Germany: National Socialists continuities in the German police, by Stephan Linck
01 April 2009
Until the late 1960s the personnel and ideology of West Germany's CID (Criminal Investigation Department) was dominated by a network of former police officers who graduated from the "Führerschule der Sicherheitspolizei” (Police Academy for the CID and secret service) in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the late 1930s. These officers than had a career in Nazi Germany with the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (RKPA), the Reich’s central CID office. After 1945 they managed, initially under British rule in Schleswig-Holstein and then after 1949 within the BKA and in regional states, to again climb the career ladder to attain leading positions from which they continued to apply National Socialist concepts to crime policy.
In September 1971, Fritz Kempe sent out the "Old Charlottenburger" regulars’
Circular Letter no. 6/71. This clique, at the time comprising 92 people (all between the ages of 59 and 69), was presumably initiated in the 1950s and it met once a month in a Düsseldorf pub. Its members, however, were not only united by drink-related recreational activities. The name "Alte Charlottenburger" referred to their former police academy in Berlin-Charlottenburg from which most of the group’s members had graduated as chief inspectors in the late 1930s. It was renamed the
Führerschule of security police in 1937. Although they chose to distance themselves from the
esprit de corps of their Gestapo colleagues who graduated at the same school, as a rule they were nonetheless equally staunch National Socialists (NS). Most of them, if they were not already members, joined the SS during the course of their training [1].
A comparatively large number of the Charlottenburg graduates joined the
Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (RKPA) in 1938-1939. In September 1939, the RKPA became Department V of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, central security office), in which the Secret State Police Office (
Staatsgeheimpolizeiamt) and the security agency's central office (
SD-Hauptamt) was located. The security agency was the private secret service of the Nazi Party and part of the SS [2]. One of the German CID’s new tasks was "preventative crime fighting", taking active measures - including preventative detention (
Sicherungsverwahrung) - against all groups that might violate the norms of the “
Volksgemeinschaft” (national community) or act in a "deviant" manner. The German CID itself became the sanction-imposing authority and legal remedy could only be sought through it. This resulted in the CID sending people to concentration camps and murdering many of those branded as "gipsies", "professional criminals" or "anti-social" (asozial). Important elements of the NS terror therefore lay within the remit of the German CID. With the ensuing war of conquest, the "external deployment" of security police officers became an additional field of action, especially for young and career-minded RKPA officers who were regularly involved in the atrocities committed by the
Einsatzgruppen (Special murder squads), especially in Eastern Europe. The
Einsatzgruppen murdered one million Jews.
The period of occupation
In April 1945, most RKPA officers withdrew to the Flensburg area and took up quarters in regional CID offices. When the Nazi regime capitulated they immediately offered the British occupying power their cooperation. In the post-war era their careers were inextricably interlinked with the contradictions of Britain's occupation policies. The conservative Foreign Office staff that devised occupation rule from 1944 onwards followed the colonial tradition of the British Empire in Germany and sought to achieve maximum effect with minimal effort by way of "indirect rule". To contain the foreseeable chaos at the end of the war they planned to incorporate large parts of the German executive - including the police force - into the new administration. Although the planners were acutely aware of the close relationship between the German CID and the apparatus of the National Socialists' machinery of terror - an internal paper described the CID and the Gestapo as "special foster children of Himmler", whose personnel consisted almost exclusively of members of the SS - their analyses were nevertheless infused with unreserved admiration for the centralised command of Germany’s CID, located in Department V of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt. A Foreign office paper from April 1945 says:
The German genius for organisation is well known and the present Kripo structure is probably sound and extremely efficient. To exploit this product of German genius to our own advantage, and at the same time avoid the risk of a complete breakdown in police operations, is surely good business.[3].
These contradictions in British occupation policy became apparent from May 1945 onwards in the conflict between the pragmatic approach of the British Public Safety Branch (PSB), which was in charge of the reconstruction of the police force, and the Army's intelligence services (Field Security Sections, FSS), which were responsible for tracking down war criminals as well as the overhaul and denazification of the police.
