Lange Was the Essence of Wannsee Conference

Reinhard Heydrich brought SS-Sturmbannf;hrer Rudolf Lange to tell all attendees that the Wannsee Conference was about serial mass murder of Jews. Period. It is also possible that he took part in more private discussions with Heydrich and two officials of Ostministerium: Alfred Meyer and Georg Leibbrandt on “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in the USSR via “Holocaust by Bullets”.

Lange had the necessary experience for the latter: in November-December 1941 he was involved in the planning and carrying out the murder of 24,000 Latvian Jews from the Riga. This serial mass murder has come to be known as the Rumbula massacre. In addition to the Latvian Jews, another 1,000 Jews deported from Germany were also murdered.

Rudolf Lange studied law at the University of Halle, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Jena, ultimately obtaining Doctorate in Law (not uncommon for officers of SS death squads). While at school, he joined the antisemitic fencing fraternity, Germania, and received several dueling scars.

In September 1936, Lange was hired by the Gestapo office in Berlin. In May 1938, just after the Anschluss with Austria, Lange was transferred to the new Gestapo office in Vienna where his duties involved “fighting the internal enemies”, specifically Jews and the Catholic Church.

He was involved in the persecution of Viennese Jews, including the brutal attacks, arrests and looting of property that occurred during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9-10 1938.

In June of 1941, Lange joined Einsatzgruppe A and in December became the commanding officer of Einsatzkommando (EK2). At the same time, he was also made the commander of the SiPo and SD in the newly established Generalbezirk Lettland (Latvia).

Matters of formal rank and titles were never clear in the Nazi occupation regime for Latvia, as the lines of authority within agencies and the relationship between one agency and others were ambiguous, overlapping, and unclear. Nevertheless, Lange is widely recognized as one of the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust in Latvia starting from July of 1941.

Lange died on February 23, 1945 (the last day of the Battle of Poznan). According to different sources, he either died in battle or committed suicide. He is buried in the military cemetery in Poznan.