Top Holocaust Perpetrators Got What They Deserved

Unlike perpetrators of just about all genocides, democides and other mass murders in XX century (with notable exception of Armenian genocide), most top Holocaust culprits got what they deserved.

They either were captured, tried, convicted of mass murder, sentenced to death and executed (usually hanged but sometimes shot) or died in jail or were forced to commit suicide… or died in battle (often as heroes).

Two primary culprits (in terms of their positions in Nazi hierarchy) committed suicide. Adolf Hitler in his F;hrerbunker and Hermann G;ring in his prison cell in Nuremberg (hours before he was scheduled to be hanged after being sentenced to death by International Military Tribunal).

However, contrary to almost universal misconception, SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler did NOT commit suicide in L;neburg on May 24, 1945. Actually, there was no suicide at all – Himmler’s impersonator (the latter was proven beyond the reasonable doubt by Hugh Thomas – an experienced medical examiner) was brutally murdered by a British NCO (proven by David Irving – one of the leading Third Reich historians, despite his Holocaust denial).

Most likely, Himmler fled to German Switzerland where he established the global headquarters of (in)famous ODESSA organization. And, most likely, lived a long an happy life.

First RSHA boss (and the designated manager of “Holocaust Project”) Reinhard Heydrich was attacked by British commandos (of Czech origin) but was subsequently killed by Himmler’s personal physician (whether intentionally or not, is still unknown).

Heydrich’s successor Ernst Kaltenbrunner was convicted of crimes against humanity by IMT, sentenced to death and hanged in Nuremberg. WVHA chief Oswald Pohl met the same fate in the same city five years later. His deputy, head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, Richard Gl;cks, committed suicide two days after Nazi Germany officially surrendered.

According to mainstream historians, Aktion Reinhard project manager Odilo Globocnik committed suicide on May 31, 1945 while in British custody (just like – allegedly – Himmler). However, there is some evidence that he made a deal with the Allies and was set free in exchange for his silence about “trading with enemy”.

Hermann H;fle, second-in-command in Aktion Reinhard, after the war lived as a free man until 1961, when he was arrested by the Austrian authorities and sent to prison in Vienna, where in 1962 he hanged himself before his trial could begin.

Richard Thomalla, the man in charge of construction for the Aktion Reinhard death camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, was captured by Red Army in Czechoslovakia and shot without a trial on May 12, 1945.

Erwin Lambert supervised construction of the gas chambers for the Action T4 euthanasia program at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Bernburg and Hadamar, and later at Sobib;r and Treblinka extermination camps during Aktion Reinhard.

After the war, Lambert lived as a free man until 1962, when he was finally arrested. At the First Treblinka Trial in 1965, Lambert was tried for the first time and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for aiding and abetting the murder of at least 300,000 people.

Having already served this time, he was allowed to continue to live as a free man. At the Sobib;r Trial in 1966, Lambert was acquitted. At both trials Lambert denied involvement in the killing operation and claimed that he merely suspected that the buildings would be used for killing. Lambert died in his house on October 15, 1976.

Hans Frank, whose administration in occupied Poland (General Government) played a vital role in the “Holocaust by Gas” project, met the same fate as Ernst Kaltenbrunner. He was convicted of crimes against humanity by IMT, sentenced to death and hanged in Nuremberg.

His deputy (and his representative at Wannsee Conference) Josef B;hler was extradited to Poland, tried, convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to death and executed by hanging on 22 August 1948 at Montelupich Prison in Krak;w.

Adolf Eichmann – one of the key managers of “Holocaust by Gas” project (first and foremost, of Holocaust in Hungary) and an organizer of Wannsee Conference, was tracked down and apprehended by Mossad, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. He was convicted of serial mass murder, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1962.

Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller was more like “Holocaust accountant” and provided support to actual murders… but he still was guilty of “Wannsee Conspiracy” to commit serial mass murder in death factories (killing centers).

M;ller was allegedly last seen in the F;hrerbunker on the evening of May 1st, 1945… but even that is debatable (witnesses are notoriously unreliable – especially in hellish Berlin of that time).

