Hitler's First Victims Read online

  “Many fear to talk because a remark critical of the Nazis might send one to Dachau, the great concentration camp for political prisoners near Munich,” a New York Times correspondent reported that spring. “Munich’s quiet is entirely too intense to be natural.” In the Hofbräuhaus, where the halls usually “reverberated with the roar of a vast multitude,” a subdued and tense atmosphere prevailed. It reminded the reporter of the “hushed peace” on the streets of Moscow. “The same serious hushed manner is everywhere,” the Times noted, “even in private homes.” The same could be said of the second-floor corridors at Prielmayrstrasse 5, where the subtle menace of deputy prosecutor Heigl and his swastika pin was omnipresent.

  Most of Hartinger’s colleagues had gone home for the day by the time the call came from the Dachau police. Hartinger rang Dr. Flamm’s office, only to be told that he too had already departed. Hartinger called Flamm at home, informed him of the Paragraph 159 death, and instructed him to drive immediately to the camp. Hartinger then asked a fellow Munich II prosecutor, Dr. Lachenbauer, who was still in the office and, like Flamm, had his own car, to drive him to Dachau. Within the hour, the investigators were assembled at the camp. The shooting victim was a twenty-eight-year-old attorney from Munich, Alfred Strauss. He had allegedly attempted to escape while being escorted by the camp guards on a walk near a swimming area for the camp personnel that was under construction near the gravel pit outside the wire compound.

  Strauss had been taken into protective custody on March 27 for “unethical exercise of his profession,” though rumor had it that his detention had been personally ordered as an “act of revenge” by Hans Frank, with whom Strauss had had repeated courtroom confrontations. Strauss’s detention had been reviewed on April 21, and even though there was no evidence of a “criminal act,” he was retained, and on May 11 transferred to Dachau.

  Hartinger and his team were led beyond the wire compound to the pit. Strauss lay crumpled on the ground, a pool of fresh blood forming a crescent around his head from the single bullet wound that had brought him down. He was a young, fragile man who reminded Hartinger of Benario. Johann Kantschuster, the SS guard who had shot Strauss, was on hand. Kantschuster was large, tall, and handsome, probably the same age as Strauss, but with a demeanor that struck Hartinger immediately. “I remember especially well that he had the expression of a depraved individual,” Hartinger recalled. Flamm agreed. “We were both of the opinion that his face belonged in a police album of criminals.” Kantschuster explained to Hartinger that Dr. Nürnbergk had instructed him to take Strauss for an evening walk. The two men had exited the wire compound and were approaching the gravel pit when suddenly Strauss bolted, Kantschuster said. Kantschuster shouted for him to stop, as regulations required, then drew his pistol and fired two shots. Kantschuster estimated that Strauss was eight meters away when he fell.

  As Hartinger studied the slain young man and the blood-soaked soil, he was troubled not only by Kantschuster’s impeccable aim, but also by the incongruous circumstances. Strauss was dressed in a shirt and trousers but with only one sock and leather slippers with open backs. It struck Hartinger as curious that a man would go for a walk in slippers, especially with only one sock. In addition to the bullets in the back of his head, Strauss also had a wound on the back of his bare foot. Hartinger decided to have Flamm conduct a forensic examination. “Above all I wanted to know whether the corpse showed other signs of abuse,” Hartinger said.

  Hartinger ordered the SS guards to carry Strauss back to the camp, where he was placed in an empty shed and stripped of his clothing. Flamm set to work with his usual precision. Beyond the wound on the foot, he found lacerations across Strauss’s back. His buttocks were bandaged to cover a deep gash.

  Hartinger ordered an autopsy, which Flamm conducted the following morning. The cause of death was readily evident: “paralysis of the brain” as a result of one bullet that had passed through Strauss’s skull and another that had lodged in the right side of his skull. More revealing was the trajectory of the bullet. Flamm determined the bullet had been fired “at an angle from the lower back skull to the upper right” in the style of an execution. Unable to determine the exact distance of the shooting, Flamm took tissue samples for further “chemical and microscopic analysis.”