As a purely military organisation, which among its staff had a number of Jews who had fled Germany, the British FSS was immune to the danger of detachment from or even admiration of the German police. However, due to their high workload during the early post-war years many of the FSS’s initial interrogations were not very thorough. This can be seen from the minutes of the interrogation of the leader of the RKPA group for economic crime, Karl Schulz, who in the autumn of 1941 had been “Adjutent Arthur Nebes” in the
Einsatzgruppe B responsible for killing over 45,000 people [4]. Schulz did not require an interpreter due to his command of English. The notes made during his interrogation clearly show that the NS CID officers’ line of defence and later interpretation of their role as apolitical, professional crime investigators had already been established. Schulz said that he had left Berlin with his colleagues on 22 April without permission. He claimed that he was a CID officer whose SS rank
Sturmbannführer ("Storm Unit Leader") was only an honorary title. For much of his interrogation he impressed his listeners with accounts of his English travels as part of the entourage of the German foreign minister. Shortly after, the Public Security Branch (PSB) appointed Schulz liaison officer to the British occupation forces in Flensburg.
In early July 1945, the PSB summarised the information it had gathered on the whereabouts of RKPA employees in their "
Report on the Reichssicherheitshauptamt". Apart from three officers who had absconded, all of those named in the report were former serving police officers, most of them located in the northern part of Schleswig Holstein. The first Flensburg CID "
Meldeblatt" (newsletter on offences and wanted persons) appeared in July and that of the Schleswig Holstein province on 7 August. But at a great price. The German CID continued where it had left off when capitulation came. Alongside break-ins, theft, murder and manslaughter, this regional newsletter had a special section for "all crimes committed by gypsies, male and female". In its first newsletter, the Flensburg CID also published a wanted notice for a "gypsy" who had testified to two soldiers having been concentration-camp prisoners. The Sinto’s distinguishing mark was: "On the left upper arm is tattooed the number 3468". Did the police want to check the identification numbers of freed concentration camp prisoners? Thus the police contributed, in the first post-war years, to an unbridled hatred being unleashed upon them by the former slave labourers, a hatred which led to many officers being murdered.
In autumn 1945, the FSS carried out a more thorough check on serving police officers. Its January 1946 report to the PSB confirms that nine leading police officers of the
Land Schleswig Holstein were on the Allies’ “Wanted” list with an order for immediate arrest; this included police chief Oberst Kühn and all officers on the staff under his command. But they were only removed from office in April 1946 when an FSS member – in circumvention of the official channels – turned directly to John Hynd, minister for the civil administration of the British zone in Germany. The RKPA members only ran into difficulties when the PSB had to change its personnel policy after German police officers had committed a series of crimes. In July and August 1946 all former SS members, and therefore all senior RKPA officers, were sacked. This decision was partly undermined by the regional Public Safety Branch offices. Thus, although Schulz lost his position within the police he was immediately re-employed as an instructor with the Royal Air Force (RAF) police at an air base near Schleswig.
The summer 1946 dismissals by no means marked an end to RKPA personnel working in the police force. At the beginning of the year, in direct opposition to the new British Labour government’s orders to decentralise, a German CID office for the British occupied zone was opened in Hamburg with the intention of maintaining the old RKPA structures [5]. This venture employed 48, usually lower-ranking officers, as the time was not yet opportune to appoint members from the old leadership. This became possible when the British devolved police powers to the regional state of Schleswig Holstein at the beginning of 1947. Until 1949, all CID positions were filled with former high ranking RKPA officers. Karl Schulz also returned from his RAF police post: he was entrusted with setting up a regional CID authority (
Landeskriminalamt, LKA).
The arrival of the Federal Republic
In 1949, with the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), police powers were irrevocably transferred to the German
Länder. Staff could now move to other regions of Germany. Simultaneously, all barriers to re-employment fell with the definitive conclusion of Denazification and the passing of the German constitutional addendum Article 131, which allowed for the reinstatement of former National Socialists. The years of occupation rule had not been used to train a new generation for leading positions in investigative police work. This meant there was no alternative but to fall back on leading officers of the NS CID. At the same time the network of “Charlottenburgers” was ideal for the recruitment of people for vacant executive positions [6]. This became clear with the construction of the Federal Criminal Investigation Authority (BKA), which developed out of the German CID for the British occupied zone in 1951. After the appointment of “Charlottenburger” Paul Dickopf as BKA deputy director in 1952, the allocation of executive positions to “Old Charlottenburgers” became systematic. Dieter Schenk’s research found a total of 24 in such functions, among them seven who had trained under Dickopf. Of the 47 officers in the BKA’s 1959 executive office only two were "clean"; the rest were tarnished by their NS careers and numerous crimes [7].
