Born
|
4 February 1895
Klagenfurt, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Austria) |
Died
|
24 March 1949
Near Scheveningen, Netherlands |
Allegiance
|
Nazi Germany
|
Service/branch
|
Schutzstaffel
|
Years of service
|
1914-1919, 1921, 1927-1945
|
Rank
|
SS-Obergruppenführer and General of Police
|
Unit
|
Gestapo
|
Commands held
|
Chief of the SS & Police of the Netherlands
(1940-1945)
|
Battles/wars
|
World War I
World War II |
Johann
Baptist Albin Rauter (February 4, 1895 – March 24, 1949) was a high-ranking
Austrian-born Nazi war criminal. He was the highest SS and Police Leader in the
occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer
there during the period of 1940-1945. He reported directly to the Nazi
SS-chief, Heinrich Himmler, and in the second instance to the Nazi governor of
the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. After World War II he was convicted in
the Netherlands of crimes against humanity and executed by firing squad.
Early
life and career
Born
in Klagenfurt, Rauter graduated from High school in 1912 and started training
as an Engineer at the Graz University of Technology. At the outbreak of World
War I Rauter volunteered for service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He served
with a Gebirgsschützenregiment and was discharged in 1919, having
reached the rank of Oberleutnant. Rauter took part in the Kärntner
Freiheitskampf of 1919, and from May until July 1921 he fought in the Freikorps
Oberland in Oberschlesien.
Rauter
first met Adolf Hitler in 1929 and joined the National Socialist cause in
Austria. His forays in Austria forced him to flee to Germany in 1933, where he
became part of the NSDAP department for Austria. He joined the SA, and was
active in planning illegal NSDAP activities in Austria. In 1935 he left the SA
to become a member of the SS. Until 1940 he was the Leader of the SS Southeast
department in Breslau.
Actions
in the occupied Netherlands
In
May 1940 he was appointed Generalkommissar für das Sicherheitswesen
(State secretary for of security forces) and Höherer SS-und Polizeiführer
(Highest SS and Police leader) for the occupied Netherlands. In his position as
police commander and highest ranking SS leader in the Netherlands, Rauter was
responsible for the deportation of 110,000 Dutch Jews to the Nazi concentration
camps (6,000 survived) and the repression of the Dutch resistance. He had
300,000 Dutchmen deported to Germany for forced labour. His first victims to
die were those killed during the armed break up of the February strike on
February 26, 1941, accounting for 9 dead that day: he also immediately declared
a state of emergency and ordered summary executions.
He
was the chief promoter of terror through summary arrests and internment in the
Netherlands. The SS set up a concentration camp named Herzogenbusch after the
city of 's-Hertogenbosch, but located in the neighboring town of Vught that
gave the camp its name: Kamp Vught. In total this camp detained 31,000 people,
of whom some 735 were killed. Also, his SS manned a so-called polizeilches
Durchgangslager or police transit camp near Amersfoort, known as Kamp
Amersfoort, in fact also a concentration camp, where some 35,000 people were
detained and maltreated and 650 people (Dutch and Russian) died. Rauter's SS
also managed the Kamp Westerbork (polizeiliches durchganslager Westerbork),
the place from which some 110,000 Dutch Jews were deported to Nazi concentration
and extermination camps, mainly Auschwitz and Sobibor.
Under
Rauter's guidance, a special block was built for 'political prisoners' (i.e.
resistance workers) in the Scheveningen prison. These were often held in indefinite
detention. In total 28,000 people were detained here over 4 years; many were
severely mistreated, some were tried and 738 men and 21 women died here or on
the nearby execution field, the Waalsdorpervlakte (now a national place of
remembrance).
Rauter
also instigated a system of retaliation for assaults on Nazi officials and
their Dutch collaborators: one killed Nazi equalled ten Dutch victims, one
killed Dutch collaborator equalled three Dutch victims. During 1944 these
numbers sharply increased with the rise of resistance violence
During
the Allied assault on Arnhem in Operation Market Garden, Rauter took the active
field command of the Kampfgruppe Rauter during operations in the Veluwe
area and near the bridges over the IJssel river. Kampfgruppe Rauter
consisted of the Landstorm Nederland, Wachbataillon Nordwest and a
regiment of the Ordnungspolizei. After the assault on Arnhem had been
fought off by the Germans, Rauter was given the command of the Maas front as a
General in the Waffen-SS.
In
the night of 7 to 8 March 1945 he was severely wounded by an attack staged by
the Dutch resistance at "Woeste Hoeve" on the Veluwe, a little
village between Arnhem and Apeldoorn. As a reprisal the Germans executed 117
political prisoners at the location of the attack as well as 50 prisoners in Kamp
Amersfoort and 40 prisoners each in The Hague and Rotterdam. This attack had
not been planned; the resistance merely wanted to hijack a truck and use it to
drive to a farmer who had butchered cows for the German army. Instead of the
truck, Rauter's BMW motorcar was stopped by members of the resistance dressed
in German uniforms. However, Rauter had just two weeks earlier issued a
directive stating that German patrols should not stop any German military
vehicles outside towns or villages, and a firefight broke out. His fellow
passengers were all killed, but Rauter feigned death and survived. He was found
by a German military patrol and transferred to a hospital where he remained
until his arrest by British Military Police after the end of hostilities.
Leider Anton
Mussert giving a speech to NSB volunteers in Den Haag,
October 1941. To the rear are Rijkscommissaris Hendrik
Seyffardt and SS Obergruppenführer Hanns Albin Rauter
|
After
the war
Rauter
was handed over to the Dutch government by the British and was tried by a
special court in The Hague. Rauter denied committing war crimes but the court
found him guilty and sentenced him to death. A film record was made of the
trial.
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