  For the past six weeks, Hartinger had sought and failed to meet the Wintersberger standard, not with the shooting of Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns, nor with the hanging of Hunglinger or the slashed wrists of Dressel. Not even the corridor murder of Götz had moved Wintersberger to action. But finally, a week after the alleged escape attempts by Schloss and Hausmann and a day after the shooting of Strauss, the chief prosecutor had begun to show interest in this isolated and tortured corner of his jurisdiction.

  “It was sometime in May or June 1933 that rumors were finding their way into the open that detainees in the Dachau Concentration Camp were being shot,” Wintersberger remembered. “SS guards from the camp had evidently not been keeping as tight-lipped as they should have in local establishments in Dachau. In my opinion it was the fact that stories of these killings in the Dachau Concentration Camp were finding their way into the public that as of this point the camp administration began reporting the deaths to the prosecutor’s office.” A day after the Strauss shooting, word came that another detainee, Karl Lehrburger, had been shot during an alleged assault on an SS man. This time Wintersberger decided to take matters into his own hands. He arrived at the concentration camp with the full authority of the Munich II prosecutor’s office, and, of course, in the company of Dr. Flamm. Wintersberger and Flamm were led to the Arrest Bunker, where Lehrburger, a twenty-eight-year-old communist from Nuremberg, had been shot. Hans Steinbrenner claimed that the detainee had attacked him with a table knife during a routine inspection of the detention cells. Lehrburger’s corpse had already been removed, but traces of the shooting were very much in evidence. The walls were spattered with fresh blood from the exit wound. A plate-size puddle of blood glistened on the concrete floor where Lehrburger had fallen.

  Wintersberger was given the report and Steinbrenner’s deposition prepared by the camp administrator, Josef Mutzbauer. According to the Mutzbauer protocol, Steinbrenner had entered Lehrburger’s cell and found the detainee trying to hide a letter in a water pitcher. When Steinbrenner attempted to look into the pitcher, Lehrburger allegedly seized his bread knife and attacked him. Steinbrenner pulled his pistol and fired a single shot. It caught Lehrburger square in the forehead. Lehrburger collapsed to the floor. In compliance with regulations, Steinbrenner went immediately to the commandant’s office to report the incident to Wäckerle, who in turn instructed him to provide a deposition to Mutzbauer.

  Dr. Flamm’s forensic examination confirmed that the death had been caused by a single bullet fired at close quarters: between ten and twenty centimeters. Lehrburger’s corpse showed no signs of abuse. Flamm saw no need for an autopsy. Wintersberger and Flamm departed the facility as crisply as they had come.

  That evening, toward eight o’clock, Steinbrenner went to see Anton Schöberl, who kept the “reporting sheet” of detainees in the Arrest Bunker. “You can strike Lehrburger from the list,” Steinbrenner said. “He died today. I shot the sow Jew. He tried to attack me.” Schöberl remembered Steinbrenner, an SS man who prided himself on his capacity for atrocity, looking “disturbed.” Indeed, Steinbrenner had spent the past two days visited by uncharacteristic hesitation and doubt. He had lashed and pummeled detainees into unconsciousness, but until that point he had never killed a man with the clear-eyed, unmitigated intent required by a pistol shot to the head. On the same day that Hilmar Wäckerle had dispatched Kantschuster to shoot Strauss, he had called Steinbrenner into his office and instructed him to kill Lehrburger. Agents of the Nuremberg political police had visited the camp and informed Wäckerle that Lehrburger, who had arrived on the same transport as Strauss and had somehow slipped through the screening process, was a Jew. Lehrburger had tried to hide in a top-tier bu
nk in his barracks hoping not to be recognized by the visitors from Nuremberg, but had nonetheless been discovered and dispatched to the Arrest Bunker. Now Wäckerle wanted him dead.

  Steinbrenner knew that the commandant brooked no opposition. Wäckerle had dismissed Anton Vogel when he refused an order to shoot Strauss. “I refused and explained that I was here as a manager,” Vogel recalled, “and if he needed an executioner, he had better look for someone else.” Wäckerle told Steinbrenner that Lehrburger was a Soviet Russian agent who had been trained in bacteriological warfare at the Cheka school in Russia. “It was suspected that there was a second or third similar agent who had not been apprehended whom they did not want to have alerted through a trial,” Steinbrenner later recalled, “and in addition they did not want to cause disquiet in the general public. It was therefore necessary to have him shot immediately.”