The only indisputable fact is that he disappeared without a trace and has never been seen since. Most mainstream historians believe that that he was most likely killed or committed suicide during the chaotic fall of Berlin, but his body, if recovered, was never identified. I think that he escaped and fled to German Switzerland where he joined Himmler as head of security for ODESSA.

Rudolf H;ss, the first (and longest-serving) Auschwitz commandant, was extradited to Poland, tried, convicted of war crimes and executed by hanging. Arthur Liebehenschel, the second Auschwitz commandant, subsequently took command of Majdanek, was captured by Red Army and met the same fate as his predecessor.

Richard Baer, the final Auschwitz commandant, fared far better. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name for 15 years but was ultimately recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial.

Karl-Otto Koch, the first commandant of Majdanek, was tried in the SS court on April 5, 1945, on charges of robbing the Reich of Jewish gold and money and committing multiple unauthorized murders. He was convicted, sentenced to death and executed on the same day.

Max Koegel, the second commandant of Majdanek, committed suicide in Allied detention in Germany the day after his arrest on June 27, 1946. Hermann Florstedt, the second commandant of Majdanek, met the same fate as the first one – and for the same reasons (only ten days later).

Martin Gottfried Weiss, the fourth commandant, was tried by the U.S. military during the Dachau trials (he was the last commandant of Dachau) in November 1945, convicted of war crimes, sentenced to death and hanged on May 29, 1946.

De-facto last commandant of Majdanek, Anton Thernes (who failed to destroy evidence), was captured by Red Army, immediately transferred to Polish custody, tried at the Majdanek trials in Lublin, found guilty of crimes against humanity, sentenced to death by hanging and executed on December 3, 1944.

Christian Wirth, the first Belzec commandant, was shot and killed on May 26, 1944 by Yugoslav Partisans while travelling (Heydrich-style) in an open-topped car near Kozina (now Slovenia).

Gottlieb Hering, the second and last commandant of Belzec, died of mysterious illness in October of 1945 in the hospital waiting room in Stetten im Remstal in Baden-W;rttemberg. It is possible that he was poisoned by Jewish avengers.

Herbert Lange, the first commandant of Chelmno killing center, was killed in action during the Battle of Berlin on 20 April 1945 (Hitler’s birthday – of all days). Hans Bothmann, the second and last commandant of Chelmno, committed suicide in British custody in April 1946.

Franz Stangl, the first commandant of Sobibor (and subsequently of Treblinka), after the war escaped to Syria (!!) and then to Brazil. He was tracked by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and arrested by Brazilian federal police on 28 February 1967.

After his extradition to West Germany by Brazilian authorities, he was tried for the deaths of around 1,000,000 people. He admitted to these killings but had no remorse: “My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty…”

On June 28, 1971, before he could stand trial, Stangl died of heart failure in a D;sseldorf prison. Franz Reichleitner, the second and last commandant of Sobibor, was killed by Italian partisans on January 3, 1944.

Irmfried Eberl, the first commandant of Treblinka death factory, was arrested in January 1948. He hanged himself in his cell the following month to avoid trial.

Kurt Franz, the last commandant of Treblinka, was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Treblinka Trials in 1965. He was eventually released in 1993 after serving twenty-eight years.

The first commander of Einsatzgruppe A (the most murderous of the four) Franz Walter Stahlecker was fatally wounded in action on March 22, 1942, by Soviet partisans in Leningrad Oblast (50 km from Leningrad).

His successor Heinz Jost was sentenced to life imprisonment at Einsatzgruppen trial but his sentence was soon commuted to ten years (no surprise here).  In December 1951, he was released from Landsberg Prison serving only 6.5 years. He then worked in D;sseldorf as a real estate agent and died in 1964.

The third commander of Einsatzgruppe A, Humbert Achamer-Pifrader was killed by an Allied bomb on April 25, 1945. His successor Friedrich Panzinger was captured by NKVD, tried, convicted and sentenced to 25 years of hard labor (amazingly, there was no death penalty in the USSR at that time).

