On this date, March 7, 1947, Gestapo SS
Colonel Josef Albert Meisinger was executed in Mokotów Prison. I will post information about this Gestapo Personnel from
Wikipedia.
Josef Albert Meisinger
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Nickname(s)
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"The Butcher of Warsaw"
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Born
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14 September 1899
Munich |
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Died
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7 March 1947 (aged 47)
Warsaw |
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Allegiance
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Service/branch
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Munich Police 1922–1933
Gestapo 1933–1945 |
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Years of
service
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1916-1919, 1933–1945
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Rank
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SS-Standartenführer (colonel) in the Gestapo
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Unit
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SD-Einsatzgruppe IV in Poland
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Commands
held
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Commander of the State Police in Warsaw
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Battles/wars
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Awards
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Josef Albert Meisinger (14 September 1899 – 7 March 1947), also known as the Butcher
of Warsaw, was a German SS colonel in the Gestapo and Nazi Party member. He
was arrested in Japan at the end of World War II, convicted of war crimes and
was executed in Warsaw, Poland.
Early
life
Meisinger
was born in Munich,
the son of Josef and Berta Meisinger; he enlisted on 23 December 1916 and
served during World War I in the 230th Minenwerfer
Company (a type of short-range mortar),
22nd Bavarian Pioneer Battalion in the 30th Bavarian Reserve Division.
After being wounded in battle he was awarded the Iron Cross
and the Bavarian Military Merit Cross. On 18
January 1919 he attained the rank of Vizefeldwebel (Sergeant
major), and on 19 April 1919 he entered the Freikorps
under Franz Ritter von Epp, with whom he fought
against the Soviet Republic of Bavaria. On 1 October
1922 he began working at the Munich Police Headquarters. As leader of the III
Platoon of the II Company of the Freikorps Oberland, he took part in the Hitlerputsch on
8–9 November 1923.
He
was inducted on 5 March 1933 into the SS and then into the Bavarian political
police on 9 March 1933, thus coming into official contact with Heinrich Müller,
Franz Josef Huber and Reinhard Heydrich (with whom
he had served in the Freikorps). At that point in time, Heinrich Himmler was
chief of the Munich Police and Heydrich was commander of Department IV, the
political police. Meisinger became a member of the Nazi Party
on 1 May 1933. He received the Blood
Order Medal of the Nazi Party on 9 November 1933.
Nazi
career
On
20 April 1934, Meisinger was promoted to SS-Obertruppführer. Heydrich was appointed chief of the Gestapo
on 22 April 1934. Immediately thereafter, Heydrich transferred to the Berlin
office of the Gestapo, and took with him trusted colleagues: Heinrich Müller,
Franz Josef Huber and Meisinger, referred to as the Bajuwaren-Brigade
(Bavarian Brigade). On 9 May, Meisinger was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer (First lieutenant) in the Dezernat
II 1 H and II H 1, which had the following tasks:
·
Uncovering
of opponents of Adolf Hitler within the Nazi Party
·
Prosecution
of homosexuals
·
Prosecution
of cases of abortion
·
Prosecution
of cases of intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews.
On
24 June 1934, he went to hear Erich
Klausener at the Catholic Congress in Berlin and informed Heydrich
that Klausener had made anarchist statements. On 30 June 1934, Klausener was shot
by an SS-squad in his office at the transportation ministry. On 16 December
1935, Meisinger received an SS-Julleuchter
from Himmler, and on 23 April 1936 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer (major).
After
the war, Walter Schellenberg the former head of the foreign intelligence section of the SD
in the RHSA, described Meisinger as:
"One of the most evil creatures among Heydrich's bunch of thugs and he carried out the vilest of his orders...He was a frightening individual, a large, coarse-faced man with a bald head and an incredibly ugly face. However, like many men of his type, he had drive and energy and an unscrupulous sort of cleverness...As a result of his long police experience he knew a good deal about the workings and methods of the Comintern."
Role
in the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair
Main
article: Blomberg–Fritsch Affair
From
1936 to 1938 Meisinger was a leader in the Gestapo in charge of the Reichszentrale
zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung ("Reich Central
Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion") in the Gestapo Central
Headquarters at the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo). During this period he
was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant colonel). In
early 1938 Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring and Himmler wanted to dispose
of Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, a conservative member of
the army's high command and Hitler's Minister of Defense. Meisinger's investigation
revealed that Blomberg's wife, Erna Gruhn, had been a prostitute with a police
record and once posed for pornographic photos. Blomberg was forced to resign.
In
1936 Meisinger had uncovered allegations of homosexuality
made against the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Colonel
General Werner von Fritsch. A file was prepared and
Heydrich passed the information on to Hitler. Hitler choose to dismiss the
allegations and ordered Heydrich to destroy the file. However, he did not do so.
