Hitler's First Victims Read online

  In January 1984, a few months after his ninety-first birthday, Hartinger received a letter from Bavaria’s minister of justice asking him to commit his recollections to record as part of a general history the state was preparing. This time, Hartinger agreed. He was willing to reveal everything he could remember, but he was hesitant to pass judgment. “The human being is complicated,” he observed, “and in complicated times this can lead to confusion.” He faulted Hans Frank for having been complicit in atrocities he could have prevented. “Like the generals who served Hitler, he was powerless in the face of these criminals,” Hartinger observed. “But just because one is without power does not mean one needs to be without courage and ultimately without character. Shouldn’t one try to find some way to make a difference, even in such hopeless circumstances, without necessarily jeopardizing one’s life?”

  Hartinger reflected in particular on the flawed character of two personal associates from those years. “Until now I have spared two men whom I regarded highly, but who probably would not have stayed employed after the war, if I had told everything,” he said in justifying his four decades of silence. “In other words, I would probably have sacrificed two otherwise flawless colleagues to the Nazi moloch after the fact.”

  Just as Hartinger did not want to commit an injustice against others for transgressions of the human spirit by speaking during their lifetime, now he did not wish to do injustice to history through continued silence. The two men were now dead. No harm could be done to their careers. He was now prepared to provide details as candidly as he could and as his memory would permit at his age. The first man was Anton Heigl. The second was Karl Wintersberger.

  The latter’s refusal to sign Hartinger’s proposed indictment had been, as Hartinger said, one of the greatest surprises of his life. Now, nearly a half century later, the then ninety-year-old Hartinger was still trying to comprehend the moment. “It is possible that the chief prosecutor added, after refusing to sign, ‘You’ll need to sign that yourself.’ ” Hartinger could not recall for certain. “I suppose this is because I left immediately even though it would have been natural to point out that he had recently expressed no objection to the indictment.” Still, Hartinger wanted to accord his former superior, long since dead, the benefit of the doubt. “I can’t help but believe that Wintersberger was simply overwhelmed,” he speculated. “What was wrong with him on June 1 and 2, 1933? Normally he wasn’t like that. Why didn’t he speak with me on either of these two days? Why didn’t he tell me about the meeting with Himmler?” Hartinger ultimately ascribed Wintersberger’s refusal to sign to his cautious nature. “I wanted to act rashly, because I felt it was a matter of urgency,” Hartinger said of the June 1 indictments. “Others wanted to wait and took refuge in holding meetings.”

  Wintersberger’s postwar judicial review, like Hartinger’s, recognized his courageous efforts to confront early Nazi atrocity, but Wintersberger’s personnel file in the Bavarian State Archives was less forgiving. In a letter from November 1934, Wintersberger touted his long-standing service to the Nazi movement. He denounced as “libelous” the depiction of his aggressive 1924 prosecution of the Assault Troop Hitler. Instead, he recalled his sympathy for the “national, youthful enthusiasm” of the forty defendants. He asserted that during the trial he argued that the defendants might have been “wrong in the legality of their actions,” but they had believed they were acting within the law. He went on to recount his decade-long prosecution of communists, Social Democrats, and critics of Adolf Hitler. He boasted that in one case the left-wing Münchner Post had criticized “my ‘national socialist’ leanings exhibited during the trial.”

  Wintersberger also underscored his particular service to Hitler. When a journalist, Werner Abel, accused Hitler of funding the Nazi movement with foreign capital, Wintersberger delivered exculpatory evidence for the Nazi leader. “It is thanks to my thorough investigation that Abel was convicted of libel,” he observed. (Abel was sentenced to three years in prison and was eventually transferred to Dachau, where, just before completing his three-year sentence, he allegedly hanged himself.) Wintersberger concluded his five-page missive with a crisp “Sieg Heil!” Like most Germans of the era, he gradually accommodated himself to the new regime.

