world was horrified. It was simply impossible to imagine such a thing. Moreover, the Germans themselves, for the most part supported Hitler, were shocked to learn about what was happening behind the external pomp of the state dressed in a flowery uniform. The conclusion was unambiguous - this should not be repeated.
In Russia, and earlier in the USSR, interest in Nazi Germany has always been high. This was partly due to the taboo topic. Judging by the books and films of the twenty post-war years, those Germans appeared to be inveterate criminals-murderers, mediocre military men, and only a small part of them were honest communists waging an implacable struggle against fascism. This simplification inevitably fueled interest - no state can consist of pathological murderers, military leaders deprived of talent cannot capture all of Europe and reach Moscow. With the beginning of the Khrushchev thaw, translated German books appeared on the shelves and, above all, the memoirs of German generals, published in small editions, they quickly disappeared, and subsequently no one was going to republish them - the thaw was over. A typical example: two volumes of the major work of B. Müller-Hillebrant "The Land Army of Germany" were published in 1956, and the third (it was dedicated to the period of 1941-45) was not immediately published, and it took 20 years. A powerful impetus to interest in the history of Germany during the years of the fascist dictatorship was given, oddly enough, just by a film. The brilliant series "Seventeen Moments of Spring" made a revolution: we saw that the Germans who served Hitler were also people - bad, mean, unbalanced, but people. Co with its shortcomings and positive features. But there was no breakthrough in historical science. True, more books began to appear. The publicistic works of D. Melnikov and L. Chernoy went off with a bang, and as soon as they appeared on the shelves, they became a bibliographic rarity. But all the same, it was impossible to analyze in detail the functioning of the Nazi system: with a detailed and careful study, too many parallels arose.
It was very difficult to refrain from comparisons - the NSDAP and the KPSS, the CC and the NKVD; "Night of the Long Knives" and the Political Trials of 1936-37. Like all totalitarian regimes, the Nazi communist regime has many similarities. This led to the presence of numerous taboos; which were practically impossible to get around, if not concentrate exclusively on concentration camps and occupation. Although here the destruction in the Stalinist camps provides a basis for comparisons, only Hitler destroyed first of all foreigners, and Stalin - the citizens of his own country. The seven-volume collection of documents "The Nuremberg Trials", which has been published in our country, has absorbed a huge number of very interesting documents, not the minutes of the proceedings themselves, published in almost all languages, have not appeared in our country. Paradox! And this one-sidedness fueled interest.
In addition, the history of Nazi Germany became the most interesting event of the 20th century. For 12 years, the state was able to turn from a fragmented and impoverished country into a powerful state, create an excellent army, subjugate almost all of Europe and survive a complete collapse. In such an insignificant period of time, so many events were concentrated, like in no other, Germany experienced everything - an industrial boom, and several attempts at coups d'état, and grandiose victories, and no less grandiose defeats. And if we add here also the external side - ranks, uniforms, parades, monuments - it becomes clear that this, in fact, a small page of history, is doomed to constant interest. And it would be absolutely wrong to say that such an interest in these 12 years exists only in Russia - the country most affected by Nazism. No. To enumerate, only enumerate, the titles of Foreign books devoted to the history of the Third Reich, it would take more than one puffy volume.
Today in Russia it has become possible to publish what the readers are interested in. As a result - a large number of books on "Nazi" themes. Here are memoirs and popular science publications. And not only translations, books written by a new generation of Russian historians have already begun to appear. But such a large "outburst" creates another problem: often great difficulties arise when it comes to any leaders and regime, and who they are - there is nowhere to find out. Behind any mentioned surname is a specific person who took his place in the structure of the Third Reich. Rather, in structures. Indeed, in Germany there were several verticals along which Hitler exercised his power. First of all, this is the apparatus of the Nazi party - the NSDAP - at the top of which were the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters; then government officials led by ministers and secretaries of state; the next - the military, and finally, the leaders of the punitive apparatus of Germany - the SS - the party's security detachments. This book will help to imagine who occupied what place in the hierarchical pyramid of Nazi Germany, and in addition to see which of them suffered just retribution.
When compiling the handbook, materials from a large number of publications were used, published in Russian, German and English. Among them, it is necessary to separately note the somewhat chaotic, but extremely informative book by E. Schönhorst "5 thousand leaders", as well as the American "Encyclopedia of the Third Reich" by Professor L. Snyder, on the basis of which the eponymous encyclopedia was published in Russian, though, unfortunately, already without mentioning the author.

Konstantin Zalessky

Who was who in the Third Reich
ABENDROT(Abendroth) Hermann Paul Maximilian (19.1.1883, Frankfurt am Main - 29.5.1956, Jena), conductor. Disciple of L. Tuile and F. Motl. G 1903 conductor of the Munich orchestra. In 1905-11 he was the conductor in Lübeck, in 1911-14 he was the state music director in Cologne, the director of the State Higher School of Music. Simultaneously, from 1915, A. was the director of the Gürzenich concerts, and from 1919 - professor and director of the conservatory, p. 1918 general-music director. In 1934-45 he was director of the Gewandhausen Symphony Orchestra and professor at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1943 and 1944 - conductor of the Bayreuth Festival. After the defeat of Nazism, he remained in East Germany, where he immediately took a prominent position in musical circles. Since 1945 he was general director of music in Weimar, in 1946-56 he was chief conductor of the State Chapel in Weimar. Since 1949 he has been the director of the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig and since 1953 in Berlin. In 1949 he received the National Prize of the GDR.

ABETZ Otto (03/26/1903, Schwetzingen - 05/05/1958, Langenfeldt, Rhine), diplomat, SS Brigadeführer (01/30/1942). In his youth, as a drawing teacher in Karlsruhe, he became the head of the youth organization "Silberkrais", among other goals of which was to establish contacts with French supporters of Nazism. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP (ticket number 7 011 453), later was accepted into the SS (ticket number 253 314). In 1930-33 he was the organizer of the German-French youth meetings, the main task of which was to strengthen the German influence in Alsace and Lorraine. Since 1934 he was an assistant in France in the imperial leadership of the Hitler Youth. In Jan. 1935 transferred to the "Ribbentrop Bureau", in charge of foreign policy issues of the NSDAP. He first entered the international arena during the Munich Conference of 1938. He made a quick career, becoming an assistant to I. von Ribbentrop. Since 1939, his personal representative in Paris on 14.6.1940 (after the defeat of France) is a representative of the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the head of the military administration in France. He was an advisor to the German military administration in France; he was supposed to form a positive attitude in Germany in the political and social circles of France. The Prime Minister of the collaborationist French government of Vichy P. Laval considered A. the most influential German official in France. After the meeting on 19.7.1940 A. with Laval, he was assigned to be responsible for solving political issues in both occupied and unoccupied France and maintain contacts with the Vichy government. On 4/20/1940 the department of A. was renamed into the "German Embassy in Paris". In nov. In 1942, as a result of intrigues in the top leadership of Germany, he was sent on "leave" and returned to his duties only in the second half of 1943. In 1944, A. was instructed, through the Foreign Ministry, to control the conduct of SD operations and anti-Jewish actions in France; he maintained contacts with the local French authorities, demanding from them the mass deportation of Jews. After the end of the war in 1945, he was arrested in the Black Forest. In July 1949, among other war criminals, at the trial in Paris, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Contained in a French prison. Released Apr. 1954. After his release, he worked as a journalist for the weekly "Fortschritt". He died in a car accident, which, according to one version, was organized by Jews - former members of the French Resistance.

August Wilhelm, August Wilhelm Heinrich Gunther Victor Hohenzollern (29.8.1887, Potsdam - 25.3.1949, Stuttgart), Prince of Germany and Prussia, party leader, SS Obergruppenfuehrer (1943), Obergruppenführer SA (1932). 4th son of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. In 1905 he passed the officer's exams. From June 1905 on active service in the 1st Guards Infantry Regiment. In 1906-08 he took a course in science at Bonn, Strasbourg and Berlin universities, then underwent an internship in various higher government institutions. Member of the 1st World War, officer of the headquarters of the 2nd Army, then inspector of the stages of the 7th Army, army groups in Macedonia and Russia (Bialystok). He was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. In oct. 1918 dismissed with the rank of colonel. After the collapse of the monarchy, he stayed in Germany, worked at the FV Krause bank, studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Charlottenburg under Professor A. Kempf. Since 1927, a member of the "Steel Helmet". In 1929, due to disagreements with his leadership, he left the organization. In the fall of 1929 he began to cooperate with the NSDAP, and in March 1930 he joined the party. He actively participated in the election campaigns of the Nazis, in 1931 during a rally in Konigsberg he was arrested by the police. Name A.-V. was widely used by Nazi propaganda to attract monarchist-minded part of the population to the side of the NSDAP. In 1931 he joined the SA and received the rank of Standartenführer. Since 1932 member of the Prussian Landtag. In March 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag from Potsdam; from Sept. 1933 Prussian State Councilor. After the NSDAP came to power, he did not play a large political role, but remained a supporter of Nazism.

ADAM (Adam) Wilhelm (15.9.1877, Ansbach, Bavaria - 8.4.1949, Garmisch-Partenkirchen), military leader, colonel general (1.1.1939). Educated at the grammar schools of Amberg and Ansbach. In 1897 he joined the Bavarian army and on 03/12/1899 was promoted to officer. In 1909 he graduated from the Military Academy and was transferred to the General Staff. From 10/01/1912 to 9/15/1914 commanded a company of the 3rd Bavarian Pioneer Battalion. Member of the 1st World War, served in the headquarters of the 6th Bavarian Division, VIII Bavarian Corps, group of General. E. Falkenhain, 2nd armies. For military distinctions he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. After demobilization, the army was left in the Reichswehr. In 1923-24 battalion commander. Gained a reputation as "the father of German mountain riflemen" and a capable specialist of the General Staff. From 1927, chief of staff of the VII Military District (Munich), from 1929, commander of the 19th Infantry Regiment, then chief of staff of the 1st Army Inspectorate in Berlin. In oct. 1930 with the active support of gene. K. Schleicher became the successor of the gene. K. von Halsherstein-Ekward at the Post of Chief of the Military Directorate - under this name the General Staff was hidden, which Germany could not have in the Versailles Peace. In 1931 he headed the German military delegation at the negotiations on expanding military cooperation with the USSR. The result of these negotiations, incl. was the training of German officers of the tank forces and the Air Force at secret bases on the territory of the USSR. Immediately after the Nazis came to power, the new Minister of War, Gen. W. von Blomberg began a purge in army circles with the aim of getting rid of Schleicher's promoters, and A. on 10/31/1933 was appointed commander of the VII Military District (Munich). Since 1935, the head of the Academy of the Ground Forces (Berlin), supervised the training of officers of the ground forces. Not harmed during the Blomberg-Fritsch affair and the ensuing purge in the army, A. 1.4.1938 was appointed commander of the 2nd Army Group in Kassel (in July the headquarters was transferred to Frankfurt am Main). A.'s relationship with A. Hitler was cool not only because of A.'s close friendship with the gene. Schleicher, but also because of his open criticism of Hitler's war plans. 6/26/1938 summoned to the Berghof for a personal report to Hitler on the progress of the construction of the "Western Wall". A. Said that the shaft "... not so much", which aroused the wrath of Hitler. On 27 August 1938, during an inspection trip to the rampart, Hitler met with A., who again warned the Fuhrer that the soldiers, given the existing disposition, would not hold the rampart. Hitler declared that “a soldier who cannot hold such fortifications is an ordinary mongrel! ". 11/10/1938 dismissed,

AKSMAN (Axmann) Arthur (18.2.1913, Hagen, Westphalia - 24.10.1996, Berlin), party leader, Reichsleiter (1940). The youngest of 5 children of a lawyer. In 1916 the family moved to Berlin-Wedding, the father died soon after, and the family was in dire need. 9/14/1928 A. attended the speech of J. Goebbels and became keenly interested in National Socialism. In nov. 1928 joined the Hitler Youth and was elected leader of this organization in the Berlin-Wedding area. He quickly made a career: in 1929-30, the lecturer was a member of the National Socialist Union of Students, on 03.12.1931 he retired from party work and entered the University of Berlin, but in June-July his mother and brothers lost their jobs, and A. was forced to leave his studies. On Sept. 1931 joined the NSDAP. From 1932 he worked as the imperial leadership of the Hitler Youth, where he organized youth factory and vocational schools. Since May 1933, the Gebitsfuehrer and head of the Social Administration, actively worked in the field of eliminating youth unemployment and vocational training for young people. Since 1933, the head of the Reich Public Council for Youth Affairs. From nov. 1934 head of the organization of the Hitler Youth in Berlin-Brandenburg. Member of the Academy of German Law. In 1939, at the beginning of the war, he briefly served as a soldier in the Wehrmacht. From 1.5.1940 deputy imperial youth leader. 8.8.1940 replaced B. von Chirac as the youth leader of the German Reich (Jugendfuhrer des Deutsches Reiches) and the imperial youth leader, the NSDAP (Reichsjugendfuhrer der NSDAP). He carried out the militarization of the Hitler Youth, introduced compulsory military training, making the Hitler Youth the main reserve for replenishing the SS personnel. A participant in World War II, in the battles on the Soviet-German front (1941) he lost an arm as a result of being wounded. From Oct. 1941 Reichstag deputy from East Prussia. In 1945, from among the members of the organizations, he sent about 1000 people to the defense of Berlin. A. Himself was among those who were in the bunker of A. Hitler in April. 1945. Subsequently, A. told the officers who had arrested him the details of the death of Hitler and E. Braun and stated that he had seen the body of M. Bormann. According to the testimony of the American historian and journalist W. Shearer, A. threw the detachment subordinate to him, defending the Piheledorf Bridge, to the mercy of fate and fled. He hid for 5 months under the name of Erich Sievert in Mecklenburg (Upper Pomerania). In nov. 1945 established contacts in Lübeck with former Hitler Youth and NSDAP functionaries and tried to create a neo-Nazi organization. Arrested by the Americans in Oct. 1946 in Bavaria. In June 1948 he was transferred to a camp in Nuremberg. In apr. 1949 sentenced to 3 years and 3 months in labor camps. After his release, he graduated from a workers' school in Schleswig-Holstein and worked as a representative of a coffee trading company. In 1958 he was sentenced by a Berlin court to a fine of 35 thousand marks for "crimes against the youth." In 1960 he founded a short-lived trading company. In 1971-76, after a second attempt to organize his own business, A. worked in a representative office of a Spanish company. In 1985 he returned to Berlin; constantly kept in touch with his former colleagues. In 1995 he published his memoirs.

ALBERS Hans (22.9.1892, Hamburg - 24.7.1960, Kempfenhausen), actor. Butcher's son. From 1907 he first worked in private companies, while simultaneously doing circus art, then began performing in a variety show. In 1911 he entered the silk company W in Frankfurt am Main. On Sept. 1914 criticism noted two roles of A. in the Talia Theater in Hamburg. In 1915 he was drafted into the army. Member of the 1st World War. He fought on the Western Front, was seriously wounded and demobilized in 1917. Returning to Berlin, he first worked in operetta, and later began to play in the theater (at first in comic roles). Popularity came to A. after he began acting in films. Tall, handsome blond, A. became the main hero-lover of the German scene. After 1927 A. has earned a reputation as one of the most talented actors in German cinema. During the reign of the Nazis, A. became one of the most beloved actors by the audience; his hero was always distinguished by heroism, idealism and self-sacrifice. The 1932 film "F.P. 1 Doesn't Answer" was a resounding success. He played in the film by G. Uchicki "The Runaways" (1933) about the Germans fleeing the persecution of the Bolsheviks. In the film Karl Peters (1941), he created an idealized image of a patriotic German colonist fighting against British aggression in East Africa. Other famous films with A. - "Peer Gynt" (1934) and "Gold" (1937) by F. Wendhausen, "Water from Kanitoga" (1939), etc. In 1943 A. began to abuse alcohol. After the end of the war, A. continued to act in films until his death, incl. played in the films "The Last Man" (1955), "Sun of Sao Paulo" (1957), etc.