He served just ten years in the Gulag; was released in September 1955 and repatriated to then West Germany. In 1959, he was arrested again, charged with murder and committed suicide by poisoning himself in his cell.

The last commander of Einsatzgruppe A, Wilhelm Fuchs, after the was arrested and extradited to Yugoslavia. He was tried along with seventeen others for the deaths of 150,000 men, women and children, including 35,000 Jews, and was sentenced to death by the Supreme Military Court in Belgrade on 22 December 1946. He was executed by hanging on 24 January 1947.

Arthur Nebe, the first commander of Einsatzgruppe B, subsequently switched sides and got heavily involved in July 20, 1944 coup attempt against Adolf Hitler. The coup failed; Nebe (at the time chief of all German criminal police) went into hiding but was betrayed and apprehended by the Gestapo.

He was brought before the infamous “People’s Court”, charged with treason, convicted, sentenced to death and, according to official records, executed at Pl;tzensee Prison by being hanged from a meat hook, in accordance with Hitler’s order that the bomb plotters were to be “hanged like cattle”. What happened to him in reality, is still not completely certain.

Nebe’s successor Erich Naumann was captured by the Allies and faced a U.S. military court during the Einsatzgruppen trial in Nuremberg. He was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in a criminal organization, namely the SS and the SD. Naumann was sentenced to death and hanged shortly after midnight on June 7, 1951.

Horst B;hme, the third commander of Einsatzgruppe B, after the war… just disappeared. Vanished without a trace. He was declared dead by the district court of Kiel in August 1954, with a death date of April 10, 1945. It was presumed that he had either died in combat or shot himself so as not to fall into Soviet hands. What really happened to him, is anybody’s guess.

His successor, Heinrich Seetzen, after the war was arrested by the British military police. On September 28, 1945, Seetzen allegedly committed suicide using a cyanide capsule. However, he was never officially identified so his true fate remains uncertain.

Otto Rasch, the first commander of Einsatzgruppe C, is the most enigmatic of all. Having neither education/training nor practical experience in oil industry, at the beginning of 1942, he quit the SS and became the director of Continental Oil, Inc. in Berlin (allegedly, the key component of “oil for the Jews” project).

After the war, he was arrested by the Allies was indicted at the Einsatzgruppen trial at the end of September 1947 but the charges were dropped in February 1948, since his physical and mental health were (allegedly) rapidly deteriorating from Parkinson’s disease and associated dementia.

Rasch was transferred back to an internment camp in the British zone. As his health further deteriorated, he was released in June 1948. He allegedly died of his illness at his home in Wehrstedt, Lower Saxony in November 1948.

Given his (allegedly) deep involvement in “trading with the enemy” (“oil for Jews”), it is possible that in reality he just disappeared – possibly joining Himmler, Muller and Globocnik in ODESSA in German Switzerland.

His successor Max Thomas, after the end of the war, went into hiding under the assumed name but was exposed and arrested. On December 6, 1945, he attempted suicide and died as a result in the Luitpold Hospital in W;rzburg.

Otto Ohlendorf, the first commander of Einsatzgruppe D, was tried at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging in 1951. His successor, Walther Bierkamp, committed suicide on 15 May 1945.

Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu – the man largely responsible for Holocaust in Romania that claimed over 250,000 lives – was deposed in 1944, arrested and tried before the first in a series of People’s Tribunals, on charges of war crimes, crimes against the peace and treason. He was found guilty on all charges, sentenced to death and executed by a military firing squad on 1 June 1946.

Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic was the main instigator of the genocidal crimes committed against Serbs, Jews, Roma and Bosniaks. In 1957, he was shot and mortally wounded by ex-Serbian officer. He died in 1959.

Hungarian dictator Ferenc Sz;lasi and his Arrow Cross Party were responsible for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews of Auschwitz and for murder of about 15,000 in the Hungarian version of “Holocaust by Bullets”.

Two days before Nazi surrender, Sz;lasi was captured by American troops in Austria where he fled. In October, he was extradited to Hungary where he was tried by the People’s Tribunal in Budapest, convicted and sentenced to death for war crimes and high treason. He was hanged on 12 March 1946 in Budapest.