  There remained for Hartinger one figure of sterling character whose memory he retained with near reverence. “Finally I need to fulfill a duty of piety,” Hartinger wrote in closing. “In my accounts I mentioned the name of the forensic physician Dr. Flamm once. If I have spoken about the incidents that occurred at Dachau during his time in office, the mere mentioning of his name does not do him justice. Without Flamm I would not have stood a chance. He—one simply has to say it this way—sacrificed himself in a way that was exemplary for any forensic doctor.” Sitting in his home in Amberg on that Saturday afternoon in the deep winter of 1984, Hartinger could recall vividly those moments when he and Flamm stood with Wäckerle and Steinbrenner and Nürnbergk over the corpses of those first victims. “When I think about the hatred with which the SS men glared at him while [he was] examining the corpses and performing autopsies,” he wrote, “I still get chills down my spine.” Flamm never flinched. He never relented. “For me Flamm was a model of behavior,” Hartinger said.

  On May 3, 1934, Eicke had dispatched a stern missive to Wintersberger expressing, “in the form of the sharpest protest possible,” his objections to Flamm’s continued intrusions. It surprised Eicke that there were still individuals like Flamm even after the “synchronization” of the legal system. He suspected Flamm of motives that were not in alignment with the government. He also said he was making Himmler himself aware of Flamm’s intrusions. Wintersberger stood his ground in Flamm’s defense and alerted the ministry of justice to Eicke’s letter. “It contains such serious, insulting attacks and veiled threats against Court Medical Examiner Dr. Flamm,” Wintersberger wrote, “that the engagement of higher authorities is urgently needed.” That spring, Flamm was nearly killed when hidden explosives were detonated in a shed where he was supposed to undertake a forensic examination.

  In July, the SS attempted to kill Flamm again, this time in his Munich apartment. “It was only thanks to the circumstance that on the night in question, he was not in his Munich apartment but with his mother in Augsburg,” Friedrich Döbig recalled; “otherwise he too would have fallen victim to the SS.” On July 20, 1934, Flamm was transferred from Munich II and assigned as a physician to the Stadelheim penitentiary. Four months later he was dead. “He died, as far as I ever learned, under fairly questionable circumstances,” Hartinger recalled. “It was rumored that the SS was not completely innocent in this affair.” By then, there was no one left with the courage or determination to investigate.

  HARTINGER COMPLETED HIS MEMOIRS on February 4, 1984. He passed away six months later, shortly after his ninety-first birthday.

  * * *

  *1 Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal defines Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity; Article 9 empowers the tribunal to declare “any group or organization” and its members as criminal.

  *2 Heigl thrived in postwar Germany. He remained in Hartinger’s former position until 1948, when he became chief prosecutor for Munich II, and in 1952 he was elected Munich’s chief of police, where he remained until his death in 1963.

  *3 The Spruchkammerverfahren were judicial hearings administered in the American, British, and French occupation zones as part of the denazification process. Unlike regular courts in which the prosecution needed to prove guilt, the defendants were required to offer evidence of their innocence. Karl Wintersberger was judged to have been a Mitläufer (collaborator), and was fined 1,099.35 reichsmarks. Josef Hartinger was absolved of any guilt or collaboration.

  APPENDIX

  The Hartinger Registers

  During the writing of this book, I found myself returning repeatedly to the two registers Josef Hartinger compiled during his criminal investigations in the spring and a
utumn of 1933. They were for me both eloquent testimony and incontrovertible proof of Hartinger’s belief in the transcendent power of justice.

  Beyond offering a context-setting snapshot of the sequencing, frequency, and circumstance of the Dachau killings, the entries permit a nuanced understanding of Hartinger’s reaction to each killing. Hartinger’s choice of details, his inclusion of the names of individual guards, his use of particular phrases and even verb tenses, provide insight into his thought processes. We can see the mind of the investigating prosecutor at work. Hartinger’s consistent presentation of the hard facts of each case without any attempt to draw conclusions is notable. That was to be left to the courts.