Albrecht Konrad (7.10.1880, Bremen -18.8.1969, Hamburg), naval leader, general-admiral (1.4.1939). In 1899 he joined the Navy, in 1912 he was promoted to officer. Member of the 1st World War, commanded a connection of torpedo boats; captain of the 3rd rank. For military distinction he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class and the Knight's Cross of the Order of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1920-23 he was commander of the 1st flotilla of torpedo boats, in 1925-28 he was chief of staff at the naval station Ostsee, then head of the officer personnel department of the Naval Directorate. From 10/01/1932 to 12/01/1935 headed the Naval Station "Ostsee" - one of the largest at that time naval formations. Then, after a short break, he again stood at the head of the station. On 6/17/1938 he surrendered command of the station and was appointed commander of a larger unit - the Vostok naval group. Supervised the actions of the Navy during the Polish campaign. On 31.12.1039, he was dismissed from the post of commander of the group, by that time reorganized into the "North" Navy group.

ALVENSLEBEN (Alyensleben) Ludolf von (03.17.1901, Halle-na-Saale - 03.17.1970, Argentina), one of the leaders of the punitive bodies in the USSR, SS Gruppenfuehrer, Lieutenant General of the SS and police forces (11/9/1943). Educated in the cadet corps. In 1918 he was released into the army as a fannunker, but did not manage to take part in the hostilities. In 1920 he joined the Volunteer Corps. In 1923-30 he was a member of the "Steel Helmet", on 1.8.1929 he joined the NSDAP (ticket JSI 149 345) and the SA. From 1.8.1929 to 5.4.1934 Kreisleiter and Gauinspector of the NSDAP in Gau Halle-Merseburg. Elected as a member of the Gallic Landtag. In nov. 1933 elected to the Reichstag. 1.4.1934 joined the SS (ticket number 177 002) with the rank of Obersturmbannführer. From 5.4.1934 commander of the 46th SS Regiment (Dresden), then commanded the 26th SS Regiment in Halle, 33rd SS Regiment in Schwerin-Mecklenburg. Since 1935, adjutant to the imperial head of the sport. After in Nov. 1936 was created by the personal headquarters of the Reichsfuehrer SS, headed by K. Wolf, A. was appointed chief adjutant of the Reichsfuehrer SS G. Himmler. One of Himmler's closest collaborators. On 10/10/1939 he was appointed head of the SD and the security police in West Prussia. Supervised the creation of the so-called. "self-defense", which practiced mass executions of the Polish population on lands intended for settlement by the Germans (including on the territory of Gau Danzig - West Prussia). 11/19/1941 appointed head of the SS and police in Tavria, Crimea and Sevastopol. 10/06/1943 transferred to the same post in Nikolaev. From Oct 29. until Dec 25 1943 at the same time was the highest leader of the SS and the police of the Black Sea region (with headquarters in Nikolaev) and regions of Army Group "A", led punitive actions in the Crimea and adjacent regions. After the liberation of the Crimea by Soviet troops in May 1944, he returned to Germany and on 02/11/1944 was appointed the highest leader of the SS and police and the commander of the SS "Elbe" (Dresden). After the end of the war, he was interned in Neuengamme. After his release from the camp in 1945, he left for Argentina.

ALMENDINGER (Allmendinger) Karl (3.2: 18SH, Aitsgemund - 2.10.1965, Ellwangen), military leader, general of the infantry (1.4.1943). 01/10/1910 entered the ground forces as a fannunker, 01/29/1911 promoted to lieutenant of the 122nd fusilier (4th Württemberg) Emperor Franz Josef Regiment Participant of the 1st World War, chief lieutenant, company commander; battalion adjutant. Wounded in the battle of Ypres. In 1919 he was a member of the Haase Volunteer Corps. After the demobilization of the army in 1920, he was accepted into service in the Reichswehr and enlisted in the 3rd battalion of the 13th infantry regiment. He received the training of an officer of the General Staff, then commanded a company of the 1st infantry regiment in Easterburg, was an assistant in the department of military educational institutions, chief of the operational department of the headquarters of the 1st military district on 1.8.1936 promoted to colonel. From 10.11.1938 chief of the 10th department (ground fortifications) of the General Staff of the ground forces. From 10/15/1939 chief of staff of the V army corps, with whom he participated in the French campaign, and on 1.8.1940 was promoted to major general. From 10/25/1940 the commander of the 5th Infantry (from Nov. 1941 - Light Infantry, and then - Jaeger) division. He took part in battles on the Soviet-German front: he distinguished himself during the offensive near Moscow. On 17/07/1941 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, and on 13/12/1942 he received oak branches for him. On 5.1.1943, the commander of a training division in Berlin. From 1.7.1943 the commander of the V Army Corps, with whom he fought in the Kuban and Crimea. 1.5.1944 changed the gene. E. Jenecke as commander of the 17th Army, which struggled to fight off the vastly superior Soviet troops. On May 9, A. was forced to surrender Sevastopol (which was defended by parts of his former corps). By May 12, the Crimean operation of the Soviet troops was completed, it cost the 17th Army almost 100 thousand people. (including more than 61 thousand prisoners). 07/25/1944 replaced by the gene. F. Schulze, enrolled in the OKH reserve and did not receive an appointment until the end of the war.

ALPERS (Alpers) Friedrich (03.25.1901, Sonneberg, Braunschweig - 3.9.1944, near Mons, France) statesman and party leader, SS Obergruppenfuehrer (06.21.19931). Member of the "1st World War. For military distinction awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. In 1919-20, a member of the Volunteer Corps. In 1923-24 he studied law and economics at the Heidelberg, Munich and Greifswald universities. In 1924- 28 working in law firms in Braunschweig.In 1929 he received his diploma and until 1933 working as a lawyer in Braunschweig.In 1929 he joined the NSDAP (ticket number 132 812), in 1930 - in the SA, in 1931 - in the SS (ticket number 6427), 5.1.1932 promoted to SS Sturmführer. In 1930 he was elected from the NSDAP as a member of the Landtag of Braunschweig. Since 1931. Chief of the 1st Sturmbann of the 12th SS Standard, in 1932 - of the 2nd Sturmbann, From 10/08/1932 to 3.5.1933, Commander 49- 1st SS standard. Was the regional forester of Brandenburg, was a protégé of G. Goering. From 8.5.1933 Minister of State for Justice and Finance of Braunschweig (had the rank of State Secretary of the Imperial Government). Forester (Generalforstmeistef) .In 1941, a member of the economic headquarters "Vostok" the axis of the plunder of the natural resources of the USSR. In the same year, Goering appointed A. the head of the working group of forests in the Office of the Commissioner for the 4-year plan. In Jan. 1942 entered the active units of the Luftwaffe and was appointed commander of the 4th reconnaissance group. In 1942 he was promoted to major in reserve. 10/14/1942 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. On 08/21/1944 commander of the 9th parachute regiment. He took part in battles in Normandy. He was seriously injured and committed suicide.

ALTEN Georg Ernst (4.12.1901, Waldheim, Saxony - 12.4.1945, Dortmund), politician, one of the leaders of the police, SS Brigadeführer and Major General of Police (1.1 L 942). Received an engineering degree. In 1922-25 he was an active member of the "Steel Helmet". From 1925 he was in the 26th assault on the SA. In apr. 1926 joined the NSDAP (ticket number 34 339), 10 May 1929 - in the SS (ticket M 1421) and was enrolled in the 21st assault on the SS. From 1.3.1931 the commander of the 1st assault, from July 1931 - the 1st stormman of the 26th standard. From 11/15/1931 commander of the 26th SS standard "Paul Berk" (Halle). From 22/07/1933 commander of the 16th SS. From 23.2.1935 chief of staff of the SS "North-East", from 5.4.1935 to 16.5.1938 - "South-West". In May 1936 he was elected to the Reichstag. Since May 1938, Police President Plauen (later - Dortmund-Plauen). At the same time in July 1939 he headed the criminal police in Plauen (from January 1942 - in Dortmund). In 1940 he served for some time in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, commander of a sapper company. 06/15/1940 was seriously wounded and demobilized.

ALFART (Alfart) Felix (5.7.1901, Leipzig - 9.11.1923, Munich), one of the Nazi official heroes. Shopkeeper by profession. Entered in the early 1920s. in H SDAN, became an enthusiastic admirer of A. Hitler. Participant of the march to the Feldhernhalle during the "Beer Hall Putsch" 1923. Killed in a shootout with the police. Dying, as the legend says, he sang "Germany Above All". A. was one of those to whom Mein Kampf is dedicated.

AMANN (Amann) Max (11/24/1891, Munich - 03/30/1957, ibid.), Party leader, Reichsleiter (1932), SS Obergruppenfuehrer (01/30/1936). Received a trade education. Since 1912 in military service. Member of the 1st World War, served in the Bavarian infantry regiment as sergeant major, direct commander of corporal A. Hitler. For military distinctions he was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. After the end of the war he worked in a bank. 10/01/1921 one of the first to join the NSDAP (party card number 3), a zealous supporter of Hitler. A capable organizer. In 1921 he was appointed manager of the NSDAP and began to manage the financial affairs of Völkishe Beobachter. He quickly put in order the financial resources of the party and the newspaper. Since 1922, the director of the Central Publishing House of the NSDAP "Eher ferlag", directed the entire publishing activity of the party. Participant of the Beer Putsch on November 9, 1923, for participation in which he was arrested and spent 4.5 months in prison. It was A. who changed the title of Hitler's book "Four and a half years of the struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice" to "Mein Kampf". From 9/11/1924 Member of the City Council of Munich. From 1.16.1928 to 12.6.1930 member of the Landtag of Upper Bavaria. In 1931, while hunting with F. von Epp, he received a gunshot wound, as a result of an operation his left arm was amputated. 03/15/1932 joined the SS (ticket; No. 53143). In 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag of Upper, Bavaria - Swabia. After the Nazis came to power, he concentrated in his hands the leadership of the Herman press, turning Eher Ferlag into a monopolist - the world's largest newspaper concern, and he himself became a millionaire (his personal income in 1942 amounted to 3.8 million marks). Publishing houses previously owned by Jews, incl. the most powerful association of Ulstein. From 11/14/1933 chairman of the German Association of Newspaper Publishers, and from 15 Nov. simultaneously president of the Imperial Chamber of the Press. In 1935 he became a member of the Imperial Senate of Culture. In these posts, A. had the right to prohibit, at his discretion, any publication, which he did, then buying the banned newspaper for next to nothing. In the process of work A. constantly had conflicts with the Imperial Ministry of Public Education and Propaganda of I. Goebbels and the press service of O. Dietrich, tk. all these departments fought for control of the German press. 1.5.1941 A. was officially awarded the title of "pioneer of labor". During the process of denazification 8.9. 1948 sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. In 1953 he was released. Lived in Munich.

AMBROS (Ambros) Otto (19.5.1901, Weiden -?), One of the leaders of German industry, Fuhrer of the war economy. He served as a member of the board of the IG Farbenindustri concern, head of the production of buna and poisonous gases. He was the Special Commissioner for Research and Development in the Office of the Commissioner for the 4-Year Plan, the head of the Committee on Chemical Warfare in the Imperial Ministry of Armaments. In addition, for some time A. headed one of the departments of the same ministry and department "C", which was in charge of preparing chemical warfare. Member of the Supervisory Board of Hülier-Marl Chemical Plants. In the IG Farben system, he was also the head of the concern's factories in Auschwitz, Iskonau and others, where slave labor of prisoners was widely used. In 1944 he was awarded the Knight's Cross for military services. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison at the American Military Tribunal in the case of the leadership of IS Farbenindustry - one of the harshest sentences in this trial. In 1951 he was released. Collaborated with the American intelligence services, advised them on chemical production issues. After his release, he held leading positions in the chemical industry of the Federal Republic of Germany.

ANGELIS (Angelis) Maximilian de (2.10.1889, Budapest, Hungary - 6.12.1974, Graz, Austria), military leader, general of artillery (1.3.1942). 18/8/1910 joined the 42nd foot artillery regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army, September 1, 1910 promoted to lieutenant. Member of the 1st World War, captain (1.5.1917). In 1914-15 he commanded the battery of his regiment. 1.7.1915 transferred to the headquarters of the Jaeger Division, from 1916 an officer of the General Staff. 11/3/1918 captured by Italian troops. 10/12/1919 returned to Austria and was appointed to the liquidation commission of the 3rd artillery regiment. 08/26/1920 enlisted in the Austrian army; graduated from the Military School in Aeneas (1927), then served as an instructor in tactics, in 1930-37 deputy commander of the school. 28/06/1933 promoted to colonel. In 1935, the operational department of the Ministry of National Defense was transferred. From 1.8.1935 deputy commander and teacher of military art at the Higher Officers' Courses in Vienna. After the Anschluss of Austria on 1.4.1938 he was transferred to the Wehrmacht with the rank of major general, general for special assignments under the High Command. From 10.11.1938 the head of the XV artillery command. On 1 September 1939, commander of the 76th Infantry Division. Participated in the French campaign. In July 1940, the division was transferred to the East, and in March 1941 to Bulgaria, where it took part in hostilities against Yugoslavia and Greece. From June 1941 he fought on the Soviet-German front. Since January 26, 1942, acting commander of the XLIV Army Corps (approved on 1.3.1942). 9/2/1942 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. 11/12/1943 received oak branches for him. From 22 nov. on 12/19/1943 replaced the commander of the 6th Army, General. K. Hollidt. From 8.4.1944 and.about. commander of the 6th Army. 07/18/1944 transferred to the post of acting. commander of the 2nd Tank Army (approved on 1 September 1944). He held his post until the end of the war. 9/5/1945 surrendered to American troops and 04/04/1946 transferred to the Yugoslav government. 10/12/1948 convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 20 years in prison. 05/05/1949 transferred to the Soviet troops. Contained in the Butyrka and Lefortovo prisons, and then in a special prison in Vladimir. On 28 February 1952, by a military tribunal of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Moscow Region, he was sentenced to 25 years in forced labor camps. On 19 April 1953, the camps were replaced by imprisonment. 11/10/1955 transferred to the authorities of the GDR.

ARNIM (Araim) Jurgen Hans von (4.4.1889, Ernsdorf, Silesia - 1.9.1969, Bad Widlungen), military leader, colonel general (3.12.1942). From an old Prussian noble family. In 1908 he joined the ground forces. Member of the 1st World War, captain. For military distinction he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. After the demobilization of the army, he remained to serve in the Reichswehr. On 1 January 1938 he was promoted to major general, From 4/4/1938, commander of the 4th service of the ground forces. Member of the Polish campaign, during which from 9/8/1939 he commanded the 52nd Infantry Division. On 5/10/1940, the commander of the 17th Panzer Division, reorganized from the 27th Infantry Division. From June 1941 he fought on the Soviet-German front, as a member of the Army Group "Center" he participated in the battles near Moscow in October. 1941.6 oct. took possession of Bryansk with a swift blow. 11/11/1941 received from the gene. R. Schmidt shock group (XXXIX Panzer Corps) consisting of the 8th and 12th Panzer, 18th and 20th Motorized Divisions. 11/8/1941 took Tikhvin, but after a fierce attack by Soviet troops was forced on November 15. retreat. On 11 January 1942, he was appointed commander of the XXXIX Panzer Corps, at the head of which, for 3 months, he tried to unblock the German troops in the Kholmsk boiler. In sep. 1941 A. Defeated the 4th Soviet Army and took Tikhvin across Leningrad, but after heavy fighting on 15 November. left the city, suffering huge losses. 4/9/1942, when the 5th Panzer Army was formed in Africa on the basis of the LXXXX army command) to the corps, the command was entrusted to A. When he was sent to Africa, A. was in the last stage of nervous exhaustion. A. did not have a relationship with E. Rommel and with the Italian command, which he ignored. A. preferred to communicate through their head directly with Field Marshal A. Kesselring. The task of the army was to protect Rommel's communications along the Mares line. He launched an offensive on Sidibu Zid and took the strategically important Kasserine pass, but, not receiving the promised support, withdrew the troops. He made an unsuccessful attempt to carry out an attack on Beiju. The 5th Panzer Army was defeated by British forces during Operation Torch, and was forced to retreat to Libya. Already when the situation was completely out of control, and Rommel left Africa, 9/3/1943 took command of Army Group Africa. Completely exhausted, without receiving reinforcements, ammunition, and food, the troops of Armenia continued to resist the well-equipped and superior enemy. Obeying the order of A. Hitler, A. called on the troops to resist to the last bullet, but could no longer save the situation. 5/13/1943, together with the army, capitulated in Tunisia. Due to the fact that his lines of communication were almost completely destroyed, some units, not receiving the order to surrender, continued to resist for some time. After the surrender, he was held in a prisoner of war camp in Great Britain. 1.7.1947 released.

