Adolf Hitler.Author Kentot785. WIKIMEDIA

10 Infamous German Nazi Officers


 

The Nazi Party was formally known as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or NSDAP. It was a far-right political organization in Germany active between 1920 and 1945. The party helped to develop and defend the Nazi ideology.

The extreme German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist revolutions in Germany after World War I, gave rise to the Nazi Party. The purpose of the party was to convert workers from communism to völkisch nationalism. Nazi political approach first centered on language that was critical of large businesses, the bourgeoisie, and capitalism.

Unquestionably, the Holocaust and the Third Reich, 1933–1945, exposed the extent of human wickedness. Some of the evilest people the world has ever encountered in such a short period made up the Nazi government. In addition to leading the largest and most expensive war humanity had ever seen, the Nazis were also responsible for one of the largest and most horrific acts of genocide in history, the Holocaust, which translates as “burnt offering.”

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Here are the 10 Infamous German Nazi Officers

1. Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler.Author Bundesarchiv. WIKIMEDIA

The most notorious of them all is Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party’s symbol and leader. Adolf Hitler, a German politician of Austrian descent, ruled as dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death on April 30, 1945. As the head of the Nazi Party, he ascended to power. In 1933, he was appointed chancellor, and in 1934, he adopted the title of Führer und Reichskanzler. He invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, starting the second European World War under his authority. He was deeply involved in military activities throughout the conflict and had a key role in the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of millions of other people in addition to the approximately six million Jews.

While it is acknowledged that Hitler was not directly involved in the Holocaust, he was undoubtedly aware of it and actively supported it. Hitler at least contributed to the development of a strongly anti-Semitic society that fostered prejudice and the dehumanization of Jews in daily life.

Learn more about Adolf Hitler-10 Facts about Adolf Hitler

2. Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler.Author Bundesarchiv. WIKIMEDIA

He was a leading member of the Nazi party and one of the most powerful men at the time. It is widely believed that Himmler was the largest mass murderer in history and that the Holocaust would not have occurred without him.

He studied agriculture at university and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS)in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed Reichsführer-SS by Adolf Hitler.

Himmler oversaw the Nazi extermination projects and ordered the murder of around six million Jews, 200,000–500,000 Romanis, and other victims. 11 to 14 million citizens are thought to have died as a result of the regime’s actions. They were mostly citizens of Poland and the Soviet Union.

3. Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich. Author Bundesarchiv. WIKIMEDIA

Heydrich is another infamous Nazi officer. He was a high-ranking German SS and police officer during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.

 He was dubbed the “man with the iron heart” by Hitler. Moreover, he was generally regarded as the most dreaded member of the Nazi Elite. He was the founding leader of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence agency tasked with locating and eliminating Nazi Party resistance through arrests, deportations, and executions. On November 9–10, 1938, he assisted in planning Kristallnacht, a series of synchronized attacks against Jews across Nazi Germany and some areas of Austria.

He was directly in charge of the Einsatzgruppen. This was a special task force that followed the German armies and killed more than two million people by shooting and gassing them in the mass, including 1.3 million Jews.

4. Joseph Mengele

On March 16, 1911, Josef Rudolf Mengele was born. During World War II, he served as a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and doctor.

Joseph Mengele was another infamous Nazi Officer. He was known as the Angel of Death. In 1937, he joined the Nazi Party, and in 1938, he joined the SS. At the start of World War II, he was assigned as a battalion medical officer. In early 1943, he was transferred to the Nazi concentration camps service and assigned to Auschwitz, where he saw the opportunity to conduct genetic research on human subjects.

He was a member of the medical team that chose the victims to be executed in the gas chambers. Moreover, one of the doctors administered the gas at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, where he conducted gruesome experiments on prisoners.

5. Paul Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels.Author Heinrich Hoffmann. WIKIMEDIA

From 1933 through 1945, Paul Joseph Goebbels served as the Gauleiter (district head) of Berlin, the Nazi Party’s senior propagandist, and the Reich Minister of Propaganda. One of Adolf Hitler’s closest and most ardent followers, he was well-known for his public speaking prowess and his intensely venomous antisemitism, which was clear from his publicly expressed opinions. He supported discrimination that got progressively worse, like the Holocaust’s slaughter of the Jews.

Goebbels pressured Hitler in 1943 to enact policies that would result in “total war.” The policies were such as shutting down non-essential enterprises, recruiting women in the labor force, and enlisting men in previously exempt professions into the Wehrmacht.

On July 23, 1944, Hitler ultimately designated him Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War. Thus, Goebbels then began a series of largely futile efforts to boost the number of people available for the Wehrmacht and armaments production.

Once the war was over and the Nazis were defeated, Goebbels and his family also committed suicide. Before the Allied soldiers could find them, he and his wife poisoned their six children and then killed themselves.

6. Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Eichman at trial in Jerusalem 1961. Author Israel Government Press Office. WIKIMEDIA

Eichmann was the Nazi administrator in charge of organizing the transport of European Jews to various concentration camps, death facilities, and ghettos across the continent.

In 1939, he became a member of the Gestapo, also known as the Geheime Staatspolizei. In this position, he was in charge of “clearing operations,” which was a polite term for the expulsion of Jews from German-occupied territory.

 Eichmann also took part in the Wannsee Conference in 1942. This is where a few Nazi leaders came up with what became infamously known as “the final solution to the Jewish question” in Europe.

Eichmann used fake documents to conceal his identity from his captors as American soldiers apprehended him at the end of the war. Eichmann escaped after passing through many Schutzstaffel (SS) officer detention facilities. He eventually made it to Argentina with the aid of Catholic Church representatives. Eichmann was apprehended in Buenos Aires in 1960 after being trailed there by Mossad, Israel’s security agency. He was extradited, put on trial, found guilty, and killed in a Ramla prison in 1962. His remains were burned and dispersed in the Mediterranean Sea by Israeli authorities.

7.Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Author Bundesarchiv,. WIKIMEDIA

He was a prominent SS leader in Nazi Germany. He oversaw the Nazi security campaign during World War II in the conquered areas of Eastern Europe against people the dictatorship considered ideological adversaries as well. Moreover, any other individuals believed to be a threat to Nazi control or the rear security of the Wehrmacht.

At the end of 1941, the forces commanded by von dem Bach consisted of 14,953 Germans, the majority of whom were officers and 238,105 local “volunteers”. He was in charge of the violent repression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Units under his command murdered approximately 200,000 civilians and an unknown number of prisoners.

He was dispatched by Hitler to Budapest, the capital of Hungary, in October 1944. He took part in the overthrow of Regent Miklós Horthy and his administration and the installation of the fascist, virulently anti-Semitic Arrow Cross Party and its leader Ferenc Szálasi. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski participated in the persecution of the Hungarian Jews in particular.

8. Alois Brunner

At the age of sixteen, he joined the Nazi Party. A year later, he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA). Brunner relocated to Germany in 1933 and enlisted in the Austrian Legion, a Nazi paramilitary organization. He joined the SS as a volunteer after Austria was annexed in 1938. After joining the staff of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, he was promoted to director in 1939. He was sent to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939, when the Germans occupied the Czech territories, to hasten the exodus of Czech Jews. Brunner rose to prominence as Adolf Eichmann’s assistant.

Brunner was in charge of transporting more than 100,000 European Jews from Slovakia, Austria, Greece, and France to ghettos and death camps in eastern Europe. He presided over the transfer of 47,000 Austrian Jews to the death camps at the outbreak of the war. During the two months he was stationed in Thessaloniki, 43,000 Jews were deported from Greece. From June 1943 through August 1944, over 24,000 men, women, and children were taken to the gas chambers while he served as the camp’s commander in Drancy, a concentration camp outside of Paris. Moreover, he wiped out Slovakia’s Jewish population.

Brunner was put on trial in absentia by the Allies, who thought he had passed away. Israel’s Mossad learned of his whereabouts in 1961 and made an effort to use a letter bomb to kill the elderly Nazi. The 51-year-old lost one of his eyes in the explosion. Brunner’s left hand lost two fingers when he received a second explosive device in the mail 19 years later. In 2010, he allegedly passed away in Syria from natural causes. His exact passing date and place of burial are still unknown.

9. Wilhelm Keitel

Wilhelm Keitel. Author Bundesarchiv. Wikimedia

He was a Nazi German field marshal and war criminal who served as head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the military’s supreme command, for the majority of the Second World War. Keitel served as the de facto war minister of Germany in that capacity. Several criminal instructions and directives that he issued resulted in numerous war crimes.

After being named the director of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry of War in 1935, Keitel began his ascent to the Wehrmacht high command. After taking over the Wehrmacht in 1938, Hitler replaced the ministry with the OKW, and Keitel was appointed as its leader. As Hitler’s go-to “yes-man,” he was despised by his military comrades.

As one of the “principal war criminals” after the World War 2, Keitel was charged by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. All of the charges against him such as crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, criminal conspiracy, and war crimes were upheld as true. He was found guilty of every one of them. In 1946, after being found guilty of murder, he was hanged.

10. Helma Kissner

She joined the Nazi Party in 1941. Kissner worked as a radio operator for the German Labour Front and the Waffen-SS during World War II.

 She worked as a radio operator at KL Auschwitz-Birkenau from 21 April to 7 July 1944, where she had access to several secret government documents as a result of her position. She then served in Alsace’s Natzweiler-Struthof until the conclusion of the war.

Kissner was imprisoned following the war until July 18, 1948. The German prosecutor’s office intended to prosecute her in 2015, alleging that while working at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she contributed to the deaths of at least 266,390 individuals. She was, however, deemed incompetent to stand trial by a Kiel court on September 9, 2016.

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