  The next morning, Erspenmüller came to see Steinbrenner. He wanted to know why Steinbrenner had not carried out Wäckerle’s order. Steinbrenner confessed that he had never actually killed a man before. He did not know how. “There is nothing easier,” Erspenmüller told him. He laid out the story involving tearing up a letter, the table knife, and the supposed attack. “When the investigators come,” he continued, “tell them that while you were inspecting the cell you noticed that Lehrburger put something in his jug and when you leaned over to look inside you saw that Lehrburger had a knife in his hand and wanted to stab you, at which point you shot in self-defense.”

  Erspenmüller reminded Steinbrenner of the SS oath he had sworn to blind obedience—quoted verbatim by Warren Farr to Sir Geoffrey Lawrence twelve years later in Nuremberg—and ordered him to carry out orders as instructed. Steinbrenner despaired. He knew that another SS man had been beaten for disobedience but still could not bring himself to shoot Lehrburger.

  That evening, around five o’clock, Erspenmüller confronted Steinbrenner yet again. This time he screamed. He ordered Steinbrenner to shoot Lehrburger immediately. If he did not obey, Erspenmüller threatened, it would be his turn. Steinbrenner steeled himself. He marched to the Arrest Bunker, down the narrow corridor, unlocked Lehrburger’s door, and burst into the cell. Lehrburger rose as Steinbrenner entered. Steinbrenner raised his pistol and shot his victim in the middle of the forehead. Lehrburger collapsed without a word. Steinbrenner stared at him for a moment. There was no movement. He then arranged the room in accordance with Erspenmüller’s suggestions, closed the cell door, and marched to the commandant’s office to inform Wäckerle that his orders had been carried out as instructed.

  Wäckerle told Steinbrenner that he could expect to be questioned either by a prosecutor or by the Mordkommission. He should simply repeat what Erspenmüller had told him to say. Steinbrenner provided a deposition to Mutzbauer, who passed it on to Wintersberger.

  Wintersberger saw no ground for further investigation. Lehrburger was dead and there were no witnesses. The inspection of the cell and Dr. Flamm’s examination did not contradict the testimony provided by Steinbrenner. As in the case of Götz, the SS testimony could not be refuted.

  The next day, a report arrived that yet another Dachau detainee, Sebastian Nefzger, had committed suicide in his cell in the Arrest Bunker. The fifty-three-year-old salesman from Munich had been delivered to Dachau on May 11, along with Hans Beimler and the six spies that Reinhard Heydrich had ferreted out of the police files. The one-page report from Mutzbauer provided the precise circumstances of Nefzger’s reported suicide:

  In accordance with the instruction of May 26, 1933, of the concentration camp commandant, I report the following:

  In the night of May 25 to 26, 1933, Nefzger committed suicide in his cell by slitting the artery on his left wrist.

  At 5:40 in the morning on May 26, 1933, while making their rounds, Corporal Winhard and SS guard Steinbrenner found Nefzger lying dead on the floor of his cell.

  On viewing the corpse I was able to determine that Nefzger first tried to commit suicide by hanging himself, which was evidenced by the strangulation marks on his neck. Nefzger used the leather strap from his artificial leg, which appeared to have torn due to his weight. It seems that Nefzger then, as already mentioned, slashed his wrist.

  Since the camp doctor and forensic expert Dr. Nürnbergk determined that the cause of death was clearly evident, the authorities were not notified.

  It was as clear a violation of the Criminal Procedure Code as Hartinger could have imagined. Not only had the body been removed but the administration had waited forty-eight hours before reporting the incident.

  The following day, Dr. Nürnbergk confirmed the incident in a six-line medical report. “The forensic examination of the detainee Nefzger, Sebastian, salesman in Munich, Schommerstrasse 17, born January 10, 1900, in Munich, Catholic, married. It was determined that there were no outside persons involved in his death,” Dr. Nürnbergk recorded. “It is without question that the death resulted from loss of blood caused by the slicing of the artery on the left hand.” Hartinger called Dr. Flamm and instructed him to conduct his own forensic examination.

  The next morning at nine o’clock, Flamm’s phone rang. It was Dr. Nürnbergk wanting to know why a forensic examination was being requested when he had already provided a signed statement. Flamm said he was simply acting on instructions from the prosecutor’s office. If Nürnbergk wanted to know why Flamm was being sent, he should talk to Hartinger.