ARNO de la PERRIER (Arnault de la Rérierе) Lothar von (18.3.1886, Posen - 24.2.1941, in the Paris region - Le Bourget), naval leader, submariner, vice admiral (1.2.1941). In 1903 he joined the Navy. Member of the 1st World War. From 1915 he commanded the submarine U-53. For military distinction he was awarded the Order of Pour le Merite (11/10/1916). During the hostilities, he sank 141 ships (453 716 tons), becoming the most effective submarine ace of the 1st World War. After demobilization, he remained to serve in the navy. In 1931 he retired. From 1938 he taught at the Turkish Naval Academy. Soon he returned to serve in the German Navy and 20/05/1940 was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in Belgium and the Netherlands, 18/06/1940 replaced by Adm. G. Kinast and appointed commander of the "South" Navy group. Killed in a plane crash.

BAAROVA(Baarova) Lida, Ludmila (1910, Prague, Czech Republic - 10/27/2000, Salzburg, Austria), film actress. She is Czech by origin. She was a fairly popular film actress and close friend (they even talked about the upcoming marriage) of the famous film actor G. Fröhlich. In 1936 she met I. Goebbels and a whirlwind romance began between them. B. did not take advantage of the closeness with Goebbels to make a career or a fortune; as a rule, she did not accept valuable gifts from him. At the end of 1938, Goebbels' feelings for B. became so obvious that the minister’s wife, M. Goebbels, through G. Goering turned to A. Hitler and demanded an immediate divorce. This was also facilitated by the fact that K. Hanke compiled and handed over to Magda a list of 36 mistresses of the minister. A huge scandal broke out. In a conversation with Hitler, Goebbels announced that for V.'s sake he was ready to leave the post of minister. The Fuhrer refused to allow the divorce and demanded that Goebbels break off relations with B. Goebbels had to submit (although, as many noted, he was very upset by the break with B.). B. was ordered to leave Germany; she had to leave for the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, where the secret supervision of the Gestapo was established for her. Films with her participation were removed from the screen, and all contracts were canceled. The last years of her life B. lived in Austria under the name Lida Lundwal. She died of Parkinson's disease.

BAER (Baer) Richard (9.9.1911, the village of Floss, Bavaria - 4 961, Frankfurt am Main), war criminal, SS Sturmbannführer. After leaving school he worked as a baker. Since 1926 he traveled to cities in Germany "working in bakeries. In 1930 he joined the NSDAP, and in 1931 - in the SS. In 1933, among other members of the SS, he was included in the" auxiliary police ", In 1934 he was transferred to the SS formations" Dead Head ", - Served in the concentration camp Dachau, then in the Gestapo prison in Berlin and in the units "Death's Head" in Thuringia (near the Buchenwald concentration camp), instructor. Later transferred to the concentration camp Neyengamme. In the summer of 1940 as part of the SS division "Dead Head" fought at the front In November 1942 he was transferred to the central apparatus of the inspection of concentration camps in Berlin. In charge of B. was the development of "measures" for the "final solution" of the Jewish question in the concentration camps. From May 1944 to January 1945 commandant of the extermination camp Auschwitz. In the summer of 1944, the extermination camp began to work in an enhanced mode: including the time of keeping victims in gas chambers was reduced from 25 to 10 minutes, which was done in order to increase production the duration of the gas chambers. By the end of 1944, the total number of prisoners at Auschwitz was almost 750,000. He took measures to eliminate traces of atrocities. In the fall of 1944, the mass deportation of prisoners from Auschwitz to other camps began, and on January 18, 1945, the last 58 thousand prisoners were hastily evacuated, and only about 6 thousand seriously ill patients remained in the camp. During the "evacuation" the overwhelming majority of the prisoners died. On January 27, 1945, the camp was liberated by Soviet troops. After the war, he was arrested and sentenced to death, commuted to life in prison. In the 1950s. released, In 1960, arrested by the German authorities, involved as an accused in the trial, which took place in December. 1960. Died in prison.

Bayerlein Fritz (1/14/1899, Würzburg - 1/30/1970, ibid.), Military leader, lieutenant general (1/1/1944). 5.64917 joined the infantry. Member of the 1st World War. After demobilization, left in the Reichswehr, he served mainly in staff positions and on 1.6.1938 was promoted to major. From 1.4.1939 chief of the operational department of the headquarters of the 10th Panzer Division, from 25.2.1940 - of the headquarters of the XIX Army Corps. 1940, as a specialist in the field of tank operations, was appointed chief of the operations department of the headquarters of the tank group, gen. G. Guderian, later transformed into the headquarters of the 2nd tank group, and on 11/16/1941 - the army. He took part in battles on the Soviet-German front, during the offensive on Moscow he commanded a formation as part of the XXXIX Panzer Corps. From 10/05/1941 chief of staff of the African corps, gen. E. Rommel. 12/26/1941 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. During the absence of Rommel, he repeatedly acted as commander of the corps and army. On December 7, 1942, chief of staff of the German-Italian tank army "Africa". From March 1 to May 6, 1943 he headed the headquarters of the 1st Italian Army in Tunisia. He led an unsuccessful attack on Alam Halfa. 6/7/1943 awarded with oak branches to the Knight's Cross. A week before the surrender of the Italian-German troops in Africa, together with Rommel, he was recalled to Europe and on 10/20/1943 was appointed commander of the 3rd Panzer Division on the Soviet-German front. 01/10/1944 appointed commander of an elite training tank division in the West. With the beginning of the Allied offensive in Normandy, the Byelorussian division was (along with others) the main striking force of H. von Kluge. Together with the 2nd SS Panzer Division, "Death's Head" attempted a counteroffensive against the Americans and suffered heavy losses. On 7/25/1944, the Byelorussian division was subjected to intensive bombardment by Allied aviation, in which about 3 thousand bombers took part. The division lost more than 70% of its composition, and; there were 14 tanks left in it. On July 26, he repulsed the attack of 5 American divisions, but as a result of the battle, the training tank division ceased to exist. 07/20/1944 awarded the Knight's Cross with oak branches and swords. Dec. 1944 took part in the Battle of Bastogne (Belgium). On March 29, 1945, commander of the L III Army Corps. On 15.4.1945 he capitulated at Rourkessel and was taken prisoner by the United States. After his release, he actively participated in the revanchist movement.

Backenkoler Otto (1.2.1892, Götgingen - 5.2.1967, Kiel), naval leader, admiral (1.4.1943). Graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps. He began his service in the navy on 15 April 1911 as a fenrich. Member of the 1st World War. For military distinction he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. After the war, he was left in the fleet. From 10/01/1921 the commander of the M-138 tender, from 8.2.1922 the V-2 torpedo boat, and from 1.4.1922 - the T-196. In oct. 1923 transferred to the headquarters of the commander of the fleet. From 10.11.1924 commander of the 4th torpedo semi-flotilla. In 1926-33 - in staff positions; captain of the 3rd rank (1.1.1929). 10/11/1933 appointed head of the torpedo school, and at the same time the naval architecture school. From 10/01/1935 to 10/15/1937 commanded the cruiser "Cologne". From 10/31/1938 chief of staff of the naval station "Ostsee". On 10/24/1939 Chief of Staff of the Fleet Command, 8/8/1940 B. was transferred to the OKM Armaments Directorate, where he headed the Torpedo Directorate. On 03/09/1943 head of the OKM Armaments Directorate. From 1.5.1944 chief of naval weapons. 3.1.1945 awarded the Knight's Cross for military merit with swords. In May 1945, he was arrested by the allies and placed in a prisoner of war camp. 12/10/1946 released.

BAKKE (Vaske) Herbert Ernst (1.5.1896, Batum, Russia - 7.4.1947, Nuremberg), statesman, SS Obergruppenfuehrer (9.9.1942). The son of a German colonist. Graduated from the Tiflis Gymnasium (1914) and the University of Goettin (1923). During World War I, he was interned in Russia as a German, and after his release he was an assistant on Russian issues. Member of the SA since 1922. In 1923-24 he was assistant to the rector of the Higher Technical School (Hannover). 1.2.1925 joined the NSDAP (ticket M 22 766), and then in the SS (ticket number 87 882). "In 1928 he was elected a member of the Prussian Landtag from the NSDAP. He specialized in agrarian policy. the head of the peasant organization of the NSDAP. From 1 September 1933, deputy, and from 21 June 1935 head of the Main Directorate of Race and Settlements of the SS. Deputy of the Reichstag. Simultaneously from October. 1933 State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In 1934 he issued an appeal to the German peasants to start the "Battle for Food" (Erzeugungsschlacht), the goal of which was to achieve full provision of Germany with its own food. Since 1936, he simultaneously supervised the issues of food and agriculture in the Directorate for a 4-year plan; since 1941, authorized the special headquarters " Oldenburg ", created to organize the robbery of the occupied regions of the USSR. One of the closest assistants of G. Goering. From 23.5.1942 and about. Imperial Minister of Food and Agriculture, officially inaugurated on 1.4.1944 and then replaced V. Darre as the imperial leader of the peasants (Reichsbauertuhrer). At these posts, he attempted to ensure an uninterrupted food supply to Germany. He took part in the implementation of Nazi plans for the Germanization of the eastern territories. Retained the post of minister in the government of K. Dennitz. Together with the entire government, he was arrested on 23 May 1945 in Flensburg. He hanged himself in prison.

BALK (Balck) Hermann (12/7/1893, Danzig-Langfur - 12/29/1982, Erbenbach-Rokenau), military leader, general of the tank forces (11/01/1943). From the Swedish-Finnish family of hereditary military, known since 1120, half English. Graduated from the Hanover military school. On 03/10/1913 he entered the ground forces, on 08/10/1914 promoted to lieutenant of the 10th Jaeger Battalion. Member of the 1st World War, lieutenant, commander of a rifle platoon. He fought on the Western and Eastern fronts, in the Balkans. For military distinctions he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. On 2/2/1919, his battalion was reorganized into the Hanoverian rifle battalion of the Reichswehr. Participated in the suppression of the Kapp coup in 1920, since January. 1922 transferred to the 10th cavalry regiment (Stuttgart), and in 1933 - to the headquarters of the 3rd. infantry division (Berlin). Since 1935, commander of the scooter battalion of the 1st Cavalry Brigade. From 1.2.1938 - in the inspection of motorized troops. Member of the Polish campaign. From 10/23/1939 the commander of the 1st rifle regiment as part of the 1st tank division, during the French campaign was included in the group of general. G. Guderian. He crossed Moza at Sedan and stormed the heights on the other bank. For these actions B. was awarded the Knight's Cross on 3.6.1940. From 12/15/1940 the commander of the 3rd tank regiment. Participated in the Greek campaign, distinguished himself in the defeat of the British troops. From 15.5.1941 the commander of the 2nd tank brigade. From 7/07/1941 he served as a staff officer in the command of the reserve army of the OKH, and on 11/01/1941 he was appointed general of the mobile forces under the commander-in-chief of the ground forces. From 05/16/1942 he commanded the 11th Panzer Division, fought at Smolensk with partisan detachments. He acted successfully in the Caucasus, and at the beginning of 1943 played a leading role in the defeat of the 5th Soviet shock army, general. MM. Popov. 12/20/1942 received oak branches for the Knight's Cross, and 4.3.1943 - swords. 3.4.1943 appointed commander of one of the best motorized divisions of the German army - "Great Germany". During the Battle of the Kursk Bulge (July - August 1943), the Byelorussian division destroyed 501 Soviet tanks. 11/12/1943 headed XL, and 3 days later - XLVIII Panzer Corps, with which he fought heavy battles near Lvov and in mid-November. took Zhitomir. From May 1943 he commanded the XIV Panzer Corps on the Western Front. 11/12/1943 received XL Panzer Corps operating in the Nikopol area. 5: 8.1944 was appointed commander of the 4th Panzer Army, commanded it for only a few days until 21 Aug. 08/31/1944 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak branches, swords and diamonds. 9/21/1944 changed the gene. I. Blaskovits on the growth of the commander of Army Group "G" in the West (headquarters - yes Molsheim, Alsace). B.'s task was to stop the American offensive in Lorraine and hold the front until the completion of the preparation for the offensive in the Ardennes. Using the "elastic defense" tactics. B. achieved some success in this difficult situation. 12/23/1944 surrendered Army Group Blaskovitsa and took command of the 6th Army operating on the Soviet-German front as part of Army Group South. At the same time he commanded the Balk army group, which united the 6th German and 2nd Hungarian armies. He organized a series of rearguard battles, covering the withdrawal of the army group's troops to Austria. 1945 he surrendered. After the war, he was arrested by the American authorities, and released in June 1947. In 1948, at a trial in Stuttgart, he was accused of war crimes and sentenced to 6 months in prison.

BALTHAZAR (Balthasar) Wilhelm (2.2.1914, Fuld - 3.6.1941, in the area of ​​Azbruck, France), fighter pilot, major (1941, posthumously). The son of a captain, fighter pilot who died in France in 1914. In 1935 he joined the Luftwaffe. As part of the Condor Legion, he took part in the Spanish Civil War (1937-38). 01/20/1938 shot down the first plane. In the battle on 7.2.1938, in 6 minutes, B. destroyed 4 enemy aircraft. In Spain, he received new appointments - squadron commander in the 131st, and then the 2nd fighter squadron. In 1939 he gained world fame by flying over Africa. Since 1939, commander of the 7th squadron of the 27th fighter squadron; participated in the French campaign (1940). 6/6/1940 single-handedly shot down 9 French aircraft. 6/14/1940 became the second representative of the Luftwaffe to receive; Knight's cross. B. became the most productive pilot of the French campaign, shooting down 23 aircraft and destroying them on take-off sites. Then, during the "Battle of England" (from September 1 to November 10, 1940) he commanded the 3rd group of the same squadron. 4/9/1940 was seriously wounded. After the death of Major G. Wick on November 28, 1940, B, on 16.21941, he was appointed commander of the elite 2nd elite of the Richthofen fighter squadron. When the armed forces were transferred to the Soviet-German front, the B. regiment remained in France. 2.7.1941 shortly before his death was awarded with oak branches to the knight's cross. While testing the new incoming aircraft Bf 109F4s, it was attacked by several British aircraft near Azbrook (near Era). He started the fight, but, making a U-turn, the plane fell into a tailspin and crashed. In total, B. had 40 victories (including 7 in Spain).

BAHG (Bang) Paul (18.1.1879, Meissen - 31.12.1945, Hohenfichte, Chemnitz), statesman, entrepreneur. Served as Senior Financial Advisor in Berlin-Tempelhof. He was an active figure in the German National People's Party and, according to its list, was elected a member of the Reichstag in May 1928. 4.2.1933 was appointed Secretary of State of the Imperial Ministry of Economy, but already on June 30 he lost his post. In nov. 1933 not elected to the Reichstag. In the same month he joined the NSDAP. Author of a large number of works on politics and economics. He has held managerial positions in various companies, incl. Chairman of the Supervisory Board of J. E. Reinicke AG (Chemnitz), Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Emil Zorn AG (Berlin).

BARADNDON (Barandon) Paul Gustav Louis (19.9.1881, Kiel - 1972), diplomat. The son of a vice admiral. Educated at Lausanne, Munich, Berlin and Keele universities. Received the title of Doctor of Laws from the University of Leipzig. Since 1903 Prussian referent. In 1910 he entered the service of the Department of Foreign Affairs. 1912-13, vice-consul in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Member of the 1st World War, captain. For military distinctions he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. After demobilization in 1919-20, he worked as a notary officer in Kiel. In 1920-26 the German representative in the Anglo-German Arbitration Court (London). In 1927-32 he was a member of the legal department of the Secretariat of the International Court of Justice in Geneva. After the Nazis came to power, he was transferred to the rank of I as an Embassy Counselor to the central office of the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs. B1933-37 Minister-Director of the German Department of the Ministry. In 1937-41 he was consul general in Valparaiso (Chile). In oct. 1942 replaced S. von Rentte-Finck as Commissioner of the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Copenhagen (Denmark). In 1944 he retired.

