Hitler's First Victims Read online

  IN THE QUIET HOURS of the evening when his colleagues had left for the day, Hartinger stayed behind, and with a single trusted colleague, whose name he never revealed, he began to register the crimes of this strange and troubled spring that had such disturbing resonances with that similarly troubled spring of 1919 when the judicial system had faltered, and with it the entire country, plunging Germany into a national bloodbath that left its citizens, as Emil Gumbel had noted, barely able to recognize themselves amid the atrocity and bloodshed. Hartinger believed that a system as abusive as the Nazi regime could not long endure. As evidence vanished, he was determined to register the criminal events in the conviction that the perpetrators would ultimately be brought to justice.

  With characteristic clarity and precision, Hartinger began chronicling the Dachau Concentration Camp killings. “On April 12, 1933, the student Arthur Kahn from Nuremberg, the political economist Dr. Rudolf Benario from Fürth, and the salesman Ernst Goldmann from Fürth were killed by pistol shots from the guards, SS man Hans Bürner, SS man Max Schmidt, and SS lieutenant Robert Erspenmüller,” Hartinger dictated as his assistant typed. “In addition, the salesman Erwin Kahn from Munich was so severely wounded from pistol shots that he died on April 16, 1933.” Hartinger went on to note that Benario, Goldmann, and Erwin Kahn “lay dead or seriously wounded in the immediate vicinity of their work area.” Arthur Kahn was found lying “ca. eighty meters from the work area in the woods.” Hartinger noted that the three SS men testified that they had shot because three of the men were “attempting to escape,” and that the fourth man, Erwin Kahn, “ran into the line of fire.”

  In recording the observations by the three guards, Hartinger employed a German grammatical device known as indirect discourse, which attributes statements to a particular person while distancing the author from the veracity of the statements. Hartinger offered neither opinion nor analysis. He stated the evidence as it stood. He made no reference to the fact that the four victims were Jewish.

  Hartinger was equally clinical in recording the Dressel suicide. He observed that Dressel was found in his cell “dead with wrists slashed” with “intrusions in [the] skin” on his back, thighs, and buttocks “that could be traced back to beatings.”

  Hartinger did the same with Josef Götz, recounting not only SS man Wicklmayr’s testimony, once again in indirect discourse, but also including the file numbers of the testimony, G 766/33, and citing the Flamm forensic examination—BLR.41—along with an observation of ancillary abuse. “Aside from the fatal bullet wound, a gash-like wound, 5 by 1 cm. wide, running horizontally across the left frontal lobe and covered by a scab, was discovered just behind the hairline,” he observed. “The cause of the wound could not be determined as of yet.”

  Hartinger may have been losing faith in the potential of the current judicial system, but he retained confidence in the strength of hard forensic evidence as well as in the enduring and transcendent power of justice. He did not realize, however, that Wäckerle himself was about to deliver the incontrovertible and incriminating evidence he was seeking.

  12

  Evidence of Evil

  A WEEK AFTER Willy Aron’s death, Hartinger received a report forwarded to Munich II by Hilmar Wäckerle describing the suicide of a fifty-three-year-old detainee named Louis Schloss, who apparently had hanged himself the previous afternoon in his cell in the Arrest Bunker. In compliance with Paragraph 159 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Wäckerle had reported the incident to the local gendarmerie, which in turn had informed the Munich II prosecutor’s office. The local police chief, Captain Schelskorn, had inspected the scene of the death and written a formal report. Wäckerle was now forwarding the report to Munich II. The report of the incident, typed on concentration camp letterhead and including technical details such as the victim’s profession and date of birth, was brief and to the point:

  Schloss was a detainee in the concentration camp Dachau. Because he was unwilling to work, he was placed in solitary detention. On the 16th of May 1933 at 13h, SS officer Unterhuber checked on Schloss for the last time in his cell. The camp administrator, Vogl [sic], entered Schloss’s cell on the same day at 14h30, and found him hanged and already dead. Schloss had tied his suspenders around his neck, attached the noose to a hook on the wall, and thus ended his life. The judiciary was notified by an officer at the Police Station Dachau.

  It was noted that Schloss was “of Israeli religion.” The report was signed by Captain Schelskorn, and accompanied by a brief note signed by Wäckerle.