North-Rhine Westphalia would become another centre of reinstatement for the NS CID officers. By the autumn of 1945, Willy Gay was appointed chief of the Cologne Criminal Investigation Department. Gay, born in 1890, had been active as a detective since the 1920s and had made a career for himself in the Weimar Republic’s police force. Even though he had joined the National Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party (NSDAP) in May 1933, and his ideas on "preventative crime fighting" closely corresponded to Nazi conceptions, the NS era represented a slump in Gay's career. In 1934 he was appointed deputy chief of the Cologne CID. This recommended him to the British occupational power in 1945. After serving several years as Cologne chief of police, he was promoted in 1952 to police consultant to the interior ministry of the
Land North-Rhine Westphalia. Gay became an important figure in the development of the post-war German CID from 1952 when he was also co-editor of the police journal
Kriminalistik. Despite not having graduated at the Charlottenburg academy, if only because of his age, there was a mutual appreciation between him and the old-boy network. Kurt Zillmann, instructor at the Charlottenburg academy, and later chief of the
Landeskriminalamt in Schleswig Holstein, called him his "master" and in 1971 Gay was still included on the address list of the Düsseldorf regulars' table; in many respects he was as an "honorary Charlottenburger". As someone who was not "tainted" his support was of great importance.
In the 1950s, North-Rhine Westphalia CID probably had the most intricate network of ex-"Charlottenburgers". Important positions vacated, up to the rank of LKA chief, were filled by them. From 1954 to 1970, Bernd Wehner was chief of the Düsseldorf CID. Born in 1909, he had undergone training for superintendent in Charlottenburg in 1936-37 and subsequently became
SS-Hauptsturmführer (SS Head Storm Leader) in Department V [8]. After the end of the war, he played a prominent role for former NS detectives as a police reporter for the news magazine
Spiegel. In a 30-part series that appeared in 1949-50, entitled "The game is over, Arthur Nebe. Glory and affliction in the German CID" (
Das Spiel ist aus, Arthur Nebe. Glanz und Elend der deutschen Kriminalpolizei), he portrayed the Third Reich’s detective force as an apolitical organisation of experts which should be seen as having been opposed to National Socialism. Before Wehner became chief of the Düsseldorf CID in 1954 Gay had brought him into the Cologne Criminal Investigation Department. After his transfer to Düsseldorf, both were united by a long-standing work relationship; Wehner joined Gay as editor-in-chief of the journal
Kriminalistik.
Preventative crime fighting – new edition
The Hiltrup police academy near Münster was another avenue for communication. The seminars for LKA chiefs that took place there assumed the character of "Charlottenburger" conventions. These were not only comrades’ reunions, but more a deliberate attempt by the participants to influence the crime policy of the new Federal Republic. This is well demonstrated by the positions they adopted on the "Preventative Fight against Crime" (
Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung). By 1947, the Lower Saxony
Landeskriminalpolizeiamt - with the support of the British zone’s police office - had made the first draft of a "Law on fighting professional and habitual criminals" (
Gesetz zur Bekämpfung der Berufs- und Gewohnheitsverbrecher). However, it failed to get on the statute books [9]. This initiative was picked up by the LKA heads at their first seminar in August 1949. In their Resolution, which aimed at creating a Federal CID Authority, they demanded, amongst other things, a "Control centre for the fight against international and mobile professional and habitual criminals" (
Zentrale zur Bekämpfung internationaler und reisender Berufs- und Gewohnheitsverbrecher) as well as a "Control centre for the fight against the vagrancy plague” (
Zentrale zur Bekämpfung des Landfahrerunwesens) [10].