Baranowski Hermann (June 1884, Schwerin - Feb 1940, Sachsenhausen), war criminal, one of the founders of the concentration camp system. In 1900 he dropped out of school and enrolled as a cabin boy in the Navy. 1920, considering that the fleet was destroyed by the socialists, retired. In civilian life, he could not find a place for himself, he was interrupted by odd jobs. At first he lived in Kiel, where he worked at a metallurgical factory, but a year later he moved to Hamburg, where he became a salesman in a company selling products. On Sept. 1930 became one of the first members of the NSDAP in Hamburg, and a few months later joined the SS. At the end of 1932, B. went to permanent service in SS units. In 1934 he was transferred from the General SS to the "Death's Head" unit. He enjoyed the patronage of T. Eicke and was appointed commandant of the Lichtenburg women's camp. He was a champion of tough army discipline to such an extent that Eicke even called his behavior "pathology". B. Could not cope with the role of an independent leader and, at his own request, was transferred by the deputy commandant of Dachau G, Loritsa. After two years of service in the camp, B. was again appointed to an independent post - commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. By this time, it was decided to turn this small (9 thousand prisoners) camp near Berlin into a large concentration camp. Supervised the construction (by the prisoners) of residential premises and enterprises. Introduced strict military discipline in the camp, which resulted in systematic abuse of prisoners.

BARBIE (Varbie) Klaus (25.8.1913, Bad Godesberg, Rhine - 1991), war criminal, SS Hauptsturmführer. From 1.4.1933 member of the Hitler Youth. 1935 joined the SS and began serving in the 4th Directorate (Gestapo) of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security. Since 1937 in the Düsseldorf SD. 1937 joined the NSDAP (party card N ° 4 583 085). From 1940 he served at the headquarters of the security police - SD in The Hague, from January. 1941 - in Amsterdam. Participated in the suppression of the uprising in Amsterdam in 1941. From May 1942 in the SD of the city of Zhex (France). In nov. 1942 sent to the SD of Lyon, where he headed the local administration of the Gestapo. He supervised the arrest and execution of Jean Moulin, one of the leaders of the Resistance. Received the nickname "Butcher of Lyons". In nov. 1944 transferred to Amsterdam and then to Dusseldorf. In May 1945 he went into hiding and left for Bolivia. In 1952, a French court in Lyon was sentenced to death in absentia. Found guilty of the murder of 4342 people. and deportation to the "death camps" 7951 people. 11/25/1954 sentenced to death for the second time. Hiding under the name Klaus Altman in Bolivia. After the leftist government came to power in 1982, B. in February. 1983 was issued to the French authorities. In 1987 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. He died in prison.

BARKHORN (Barkhorn) Gerhard (Gerd) Erich (20.3. 1919, Konigsberg - 8.1.1983), fighter pilot, one of the best aces of the German army, major of aviation (1944). Graduated from flight school (1939). From Oct. 1939 served in the 2nd Fighter Squadron "Richthofen". In aug. 1941 transferred to the 2nd group of the 52nd fighter squadron. He shot down his first plane on 2.7.1941, having made 120 unsuccessful flights before. In aug. took part in the "Battle of England". He flew on a Messerschmitt plane (Me.262). After the attack on the USSR, he was transferred to the Soviet-German front. In battle on 06/20/1942 he shot down 4 enemy aircraft - his best result in a day. On January 11, 1943, he was awarded the Knight's Cross with oak branches, and on 2.3.1944, he was awarded the Knight's Cross. On 1 September 1943, commander of the 2nd group of the 52nd Fighter Squadron, which fought in the East. 01/16/1945 appointed commander of the 6th fighter squadron "Horst Wessel". Apr 10 transferred to Elite Force 44, equipped with jet aircraft. He was shot down 9 times, wounded twice and taken prisoner once, but escaped. In total, during the fighting, he flew 1404 sorties and shot down 301 enemy aircraft (all on the Eastern Front), taking 2nd place in the list of German aces, after E. Hartmann and becoming one of two pilots who shot down more than three hundred aircraft. In 1955 he joined the German Air Force, where he commanded the F-104 training air wing (Novenich). He retired with the rank of major general.

BARTELS (Bartels) Adolf (11/15/1862, Wesselburen - 7.3.1945, Weimar), writer, literary historian. Educated at Leipzig and Berlin universities. The author of historical novels, plays, etc. In 1918 he published the work Lessing and the Jews, which had a pronounced anti-Semitic orientation. In 1920 he founded the Union of People's Publishers; editor of the anti-Semitic journal "German Works" ("Deutsche Schrifttum"). In 1924 he published the work "National Socialist Liberation of Germany", in which he praised the Nazi movement.

BASTIAN (Bastian) Max (28.8.1883, Spandau - 11.3.1958, Wilhelmshaven), naval leader, admiral (1.4.1938). 1.4.1902 began service in the navy as a cadet. Educated at a maritime school. From nov. 1904 served on the cruiser Hansa. 09/29/1905 promoted to lieutenant. From 01.10.1905 officer of watch of gunboat "Luchs", from 4.4.1907 - battleship "Kaiser Friedrich III", from 01.10.1907 - battleship "Kaiser Barbarossa", from 15.9.1910 - battleship "Prussia". In 1914 he graduated from the course of the Naval Academy. Member of the 1st World War, served mainly in staff positions. For military distinctions he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. After the end of the war he was left in the navy. From 1923 he held leading positions in the Maritime Archives. From 4.1.1926 1st officer of the headquarters of the fleet. From Jan. 1928 commander of the battleship Silesia. 09/23/1929 appointed head of the budgetary department of the Navy in the Ministry of the Reichswehr One of the leaders of the secret revival of the German Navy. On 10/01/1932 commander of battleships. 19.1933 promoted to rear admiral. On 2.10.1934 2nd Admiral of the Ostsee Naval Station. On September 27, 1939, he was appointed head of the General Directorate of OKM. During the purge of the senior command staff in early 1938, B. 3 April. lost his post and was transferred to the reserve. On September 12, 1939, he was appointed president of the Imperial Military Court and remained in this post until 10/31/1944, after which he was placed at the disposal of K. Dönitz. 10/12/1944 awarded the Knight's Cross for military service with swords.

Bauer Ernst (3.2.1914, Fürth - 12.3.1998, Westferland), submariner, captain of the 3rd rank (1.4.1945). 23/09/1933 entered the service in the Navy, 1/10/1936 promoted to lieutenant of the fleet. After serving on the light cruiser "Königsberg" in January. 1938 transferred to the submarine fleet. He served as a watch officer on submarines U-10 and U-37, then transferred to the training boat U-120. From 1.3.1941 lieutenant captain, commander of the U-126 submarine. He made a successful voyage to the Caribbean and to the shores of Africa. He commanded the boat until March 1943, when he was appointed training officer for the 27th submarine flotilla. Up to this point, B, sank 25 vessels with a total displacement of 118,660 tons, and later - 4 more vessels with a displacement of 31,304 tons. 03/16/1942 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. From Oct. 1944 commander of the 27th submarine flotilla, and in the last days of the war - the 26th flotilla. In 1955 he entered the service in the German Navy, where he held staff posts. In 1972 he retired with the rank of captain of the 1st rank.

BAUMBACH (Baumbach) Werner (12/27/1916 Cloppenburg - 10/20/195Z, near Rio de la Plata, Argentina), pilot, aviation colonel. He spent most of his service in the 30th Eagle Bomber Squadron; from July to Dec. 1942 commanded the 3rd group of this squadron. Participated in the French campaign, battles on the Soviet-German front. 8.5.1940 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. 07/14/1941 received oak branches for him (became the 20th holder of this award). On 8/16/1942 B. was the first among bomber aviation pilots to be awarded the Knight's Cross with oak branches and swords (16th holder of this award). From 11/15/1944 to 6/6/1945 he commanded (headquarters in Berlin-Gatow) the 202nd bomber squadron in the Reich air fleet. In March 1945 he was promoted to general of bomber aviation. During the war, he flew more than 210 combat missions, on his account were the sunken ships of the Allies with a displacement of 300 thousand tons. After the end of the war, he was invited to work in the aviation industry in Argentina. Killed while testing a new aircraft.

BAUMLER (Baumler) Alfred (9.11.1887, Neustadt, Norway - 1968), philosopher. Educated at Munich, Berlin and Bonn universities. In 1914 he served in the Austrian army. Member of the 1st World War. Since 1928 professor of philosophy at the Dresden University of Applied Sciences. In 1933-35 he was a professor of political pedagogy at the University of Berlin. Was a link between German universities and the "Rosenberg Bureau", which dealt with issues of Nazi ideology. B.'s views were formed under the influence of F. Nietzsche's "philosophy of life" and O. Spengler's "morphology of history". B. author of a large number of works on the interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy (including "Nietzsche - a philosopher and politician", 1931; Teaching about German spiritual history, 1937), tried to adapt it to the needs of Nazi ideology, often ignoring the real views of Nietzsche. Works 1B. Were recognized in the Third Reich as the official guide for the education of the younger generation. In 1942 he was appointed head of the research department of management A. Rosenberg. B. was the main researcher of Nietzsche, putting his ideas at the service of Nazism. For B. Nietzsche was "a philosopher heroism ", which wanted the power of the" aristocracy of the spirit ", in which the main role should be played by the" Nordic race. " education "(1943)," Alfred Rosenberg and the Myth of the XX century ".

BAUR (Baur) Hans (19.6.1897, Ampfing, Bavaria - after 1955), personal pilot A of Hitler, SS Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Police. Member of the 1st World War. For military distinction he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. Member of the NSDAP (ticket number 48 113) and CC (ticket number 171 865). In 1932, on the recommendation of G. Himmler and R. Hess, he became the personal pilot of the Fuhrer. In 1933 he was appointed chief pilot of the Fuhrer, and in 1934 he also led a government squadron serving the leadership of the NSDAP and the imperial government. He enjoyed the location of Hitler, whom he accompanied on all trips. In April - May 1945, during the battles in Berlin, he was constantly in the Fuehrer's bunker at the Imperial Chancellery. After Hitler's suicide, he, among others, tried to break through to the West, but on May 2 he was captured by Soviet troops and taken to Moscow, where he was held in the Butyrka prison. 5/31/1950 by a military tribunal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Moscow District sentenced to 25 years in prison camps. On October 8, 1955, among the non-amnestied criminals, he was handed over to the FRG authorities and released.

BACH-Zelewski (Vash-Zelewski) Erich Julius Eberhard von der (1.3.1899, Lauenburg, Pomerania - 8.3.1972, Munich-Harlaching), one of the leaders of the SS, SS chief gruppenfürer and police general (9/11/1941), General of the SS troops (1.7.1944). Descended from a family of professional military cadets, until the 30s. was called "Zelewski" and only then could he take the surname "Bach". Educated at the Neustadt, Strasbourg and Konitz grammar schools. Dec. 1914 volunteered for the 76th infantry regiment, promoted to lieutenant on 1 January 1916. B. participant of the 1st World War, company commander. For military distinctions he was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st and 2nd class. After the end of the war in 1918-19 he served in the 10th regiment "King Friedrich Wilhelm II", commander of a machine-gun company. Left to serve in the Reichswehr, from 1923 he served in the 4th Infantry Regiment. In February 1924 he was dismissed from the army for conducting National Socialist propaganda. He was engaged in agriculture in Dühringshof. In apr. 1930 joined the NSDAP (ticket number 489 101), in 1931 - SA, 15.2.1931 - in the SS (ticket number 9831); 07/20/1931 received the rank of SS Sturmführer. From 12/15/1931 commander of the 27th SS standard "Ostmark". In July 1932 he was elected to the Reichstag from Breslau. From 12.7.1932 commander of the 12th (Frankfurt-on-Oder), from 12.2.1934 - 7th (Konigsberg) SS abs. From 1.2.1934 the head of the SS "North-East" (Konigsberg), from 15.2.1936 - "South-East" (Breslau). During the Night of the Long Knives, Baron Anton von Hoberg-Buchwald was killed on his orders. After the introduction of the posts of the highest leaders of the SS and police B.-3.28.6.1938 was appointed VRSSP in the South-East (Breslau). He remained in this position until 5/20/1941. In 1940, on the initiative of his subordinate Security Police and SD inspector, SS Oberfuehrer Arpad Wiegandt, a concentration camp was created near the city of Auschwitz, which became the largest extermination camp. From 1.5.1941 to 21.6.1944, the highest leader of the SS and police in Central Russia (originally headquartered in Mogilev, from 24.7.1943 in Minsk), led operations to combat partisans. From 10/23/1942 to 6/21/1943 authorized by the Reichsfuehrer SS to combat bandit formations in the East. After the destruction of 10/31/1941 35 thousand people. in Riga said: "There are no more Jews left in Estonia." Organizer of mass executions in Minsk and Mogilev. In 1942 he was in the hospital for a long time, where he was treated for a mental disorder caused by participation in mass executions. 07/21/1943 appointed responsible for the development and implementation of operations; as well as the commander of anti-partisan formations. In 1944-1945 he commanded various units of the SS, one of the leaders of the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, where he was entrusted with the leadership of the corps group "Bach" (in August - November 1944). 9/30/1944 awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Using extremely brutal measures, he forced the command of the uprising on 10/2/1944 to surrender. In total, during the uprising and from the terror that followed it at the hands of the subordinates of B.-3. troops killed about 200 thousand people. From nov. 1942 commander XIV, from 4 to 10 Feb. 1945 - X SS Army Corps. In Feb. - Apr. 1945 commanded the Oder prefabricated corps. After the end of the war, he was arrested, testified at the trial of the International Tribunal in Nuremberg. He was imprisoned until 1950. On March 31, 1951, he was sentenced by the Munich court for denazification to 10 years of community service, which actually allowed him to live in peace in his home in Franconia. In 1958 he was again arrested and in 1961 by a German court for participation in murders during the "Night of Long Knives" he was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison. In 1962 he was convicted of the murder of 6 communists in 1933 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in a prison hospital.

The history of Nazi Germany is short-lived, but very bloody. It began with (Great Depression) - the world economic crisis that began in 1929 and especially affected the countries of big business: the USA and Canada, Great Britain, France and Germany. In he destroyed the Weimar Republic and contributed to the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.

Rise to power

Six million unemployed, the general growing dissatisfaction of citizens gave rise to a sharp radicalization (extreme uncompromising adherence to certain views) of society. Many supported the communists (almost 17%), but there were almost twice as many supporters of the NSDAP. Adolf Hitler destroyed both his own and others on his way to power, as a result of which on January 30, 1933 he became the Reich Chancellor of Germany.

Nazi Germany was a one-party system (like all similar regimes), the state policy of which was internal terror and external expansion.

Fascist state

In the occupied territories, and the whole of Europe, strewn with concentration camps, was enslaved, terror became the norm and the law. Nazi Germany died along with its demoniac Fuhrer, but officially ceased to exist on May 23, 1945, at the moment when the Flensburg government, headed by Karl Dönitz, was dissolved. The destruction and discrimination of enslaved peoples is the official policy of this vampire state, which existed for 12 years. Who ruled the vast conquered territories, who was responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the "new order" in the lands entrusted to him?

Administrative-territorial unit

A Gauleiter in Nazi Germany is an official burdened with full power in that administrative-territorial unit, or "Gau," where the Fuehrer personally appointed him. Actually, this is the head of the district. In 1933 he was the head of the electoral district, of which there were 33. Subsequently, when the conquered territories appeared, there were 43 districts (not electoral). Back in 1925, after the failed "beer coup", the NSDAP was reorganized, as a result of which the position of Gauleiter appeared. And in 1928, this position was included in the list of party ranks, and its emblem was two oak leaves in buttonholes.