  The first register, which includes six names and is dated May 30, 1933, evidently served as the basis for the murder indictments Hartinger signed on June 1, 1933. The second register is undated and preserves Hartinger’s effort to provide a complete and chronological record of the camp deaths, beginning with the shooting of Benario, Goldmann, and the two Kahns on April 12, 1933, and concluding with the final entry in March 1934, just before Hartinger’s transfer from Munich II. It should be noted that Hartinger makes occasional errors in regard to the spelling of names and listing of professions, for example, Dirnagl instead of Dürnagl. In addition, the second register contains at least one potential oversight worth mentioning, namely Dr. Albert Rosenfelder. Rosenfelder was a prominent Jewish attorney from Nuremberg known for his legal battles with Julius Streicher and Streicher’s anti-Semitic newspaper, Der Stürmer. Rosenfelder was taken into protective custody in March 1933 and transferred to Dachau on April 13, 1933. He was placed in the Arrest Bunker in July, along with Dr. Delwin Katz, Wilhelm Franz, and Josef Altmann, following their collective attempt to smuggle written accounts of SS atrocity out of the camp. Rosenfelder appears to have vanished at the same time that Katz and Franz allegedly hanged themselves. It remains uncertain whether he escaped or was murdered, thus explaining his absence from Hartinger’s list.

  I WOULD LIKE to make a few observations about the translation. Hartinger identifies the professions of several victims with the term Kaufmann, which can be variously translated as “salesman,” “merchant,” or “businessman.” I have used the generic term “salesman,” except in cases where it appears the victim had his own business, as in the case of Louis Schloss. Hartinger identifies Ernst Goldmann as a Reisender, which can be variously understood as a tourist, a traveling salesman, or a wayfarer. Since Goldmann was resident in Fürth and unemployed, I use the term “itinerant.” Hartinger similarly misidentifies Rudolf Benario, describing him first as a Diplom-Volkswirt, trained in business or economics, and then as a Diplom-Landwirt, trained in agriculture, when in fact he held the title Doctor rerum politicarum, a doctor in political economy. I have retained Hartinger’s designations, and have also included the original file numbers, for example, with Sebastian Nefzger: AVZ.: G 851/33.

  Register I

  Munich, May 30, 1933

  Subject:

  Deaths in the Concentration Camp Dachau

  I.

  Götz, Josef, 37 years old, married, mechanic from Munich.

  On May 8, 1933, Götz was killed by the SS guard Karl Friedrich Wicklmayr (student of philology) in the corridor of the detention block of the camp. The shot to the left temple was fired with a pistol. According to Wicklmayr’s testimony, Götz, who had been ordered to bring pillows and a straw bed from one cell to another, attacked the guard twice while passing. On the first occasion, Wicklmayr pushed the aggressor back. However, when he lunged at him a second time, Wicklmayr fired a shot at him. Götz immediately collapsed, dead. (Page 6. R. of the investigation file G 766/33.)

  On May 9, 1933, a forensic examination of the corpse was conducted in the camp by the state medical examiner, Dr. Flamm. 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. (Page 4 R. a.a.O.) The cause of this wound could not be determined as of yet.

  II.

  Schloss, Louis, 55 [sic] years old, widowed salesman from Nuremberg.

  On the afternoon of May 16, 1933, the state police were contacted by the police station Dachau, after having received notice that Schloss had hanged himself in a solitary detention cell in the camp. On that same day, a forensic examination of the corpse by the state medical examiner Dr. Flamm took place. (Page 2 of the investigation file A.G. 851/33.) During the examination, it became evident that the body had several lacerations, and since the cause of death seemed questionable, an autopsy was conducted on May 17, 1933. Based on the preliminary assessment, death by hanging could not be proven. A fat embolism and asphyxiation were considered more likely to have been the cause of death as a result of the extensive damage to adipose tissues. (P. 12, d.A.)

  It is not known who caused these wounds.

