Josef Albert Meisinger
| Josef Albert Meisinger | |
|---|---|
 SS-Standartenführer Meisinger in 1940. |
|
| Nickname | "The Butcher of Warsaw" |
| Born | 14 September 1899 Munich |
| Died | March 7, 1947 (aged 47) Warsaw |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Service/branch | Munich Police 1922–1933 Gestapo 1933–1945 |
| Years of service | 1933–1945 |
| Rank | Colonel of the Gestapo |
| Unit | SD-Einsatzgruppe IV in Poland |
| Commands held | SS-Standartenführer Commander of the State Police in Warsaw |
| Battles/wars | World War I World War II |
| Awards | Iron Cross Bavarian Military Distinguished Service Cross Blood Order SS Julleuchter |
Josef Albert Meisinger (14 September 1899 – 7 March 1947), also known as the Butcher of Warsaw, was a German Colonel of 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.
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[edit] 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 a reserve Minenwerfer (mine-laying) battalion in the 30th Infantry Regiment, 230th Company. After being wounded in battle he was awarded the Iron Cross and the Bavarian Military Distinguished Service 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.[1]
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. He 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.
[edit] Gestapo career
On 20 April 1934 he was promoted to SS-Obertruppenführer. Heydrich, upon his transfer to the Berlin office of the Gestapo on 1 May 1934, took with him his most trusted colleagues: Heinrich Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Meisinger, referred to as the Bajuwaren-Brigade (Bavarian Brigade). On 9 May he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer 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[2]
- 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 Hitler, and on 23 April 1936 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer.
[edit] Role in the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair
From 1936 to 1938 Meisinger was a leader in the Gestapo in charge of Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und der Abtreibung ("Campaign against Homosexuality and Abortion") in the Gestapo Central Headquarters at the Sicherheitspolizei.[3] During this period he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer. When Heinrich Himmler wanted to dispose of Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, a member of the army's high command and Adolf Hitler's Minister of Defense whom Himmler disliked intensely, Meisinger's investigations revealed the fact that Blomberg's wife, Erna Gruhn, had once posed for pornographic photos and was the daughter of a woman who had once operated a brothel. Blomberg was accused of having married a prostitute and was forced to resign.[4]
When in July 1936 the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Colonel General Werner von Fritsch was in court over accusations of homosexuality, the case was the responsibility of Meisinger. Here Meisinger saw an opportunity for advancement, since he knew that Himmler and the SS regarded homosexuals as a danger to the regime.[5] However Meisinger's police work was judged to be sloppy and Heydrich and Müller were dissatisfied.[6] At one point when Meisinger interrogated Otto Schmidt, a notorious liar who had identified Fritsch as a homosexual, Meisinger provided a photograph of Fritsch on which was clearly printed Fritsch's name, title and military rank. Schmidt undoubtedly jumped at the chance to advance himself by slandering a general.[7][8] 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 someone else: Rittmeister von Frisch. The accusations against Fritsch broke down and Meisinger’s career in the Gestapo was almost terminated.[9]
[edit] 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.[10] In 1938 he was transferred to work in the archives of the principal SD Security Service office, but by September 1939 he had risen to Deputy Commander of the SD-Einsatzgruppe IV in Poland. On 1 January 1940 he was appointed to the post of SS-Standartenführer, 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.[11] 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.[12] Meisinger became so notorious that he was called the “Butcher of Warsaw”[13] (although this sobriquet was also given to SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth). His atrocities in Warsaw appalled even his Gestapo superiors. According to Walter Schellenberg, head of the foreign intelligence section of the RHSA, Meisinger's file showed him to be "so utterly bestial and corrupt as to be practically inhuman." Only 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.[14]
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.[15]
[edit] 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 Security Service at the German Embassy in Tokyo.[16] His duties included seeking out enemies of the Third Reich within the German community, using various informants. He was also liaison officer of the SD 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.[17][18]
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,[19] or starvation on freighters off the coast of China.[20] The Japanese admiral responsible overseeing Shanghai would not yield to pressure from Meisinger, however the Japanese built a ghetto in the neighborhood of Hongkew,[21] 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 sadistic Japanese official Kano Ghoya,[22] and Jews could only leave it with special permission. Some 2,000 of them died in the Shanghai Ghetto during the wartime period.[23]
On 25 January 1943 Meisinger was appointed a Gestapo Colonel under Heinrich Müller.