Hierarchy in the Third Reich

Ranks in Nazi Germany, like ranks and insignia, were army, SS, party. Since the leader of the Gau belonged to the latter structure, it is necessary to take a closer look at the party structure of the Reich. The highest rank at the imperial level was held by the Reichsleiter (the most senior after Hitler), then the Gauleiter was naturally at the Gau level, the Chrysleiter was the district level, and the Orstgruppenleiter was the main one at the local level. It can be stated that a Gauleiter in Nazi Germany is the head of the NSDAP in the territory given to him for undivided use, that is, he occupies the highest party position in this area. His power there was undivided, before him was only the task of the Fuehrer. He had his own subordinates, namely: immediately after the Gauleiter was his deputy, to whom the Hauptamtsleiter was subordinate, or the executive in charge of internal party affairs. Then the amtsleiter, the haptställenleiter, the shtellänleiter and the mitarbeiter followed in order.

Party rank

As already noted, the Gauleiter in Nazi Germany is one of the highest ranks in the National Socialist Workers' Party of Nazi Germany. Until 1939, the "Gauleiter" was both a position and a title, after that it was only a position. So was the Deputy Gauleiter - after 1939 this post could be occupied by functionaries with the rank of Befelsleiter and Hauptdinstleiter. They were required to wear an armband confirming their position. The party hierarchy of the Third Reich is rather convoluted. Hitler created a unitary state in which the government and party apparatus have grown together as much as possible.

Who is the Reich Commissioner

Gauleiter in Nazi Germany is at the same time the imperial governor. He was a kind of chief-president of the "Gau" entrusted to him. That is, there is no more important thing. The provincial government was completely subordinate to the Gauleiter appointed by the Fuhrer.

However, there were still posts of Reich commissioners or governors. In fact, the Reichskommissar performed the functions of government, without being part of it, and was directly subordinate only to the Fuehrer. The most striking example is Hermann Goering as Reich Aviation Commissioner. But as more and more lands were enslaved, these posts began to be introduced in new territories to carry out imperial policies there. Its sole purpose was the following: at the first stage - to squeeze everything possible from these regions, mercilessly exploiting economic and human resources, at the second - to clear, completely destroy or turn into draft animals the local population and prepare territories for German settlers-colonists.

Territorial division of enslaved territories

For the maximum enslavement of the annexed lands, the following Reichskommissariats were created: the Netherlands, Norway, Ostland, Ukraine (formed on August 20, 1941 with the capital in Rovno), Muscovy, the Caucasus and Turkestan. The last two were only planned, Muscovy was established, but for obvious reasons it was dissolved. Ukraine was less fortunate - in 1942, Gauleiter Koch took over as Reich Commissioner of this country.

Who is he - Erich Koch, above which was only the sun, and cooler - only Hitler? He had plenty of posts and titles. In this regard, it should be noted that, in addition to all the above posts, titles, ranks, implying one and only thing - unlimited power, there was also the post of head of the civil administration, and it was also held by Erich Koch (Bialystok district).

All holding Koch

In addition, this SA Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General of the Army) was a Gauleiter and Oberpresident.He stayed on the post of Reichskommissar of Ukraine until 1944, combining all of the above posts. And in all positions he was distinguished by extreme rudeness, and in cruelty he surpassed all other Nazi executioners. This prominent Nazi functionary is known more than others in our country precisely because he was the master of Ukraine, although his name is associated with the disappearance and the arrival of the Ribbentrop delegation in 1939 in Moscow.

Nazi bonza

Erich Koch was not literally a Gauleiter of Ukraine, he was a Reich Commissioner, because the title of "Gauleiter" was abolished in 1939. Most likely, in the public consciousness, this term was inextricably linked with the concept of the owner, exposed by unlimited power, which he used to the fullest. Although in some articles he is called "Gauleiter of the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine." In a word, a slave owner who was not going to be one in relation to the Russians (or rather the Soviets). Koch stated that for Greater Germany the life of this people is unprofitable, therefore, there is no question of any colonization and exploitation of them, they will all be simply destroyed. It can be added that this inquisitor spent 36 years in a rather comfortable prison built by him himself, and the Soviet government did not demand his extradition. He lived to be 90 years old.

The sprouts of neo-Nazism

The Gauleiters of Germany were the most loyal dogs of Adolf Hitler. After the war, this title was remembered in the 50s in connection with the Naumann Circle, or the Gauleiter Circle.

Then the neo-Nazi movement revived in this country. Rallying around Werner Naumann (Minister of Press and Propaganda of the Third Reich), the former fascist functionaries wanted to infiltrate the highest legislative and executive bodies of the FRG.

Himmler, Goering, Goebbels - we all remember what fate befell the odious leaders of Nazi Germany. People, however, often overlook the fact that each of the Bonzes of the Third Reich had a family. Of the entire German elite, only Hitler did not bother to have offspring.

But his closest friends and associates took care of the continuation of the family. When Germany fell, the children of war criminals were marginalized. Some of them were forced to atone for the sins of their fathers for years in the literal sense of the word. And others, on the contrary, in every possible way protected their own parents!

Martin Bormann, the personal secretary of the Fuhrer, concentrated colossal power in his hands. When Hitler committed suicide, the man followed the example of his boss, whom he almost deified. Eight of Martin's children were left orphans. After the death of the mother, the unfortunate were scattered around the orphanages.

The most interesting was the fate of Bormann's eldest son, Martin Adolphe, who was called the "crown prince" during the Third Reich. Growing up, the Fuhrer's godson became a Catholic missionary priest.

But later Martin got into a terrible car accident. Having recovered, the priest left the church and married the nun who was leaving him! However, even in the world, Martin invariably condemned the actions of his father ...

Name Paul Joseph Goebbels has long become a household name. The main propagandist of the Third Reich sincerely believed in the ideas that he promoted.

The solution of the Jewish question was the personal goal of Paul Joseph, and the man's faith in Nazism and the Fuhrer seemed boundless. In the spring of 1945, realizing that his life's work was doomed, Goebbels decided on a terrible step ...

The wife of the propaganda minister fully shared her husband's views. Realizing that in the new world they will first of all be forced to answer for their crimes, the Goebbels voluntarily passed away, but before that they poisoned six of their children!

Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering led the Luftwaffe, the Air Force of the Reich. For a long time, the Minister of Aviation was considered the only possible successor to the Fuhrer, but in the spring of 1945 Hitler blamed the military for the failure of the campaign, stripping him of all titles and honors. Rumor has it that Goering was preparing a coup, trying to remove the distraught Supreme Commander from power.

Edda, the only daughter of Herman and his second wife, lived up to the age of six without grief. Later, like most children of other war criminals, her fate took a sharp turn.

Rumor has it that even today 80-year-old Edda justifies her father, but, unlike Gudrun Himmler, the woman never advertised her views. Goering's daughter does not communicate with the press, she lives unsociable.

Rumored to be Rudolf Hess the only one of the closest associates of the Fuehrer considered the British pure-blooded Aryans and did not want a war with the British crown. In 1941, Hitler's deputy personally flew to Britain, wanting to reconcile the Queen with his leader, but was captured instead.

After the Nyurberg trial, the politician was imprisoned, where he spent the rest of his life. Conspiracy theorists are still building theories about the background behind the mysterious act of Hess!

Wolf Rüdiger, the only son of Rudolph, was born 10 years after his parents' wedding. Hitler was the boy's godfather, thereby expressing his joy that his closest associate had finally acquired an heir.

Wolf devoted his whole life to freeing his dad. And when Hess committed suicide in 1987, the man said that his father was actually killed!

Heinrich Himmler, the main organizer of the Holocaust, was very fond of his daughter Gudrun. He affectionately called the baby "Doll" and took her everywhere with him. Constantly appearing on propaganda photographs, Gudrun soon received the unofficial nickname "Princess of the Third Reich"!

The only one among the children of the highest leadership of Nazi Germany, Himmler's daughter until the end of her life she believed that her father was right about everything. The woman maintained close ties with neo-Nazi organizations and in every possible way helped the veterans of the Third Reich. Gudrun Himmler passed away on May 24, 2018.

The first head of the main imperial security directorate was SS Obergruppenfuehrer and Police General Reinhard Heydrich, who was officially called the Chief of the Security Police and SD. The political portrait of this man, whom so many people feared, would be incomplete without touching on his past. After the First World War, in 1922, Heydrich entered the navy and served as a naval cadet on the cruiser Berlin, which Canaris commanded at that time (this circumstance will play a fatal role in the fate of the admiral in 1944). In his military career, Heydrich achieved the rank of chief lieutenant, but due to a dissolute life, especially various scandalous stories with women, he eventually appeared before an officer's court of honor, which forced him to resign. In 1931, Heydrich found himself thrown into the street without a livelihood. But he managed to convince friends from the Hamburg SS organization that he was a victim of his commitment to National Socialism. With their assistance, he comes to the attention of SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler, then the head of Hitler's security detachments. Having become better acquainted with the retired young lieutenant, the Reichsfuehrer SS, as eyewitnesses testify, one day instructed him to draw up a project for the creation of the future security service of the National Socialist Party. According to Himmler, Hitler then had reasons to arm his movement with counterintelligence. The fact is that the Bavarian police showed themselves at that time too knowledgeable about all the secrets of the Nazi leadership. Soon Heydrich was lucky to find a "traitor" - he turned out to be an adviser to the Bavarian criminal police. Heydrich convinced the Reichsfuehrer. that it is much more profitable to spare the "traitor" and, taking advantage of this, try to turn him into a source of information for the SD. Under pressure from Heydrich, the adviser really quickly switched over to the side of his new chiefs and began to regularly supply Himmler's service with information about everything that was happening in the political police of Bavaria. Thanks to this "success", the young Heydrich, who displayed high professional qualities, had the opportunity to enter the immediate environment of the gaining strength of the Reichsfuehrer SS, and this circumstance largely determined his position in the future.

After the Nazis came to power, Heydrich's dizzying career began: under the leadership of Himmler, he created a political police in Munich and formed an elite corps within the SS, the core of which was made up of security personnel. In April 1934, Himmler appointed Heydrich head of the secret state police department in the largest German state, Prussia. Until that time, the institutions of the political police in the states were subordinate to the Reichsfuehrer SS only along the operational line, but not administratively. Prussia was for Himmler and Heydrich, as it were, the first step towards the possession of all power in the system of state police bodies. The immediate goal that they set for themselves was to include in this system the political police of other lands and thus extend their influence to the body that already had "imperial significance." When this goal was achieved, Heydrich, using his position, "stretched out tentacles" to all key posts of the administrative apparatus of the Nazi Reich. With the help of the security service he headed, he was able to monitor state and party leaders, including those in the highest positions, as well as to exercise control over public life in Germany, resolutely suppressing any dissent.

Ambition, ruthlessness, prudence, the ability to take advantage of the slightest opportunity, characteristic of Heydrich and appreciated by Himmler, helped him immediately move forward and bypass many of his colleagues in the Nazi party. "A man with an iron heart" - this is how Hitler called Reinhard Heydrich, who later became the head of the police of all German states and, in addition, the chief of the SD (the next post in the party hierarchy after Hess and Himmler).

According to Schellenberg's testimonies, one of the features of Heydrich was the gift of instantly recognizing the professional and personal weaknesses of people, fixing them in his phenomenal memory and in his own “card index”. Already at the very beginning of his career, having appreciated the importance of keeping the dossier, he systematically collected information about all the leaders of the Third Reich. Heydrich was convinced that only knowledge of other people's weaknesses and vices would provide him with a reliable connection with the right people. With the conscientiousness of an accountant, wrote G. Buchheit, Heydrich accumulated incriminating materials on all influential representatives of the highest echelon of power and even his closest assistants.

According to the testimony of those close to Heydrich, he knew in all details the "dark spots" in the genealogy of Hitler himself. Not a single detail of the personal life of Goebbels, Bormann, Hess. Ribbentrop, von Papen and other Nazi bosses did not escape his attention. Better than anyone, he knew in what ways to put pressure on a person and direct the development of events in the right direction. He never experienced a shortage of informers and informers.

To strengthen the power and spread the influence of Heydrich worked his rare ability to make everyone around - from secretary to minister - dependent on himself through the knowledge and use of their vices. More than once he confidentially informed the interlocutor that he had heard rumors that "clouds were gathering over him, threatening him with official or personal troubles. Moreover, he, as a rule, invented these rumors himself, launching them in order to induce the interlocutor to lay out everything. what he would like to know about this or that person.

“The closer I got to know this man,” Schellenberg wrote about Heydrich, “the more he seemed to me like a beast of prey, always on the alert, always feeling danger, never trusting anyone or anything. In addition, he was possessed by an insatiable ambition, the desire to know more than others, to be the master of the situation everywhere. To this goal, he subordinated his extraordinary intelligence and instinct of a predator following the trail. One could always expect trouble from him. " Not a single person with an independent character from Heydrich's entourage could consider himself safe. Colleagues were rivals for him.

Everyone who knew Heydrich closely or who had to communicate with him noted that this prominent representative of Nazism, like other leading figures of the Third Reich, was characterized by cruelty, a thirst for unlimited power, the ability to weave intrigues, a passion for self-glorification. And one more thing: possessing the qualities of a major organizer and administrator who had no equal in the Reich in matters of government, he was at the same time an adventurer and a gangster by nature. These personal qualities of Heydrich left an imprint on all the activities of the RSHA. The representative of the League of Nations in Danzig Karl Burckhardt in the book "Memoirs" characterizes Heydrich as a young evil god of death, whose pampered hands seem to have been made to strangle. From 1936 to 1939 and especially after 1939, the mere mention of Heydrich's name, and even more so his appearance anywhere, terrified.

One of the innovations introduced by Heydrich into the practice of the RSHA's agent work was the organization of "salons". In an effort to obtain more valuable information, including about the "powerful of this world", as well as prominent foreign guests, he decided to open a fashionable restaurant for a select audience in one of the central districts of Berlin. In such an atmosphere, Heydrich believed, a person is easier than anywhere else to blurt out things from which the secret service can learn a lot of useful things for themselves. This assignment, approved by Himmler, was entrusted to Schellenberg. He got down to business, renting a building through a figurehead. The best architects were involved in the redevelopment and decoration. After that, specialists in technical eavesdropping got down to business: double walls, modern equipment and automatic transmission of information over a distance made it possible to record every word spoken in this "salon" and transmit it to the central office. Reliable employees were in charge of the technical side of the matter, and the entire staff of the "salon" - from cleaning ladies to waiter - consisted of secret SD agents. After the preparatory work, the problem of finding "beautiful women" arose. The decision was taken by the chief of the criminal police Arthur Heaven. From big cities Europe were the ladies of the half-world were invited, and in addition, some ladies from the so-called "good society" expressed their readiness to provide their services. Heydrich gave this establishment the name "Kitty Salon".

The salon provided interesting information that significantly added to the dossier of the security service and the Gestapo. The creation of Salon Kitty was operationally extremely successful. As a result of eavesdropping and secret photographing, the security service had the opportunity, according to Schellenberg, to significantly replenish their files with valuable information. She managed, in particular, to reach the hidden opponents of the Nazi regime, as well as to reveal the plans of representatives of foreign political and business circles arriving in Germany for negotiations.

Among the foreign visitors, one of the most interesting clients was the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, who, while on a visit to Berlin, widely "walked" in the "Kitty Salon" with his diplomatic staff.

At the beginning of March 1942, by order of Hitler, Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, retaining the duties of chief of the RSHA and promoted to Obergruppenführer. This decision of the Fuehrer did not surprise anyone. In fact, the scope and nature of the powers vested in Heydrich went beyond the functions normally performed by the Deputy Reich Protector. Heydrich's tenure in this post was nominal, in fact it was he who owned the leadership of the protectorate. From a purely external point of view, it seemed as if the imperial protector Baron Constantin von Neurath had asked Hitler for a long leave for health reasons. The government message said that the Fuehrer could not refuse the request to the Reich minister and appointed the chief of the RSHA Rein-gard Heydrich as acting imperial protector in Bohemia and Moravia. Hitler needed a decisive, ruthless Nazi in this protectorate. Von Neurath was no good. Under him, the underground movement "raised its head".

Heydrich did not hide from his entourage that he was extremely attracted by the new appointment, especially since in a conversation with him about this, Bormann hinted that it meant a big step forward for him, especially if he was able to successfully solve the political and economic problems of this area, “ fraught with the danger of conflicts and explosions. "

Having assumed the leadership of the protectorate, Heydrich, who was distinguished by extreme cruelty, immediately declared a state of emergency, signed the first death sentences. The terror unleashed by him has affected many innocent people. In response to Heydrich's policy of genocide, Czechoslovak patriots and members of the Resistance movement organized an attempt on his life.

The assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich

Let us recall, in general terms, on the basis of firmly established facts, how this attempt was prepared and carried out and what role the Czechoslovak intelligence, whose center was at that time in London, played in this.

In the early years of the war, several dozen reconnaissance groups were thrown from England into the protectorate with the task of collecting military-economic and political information and establishing links with underground groups of the internal Resistance. Sometimes lone agents were also sent, who were entrusted only with the transfer of money, spare parts for walkie-talkies, poison, encryption keys.

In the fall of 1941, communication between London and the internal Resistance was severely disrupted, and both sides set about restoring it.

The Czechoslovak government, being in exile, seeking to strengthen its position in the international arena, revive the activities of the national Resistance movement and strengthen its own influence in it, sought to increase activity in sending agents to different regions of the country. The core of each abandoned group consisted of a senior and a radio operator; each of them received approximately three clandestine addresses.

Previously, the agents underwent special training under the guidance of English instructors. The training program was short but very intense. It included grueling physical training day and night, special theoretical studies, exercises in shooting from personal weapons, mastering self-defense techniques, parachute jumping, and the study of radio business.

In August 1941, London received a request to send paratroopers to the protectorate from the underground group of Staff Captain Vaclav Moravek, who had survived the defeat in the successfully continuing its activities. After discussing this request at a special meeting, which was attended by a narrow circle of high-ranking officers from the intelligence service and the general staff, a decision was made to send five paratroopers to the Czech Republic. Three of them were supposed to collect information about the deployment of military units, echelons going to the front, and the products of military factories; create strong points in the form of safe houses and safe houses to receive new groups. The task of the captain Gabchik and the senior sergeant Svoboda (both of them attended the said meeting) was to prepare and make an attempt on the life of the acting imperial protector Reingard Heydrich. Gabchik and Svoboda were assigned to one of the training camps of the British War Office to practice parachute jumping at night.

By this time, as evidenced in his memoirs by Colonel Frantisek Moravec, the then head of the Czechoslovak intelligence, the London center had developed and communicated to both participants in the operation a detailed tactical plan of the assassination, which received the code name "Anthropoid". As envisaged by this plan. Gabczyk and Kubiš were to jump with a parachute about 48 kilometers southeast of Prague, in a hilly area covered with dense forests. They had to settle down in Prague, where they had to thoroughly study the situation, acting in everything independently, without involving outside forces.

As for the technical details of the operation, time, place and method of its implementation, they had to be clarified on the spot, taking into account specific conditions.

Before the drop-off, Gabczyk and Kubing were instructed by Colonel Frantisek Moravec personally about what they have to do, how to avoid mistakes and how to handle themselves, especially in dangerous situations.

The first flight on November 7, 1941 was unsuccessful - heavy snowfall forced the pilot to return to England. The second attempt on November 30, 1941 also failed: the aircraft crew lost their bearings and had to return to base. The third attempt was made on December 28, 1941.

Having landed near Prague, in the area of ​​the cemetery, Gabczyk and Kubish buried their parachutes and settled for a while in an abandoned hut by the pond. Then, using the addresses received in the center, with the help of the underground, they moved to Prague. Here, having become somewhat accustomed to the situation, they began to develop possible options for the plan for the implementation of the operation.

Three options for the assassination attempt on Heydrich

According to the first version, it was supposed to arrange a raid on the tread carriage in the train. Having carefully examined the railway track and the embankment in the place where they were supposed to ambush, Gabchik and Kubish came to the conclusion that it was of little use. The second option involved an assassination attempt on the highway in Panenske-Březhany. They intended to stretch a steel cable across the road in the expectation that as soon as Heydrich's car hit it, there would be confusion, which the group would use to strike. Gabchik and Kubish purchased such a rope, held a rehearsal, but in the end they had to give up this option as well - it did not guarantee complete success. The fact is that near the chosen place there was nowhere to hide and there was nowhere to run, and this meant certain suicide for the performers.

We settled on the third option, which was as follows. On the Panenske-Brzezany - Prague road - usually Heydrich took this route - there was a turn in the Kobylis area where the driver usually had to slow down. Gabczyk and Kubish decided that this section of the road meets the requirements of the plan to a greater extent.

Having meticulously carried out all the preparatory work, Gabchik and Kubish outlined the date of the assassination attempt - May 27, 1942, distributed among themselves responsibilities in the upcoming operation: Gabchik was supposed to shoot Heydrich from a machine gun, Kubish - to remain in ambush for safety, having two bombs with him. To fulfill this plan, it was necessary to involve another person in the operation (his task was to signal Gabchik with the help of a mirror that Heydrich's car was approaching a turn). They settled on the candidacy of Walchik, who had once been abandoned in Prague and firmly established here.

On the day of the assassination attempt, early in the morning, Gabchik and Kubish reached the agreed point on their bicycles. On the way, Valchik joined them.

On May 27 at 10.30, when the car was approaching a turn, Gabchik, at a signal from Valchik, opens his raincoat and directs the muzzle of a machine gun at Heydrich, who is sitting next to the driver. But the machine gun suddenly misfired. Then Kubish, who is not far from the car, throws a bomb at it. After that, the parachutists hide in different directions.

Having changed several places of their stay in connection with the general searches, Gabchik and Kubish accept the offer of the underground fighters to move for several days to the underground under the Church of Cyril and Methodius. There were already five other paratroopers there.

During these days, the underground workers developed a plan for the withdrawal of paratroopers from the church outside Prague: Gabchik and Kubis were supposed to be taken out in coffins, and the rest in a police car. However, on the eve of the implementation of this plan, the Gestapo, due to the betrayal of one of the agents sent by Colonel Moravec to Prague, managed to reveal the whereabouts of Gabczyk and Kubis. Significant forces of the SD and SS were pulled to the church, the blocking of the entire quarter was organized.

The assault on the church lasted for several hours. The parachutists defended themselves courageously. Three of them were killed, and the rest fought, the bale did not run out of cartridges, leaving one cartridge for themselves.

Reporting to his superiors on the completion of the operation, SS Standartenfuehrer Česhke, head of the headquarters of the Gestapo in Prague, noted that ammunition, mattresses, blankets, linen, food and other items found in the church indicate that a wide range of people assisted the paratroopers, including including church ministers.

Consequences of the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich

The payment for the assassination attempt turned out to be very high: out of 10 thousand hostages, on the very first night, 100 "the main enemies of the Reich" were shot. 252 Czech patriots were sentenced to death for harboring or assisting paratroopers. However, there were many more. In the first weeks, over 2 thousand people were executed.

Despite the fact that the Resistance forces suffered heavy losses, the Nazis failed to break the will of the Czech people, whose greatness, modesty and heroism became a high moral guideline for subsequent generations.

After the death of Heydrich, the post of the head of the PCXA, turned thanks to his efforts into one of the most sinister departments of the Third Reich, was taken by the chief of the police and SS in Vienna, Dr. Ernest Kaltenbrunner. So in the hands of this fanatical Austrian Nazi are the levers of control of a machine of murder and terror unprecedented in history.

Until 1926, Kaltenbrunner practiced law in Linz. In 1932, at the age of 29, he joined the local National Socialist Party, a year later he became a member of the semi-legal SS organization, which actively advocated the subordination of Austria to Nazi Germany. Arrested twice (in 1934 and 1935), spent six months in prison. Shortly before the second arrest, he took over command of the SS forces banned in Austria, established close relations with Berlin, in particular with the leaders of the SD. On March 2, 1938, he received the "briefcase of the Minister of Security" in the Austrian puppet government.

Using his official position and connections, relying on the SS organization headed by him. Kaltenbrunner launched active preparations for the capture of Austria by the Nazis. Under his command, 500 Austrian SS thugs on the night of March 11, 1938, surrounded the state chancellery and carried out a fascist coup with the support of German troops entering the country. The next day, the Anschluss became a fait accompli. Shortly after the Anschluss, he made a meteoric career. Through his executions in annexed Austria as the highest leader of the SS and the security police, Kaltenbrunner became a handy for Reichsführer Himmler, who was impressed by the effectiveness of the powerful intelligence network he created that covered areas southeast of the Austrian border. Entrusting the “old fighter” Kaltenbrunner with the post of chief of the main imperial security directorate, the Fuhrer was convinced, Schellenberg writes, that this “tough guy possesses all the qualities necessary for such a position, and unconditional obedience, personal loyalty to Hitler and the fact that Kaltenbrunner was his fellow countryman, a native of Austria. "

Kaltenbrunner's job as head of the Gestapo

As the head of the SD and the security police. Kaltenbrunner not only managed the activities of the Gestapo, but also directly oversaw the concentration camp system and the administrative apparatus that was involved in the implementation of the Nuremberg racist laws adopted in September 1935, in accordance with which the so-called final solution of the Jewish question was carried out. According to his colleagues, Kaltenbrunner was less interested in the professional details of the work of the organization he headed. For him, the main thing was, first of all, that the leadership of domestic and foreign intelligence gave him the opportunity to influence the most important political events. The tool required for this was in his charge.

In addition to his position, Kaltenbrunner attached importance, as noted by the SD staff, to his appearance: he was a giant, with slow movements, broad shoulders, huge arms, a massive square chin and a "bull's head". The face was crossed by a deep scar, received in the turbulent student years. He was an unbalanced, deceitful and eccentric person, who drank a lot of alcoholic beverages. Dr. Kerster, who on the instructions of the Reichsfuehrer SS checked all high-ranking SS and police officials to find out which of them was more suitable for a particular position, told Schellenberg that such a stubborn and tough "bull" like Kaltenbrunner rarely fell into his hands. “Apparently,” the doctor concluded, “he can only think while drunk.”

Kaltenbrunner's attention was most drawn to the methods of execution used in concentration camps, and especially the use of gas chambers. With his arrival in the RSHA, which united all the services of terror and search in Germany, first of all, the Gestapo and the security service began to use even more sadistic torture, the instruments of mass extermination of people began to work at full capacity. According to one of the SD officers, almost daily meetings were held under the chairmanship of Kaltenbrunner, at which the issue of new methods of torture and techniques of murder in concentration camps was discussed in detail. Under his direct leadership, the Imperial Security Directorate, on the direct orders of the rulers of the Reich, organized a hunt for persons of Jewish nationality and destroyed several million. The same fate befell the paratroopers of the allied powers, prisoners of war.

Thus, personally connected with Hitler and having direct access to him and, obviously, thanks to this, received from Himmler such rights and powers that no one else from his entourage had, Kaltenbrunner played the most monstrous role in the general criminal conspiracy of the Nazi clique. Shortly before his suicide, Hitler, who treated Kaltenbrunner as one of his closest and most trusted people, appointed him commander-in-chief of the mystical "National Redoubt", the center of which was supposed to be the Salzkammergut, a mountainous region in northern Austria characterized by highly rugged terrain and inaccessibility. According to Hettl, the myth of "an impregnable alpine fortress, protected by nature itself and the most powerful secret weapon ever created by man" was invented in order to try to bargain with the Western allies more favorable terms of surrender. In the mountains of this area, Kaltenbrunner and other Nazi war criminals were hiding when the Third Reich was defeated.

Companions of Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner in the SS

The end of the chief of the Reich's main security office is well known: he was sentenced in 1946 by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg to death by hanging.

The figures of the closest associates of Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner - Müller, Naujocks and Schellenberg, who played a leading role in organizing the secret war against the USSR, are also characteristic.

Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo, SS Gruppenfuehrer and police general, was born in Munich in 1900 to a Catholic family. Staying behind the scenes of events from 1939 to 1945, he was practically the head of the state police of the entire Reich and Kaltenbrunner's deputy. He began his career in the Bavarian police, where he held a modest position, specializing primarily in spying on members of the Communist Party. And if Goering gave birth to the Gestapo, and Himmler took him into his fold, then Müller brought this service to full maturity as a deadly weapon, the tip of which was directed against anti-fascist speeches and all manifestations of opposition to the Nazi regime, which he sought to stifle in the bud. This was achieved with the help of such monstrous methods that have received widespread use, such as making forgeries, slandering those who opposed the Nazi dictatorship and the policy of aggression, weaving imaginary conspiracies, which were then exposed to prevent real conspiracies, finally, bloody massacres, torture, secret executions. “Dry, stingy with the words that he uttered with a typical Bavarian accent, short, stocky, with a square muzhik skull, narrow, tightly compressed lips and spiky brown eyes, which were always half-hidden by heavy, constantly twitching eyelids. The sight of his massive, wide hands with short thick fingers seemed especially unpleasant "- this is how Schellenberg describes Mueller in his memoirs. True, just in case, he retrospectively presents the case as if he had been Schellenberg's mortal enemy since 1943. constantly plotting against him intrigues and was almost ready to destroy. This is hardly reliable. But one thing is quite obvious: both rivals thoroughly knew each other's weak and strong sides and in their service to the Nazi elite acted with the greatest caution, fearing to stumble somewhere and thereby give the enemy a trump card.

According to Müller's henchmen, who had known him for many years, he was a cunning, merciless man who knew how to take revenge. The habit of lying and the desire for irrepressible power over his victims left an imprint on him of deceit and rudeness, hidden and convulsive cruelty.

It was not by chance that Heydrich chose Müller. He found in this "stubborn and arrogant" Bavarian, who possessed high professionalism and the ability to blindly obey, an ideal partner who stood out for his hatred of communism and "always ready to support Heydrich in any dirty business" (such as the destruction of generals disliked by Hitler, reprisals political opponents, spying on colleagues). Müller was distinguished by the fact that, acting according to the usual standard, he "as an experienced artisan pursued his victim straightforwardly, with the tenacity of a watchdog, driving it into a circle from which there was no way out."

As head of the Gestapo, Müller created a pyramid of cells that spread from top to bottom, penetrating literally every German house. Ordinary citizens became honorary employees of the Gestapo, acting as quarterly overseers. The inmate of a residential building was supposed to, like a district overseer, keep an eye on the members of all families living in this house. Quarterly overseers reported political misconduct and inflammatory conversations. In the summer of 1943, the Gestapo had 482,000 district overseers.

Proactive denunciation by other citizens was also widely promoted and encouraged as a manifestation of patriotism. Volunteer informants usually acted out of jealousy or a desire to curry favor with the authorities, and the information received from them, as a rule, was, according to the testimony of the Gestapo, useless.

Nevertheless, as the Gestapo believed, a person's awareness of what literally anyone could report to him created the desired atmosphere of fear. Not even a single member of the National Socialist Party felt calm, fearing the "all-seeing eye" of the Gestapo.

With the help of the thought embedded in people's heads that everyone was being watched all the time, it was possible to keep an entire people in check, undermine their will to resist. Another advantage of such a fully-fledged public network of honorable and voluntary informers was that it was free for the government.

As an expert in torture, Müller excelled in organization of all his colleagues. Those who fell into the hands of the Gestapo were "worked" in a strikingly similar way. The technology of torture used was so much the same both in Germany and on the territory of the occupied countries that this clearly indicated that the Gestapo were guided by a single, mandatory for all Gestapo organs, operational instructions.

Prior to interrogation, the suspect was usually severely beaten in order to shock him. The purpose of such malicious arbitrariness was to stun, humiliate and take the arrested person out of the state of mental equilibrium at the very beginning of the struggle with his torturers, when it was necessary to bring together all his mind and will.

The Gestapo believed that every person they captured had at least some information about subversive activities, even if they did not even personally have a direct relationship to it. Even those against whom there was no evidence of their involvement in subversive activities were tortured “just in case” - maybe they will tell you something. The arrested person was interrogated "with bias" on issues about which he knew absolutely nothing. One "line of interrogation at random" was replaced by another. Once started, this process became literally irreversible. If the arrested person did not testify during interrogation with the use of "mild" torture, they became more and more cruel. A man could die before his torturers were convinced that he really didn’t know anything.

It was common practice to beat off the interrogator's kidneys. He was beaten until his face turned into a shapeless, toothless mass. The Gestapo had a set of sophisticated instruments of torture: a vice with which they crushed the testicles, electrodes for transmitting an electric current from the penis to the anus, a steel hoop for squeezing the head, and a soldering iron for cauterizing the body of the tortured.