  The previous evening, when news of the incident arrived, Hartinger had dispatched Dr. Flamm along with Judge Meyer and Secretary Brücklmeier to investigate the matter. They had departed Munich at 6:30 sharp and arrived at the entrance to the camp in the falling light of early evening sometime around seven o’clock. The three men were taken to the Arrest Bunker, where they were met by Vogel, who took them to Cell 4. As Vogel opened the cell door, they were witness to a horrific scene. A middle-aged man with short dark blond hair was dangling by a pair of suspenders a few inches over a bench in the corner. He was wearing a white flannel shirt, a gray-and-black-striped pair of cloth trousers, and gray-and-green-striped socks with brown slippers. Schloss was half sitting on the bench, a noose around his neck. It was an odd, awkward posture, even in death. He was still wearing his eyeglasses.

  Wäckerle was present and provided the identical account he affirmed in the brief report to Munich II. Camp physician Dr. Nürnbergk was there as well. He explained to Flamm that he had administered “camphor and a cardial injection” in an attempt to revive Schloss but that it had been in vain. Considering the circumstances, however, it seemed curious that Dr. Nürnbergk would not have removed the noose from around a man’s neck before attempting to revive him.

  Flamm had Schloss removed from his suspenders. “I was the one who cut the Jew Schloss loose,” Karl Kübler recalled. “His neck was in a noose so tight that I could not open it and had to cut it off.” Flamm had the corpse stripped, then laid out on the bunk for a forensic examination. Schloss’s skin was cool but his body was still pliable; rigor mortis had yet to set in. Flamm noticed a few bruises over the eyes and some dried blood in the nostrils, and a bit of blood on the lips. Schloss’s neck bore a single two-centimeter-wide track from the hanging. Flamm also found a seven-centimeter-long slash across his chest, and several bruises. “On the glans of the penis a scab the size of one penny,” Flamm noted. The corpse was rolled onto its stomach. “The skin of his entire back from the shoulders to the buttocks is dark purple with a tint of red with numerous dried-up dark blue lashing streaks,” Flamm recorded in his notes, “in particular across the right shoulder blade, the right loin, and the right buttock.” The skin in the lower part between the shoulder blades was “dark purple” from lashing. The backs of both arms bore similar signs of abuse. It was as if the man had been subjected to torture. It was a horrific sight.

  After filing his report, which included a sketch of Schloss hanging in his cell, Flamm went to see Hartinger. “Whether the cause of death was hanging or whether the corpse was hanged later cannot be determined by examining the corpse,” Flamm explained to him. “Due to the extensive bruising, death by a fat embolism seems plausible.”

  Flamm had decided to conduct an autopsy, but Dr. Nürnbergk objected. The circumstances made it clear the man had hanged himself, he said. Flamm disregarded the objection. He ordered that Schloss’s corpse be removed to the viewing hall at the Dachau town cemetery for an autopsy. He had also requested photographs.

  That afternoon, May 17, Flamm, Meyer, and Brücklmeier drove to the cemetery, where Schloss’s corpse was waiting for them on a table in the viewing hall. Two attendants stood nearby. Frontal photographs were taken. He was rolled over and his lacerated back was also photographed. Dr. Flamm then set to work. It was exactly three o’clock. For the next three hours, he worked his way through Schloss’s body, cutting through the skin and deep into his tissue and organs, working patiently, sy
stematically, through the still, stiff corpse. He removed samples from Schloss’s neck, vital organs, part of his brain, his liver, his spleen, and his kidneys, as well as a portion of skin with the “marks from hanging on the neck,” to send to a laboratory for microscopic analysis.

  Just as Flamm finished, word came that there had been yet another death in Dachau. Ten minutes later, Flamm, Meyer, and Brücklmeier were back at the concentration camp.

  The three men were met by Max Winkler, of the state police, and Karl Ehmann, the guard who said he had shot a detainee during a failed escape attempt earlier that day. The victim was Leonhard Hausmann, a thirty-one-year-old communist town council member from Augsburg, who had clashed the previous August with Ehmann. Ehmann was notorious for his excessive drinking and violent behavior. When Ehmann shot the wife of a local communist through a bedroom window, Hausmann distributed Ehmann’s picture to local communists. Nine months later, Hausmann was in Ehmann’s hands.

