Erich von dem Bach
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 1, 1899 Lauenburg, Pomerania, German Empire |
Erich von dem Bach, born Erich von Zelewski and also known as Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (March 1 1899 - March 8 1972), was a Nazi official and a member of the SS, in which he reached the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
He was born in Lauenburg, Pomerania, German Empire, on March 1 1899, the son of Otto von Żelewski, a landlord from Lębork (in German Lauenburg) of Polish and German origin. His father joined the army and was killed in 1915 during World War I. The following year Erich von Zelewski volunteered for the Prussian army and served there until the end of the war. Twice wounded, he twice won the Iron Cross.
After the war he remained in the Reichswehr and, among other duties, fought in the Silesian Uprisings. In 1924 he transferred to the border guards' units (Grenzschutz), where he remained until 1930.
After quitting the Grenzschutz he joined the German Nazi Party (I.D. card No. 489101) in 1930 and became a member of the SS in 1931. He gained rapid promotion and by the end of 1933 had reached the rank of SS-Brigadeführer. At this point he began using his mother's maiden name (Bach), in order to sound more Germanic. A source of considerable annoyance for him was that three of his sisters married Jewish men. This, along with his partly Slavic ancestry, may have driven him to ever bloodier excesses in order to "prove himself" as a Nazi.
A member of the Reichstag from 1932 to 1944, he participated in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. He served at various Nazi party posts, initially in East Prussia and after 1936 in Silesia. By 1937 he had become HSSPF in Silesia.
[edit] World War II
After the outbreak of World War II, units under his command took part in reprisal actions and the shooting of POWs during the September Campaign; however, von dem Bach was not present personally. On November 7 1939, Heinrich Himmler offered him the post of commissar for strengthening of Germandom in Silesia. His duties included mass resettlements and the confiscation of private property. By August 1940 his units had deprived more than 20,000 families from the Zywiec region of their homes and had forced them to leave.
In late 1939 he proposed setting up a concentration camp for the non-German inhabitants of the region in the vicinity of the town of Oswiecim. After initial reluctance, Heinrich Himmler agreed to von dem Bach's suggestion and in May 1940 the Auschwitz concentration camp opened.
On November 28 1940, von dem Bach officially changed his name and dropped the name of Zelewski.
On June 22 1941, von dem Bach became Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer ("Higher SS and Police Leader") in the region of the Heeresgruppe Mitte ("Middle Army Group"); in July 1943, he became commander of the so-called "Bandenkampfverbände" ("Band-fighting Units"), responsible for, among other deeds, the mass murder of 35,000 civilians in Riga and killing more than 200,000 people in Belarus and Eastern Poland. The authorities designated him as the future HSSPF Moscow; however the Wehrmacht failed to take the city and von dem Bach remained the HSSPF in command of "anti-partisan" units in the Central Front until 1943, a special command created by Adolf Hitler. Bach-Zelewsky has the "honour" of being the only HSSPE in the occupied Soviet territories to retain genuine authority over the police after Hans-Adolf Prützmann and Jockeln lost theirs to the civil administration.
In February 1942 he went into hospital, which he would later claim was due to a nervous breakdown connected with the ethnic cleansing in Belarus, especially the genocidal campaign against the Jews. Wireless intercepts decoded by British intelligence suggest, however, that his illness was strictly physical. He resumed his post in July, with no apparent diminution in his ruthlessness.
On July 23 1943, von dem Bach-Zelewski received command of all anti-partisan actions in Belgium, Belarus, France, the General Gouvernment, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and parts of the Białystok area. In practice, his activities remained confined to Belarus and the contiguous part of Russia.
Von dem Bach's tactics produced high numbers of civilian deaths and relatively minor military gains. German forces would more or less encircle partisan-controlled area before closing in. Since deploying the necessary forces was a time-consuming and conspicuous process, the partisans would be forewarned and many would slip away, after caching their heavier equipment and much of their supplies, while the remaining partisans would carry out a fighting withdrawal, picking off the lead German troops, often killing more men than they lost.
In the process of fighting these irregular units, the Germans would wantonly slaughter civilians in order to inflate the figures of "enemy losses"; indeed enormously more fatalities were inflicted than weapons captured. After an operation was completed, no permanent military presence would be maintained, allowing the partisans to slip back in, retrieve their cached stocks and pick up were they had left off. On other occasions, though, the partisans would not return but begin operating where they had retreated to before the operation. Even when successful, Bach was accomplishing not much more than forcing the partisans to periodically relocate.
In 1944 he took part in front-line fighting in the Kovel area, but in March he had to go to Germany for medical treatment. Heinrich Himmler assumed all his posts.
On August 2 1944, he took command of all troops fighting against the Warsaw Uprising (Korpsgruppe Bach). Units under his command killed approximately 200,000 civilians (more than 65,000 in mass executions) and an unknown number of POWs. After more than two months of heavy fighting, he finally managed to recapture the city.
Between January 26 and February 10 1945, von dem Bach-Zelewski commanded one of the "paper-corps", X SS Armeekorps in Germany. His unit, however, suffered annihilation after less than two weeks.
[edit] After the war
Bach went underground and tried to leave the country. However, US military police arrested him on August 1 1945. In exchange for his testimony against his former superiors at the Nuremberg Trials, von dem Bach-Zelewski never faced trial for any war crimes. Similarly, he never faced extradition to Poland or to the USSR. He left prison in 1949. In Nuremberg he also resumed using the name Bach-Zelewsky in an attempt to appear more "Slavic" and thus less likely an exponent of Nazi Germano-supremacism.
In 1951 von dem Bach-Zelewski claimed that he had helped Hermann Göring commit suicide in 1946. As evidence, he produced cyanide capsules to the authorities with serial numbers not far removed from the one used by Göring. The authorities never verified von dem Bach-Zelewski's claim, however, and did not charge him with aiding Göring's death. Most modern day historians dismiss the von dem Bach-Zelewski claim and agree that a U.S. Army contact within the Spandau prison at Nuremberg most likely aided Göring in his suicide. [citation needed]
In 1951 von dem Bach-Zelewski received a sentence of ten years in a labour camp for the murder of political opponents in the early thirties; however, he did not serve time until 1958, when he faced an accusation of killing an SA officer during the Night of the Long Knives and received a prison sentence of two and a half years. In 1961 he received a sentence of another ten years in home custody for the murder of ten German Communists in the early thirties. None of the sentences referred to his role in the East and his participation to the massacres, though he openly admitted to having murdered Jews. He died in Munich prison on March 8 1972.
[edit] See also
- Ex-Nazis and List of former Nazis influential after 1945
- Geneva Convention
- Third Reich
- Warsaw Uprising
- Warsaw Uprising Atrocitiesde:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
he:אריך פון דם באך צלבסקי pl:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski sv:Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