Under the leadership of Müller, all the SS executioners underwent a bloody "practice" in the Gestapo, who subsequently committed atrocities in the occupied countries of Europe and on the temporarily occupied Soviet territory.

The idea of ​​Müller's fix was the creation of a centralized accounting, in which there would be a dossier for each German with information about all the "doubtful moments" in the biography and actions, even the most insignificant. Anyone who was suspected of resisting the Hitlerite regime, even if "only in thoughts", Müller ranked among the enemies of the Reich.

Mueller was most directly involved in the "final solution of the Jewish question", which meant the massive physical extermination of Jews. It was he who signed the order requiring the delivery of 45 thousand persons of Jewish nationality to Auschwitz by January 31, 1943 for their destruction. He was the author of countless documents of similar content, once again testifying to his unusual zeal in fulfilling the directives of the Nazi leadership. In the summer of 1943, he was sent to Rome to put pressure on the Italian authorities in connection with their hesitation in the "solution of the Jewish question." Until the very end of the war, Müller tirelessly demanded that his subordinates intensify their activities in this direction. During his leadership, mass murder became an automatic procedure. Mueller displayed the same extremism in relation to Soviet prisoners of war. He also gave the order to shoot the British officers who escaped from custody near Breslau at the end of March 1944.

As well as the head of the RSHA. Heydrich, Müller was aware of the most intimate details concerning all the leaders of the regime and their inner circle. In general, he was one of the most knowledgeable persons of the Third Reich, the supreme "bearer of secrets." Müller used the power of the Gestapo in his personal interests. It is said that when one of the members of the wealthy and noblest Geredorf family fell into the clutches of the secret police, his relatives offered a ransom of three million marks, which Mueller put in his pocket.

Mueller's disappearance without a trace

After fleeing defeated Germany, Müller left almost no traces. He was last seen on April 28, 1945. Although officially his funeral took place twelve days before, however, after the exhumation, the body was not identified. There were rumors that he had gone to Latin America.

The list of the closest accomplices of the chief executioner Himmler, key figures of the imperial security service, will not be complete, if not to mention Alfred Naujoks, who is adept at major political provocations, and above all against the USSR. Among the SS men, Naujoks was popular as "the man who started the Second World War", leading the mock "Polish" attack on the radio station in Gliwice on August 31, 1939, as detailed above.

The famous amateur boxer Naujocks's friendship with the Nazis began with his participation in street fights organized by them with his political opponents.

In 1931, at the age of 20, he joined the SS forces, in need of "young thugs", and three years later he was enlisted to work in the SD, where over time he attracted the attention of Heydrich with his ability to make quick decisions and desperate risks and became one from his confidants. Initially, he was assigned to lead a division that was engaged in the manufacture of false documents, passports, identity cards and counterfeiting foreign banknotes. In 1937, as already mentioned, he rendered a service to Heydrich by successfully coping with the manufacture of a forgery with the aim of compromising prominent Soviet military leaders led by Marshal M.N. Tukhachevsky. At the end of 1938, Naujoks, together with Schellenberg, participated in the abduction of two British intelligence officers on the German-Dutch border, which will be discussed later. As in the case with Poland, it was he who was instructed to find a pretext for the treacherous invasion of the German fascist troops into the territory of the Netherlands in May 1940. Finally, Naujoks had the idea to organize an economic sabotage (Operation Bernard) against England by spreading counterfeit money on its territory.

In 1941, Naujoks was dismissed from the SD for challenging the order of Heydrich, who severely punished for the slightest disobedience. At first he was sent to one of the SS units, and in 1943 he was sent to the Eastern Front. During the year, Naujoks served in the occupation forces in Belgium. Formally listed as an economist, this one of the "successful and cunning scouts" of the Third Reich from time to time was involved in "special assignments", in particular, he organized several major terrorist attacks that ended in the murder of a significant group of active participants in the Dutch Resistance movement.

In 1944, Naujoks surrendered to the Americans, ended up in a war criminals camp at the end of the war, but somehow managed to escape from custody before he was supposed to appear before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

In the post-war years, this specialist on special assignments led an underground organization of former SS members, relying on the help of Skorzeny, who supplied passports and money to the Nazis who fled from Berlin. Naujocks and his apparatus, disguised as "tourists", dispatched Nazi war criminals to Latin America for security. Subsequently, he settled in Hamburg, continuing to do the same until his death in April 1960, never facing trial for the monstrous atrocities committed during the war years.

As facts and documents irrefutably confirm, Walter Schellenberg, the son of a piano factory owner from Saarbrücken, a lawyer by training, was also among the zealous executors of Hitler's will, convinced supporters. In 1933 he joined the National Socialist Party and at the same time the organization for the elite - the SS (Hitler's guard units). At first, he was content with the position of a freelance spy for the Gestapo and a foreign SD agent, while making every effort to attract the attention of his chiefs with the thoroughness and elaboration of the details of the reports he regularly submitted. At the same time, according to Schellenberg's own admission, after he became a National Socialist, he did not have to experience any mental discomfort from the fact that he took on the duty of simply being an informer, collecting information about his own comrades and university professors. Schellenberg received his first assignments from the secret service in green envelopes sent to the address of a Bonn professor of surgery. Instructions for him came directly from the central office of the security service in Berlin, which required the provision of information about the state of mind in the Rhine universities, political, professional and personal contacts of students and teachers.

A typical upstart, with ambitions not supported by a material base, Schellenberg sought to "break out into the people" at any cost. Inclined to achieve goals through adventures and behind-the-scenes maneuvers, he had a particular fondness for dubious romance. The world, located on the other side of the established order, on the other side of "boring prudence," as he liked to say, attracted him with magical power. Admiring the power of the "triumphant will of heroic personalities", he strove to turn randomness in his life into a rule, unusual - to consider it in the order of things.

Fighting with humiliating zeal at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals for his own life, Schellenberg strove with all his might to whitewash himself, to fence himself off from the monstrous crimes of his colleagues - the sinister executioners of the Hitlerite empire, to present himself as just a "modest armchair theorist" standing over the fight as a priest of the "pure" the art of intelligence. However, the British officers who interrogated him, contemptuously told him that he was nothing more than an undeservedly overrated favorite of the Nazi regime, who did not meet either the tasks facing him or the historical situation. Such an assessment by the enemy of his abilities was for Schellenberg a heavy blow to his pride. The last years of his life, which he spent in Italy, after he was expelled from Switzerland, where he first settled, turned out to be "poisoned" for him. The fact is that the Italian authorities, who, not without hesitation, granted him asylum, did not pay any attention to him, being content with a very superficial observation of a man who not only did not pose any danger, but could hardly cause any concern. Schellenberg perceived such an attitude extremely painful, since it revealed complete disregard for the person of yesterday's "super-star" of Hitler's intelligence.

Returning to the period when Schellenberg, having become close to circles associated with intelligence, began to take his first steps in the field of "secret war", it should be noted that his abilities for this activity were especially highly appreciated during his long trip to Western Europe as a foreign agent of the Board of Directors. The efforts, the indisputable professionalism discovered by Schellenberg when performing a difficult task that required obtaining relevant information of the "widest profile" could not go unnoticed: having recognized the necessary figure in him, he was soon assigned to the staff of the secret service of the SS leadership. In the mid-1930s, he was sent to Frankfurt am Main to undergo a three-month course there in the police departments of the Presidium. From there he was sent to France for four weeks with the task of collecting accurate information about the political views of a famous professor at the Sorbonne. Schellenberg coped with the task, and after returning from Paris he was transferred to study "management methods" in Berlin at the Reich Ministry of the Interior, from where he moved to the Gestapo.

In April 1938, Schellenberg was given a special trust: to accompany Hitler on his trip to Rome. He used his stay in Italy in order to obtain as much information as possible about the moods of the Italian people - it was important for the Fuhrer to know how strong the power of Mussolini was and whether Germany could fully count on an alliance with this country in the implementation of its military program. In preparation for this mission, Schellenberg selected about 500 SD staff and agents who knew Italian to travel to Italy under the guise of harmless tourists. Under agreements with various travel agencies, some of which secretly collaborated with Nazi intelligence, these people traveled from Germany and France to Italy on trains, planes or ships. In total, about 170 groups of three people each had to carry out the same task in different places, knowing nothing about each other. As a result, Schellenberg was able to collect important information about the "undercurrents" and the mood of the population of fascist Italy, which was highly appreciated by the Fuhrer himself.

So, climbing higher and higher on the steps of the SS hierarchical ladder, Schellenberg, who was a protege of the SD chief Heydrich, soon finds himself at the head of the headquarters of the security service, and then, after the creation of the main imperial security directorate, he is appointed head of the counterintelligence department in the state secret police department ( Gestapo). Schellenberg reached such a high status in the intelligence structure in his incomplete 30 years ...

In connection with the visit of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov to Germany on November 13, 1940, Schellenberg was made responsible for ensuring the safety of the Soviet delegation on the way from Warsaw to Berlin. Double posts were set up along the railway along the entire route, especially on the Polish section, and comprehensive control over the border, hotels and the train was organized. At the same time, unremitting covert surveillance of all the companions of the head of the delegation was conducted, especially, as Schellenberg later explained, the identity of three of them could not be established. In June 1941, Schellenberg was put at the head of the VI Directorate (foreign policy intelligence), first as deputy chief, and from December 1941 as chief. Everything developed in such a way that he turns into one of the central figures of the SD. He was looked upon as a new, rising star in the sky of German espionage at that time. He was 34 when he was. having made a dizzying career and seizing the right to dispose of the organization that served as a support for the fascist regime, he found himself in the inner circle of Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. In a word, "the goal I was striving for, Schellenberg writes about himself, was achieved." At the time, he said, he made a commitment to the Nazi regime's "full-blown organization" not to let this machine stop, and to keep the people at the controls in a magical state of rapture for power. As head of foreign policy intelligence, Schellenberg demanded from any of its employees the development and maintenance of correct intuition - this quality was decisive for him in assessing their professional qualities. They had to take care of the knowledge of such things, which may become relevant only after a week or months, so that when this information is needed by the authorities, they will already be available. “I myself,” Schellenberg concludes, “as far as my position allowed (and she allowed, we will notice from ourselves, very, very much. - Approx. author), did everything to ensure the victory of National Socialist Germany. "

On November 20, 1945, the International Tribunal began work in Nuremberg to try the main Nazi war criminals. Prior to that, for several months, representatives of the victorious powers in World War II (the USSR, the USA, England and France) carefully studied the documents of the German departments, interviewed witnesses of Nazi crimes.

And so the accused were led into the courtroom ...

The man who took the seat on the far left in the front row of the dock had little resemblance to his previous images in the ceremonial portraits. Once upon a time, his chest, hung with orders, was compared to the window of a jewelry store. Now he appeared before an international tribunal, very thin, without shoulder straps and orders. For many years he was the second person after Hitler in the Nazi hierarchy, his official successor. Called

this man Hermann Wilhelm Goering, former Reichsmarschall, former President of the Nazi Reichstag, former Commander of the German Air Force.

Before the tribunal, Goering held himself very firmly. “I protect my face, not my head,” he once snapped. The chance of escaping the death sentence was so small that the "number two", apparently, really only cared about what kind of memory he would leave of himself in history.

With his biography, Goering differed from other defendants. He was born in 1893 in Bavaria into the family of the former governor of the largest German colony - German South-West Africa. The Goering were wealthy people who owned two castles in Bavaria and Austria.

Goering met the First World War in the rank of lieutenant in the infantry, then switched to aviation, flew a reconnaissance aircraft, bomber, became a fighter pilot. For military merit and bravery he was awarded many awards, including the highest German orders of the time. As one of the best pilots of Kaiser's Germany, he was entrusted with the command of the then-famous squadron of Richthofen.

Then he was very popular in Germany, his photographs did not leave the pages of illustrated magazines. But in 1918 the war ended, and "handsome Herman" was included by the victorious powers on the list of war criminals. It turned out that his squadron was dropping bombs on peaceful cities.

Like many front-line officers, Goering did not accept the revolution in Germany (November 1918), which overthrew Kaiser Wilhelm II and proclaimed a bourgeois democratic republic. He declared the surrender of the new German Social Democratic government to the Entente to be a shameful act of betrayal. Goering categorically refused to serve in the German Republican Army (Reichswehr) and went to Denmark, and from there to Sweden, where he made a living by demonstration flights commissioned by German aircraft companies.

In 1921 Goering returned to Germany. In Munich, he met and became close friends with Hitler, who instructed him to lead the formation of assault detachments. In this field, Goering was very successful. During the Nazi putsch in Munich on November 8-9, 1923, he led one of the columns of the putschists and was seriously wounded in a skirmish with the police. He managed to avoid arrest - his wife and friends managed to take him to Austria. There he spent a month and a half in the hospital. To relieve the severe pain that the wound caused him, the doctors had to inject him with morphine, as a result of which Goering developed a need for drugs, which took him great efforts to get rid of in the future.

Accused of high treason, Goering decided not to return to Germany. However, when in the fall of 1927 Hindenburg, who had recently been elected President of Germany, announced a political amnesty, Goering immediately went to Bavaria and re-established close contact with Hitler. He instructed him to provide the party with the support of leading industrial and political circles and sent him to Berlin.

In the capital, Goering developed a stormy activity. Unlike other Nazis who tried to "conquer Berlin" at rallies and street fights, he acted at receptions and in salons. Origin, upbringing, erudition, connections - all this distinguished him favorably from other Nazi leaders. Goering managed to establish close relationships with leading industrialists and bankers and use these ties in the interests of Hitler and the NSDAP.

In 1928 he was elected to the Reichstag from the Nazi party. Skillful organizer, good

an orator, a skillful tactician, he made a huge contribution to the conquest of power by the Nazis and the establishment of the dictatorship of the NSDAP. Very quickly pushing aside all of his political competitors in the party, Goering soon became Hitler's right-hand man.

Many dark pages in the history of the Nazi regime are associated with the name of Goering. Trial against the communists in connection with the burning of the Reichstag, the creation of concentration camps and the Nazi security service, the physical destruction of the leadership of the stormtroopers in the summer of 1934, the confiscation of Jewish property, the imposition of indemnities on the Jewish population of Germany after the pogroms that took place in November 1938, the leadership of the economic preparations for the war , the command of the German aviation, which criminally destroyed peaceful cities, the robbery of the occupied countries - for all this and much more, Goering bore personal responsibility.

Unlike many of Hitler's entourage, Goering was not a die-hard Nazi dogmatist. This, however, did not prevent him from always unquestioningly fulfilling the will of the Fuehrer. And Hitler highly appreciated his services. On September 1, 1939, the day Germany declared war on Poland, he appointed him as his official successor, and on July 19, 1940, for the contribution made by Goering's aviation to the defeat of France, he awarded him the highest military rank of Reichsmarshal, which was specially introduced for him.

However, then Goering's position in the Nazi leadership began to gradually weaken, mainly due to the military failures of the air force led by him.

In addition, Goebbels, Himmler and Bormann were increasingly intriguing against Goering, each of whom was aiming at the place of the Fuhrer's successor. As a result, his prestige in the eyes of Hitler, party members and the country's population began to decline. Goering increasingly gave rise to criticism in his address. The Reichsmarschall again began to use drugs, which could not but affect his qualities as a politician and personality. The craving for luxury, which was inherent in him before, took on more and more ugly forms. Wealthy villas filled with looted works of art, unthinkable toilets that were changed three times a day, buying jewelry - all this looked monstrous against the background of the disasters that the "total war" brought to the German people. The former ace turned into a greedy money-grubber, and his rivals, no longer hesitated, declared that he, with his moral decay, dishonored the National Socialist movement.

At the end of April 1945, when Berlin was surrounded by the Red Army and fighting broke out in its streets, Goering flew to Bavaria and from there attempted to negotiate with the Americans. The Reichsmarshal had a delusional idea that he could achieve a separate peace with the Western powers and, together with them, strike at the Red Army. But Goering's plans were thwarted not by the Americans, but by Hitler, who ordered the SS to arrest the traitor. The Reichsmarshal was rescued from reprisals by the SS by the officers of the "Luftwaffe" loyal to him, to whom he turned for help. On May 9, he voluntarily surrendered to the American command.