The "fight against professional and habitual criminals" was the main focus of their third seminar in November 1951 [11]. Although detectives by now accepted the introduction of a judge's order to authorise any desired preventative detention, Gay demanded in his presentation to the conference the immediate enforcibility of such an order through summary courts - ignoring consideration of any appeals already lodged [12]. A product of this seminar was an article published in 1952 in the police journal
Polizei by Fritz Weber, a "Charlottenburger" and former SS Storm Unit Leader (
SS-Sturmbannführer) in the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt. According to his interpretation, the "Law on habitual criminals" (
Gewohnheitsverbrechergesetz) of November 1933 was still formally in force. He nevertheless argued for a new law which would reintroduce preventative detention under judicial authorisation (a concession to the separation of powers).
This positive reference to the Nazi practice of "preventative crime fighting" was taken up by the BKA in 1955 with a new initiative, for which the author of the relevant decrees that had been passed by Department V during the Nazi regime, Eduard Richrath, was personally consulted. This resulted in another in a series of BKA publications, an anthology on "Problems of Police Supervision" (
Probleme der Polizeiaufsicht), which described the Nazi practice of committing people to concentration camps as a success story. Alongside pieces by the "Charlottenburger", Rudolf Leitweiß, articles were also authored by the leader of the BKA criminological institute, Eberhard Eschenbach, who in 1945 had been directly transferred to the Schleswig Holstein CID. In addition, there were further publications by "Charlottenburgers" from the Hiltrup police academy and in the journal
Polizei. The BKA guidelines succeeded insofar as they got to be discussed by the Federal Ministry of Justice’s criminal law committee. Even though this initiative failed it revealed the surprisingly harmonised approach to crime policy of this insider party.
On the defensive
Until then, the “Charlottenburgers’” circle had aggressively promoted its members to high ranks in the West German CID and sought to influence the direction of Germany's crime policies. In the following years it was to come under increasing pressure. This was triggered by Bernhard Fischer-Schweder, who had also undergone superintendent’s training at the Charlottenburg police academy. However, Fischer-Schweder was not a detective. He had had a party political and SA (
Sturmabteilung) career, before joining the Gestapo and becoming police chief of Memel. In the latter position in 1941, he had taken part in the mass shooting of Jews in Lithuania. After the war, he initially lived under a false name and concealed his past. In the mid-1950s he misinterpreted the social climate and applied for a position in the CID, and included references to his former career. Details of his crimes consequently entered the public domain and his application triggered investigations that led to a major trial against members of the police special-task murder forces in Ulm (
Ulmer Einsatzgruppen-Prozess). It ended in 1958 with his being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment [13].
More telling than the sentence itself was the creation of the Central Coordinating body for the Administration of Justice for the
Länder (
Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen) in Ludwigsburg after the trial, and the resulting start of the systematic investigation of Nazi crimes. Even if the murderous consequences of the "preventative fight against crime" and the persecution and deportation of the Roma and Sinti led to punitive proceedings, the investigations posed a definitive threat to the "Old Charlottenburgers" because many of them had also taken part in special-squad killings. Of the 92 persons still included on the "Old Charlottenburgers" mailing list for 1971 (ie. those that were still alive), only eight were not the target of comprehensive investigations into Nazi crimes.
Those suspended on the basis of the investigations often bridged this gap with employment in the economic sector, only to return to the police service at a later stage. Despite their involvement in Nazi crimes, on the whole they felt safe from prosecution. The self-confidence of the "Old Charlottenburgers" is highlighted by an episode described to this author by the former chief of the special commission for Nazi crimes of violence in Schleswig Holstein, Karl-Georg Schulz. When he took Waldemar Krause, an erstwhile member of Department V, into pre-trial custody in the context of investigations against him as chief of the Nazi
Sonderkommando (special commando) 4b of
the Einsatzgruppe (Special task force C), he simply asked Schulz why the latter bothered to do this knowing full well that Schulz would be free again within 24 hours [14].
The depths of preferential treatment and mutual support given to one-time "Charlottenburgers" in these investigations still urgently needs to be sounded out. The "Old Charlottenburgers" succeeded in determining not only the staffing policies and crime-policy discourses of the West German CID for decades but also the interpretation of the activities of the latter during the Nazi era [15]. Thus as late as 1986, a police training manual repeated Walter Zirpins's explanation for high crime rates shortly after the war: they were due to the release of the majority of the “professional criminals, anti-social elements and vagrants" who had been imprisoned in jail or concentration camps [16].