  Flamm then set off to Dachau in his car. Nürnbergk was waiting for him when he arrived. He was visibly unsettled. He again wanted to know why Flamm was conducting a forensic examination when he had already provided a report and it was clear that death was due to suicide. Flamm repeated that he was simply following orders. Flamm had Nefzger’s corpse photographed frontally, then rolled over and photographed from behind, recording the deep pattern of lacerations that covered the entire back as if from some primitive induction rite. Flamm also had close-up photographs taken of the slashed wrist, with the tendons and tissue clearly visible and still moist with blood.

  Flamm set to work. He noted a man “of powerful build and well fed” but with a mercilessly abused body with lacerations across the back, buttocks, and legs, traces of dried blood around his lips, and strangulation marks around the neck. In particular, he noted “a gash on the left hand with a deep gaping wound that sliced the tissue and left three slices in the bone.” It struck Flamm as unusual that a man committing suicide would slash his wrist hard enough three times to score the bone. By 2 p.m., Flamm had completed his forensic examination and had determined that it would be necessary to conduct a full autopsy the next day.

  As Flamm prepared to leave, Nürnbergk stopped him. He said he had a question. He had just learned that Jewish burial rituals provided for Jews to conduct their own medical examinations of the deceased. Nürnbergk mentioned the case of a Jew, Wilhelm Aron, who had died of “heart failure” and for whom he had issued the death certificate. Nürnbergk said that his medical opinion had sufficed in that case. Munich II had simply placed Aron in a sealed coffin and sent it back to his family in Bamberg. Nürnbergk now wondered whether there was any way to prevent the delivery of the bodies to Jewish families or prevent them from opening the coffin.

  On Monday afternoon, Flamm and three other Hartinger colleagues met with Mutzbauer, who told them he had seen Nefzger in Cell 4 lying on his back on the floor in a pool of blood. The table knife was lying nearby, smeared with blood. Nefzger’s artificial leg was also lying on the floor. On the right wall, hanging from a hook three or so meters above the floor, were the straps from his artificial leg. The straps were torn in half, apparent evidence of a failed attempt to hang himself.

  Flamm commenced with his autopsy at four o’clock, again noting the unusual incisions on the bone. It was typical in such cases for there to be one or more exploratory incisions as the person tested for veins and arteries to slice, but it was highly unusual for a person to slash his wrist with three consecutive incisions with such force. More suspicious stil
l was the inordinate amount of blood that Flamm discovered when he examined Nefzger’s skull. “The left temporal side is saturated to a great extent with dark clotted blood,” Flamm recorded. “The right temporal muscle is full of blood.” When Flamm removed Nefzger’s skull he also found it saturated with blood. “After removing the cranium including the upper half of the brain, the lining of the brain was shiny blue,” Flamm noted. “The vessels full, in the large artery a great deal of dark fluid and freely flowing blood.” This was not the tissue of a man who had bled to death.

  Flamm continued to work through Nefzger’s body, organ by organ, limb by limb. Nearly three hours later, he had finished. His conclusions were definitive:

  I. The results of the autopsy exclude as the cause of death bleeding from the gash on the left arm.

  II. The gash on the left wrist shows three cuts into the bone. There are no test cuts. These findings speak against the assumption that this was a self-inflicted wound.

  III. Suffocation appears to be the cause of death. The cause of suffocation could be either from choking or strangulation. The marks on the neck do not correspond to what one usually finds in the case of hanging deaths.

  Dr. Flamm completed his autopsy at 6:30 that evening and returned to Munich. His thirty-page, ninety-eight-point autopsy report, coupled with the Mutzbauer memorandum and the Nürnbergk forensic examination, recounted a macabre nocturnal incident: Two SS men mercilessly lash a crippled war veteran into near unconsciousness, strangle him to death, tie his own prosthetic straps around the corpse’s neck, hang the straps from a nail in the wall, have the straps tear under the dead man’s weight with the body tumbling to the floor, slash the man’s wrist with a bread knife to feign suicide, close the cell door and lock it, only to open it a few hours later to “discover” a victim of a nighttime suicide.