  III.

  Hausmann, Leonhard, 31 years old, married, laborer from Augsburg.

  Hausmann was shot by the SS sergeant Karl Ehmann in the late morning of May 17, 1933. According to the latter, Hausmann and another detainee were to dig up young fir trees in the woods by the camp and carry them to a specific spot for collection. Ehmann was guarding him. Suddenly, he could no longer see Hausmann. Thus he started searching for the detainee and saw him running away, ducking between the trees. Ehmann ran after him, shouted “Halt!” at him several times, and once [yelled] “Stop running,” but there was no response. Thereupon Ehmann drew his pistol and, without aiming, fired a shot at the fugitive. Hausmann collapsed, dead. Ehmann claimed to have shot from a distance of ten to twelve meters. On the same day, May 17, 1933, a forensic examination of the corpse was performed under instructions of the state medical examiner Dr. Flamm. It was established that death was caused by a shot through the left chest cavity. (Page 2 R d. Investigation file G 866/33.) According to the examination report, the shot was fired (in contradiction to Ehmann’s assertion) at a distance of less than one meter. As reported by state medical examiner Dr. Flamm, Professor Merkel determined that the distance was less than 30 cm.

  IV.

  Strauss, Alfred, 30 years old, unmarried lawyer from Munich.

  Strauss was killed on May 24, 1933, by two shots fired from a Dreyse pistol by the accompanying SS man Johann Kantschuster while he was taking a walk, as prescribed to him by the camp physician, outside the enclosed area of the camp. Kantschuster reported the incident as follows: He had to accompany him. Strauss was walking. Suddenly, Strauss ran for a thicket about 6 meters away from the path. As soon as Kantschuster took notice of this, he shot at the fleeing man twice from a distance of about 8 meters. Strauss collapsed, dead. On that same day, May 24, 1933, a judicial inspection of the site was undertaken. Strauss’s corpse lay at the edge of the woods. He was wearing slippers on his feet. One foot was covered by a sock, the other one was bare, evidently due to an injury on the foot. After the inspection of the site, the forensics examination of the corpse took place. Two bullet wounds were found in the back of the corpse’s head.

  V.

  Lehrburger, Karl, 28 years old, unmarried salesman from Nuremberg.

  Lehrburger was killed on May 8, 1933, in his single-detention cell by the SS man Hans Steinbrenner by a shot to the forehead. According to Steinbrenner, Lehrburger had made a sudden gesture toward him, which he had interpreted as an attack. Thereupon, he made use of his firearm.

  On the same day, a forensic examination of the corpse took place, administered by the state medical examiner Dr. Flamm. The report of the corpse’s examination has not yet been submitted to the state prosecutor.

  VI.

  Nefzger, Sebastian, 33 years old, married salesman, former SS man from Munich.

  According to information given by the Dachau district court, Nefzger’s death occurred in the night from May 25 to 26, 1933.

  On May 27, 1933, the district court of Dachau received the following notification: “Concentration Camp Dachau, Political Department, May 27,
1933. To the district court of Dachau. During the forensic examination of the detainee Nefzger Sebastian’s corpse, salesman from Munich, it was determined that the possibility of death at the hands of another party is excluded. His death was without doubt caused by excessive bleeding from the opening of the pulse artery in the left hand. Signed, Dr. Nürnbergk, camp physician.”

  The district court contacted the prosecutor’s office. A forensic examination of the corpse was ordered, and took place that same day. Because death by excessive blood loss seemed suspicious, a judicial autopsy was conducted on May 29, 1933. Based on the verbal report by the state medical examiner Dr. Flamm, the autopsy revealed that Nefzger’s death could not be traced back to exsanguination. Rather, death by strangling should be assumed. The reports on the forensic examination as well as the autopsy have not yet been delivered to the prosecutors.

  Register II

  [undated]

  Subject:

  Deaths of detainees under protective custody in the Dachau Concentration Camp.