Franz Six

Franz Six
Franz Six in 1940/1941
Born	(1909-08-12)12 August 1909 Mannheim, Germany
Died	9 July 1975(1975-07-09) (aged 65) Bolzano, Italy
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Allgemeine SS
Years of service	1930–1945
Rank	SS-Brigadeführer
Commands held	SS Division Das Reich c.1941 Einsatzgruppe B
Battles/wars	World War II

Dr. Franz Alfred Six (12 August 1909 – 9 July 1975) was a Nazi official who rose to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer. He was appointed by Reinhard Heydrich to head department Amt VII, Written Records of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). In 1940, he was appointed to direct state police operations in an occupied Great Britain following invasion.

In the post-war period, he worked as a public relations executive and a management consultant.

Academic career

Franz Six completed his classical High School in 1930, and proceeded to the University of Heidelberg to study journalism, sociology and politics. His late graduation was due to the fact he had to drop out of school from time to time to earn the money needed to graduate. He graduated with a degree of Doctor in philosophy in 1934. In 1936, Six earned the high degree of Dr.phil.habil. and became a professor of journalism at the University of Königsberg where he also took up the position of Press Director for the German Student's Association. By 1939, he had become chair for Foreign Political Science at the University of Berlin and was its first Dean of the faculty for Foreign Countries.

Nazi official

Six joined the Nazi Party in 1930 with member number 245,670 and the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1932, for whom he was a student organizer. Six joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in 1935 and his SS membership number was 107,480. Impressed by his academic achievements and outstanding curriculum, Reinhard Heydrich appointed him as head of Amt VII, Written Records of the RSHA which dealt mainly with ideological tasks. These included the creation of anti-semitic, anti-masonic propaganda, the sounding of public opinion and monitoring of Nazi indoctrination by the public. He held this post until 1943 when he was succeeded by Paul Dittel.

On 17 September 1940, the same day on which Hitler abandoned the idea of an invasion of Great Britain, Heydrich charged him to plan the elimination of anti-Nazi elements in Britain following a successful invasion by the Wehrmacht, since this task would be appointed to the RSHA, which included the SD. Among other things, his responsibilities included the detention of some 2,300 individuals immediately after the conquest of Britain by Germany. Their names came from a list previously compiled by Walter Schellenberg, Chief of Amt VI, Ausland-SD that made up the foreign intelligence branch of the SD. This list included British politicians, namely Winston Churchill and other members of the Cabinet, writers like Sigmund Freud, even though he had died in September 1939, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, members of exiled governments, financiers such as Bernard Baruch and many other anti-Nazi elements. According to William L. Shirer's book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Churchill was to be placed into the hands of RSHA Amt VI Ausland-SD, but most of the rest of the people on the list were to be turned over to RSHA Amt IV (Gestapo). A separate list also named many organizations which would have to be dismantled as well, namely the Freemasons, the Jehovah's Witnesses and even the Boy Scouts.

Franz Six was also charged with the creation of six Einsatzgruppen to be located in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and either Edinburgh or Glasgow. These death squads would be charged with the elimination of civilian resistance members and Jews all over Great Britain.

Einsatzgruppen

Six at the Nuremberg Trials in 1948

After the Battle of Britain, Hitler gave up on his attempts to invade Great Britain and thus Six's plans came to nothing. On 20 June 1941, Six was assigned as chief of Vorkommando Moscow, a unit of Einsatzgruppe B in the Soviet Union. During this command, Six's Kommando reported "liquidating" 144 persons. The report claimed "The Vorkommando Moscow was forced to execute another 46 persons, amongst them 38 intellectual Jews who had tried to create unrest and discontent in the newly established Ghetto of Smolensk." He was promoted by Heinrich Himmler on 9 November 1941 to SS-Oberführer for exceptional service in the Einsatz. On 31 January 1945, he was again promoted to SS-Brigadeführer. Six was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg in the Einsatzgruppen Trial of 1948. Unable to link him directly to any atrocities, the Nuremberg tribunal sentenced him to 20 years' imprisonment. A clemency court commuted this sentence to 10 years, and he was released on 30 September 1952. CIA files suggest Six joined the Gehlen Organization, the forerunner to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, in the 1950s.

Later years

Franz Six retired to Friedrichshafen in southern Germany. He worked as a publicity/advertising executive for Porsche.

Six was called as one of four witnesses by defense attorney Robert Servatius in the 1961 trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, and gave his testimony by deposition in West Germany. Servatius had wanted to have Six appear in person, but Prosecutor Gideon Hausner stated that the former Nazi general would be subject to arrest as a war criminal. Six's testimony was introduced in Eichmann's defense, but proved to be of more help to the prosecution.

Franz Six died in 1975.