Next to Goering in the dock sat another faithful paladin of the Fuhrer - Rudolf Hess. The behavior at the trial of this Nazi leader did not fit in with his appearance. Tall, athletic, with a heavy gaze from deep-set eyes, he sometimes pretended to be mentally ill and defiantly tried to commit suicide, then referred to a complete loss of memory. At the request of the court, doctors carefully examined the defendant and concluded that his actions were "deliberately and intentionally simulative." After that, Hess had no choice but to abandon the version of insanity.

Hess was born in 1894 in Alexandria into the family of a German merchant. He spent his childhood in Egypt, then studied at commercial schools in Switzerland and Germany. During the First World War, he volunteered for the front and served in the same regiment with Hitler, was wounded several times and rose to the rank of lieutenant in the infantry. At the end of the war he went to serve in the aviation.

After the war, Hess decided to continue his business education and for this he moved to Munich. Here he fell under the influence of right-wing radical circles and again met with Hitler. In 1920 he joined the NSDAP. He sincerely adored Hitler and already in the early 1920s. began to create around him the cult of "the great leader of the German nation."

Hess played an active role in the coup of 1923 (see article "Adolf Hitler"). He was entrusted with the seizure of several leaders of the Bavarian Republic as hostages. After the suppression of the putsch, he fled to Austria, but soon returned and was arrested. He was placed in Landsberg prison, in which Hitler was also. In prison, Hess, who possessed the skills of shorthand, wrote under Hitler's dictation the manuscript of his future book "My Struggle" ("Mein Kampf"), which included many of Hess's own thoughts. From that time on, he began to fulfill, in fact, the duties of a personal secretary under Hitler.

In 1932, the Fuhrer entrusted his faithful assistant and follower with the leadership of the newly created central party commission of the NSDAP, and in 1933 he appointed him as his deputy for the party. As head of the party office, Hess received the minister’s portfolio in the same year.

In Nazi Germany, the power of Hess, Nazi number three, Hitler's official successor (after Goering), was immense. On behalf of Hitler, Hess was in charge of all the affairs of the Nazi Party. By a special decree of Hitler, he was entrusted with control over all activities of the fascist government and other state bodies. Not a single government order, not a single Reich law was in force until they were signed by Hitler or Hess. Hess was entrusted with making decisions on behalf of the Fuehrer, he was declared "the full-fledged representative of the Fuehrer", and his office - "the office of the Fuehrer himself." With him, Hitler discussed all issues related to both domestic and foreign policy, and for all the crimes of Nazism, Hess was responsible to the same extent as Hitler and Goering.

Hitler trusted Hess completely. Therefore, preparing for an attack on the USSR, he gave him a secret mission of particular importance - to achieve an armistice with the British. On May 10, 1941, Hess flew secretly to Great Britain in a specially equipped fighter plane. However, this mission failed. The British rejected the German proposals, and the world community became aware of Hess's arrival in England. Hitler had no choice but to declare his deputy in the party insane. In England, Hess was arrested, and after the end of the war, in the fall of 1945, he was taken to Nuremberg, where he appeared before the International Tribunal, which tried the main Nazi criminals.

Next on the list of defendants in Nuremberg was Joachim von Ribbentrop, the former foreign minister of Nazi Germany.

At the sessions of the International Tribunal, Ribbentrop behaved very modestly and even ingratiatingly, the first to jump up from his seat when the judges entered the hall. He showed with all his appearance how suppressed by the scale of the suffering that befell humanity because of the criminal policy of Nazism. But as soon as the prosecutor reminded the former minister of his personal responsibility, he immediately assumed the pose of an innocent slandered person.

Ribbentrop was born in 1893 in the Rhineland in the family of an officer. After the resignation of his father in 1908, the future Reichsminister lived in Switzerland, worked in England, the USA and Canada. This gave him a certain outlook, life experience and excellent knowledge of French and English, which Hitler subsequently appreciated so much in him.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Ribbentrop left all his business in America, where he headed a small export-import enterprise for the wine trade, and returned to Germany. He volunteered for a hussar regiment, took part in battles on the Eastern and Western fronts, was wounded, awarded the Iron Cross of the first class and rose to the rank of chief lieutenant. At the end of the war, Ribbentrop was used for some time in the diplomatic service.

In 1919 Ribbentrop went into business. A profitable marriage with the daughter of the largest German champagne producer Otto Henkel opened up great prospects for him. By 1925 Ribbentrop was already a successful businessman. His luxurious Berlin mansion was eagerly visited by industrialists, politicians, journalists and cultural figures. Until 1930, Ribbentrop was not involved in politics, although he sympathized with the conservative parties. However, as the economy aggravates,

German Foreign Minister

Ribbentrop and the Foreign Minister

Affairs of Italy Ciano. 1939 g.

As a result of the economic and political crisis that gripped Germany from the end of the 1920s, he began to lean more and more towards the NSDAP. Since 1930, Hitler, Goering, Himmler and other Nazi leaders have become frequent guests at Ribbentrop's house, and in May 1932 he himself joined the NSDAP. In January 1933, Ribbentrop was instrumental in bringing the Nazis to power. In his house, negotiations were held on the appointment of Hitler as Reich Chancellor between the leaders of the NSDAP, on the one hand, and representatives of President Hindenburg and the right-wing bourgeois parties, on the other. Ribbentrop himself often assumed the role of mediator in these complex negotiations.

For his services, he hoped to get a high post in the German Foreign Ministry. And he got it. Some time after coming to power, Hitler created a special foreign policy body of the NSDAP, which was supposed to operate in parallel with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He put Ribbentrop at its head, and this organ itself was called the "Ribbentrop Bureau". The bureau was gradually filled with people from the SS, and Ribbentrop himself, who was close friends with Himmler, eventually received the very high rank of SS Obergruppenführer (general).

In 1936 Ribbentrop was appointed German Ambassador to Great Britain, and in February 1938 - German Foreign Minister. Since that time, he has played an important role in the implementation of the aggressive plans of the Third Reich. There was not a single criminal action by the German military, in the preparation and assistance of which by means of diplomacy Ribbentrop would not have taken part. The annexation of Austria and the Czech Republic to the German Empire, the attack on Poland, the occupation of Denmark and Norway, Belgium and Holland, the defeat of France, the attack on Yugoslavia and Greece, the aggression against the USSR, the forging of aggressive blocs, the economic robbery of the occupied countries is a measure of Ribbentrop's personal responsibility for all these the crime was enormous.

The ministry he headed played a grim role in the extermination of Jews in occupied and allied countries with Nazi Germany. In particular, in the spring of 1943, Ribbentrop insistently demanded that the Hungarian regent Horthy "bring to the end" the anti-Jewish measures in Hungary. “Jews must be exterminated or exiled to concentration camps - there is no other option,” Ribbentrop emphasized.

Other, purely SS, affairs of the German Foreign Minister were no less criminal. For example, he reprimanded the Italian ambassador for insufficient brutality in the fight against partisans and insistently advised one and the same "to destroy the gangs, including men, women and children, whose existence threatens the lives of Germans and Italians." Ribbentrop also did not hesitate on the fate of the British and American pilots shot down in the skies of Germany. He strongly insisted that they all be lynched on the spot.

In the first days of May 1945, Ribbentrop managed to escape. He went to Hamburg, where he rented a room in an unremarkable house under the nose of the British military command and led the life of a harmless man in the street. A former companion of Ribbentrop lived in Hamburg, and with his help the fugitive Reichsminister hoped to provide himself with a reliable shelter. However, the son of a companion informed the occupation authorities of his appearance in the city, and on June 14, 1945, Ribbentrop was arrested.

In the dock in Nuremberg, in addition to Goering, Hess and Ribbentrop, there were about two dozen Nazi politicians, diplomats and military men who played a key role in the life of the “Third Reich”.

Here, next to Ribbentrop, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel is a typical representative of the Prussian military, chief of staff of the German High Command. It was he who gave orders to the troops not to stand on ceremony with the civilian population of the countries attacked by the Wehrmacht, to shoot on the spot all who resist, as well as commissars and Jews.

Next to him is Ernst Kaltenbrunner, SS Obergruppenfuehrer, head of the Reich's Main Security Directorate (RSHA) and the Security Police, Himmler's closest aide. Directives were issued from his office on the extermination of millions of people in the death camps, on the persecution of all opponents of Nazism.

For Kaltenbrunner - Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's deputy for "spiritual and ideological training" of members of the Nazi party, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, one of the "ideological pillars" of National Socialism.

Next to him is Hans Frank - Reichsleiter of the NSDAP on legal issues, Reich Minister of Justice, Governor General of Poland. At one time, he was Hitler's lawyer at the trial in Munich after the failure of the 1923 coup.

Side by side with Frank - Wilhelm Frick, one of the oldest leaders of the Nazi party, the head of its faction in the Reichstag even before Hitler seized power, then the Minister of the Interior of the Nazi government. He oversaw the development of barbaric racial laws that served as the "legal" basis for the persecution and destruction of entire nations.

Behind Frick is Julius Streicher, a Gauleiter, one of the founders of the NSDAP, an ideologue of anti-Semitism.

Further Walter Funk - Reich Minister of Economy, President of the Reichsbank and Commissioner General for War Economy. Under his leadership, weapons for the Wehrmacht were forged, and his Reichsbank accepted for storage gold rings and dental crowns taken from victims of concentration camps.

Next to him is Hjalmar Schacht, the political representative of the German monopolies and banks under Hitler. Without the money that German industrialists and bankers transferred through this person to the cashier of the NSDAP, there would have been, perhaps, no Nazi dictatorship, no Wehrmacht armed to the teeth, or World War II.

The second row of defendants is no less representative.

Here are Grand Admirals Karl Doenitz and Erich Raeder - government pirates who have violated all maritime laws and customs, giving orders to sink civilian ships.

Next to them is Baldur von Schirach, organizer and leader of the Nazi youth organization "Hitler Youth", Gauleiter of the NSDAP and the imperial governor in Vienna.

Next to him is Fritz Sauckel, SS Obergruppenfuehrer, General Commissioner for the Use of Labor, who drove millions of people from the occupied countries to forced labor in Germany and did everything to ensure that almost every one of the hijacked was worked out to death.

Behind him are Alfred Jodl, Colonel General, Chief of Staff of the Operational Command of the High Command of the Armed Forces, and Franz von Papen, the former Reich Chancellor who opened the way for Hitler to power, and then the German ambassador to Austria and Turkey.

In the neighborhood of Papen - Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a prominent figure of the Nazi party, imperial governor in Austria, deputy governor-general of Poland, imperial commissioner for the occupied Netherlands, a man who drowned the Polish and Dutch liberation movements in blood.

Behind him is Albert Speer, a close friend of Hitler, the Reich Minister of Armaments and Ammunition, who created new types of weapons for the German army and supervised the development of missile and nuclear weapons.

And two more - Konstantin von Neurath and Hans Fritsche. The first until 1938 was the German foreign minister and helped Hitler to take the very first steps in his aggressive foreign policy, and then was the Nazi protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The second held the post of Deputy Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and directed radio propaganda in the "Third Reich".

But not all Nazi figures who could be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity were in the hall. Hitler and Goebbels committed suicide in a bunker under the building of the Imperial Chancellery, the first on April 30, the second on May 1, 1945. Heinrich Himmler, SS Reichsfuehrer, one of the most sinister figures of the Nazi regime, was poisoned on May 23, 1945 by potassium cyanide. During the investigation in the Nuremberg prison, Robert Ley, one of the leaders of the NSDAP, the leader of the Nazi "labor front", hanged himself.

Was not in the dock and Martin Bormann, the secretary and closest adviser to Hitler, who headed the party office of the NSDAP after Hess's flight to England. Bormann was sentenced in absentia. For many years it was believed that he managed to escape from Germany and hide somewhere abroad. Only in the early 70s. convincing evidence was obtained that he could not escape from the surrounded Berlin and on May 2, 1945 he committed suicide (as

Many Nazi leaders, using potassium cyanide) under the Bridge of Invalids in Berlin.

On October 1, 1946, the International Tribunal at Nuremberg finished its work and sentenced the defendants. 12 of them were sentenced to death by hanging (Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Sauckel, Jodl, Seyss-Inquart, Bormann), 3 - to life imprisonment (Hess, Funk, Raeder) ... Doenitz, Schirach, Speer and Neurath received from 10 to 20 years in prison, and Schacht, Papen, Fritsche, despite the objections of the Soviet judges, were acquitted.

In justifying Schacht, his close ties with American industrialists and bankers, as well as the desire of Western judges to remove responsibility for the outbreak of war from the "captains of industry", played an exceptional role. If Schacht had been convicted, he would certainly have told the public in revenge about the role of American capital in arming Germany on the eve of the war and about the ties that were maintained by the German and American monopolies in its years.

As for Fritsche and Papen, in comparison with the other defendants, their guilt was much less, and they could not be charged with the gravest war crimes and conspiracy against peace and humanity. Fritsche was, in general, a small fry in the Nazi political apparatus, and Papen, a representative of the conservative Prussian elite, was not a member of the NSDAP. An important role in Papen's acquittal was apparently also played by his close ties with industry and the Catholic Church. It is known, in particular, that before the start of the Nuremberg Trials, the Pope petitioned the American judge for Papen.

On October 16 of the same year, the death sentences handed down by the International Tribunal were carried out. Only Goering escaped the hanging. Two hours before the execution, he committed suicide with the help of potassium cyanide, by whom and how he was transferred to prison.

The convicts who escaped the death sentence were placed in Berlin's Spandau prison. However, already in 1954, Neurath was pardoned, and in 1957-1958. - Funk and Raeder, sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1956, Doenitz was released after serving his sentence, and in 1966 Speer and Schirach were released. Only Rudolf Hess remained in prison. A sharp political struggle unfolded around him in the following years. The right-wing forces in the FRG and other Western countries began insistently demanding his pardon. However, the victorious powers refused to commute the sentence. Hess remained in prison until his death on August 17, 1987. With his death, the last page of the life of the political leaders of the Third Reich was closed.

BURNING OF REICHSTAG

At 9 pm on February 27, 1933, the 24-year-old Dutch anarchist Marinus van der Lubbe entered the Reichstag and, using special incendiary devices, set fire to a large conference room in several places. The fire quickly engulfed the premises, and the firefighters, who arrived at the scene half an hour later, could no longer cope with the flame that shot up to the very dome of the building. Hitler and other Nazi leaders immediately declared the burning of the Reichstag to be the work of the Communists, who allegedly wanted to use this action to signal an uprising against the Nazi government. According to the lists prepared in advance, about 4 thousand leading figures of the Communist Party of Germany were immediately arrested, and the KKE itself was deprived of all deputy mandates in the Reichstag. This was followed by mass arrests of rank-and-file communists. The KKE was almost completely defeated. Those of its members who survived and did not come to terms with Nazism went into an illegal position and fought underground.

Who benefits from the burning of the Reichstag? The systematic rout after him of the Communist Party - the main enemy of the NSDAP - suggests that it was primarily in the interests of the Nazi leadership. The opinion has been repeatedly expressed that the Nazis themselves staged this arson, using van der Lubbe only as a figurehead. This is supported by the fact that an underground passage led from Goering's residence to the Reichstag, which could have been used for provocation. And it’s hard to imagine that one person could set fire to such a huge building. However, during the process of the Reichstag arson, which took place in Leipzig in September-December 1933, neither the Nazi leaders nor the communists who were in the dock could provide convincing evidence that van der Lubbe did not act alone: ​​the Nazis could not prove the involvement of the communists, the communists - the participation of the Nazis. After the war, the question of the burning of the Reichstag was thoroughly investigated by an international commission headed by the famous Swiss historian Hofer, but it also failed to refute the version of the sole responsibility of the Dutch anarchist.

The Nazi elite tried to turn the process of setting fire to the Reichstag into a show trial of the German communists and leaders of the Communist International who were at that time in Germany (Georgy Dimitrov and others). At this trial, Goering was the main witness. However, the plans of the Nazis failed. Dimitrov and his comrades not only denied all the charges against them, but also used the court session to expose Nazism. The court was forced to fully acquit them.

Van der Lubbe was sentenced to death. On January 10, 1934, the Nazis carried it out. In the post-war period, the van der Lubbe case was tried several times by West German courts. In 1967, it was finally recognized that the punishment was too harsh.