In
late January 1938, Göring wanted to dispose of von Fritsch as he did not want
Fritsch to become the successor to Blomberg and thus his superior. Heydrich
resurrected the old file on Fritsch. Meisinger saw it as an opportunity for
advancement, since he knew that Himmler and the SS regarded homosexuals as a
danger to the regime. However, Meisinger's police work was judged to be sloppy
and Heydrich and Müller were dissatisfied. At one point, Meisinger and Huber
interrogated Otto Schmidt, a notorious criminal whose Berlin gang had
specialized in blackmail of homosexuals. Schmidt identified von Fritsch as a
man whom he had witnessed engaging in homosexual acts in 1933. When Meisinger
provided a photograph of Fritsch on which was clearly printed Fritsch's name,
title and military rank, Schmidt jumped at the chance to advance himself by
slandering the general. Heydrich resubmitted the updated von Fritsch file to
Hitler. Werner
Best, in describing this incident, called Meisinger "a primitive man
with clumsy methods". It was eventually determined that von Fritsch had
been confused with Rittmeister Achim von Frisch. The accusations against
Fritsch broke down in court and members of the German officer corps were
appalled at Fritsch's treatment. Meisinger’s career in the Gestapo was almost
terminated.
Activities
in Poland
As
a consequence of Meisinger's and his agency's failure, he and others were
replaced, transferred for disciplinary reasons or dismissed. In 1938 he was
transferred to work in the archives of the principal SD office, but by
September 1939 he had risen to Deputy Commander of the SD-Einsatzgruppe
IV in Poland. On 1 January 1940, after promotion to SS-Standartenführer
(colonel), Meisinger was appointed Commander of the State Police in the Warsaw District, replacing Lothar Beutel who had been denounced for corruption.
Meisinger
proceeded to apply brutal force against Jews in Poland. As part of the German
AB-Aktion in Poland, he authorized the mass shooting of 1,700 people in the forest near
Palmiry. As a reprisal for the murder of a Polish policeman, he
ordered the execution of 55 Jewish residents on 22 November 1939, and on 20
December, the execution of 107 Poles as a reprisal for the murder of two
Germans. Meisinger became so notorious that he was called the “Butcher of
Warsaw” (although this sobriquet was also
given to SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth). According to
Schellenberg, his atrocities in Warsaw even appalled his superiors: "I had
collected a huge file which proved him to be so utterly bestial and corrupt as
to be practically inhuman...At this stage...Heydrich intervened: Meisinger knew
too much, and Heydrich managed to prevent the trial from taking place."
Heydrich's appeal to Himmler saved Meisinger from court-martial and possible execution. He
was sent to Tokyo by submarine as a means of keeping
him at arm's length until the dust had settled.
During
his trial in 1947 Meisinger stated that he was not in Warsaw after October
1940, but it is likely that he participated in the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Activities
in Shanghai and Japan
From
1 April 1941 to May 1945 Meisinger acted as Gestapo liaison connecting leaders
and particular agents of the SD at the German Embassy in Tokyo.
His duties included seeking out enemies of the Third Reich within the German community,
using various informants. He was also the SD liaison officer to the Japanese Secret Intelligence Service. One
of his tasks in Japan was the observation of the secret Soviet agent Richard Sorge (who was under suspicion in
Berlin) but Meisinger soon became Sorge's constant drinking companion and,
unwittingly, one of Sorge's best sources of information.
In
1941 Meisinger tried to influence the Japanese to exterminate approximately
18,000–20,000 Jews who had escaped from Austria and Germany and who were living in
Japanese-occupied Shanghai. His
proposals included the creation of a concentration camp
on Chongming Island
in the delta of the Yangtze, or starvation
on freighters off the coast of China. The Japanese admiral responsible for
overseeing Shanghai would not yield to pressure from Meisinger; however, the
Japanese built a ghetto in the
neighborhood of Hongkew
which had already been planned by Tokyo in 1939: a slum with about twice the population density
of Manhattan. The ghetto was strictly isolated
by Japanese soldiers under the command of the Japanese official Kano Ghoya, and
Jews could only leave it with special permission. Some 2,000 of them died in
the Shanghai Ghetto
during the wartime period.
Arrest
and execution
On
6 September 1945 Meisinger surrendered to two war
correspondents, Clark Lee of the INS and Robert Brumby of MBS, at the Fujiya
Hotel in Hakone, Kanagawa. The reporters drove him to the Yokohama
headquarters of the Counter-Intelligence
Corps where Meisinger turned himself in. He was held in the Yokohama Jail
where he underwent intensive questioning for two weeks before being transferred
to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Frankfurt.
In November 1945, under the escort of Lt. Col. Jennis R. Galloway, and Major
James W. McColl, both of the 441st CIC detachment, he was flown to Washington,
D.C. for questioning on his involvement in the destruction of the Warsaw
Ghetto.
In
1946 he was handed over to Polish authorities. In Warsaw on 17 December 1946 he
was accused, together with Ludwig Fischer (Nazi Governor of the Warsaw
District), Max Daume (Acting Commander of the Ordnungspolizei
in Warsaw), and Ludwig Leist (Nazi Plenipotentiary
Governor of the City of Warsaw) of war crimes.
The trials took place between 17 December 1946 and 24 February 1947. On 3 March
1947 the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw
condemned Meisinger to death, and on 7 March he was executed in Warsaw's Mokotów
Prison.
Appearances
in literature
Meisinger
appears in the French novel The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (winner of the
2006 Prix Goncourt), and in the Spanish novels La Espina de la Amapola and La
Crin de Damocles by Javier Pérez Fernández, winner of the 2006 Premio Azorín.
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