  Ehmann explained that Hausmann had left the wire enclosure with a work detail of fifty detainees that morning at about 7:15, accompanied by four SS guards. “Guards were standing around the area where they were working,” Ehmann said. “I personally was moving around among the detainees, instructing them on their various duties.” Ehmann had instructed Hausmann and another detainee to dig up saplings and carry them to another area. Around 10:30, Ehmann said he noticed that Hausmann was no longer there. Suddenly he saw a man wearing prison garb in a ducking posture running through the trees toward the gravel pit. Ehmann ran after him and started shouting for him to stop. The man kept going. Ehmann said, “He just glanced back at me once while running. That is when I, as is stated in the camp rules, drew my .8 pistol and, without aiming, fired at the fleeing man.” Hausmann collapsed instantly “without making a sound. When I got to him, he gave one short, deep gasp,” Ehmann noted. “I thought he was dead.” Ehmann told the guards to get the other detainees back into the camp and rushed to report to police captain Winkler.

  Ehmann could not recall the exact position from which he had shot Hausmann. He estimated it to have been at a distance of ten to twelve meters but it did not surprise him that the bullet found its mark. “In the war I was with the 2. Uhlan cavalry regiment and a sharpshooter in my unit,” Ehmann explained. “I am the son of a huntsman and thus I know how to handle a gun like that. That is also why it didn’t take long for me to take aim before I shot the fugitive in the back.”

  Winkler confirmed Ehmann’s account. He knew Ehmann to be a calm and responsible man. Winkler recalled that Ehmann had arrived at his office at around 11 a.m. to report that he had shot an escaping detainee. Winkler had Ehmann describe the circumstances. Winkler informed Wäckerle of the incident, then accompanied Ehmann to the scene of the shooting. “The corpse had obviously not been touched,” Winkler noted. “I held the dead man’s hand. It was still warm.” Winkler ordered a guard to stand watch over the body until the police arrived. “The guards follow specific regulations for the use of their weapons,” Winkler reminded the investigation team. “Within these regulations, the guard must take action in the case of an escape attempt and use his firearm,” he said. “The guards as well as the prisoners are familiar with these regulations.” Captain Winkler was certain that SS guard Ehmann was just doing his duty.

  Another SS man, twenty-seven-year-old Ludwig Wieland, was witness to the shooting and confirmed Ehmann’s account as well. Wieland was forty or fifty meters away from Ehmann, watching his detainees, when the incident occurred. He heard Ehmann shouting, then he heard the shooting of a pistol. Then Ehmann came to him and told him to get his prisoners back into the camp immediately.

  “The terrain on which Hausmann was working is very difficult to oversee due to shrubs, undergrowth, and a stand of young firs,” Wieland said. He knew the terrain well. “This is what must have inspired Hausmann to believe his escape would be successful. If the head guard Ehmann had not been so diligent and attentive, Hausmann would surely have succeeded in fleeing.” Wäckerle, too, confirmed Ehmann’s account. He noted the particular circumstances around the gravel pit that made it especially vulnerable to escape.

  “Prosecutor Hartinger ordered that a sketch of the scene of the shooting had to be made,” Johann Bielmeier, chief of the Dachau police, recorded in his memorandum of the incident. “It is noted that a detailed report of the shooting of Hausmann was prepared by the department of the political police and submitted to the district court in Dachau.” The appended pencil map included Wäckerle’s headquarters and two adjacent buildings, with the dense forest and gravel pit beyond. “Since the forest has been left untouched for fifteen years and has overgrown completely, it would have been exceedingly easy for Hausmann to escape into the brush,” Bielmeier observed. “If Hausmann had reached the gravel pit that is indicated on the sketch, or if he had been able to reach the forest opposite to him, his escape would surely have been successful.” Bielmeier went on to note that the woods led down to the Amper River, and the only thing stopping Hausmann at that point would have been “some very faulty old barbed wire” that was left over from the time of the munitions factory.

