Waldemar Klingelhöfer

Waldemar Klingelhöfer
Klingelhöfer's mugshot after his indictment for theNuremberg Military Tribunal(July 1947)
Born	4 April 1900(1900-04-04) Moscow,Moscow Governorate,Russian Empire
Died	18 January 1977(1977-01-18)(aged 76) Villingen-Schwenningen,Baden-Württemberg,West Germany
Occupation(s)	Opera singer,Naziofficial, office clerk
Criminal status	Deceased
Motive	Nazism
Conviction(s)	Crimes against humanity War crimes Membership in a criminal organization
Trial	Einsatzgruppen trial
Criminal penalty	Death;commuted tolife imprisonment

Waldemar Klingelhöfer(4 April 1900 — 18 January 1977) was anSS-Sturmbannführerand convicted war criminal.

Early life

Klingelhöfer was born in Moscow as the son of a funeral director of German origins. Waldemar Klingelhöfer attended school inKassel,served in the German army from June–December 1918 and after the war studied music and voice.He gave concerts throughout Germany and later received a State's Certificate as a voice teacher. In 1935, he became an opera singer.

Nazi career

In the 1920s, Klingelhöfer joined theFreikorps Roßbach,aFreikorpsorganised byGerhard Roßbach.In 1937, he took over the Department of Culture, a branch of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst,or SD), office SD III-C in Kassel. In 1941, he was assigned toEinsatzgruppeBas a Russian interpreter. ThisEinsatzgruppe—already by November 1941, according to its own Status Report No. 133—had killed 45,467 persons.

By 26 October,Vorkommando Moscow—a part ofEinsatzgruppeB—and the group staff had executed 2,457 persons, including 572 people killed between 28 September and 26 October 1941, while Klingelhöfer was in command.Klingelhöfer witnessed executions and carried out others. For example, he shot 30 Jews who had left a ghetto without permission. Klingelhöfer later claimed he did this on the orders ofArthur Nebeto make an example out of the victims, then contradicted himself by saying that three women had contacted some partisans, then returned to the town and spoke with the Jews. This, according to Klingelhöfer, made the Jewspartisansand therefore subject to being shot. The three women Klingelhöfer also shot, but—unlike the Jews—he blindfolded them and buried them in a separate grave.

War crimes trial

At trial, Klingelhöfer claimed that his only role in theEinsatzgruppewas that of interpreter.This contention was rejected by the court, on the grounds that even if it were true, as an interpreter, his tasks included locating, evaluating and forwarding to theEinsatzgruppecommand lists of Communist party functionaries. Because—according to his own testimony—he knew the people would be executed when found, this made him an accessory to the crime.

Beyond this, the tribunal found that Klingelhöfer was not just an interpreter, but an active leader and commander, who knew what theEinsatzunits were doing to the Jews. According to Klingelhöfer's own affidavit, he had been appointed byArthur Nebeto leadVorkommando Moscow:

While I was assigned by Nebe to the leadership of theVorkommando Moscow,Nebe ordered me to go from Smolensk to Tatarsk and Mstislavl to get furs for the German troops and to liquidate part of the Jews there. The Jews had already been arrested by order ofHauptsturmführerEgon Noack.The executions proper were carried out by Noack under my supervision.

TheEinsatzgruppenoperated with the assumption that aFührerorder (Führerbefehl) existed that provided for and required the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies and others whom the Nazis did not deem racially worthy. Although Klingelhöfer stated several times during his testimony that he was morally opposed to theFührerOrder, the court found that he went along quite willingly with it. Klingelhöfer was unrepentant about the necessity for the war:

Before leaving the witness stand he stated that he would have been happy for Hitler to win the war even at the expense of its present condition with two million Germans killed, the nation in utter ruins, and all of Europe devastated. This statement has no bearing, of course, on the question of his guilt under counts one and two, but it is helpful in determining the state of mind as to whether he obeyed the so-called superior orders with a full heart or not.
The Tribunal finds from all the evidence that the defendant accepted theFührerOrder without reservation and that he executed it without truce.

Death sentence and reprieve

On 10 April 1948, Klingelhöfer was sentenced to death in theEinsatzgruppenTrial.In 1951, under intense political pressure, U.S. High CommissionerJohn J. McCloycommuted Klingelhöfer's sentence—and those of three otherEinsatzgruppendefendants—to life imprisonment.On 12 December 1956, Klingelhöfer was released fromLandsberg Prisonon parole. In 1960, he lived in Villingen and worked as an office clerk.

References

• Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946 - April 1949,Volume IV, ( "Green Series) (the" Einsatzgruppen case ")also available atMazel library(well indexed HTML version)
• Diefenforf, Jeffry M., Frohn, Axel, and Rupieper, Hermann-Josef,American Policy and the Reconstruction of West Germany, 1945-1955,Cambridge University Press 1994ISBN0-521-43120-4

Further reading

• Earl, Hilary,The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945–1958: Atrocity, Law, and History,Nipissing University, OntarioISBN978-0-521-45608-1
• Headland, Ronald,Messages of Murder: A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security Service, 1941-1943,Rutherford 1992ISBN0-8386-3418-4

External links

• (in Italian)Biography and photoArchived6 July 2009 at theWayback Machine