[edit] 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.[13] The reporters drove him to the Yokohama headquarters of the Counter-Intelligence Corps where Meisinger turned himself in.[24] He was held in the Yokohama Jail[25][26] where he underwent intensive questioning for two weeks before being transferred to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Frankfurt.[27] In November 1945 he was flown to Washington, D.C. for questioning on his involvement in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto.[28] In 1946 he was handed over to Polish authorities. In Warsaw on 17 December 1946 he was accused together with Ludwig Fischer, the Nazi Governor of the Warsaw District, Max Daume (Acting Commander of the Ordnungspolizei in Warsaw), and Ludwig Leist (Deputy District Chief for the City of Warsaw), of war crimes and tried in February. On 3 March 1947 the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw condemned Meisinger to death, and on 7 March 1947 he was executed in Warsaw's Mokotów Prison.[29]
[edit] Appearances in literature
Meisinger appears in the French novel The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Josef Albert Meisinger
- ^ Meisinger and the Gay Holocaust
- ^ Jörg Hutter, Die Rolle der Polizei bei der Schwulen- und Lesbenverfolgung im Nationalsozialismus, in: "Schwule, Lesben, Polizei", Dobler, Jens (HG.), Verlag rosa Winkel, Berlin 1996.
- ^ Jay Robert Nash, "Gestapo: The German Secret Police," from Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Dirty Tricks and Double Dealing from Biblical Times to Today. M. Evans and Company, Inc., New York. 1997.
- ^ Josef Meisinger on "Combating Homosexuality as a Political Task" (April 5–6, 1937)
- ^ Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals. Revised edition. Macmillan, 1988, p. 111. ISBN 9780805006001
- ^ Harold Charles Deutsch, Hitler and His Generals: The Hidden Crisis, January–June 1938, U of Minnesota Press, 1974, p. 141. ISBN 9780816606498
- ^ Karl-Heinz Janssen and Fritz Tobias, Der Sturz der Generale: Hitler und die Blomberg-Fritsch-Krise 1938, Munich 1994, ISBN 340638109X.
- ^ Janssen, P. 95.
- ^ Janssen, p. 160.
- ^ Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, Studienausgabe. Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 978-3930908875, p. 478
- ^ Eta Harich-Schneider, Charaktere und Katastrophen, Ullstein, 1978 ISBN 9783550074813, p. 203.
- ^ a b "Swiss Neutral Claims Nazis are Still on the Loose in Japan," Spartanburg Herald-Journal, May 12, 1946, p. A5.
- ^ Louis Hagen and Andre Deutsch, The Schellenberg Memoirs, André Deutsch, 1956.
- ^ Astrid Freyeisen, Shanghai und die Rolle dês Deutschen Reichs, Königshausen und Neumann, 2000, p. 466.
- ^ Robert Whymant, Stalin's spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring, I.B.Tauris, 1996 ISBN 9781860640445, p. 144.
- ^ Janusz Piekalkiewicz, World history of espionage: Agents, systems, operations, # National Intelligence Book Center (1998), p. 369. ISBN 978-3517008493
- ^ Whymant, p. 144.
- ^ Mark O'Neill, "A saved haven: Plans to rejuvenate Shanghai's rundown former Jewish ghetto will celebrate the district's role as a sanctuary during the second world war," South China Morning Post, August 1, 2006; Features: Behind the News; Pg. 11.
- ^ Jane Shlensky, "Considering Other Choices: Chiune Sugihara's Rescue of Polish Jews," North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Durham, NC, 2003, p. 6.
- ^ Patrick E. Tyler, "Jews Revisit Shanghai, Grateful Still that it Sheltered Them." New York Times, June 29, 1994.
- ^ Heppner, Ernest G., "Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai (review)," in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Volume 19, Number 3, Spring 2001, pp. 160–161.
- ^ Ernest G. Heppner, Shanghai Refuge – A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto,1995.
- ^ Clark Lee, One last look around, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947, pp. 125-30.
- ^ "International: First Haul," Time Magazine, Sept 24, 1945.
- ^ "War Criminal 'Cry-Baby': German Held in Yokohama," The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW: 1842–1954), 5 October 1945, p. 1.
- ^ Frank Kelley and Cornelius Ryan, STAR-SPANGLED MIKADO, Robert M. McBride & Co., New York, 1947.
- ^ "The 'Butcher of Warsaw' Arrives in California," New York Times, Nov 16, 1945; pg. 9
- ^ Prosecution of Nazi Crimes in Poland in 1939–2004
[edit] External links
- Josef Albert Meisinger
- Josef Meisinger
- Meisinger and the Gay Holocaust
- Administrative Structure of the State Security Department (Gestapo)
- Heinz Eberhard Maul, Japan und die Juden. Studie über die Judenpolitik des Kaiserreiches Japan während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933 – 1945. Doctoral Dissertation, Bonn 2000: Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität.