  According to the forensic examination conducted by Flamm, Hausmann was wearing a blue shirt that was saturated with blood from a chest wound. A puddle of blood “the size of a plate” was “still moist on the ground.” Hausmann’s eyes were half open. His right side and neck were smeared with “partly dry and partially still liquid blood,” Flamm noted. On the back was a “jagged opening of 12 mm. in diameter with very ragged edges.” And on the front of the chest “a circular opening of 6 mm. in diameter surrounded by a bluish-black edge.” He found no other “injuries on the body.” There was no need for an autopsy. The cause of death was clear: “a shot through the left chest cavity. The bullet entered the back at the height of the tenth vertebra and exited in the front at the height of the sixth rib,” Flamm concluded. “Based on the trajectory of the bullet, it can be assumed that the heart was damaged, leading to internal bleeding in the left chest cavity.” The examination confirmed Ehmann’s account except, as Flamm observed in a handwritten note, “Based on the nature of the bullet hole in the overalls, the shot must have been fired at less than one meter distance.” Flamm took tissue samples for evaluation.

  Dr. Merkel in the forensics laboratory confirmed Flamm’s findings of a close-range shooting, but with greater precision. The tissue samples indicated that Ehmann had fired his gun from a distance of less than three inches. Hausmann had not been shot fleeing; he had been executed.

  In those same days, Flamm also delivered the forensic evidence Hartinger had been seeking in the case of Louis Schloss. “The autopsy has shown that the cause of death could not have been through hanging,” Flamm reported, noting the extensive contusions and the destruction of the fatty tissue. “This is consistent with death by an embolism.” In brief, Schloss had been beaten to death, then placed in a noose fashioned from his own suspenders and hanged from a nail on the wall of his cell. Hartinger now had incontrovertible forensic proof of homicide in two cases. After six weeks of frustrated efforts, he had criminal evidence that met the Wintersberger standard.

  Under Article 234 of the German criminal code, Hartinger was now in a position to prosecute Ehmann for homicide. More important still, Hartinger also possessed evidence implicating Wäckerle and Nürnbergk. The two men had violated their Paragraph 161 obligations of the Criminal Procedure Code requiring them to cooperate “fully with the prosecutor” and “not obscure any facts relating to an investigation.” He knew it would be difficult to convince Wintersberger to issue murder indictments against unidentified perpetrators, but if Hartinger could implicate Wäckerle and the senior SS staff, he could perhaps demonstrate a pattern of abuse within the facility, which he felt could stand as a collective indictment of the concentration camp’s entire SS administration. Given Munich II’s growing visibility because of the presence of the concentration camp in its jurisdiction, a Paragraph 159 death in Dachau possessed
potential for strong interest by the press, including the international press. “I had one hope in particular, namely, that the Nazi officials would have been forced by Hindenburg and Ritter von Epp, and Gürtner [the former Bavarian minister of justice and the Reich justice minister at that time], as well as a few of the less rabid Nazis, to have the SS removed from the camp and replaced by regular police or a military unit.”

  Hartinger’s timing could not have been more opportune. Hitler had just suffered a diplomatic fiasco in London. He was in the midst of highly sensitive negotiations with Rome. The Reich’s banker, Hjalmar Schacht, was helping turn the tide of public opinion in America. “Basically, I was intent on making the public aware of what was going on in the camp, especially abroad,” Hartinger later said. He knew the Nazis still had “a certain degree of respect” for foreign opinion, if for no other reason than economic necessity.

  PART III

  GUILTY

  13

  Presidential Powers

  A PLEASANT WEEK at the end of May with summerlike temperatures brought Dachau residents the cheering news that their town was considered the “most famous place in Germany.”

  “Dachau has been known and talked about for many reasons,” the Dachauer Zeitung reported on May 23. “Dachau residents are simple peasant people who fiercely hold to their traditions; the distinctive farmer’s garb and the women’s embroidered dresses are well known.” And then, of course, there were “all the luminaries in the firmament of art.” The Dachauer counted among their number the German impressionist Max Liebermann, the early expressionist Lovis Corinth, and the pioneering modernist Emil Nolde. Most famous was Carl Spitzweg, the legendary nineteenth-century master of the quaint and cozy. Copies of his painting The Bookworm, depicting a befuddled old man on a wooden stepladder in the Dachau palace library, graced the walls of bibliophiles the world over. And then there was the munitions factory that in its day was “one of the largest enterprises” in Bavaria.