This article first appeared in the German magazine Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP 92 (1/2009)
Footnotes
1. Banach, J.: Heydrichs Elite. Die Führerkorps der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1936-1945 [Heydrich's elite. The leadership corps of the security police and the SD 1936-1945], Paderborn, 1998, pp. 106 ff., 264-276
2 Wagner, P.: Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher [A national community without criminals], Hamburg 1996, pp. 235–243
3. Compare Ernst Klee, Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945, Frankfurt 2005, S. 430.
4. For more information, see Linck, S.: Der Ordnung verpflichtet. Deutsche Polizei 1933–1949. Der Fall Flensburg [To order bound. German police 1933-1949. The case of Flensburg], Paderborn 2000, pp. 186–193; ibid.: Zur Personalpolitik der britischen Besatzungsmacht gegenüber der deutschen Kriminalpolizei nach 1945 [On the personnel politics of the British occupying powers with regard to the German CID after 1945], in: Fürmetz, G.; Reinke, H.; Weinhauer, K. (eds.): Nachkriegspolizei. Sicherheit und Ordnung in Ost- und Westdeutschland 1945-1969 [Post-war police. Security and order in East and West Germany 1945-1969], Hamburg 2001
5. Schenk, D.: Auf dem rechten Auge blind. Die braunen Wurzeln des BKA [Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA], Köln 2001, pp. 133ff.
6. Linck: Der Ordnung verpflichtet [In the name of order] ibid. fn. 3, pp. 340f.
7. Schenk ibid (fn. 4), pp. 67f. and 282f.
8. ibid., p. 177
9. Wagner, P.: Kriminalpolizei und „innere Sicherheit“ in Bremen und Nordwestdeutschland zwischen 1942 und 1949 [Crime police and 'internal security' in Bremen and North-Rhine Westphalia between 1942 and 1949], in: Frank Bajohr (ed.): Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus [Northern Germany during National Socialism, Hamburg 1993, p. 259
10. Translator's note: 'Vagabond mischief' (Landfahrerunwesen) is the post-war term for a discriminatory policy against the Sinti and Roma that followed on from their criminalisation and persecution during the Nazi era.
11. In: Die Polizei 1949 [The police 1949], issue.2, p. 282
12. Linck: Personalpolitik [Personnel politics] ibid. fn. 3), pp. 125f.
13. Bericht über die 3. Arbeitstagung der Leiter der LKPA v. 13.–15.11.1951 [Report on the 3rd seminar of LKPA chiefs, 13-15.11.1951] in: Mitteilungen aus dem Polizei Institut Hiltrup 1952 [Newsletter of the police institute Hiltrup 1952], issue. 1, pp. 12ff.; contribution by Gay
on pp. 16ff.
14. Compare Klemp, S.: „Nicht ermittelt“. Polizeibataillone und die Nachkriegsjustiz – Ein Handbuch ["Not investigated". Police corps and the post-war era - a handbook], Essen 2005, p. 355
15. Compare Peters, O.H.: Schleswig-Holstein hat sich als Versteck für NS-Verbrecher bewährt: Für Erich Waldemar Krause wurde sogar gelogen [Schleswig Holstein has proven a safe haven for Nazi criminals: They even lied for Erich Waldemar Krause], in: ISHZ 23, November 1992, pp. 61f.; and Krauses: Klemp ibid. (fn. 11), p. 397.
16. Compare the apologetic presentation by Wehner, B.: Dem Täter auf der Spur. Die Geschichte der deutschen Kriminalpolizei [On the trail of the perpetrator: The history of Germany's Crime Police], Bergisch Gladbach 1983
17. Zirpins, W.: Die Entwicklung der polizeilichen Verbrechensbekämpfung in Deutschland [The development of the police fight against crime in Germany], in: Taschenbuch für Kriminalisten [Pocket book for criminalists], vol. 5, Hamburg 1955, p. 292; the same description can be found in Harnischmacher, R.; Semerak, A.: Deutsche Polizeigeschichte. Eine allgemeine Einführung in die Grundlagen [German police history. A general introduction to the basics], Stuttgart 1986.