Fritz Dietrich (Nazi)

Fritz Maria Josef Dietrich (6 August 1898 – 22 October 1948) was an Austrian SS officer and member of the Nazi Party. He held a doctoral degree in chemistry and physics.[1][2] His name is also seen as Emil Dietrich.[3] After the war, Dietrich was tried as a war criminal by the Dachau Military Tribunal for ordering the killings of 7 American prisoners of war. He was found guilty of these murders and executed.

Fritz Dietrich
Born
Fritz Maria Josef Dietrich

(1898-08-06)6 August 1898
Lavarone, Italy
Died22 October 1948(1948-10-22) (aged 50)
Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech, Allied-occupied Germany
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
Known forLiepāja massacres
Political partyNazi Party
Criminal statusExecuted
MotiveNazism
Conviction(s)War crimes
TrialDachau trials
Criminal penaltyDeath
SS career
Allegiance Nazi Germany
Service/branch Schutzstaffel
Years of service1936–1945
RankObersturmbannführer
Nazi police warning issued by Fritz Dietrich to the Jews of Liepāja to remain in their houses on December 15 and 16, 1941 (this was preparatory to their murder on those dates.)
Dietrich's warning (in Latvian)

It is now known that Dietrich was responsible for organizing the Liepāja massacres, in which over 5,000 Jewish men, women, and children were massacred by the Germans and Latvian collaborators. Lesser numbers of Jews, Communists, and mentally ill people were also killed.

Career summary

After school, Dietrich fought in World War I. He then completed a degree in chemistry, which he completed with a doctorate. In 1930, Dietrich became involved in Nazi Party. Dietrich joined the Nazi Party in 1933, and the SS in 1936. In 1934, he played a leading role in the July Putsch.[4]

In 1941 Dietrich held the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer. From September 1941 to November 1943 he served as the local SS and police chief in Liepāja (Libau in German), Latvia. Police units under his command carried out a number of massacres of civilians in Liepāja, for the most part of Jewish ethnicity. The largest of the Liepāja massacres took place over three days from December 15 to December 17, 1941. On December 13, the newspaper Kurzemes Vārds published an order by Dietrich which required all Jews in the city to remain in their residences on Monday, December 15 and December 16, 1941, thus facilitating the killing operations.[5]

From April 1944 to the end of the war, Dietrich was the police chief of Saarbrücken.[6]

War crimes trial

After World War II, Dietrich was put on trial war crimes, but not for his actions in Latvia. Dietrich was instead tried by an American military court for ordering the executions of seven American POWs who had parachuted from disabled airplanes.[7] He was found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1948, Dietrich was hanged at Landsberg Prison, coincidentally the same prison where Hitler had been incarcerated for his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.[8] The trials of Dietrich and others were known as the "Flyers Cases" and were part of what has since become known as the Dachau Trials for war crimes.

When asked if he had any last words, Dietrich showed a lack of remorse:

"In the conviction that my death for my passionately beloved fatherland, for which I worked and fought my entire life, will ultimately be of service, I go this last walk of sacrifice with a proud heart because I know that my sacrifice will contribute to fill the measure of suffering that has been imposed by a cruel victor over the German people without compelling reason."[9]

Notes
  1. Klee, Ernst; Dressen, Willi; Riess, Volker, eds. (1991). "The Good Old Days" -- The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Translation by Deborah Burnstone. New York City: MacMillan. p. 290. ISBN 0-02-917425-2.
  2. Klee, Ernst (2011). Das Personen Lexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945? (in German). Koblenz: Edition Kramer. p. 110. ISBN 978-398114834-3.
  3. Ezergailis 1996, p. 288.
  4. Bundesarchiv R 9361-III/521320
  5. Ezergailis 1996, pp. 296–4.
  6. vgl. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt am Main 2007, S. 110
  7. "United States vs. Fritz Dietrich and others, Case Nos. 12-1545 and 12-2272 (File US115), summarized in Nazi Crimes on Trial". Archived from the original on 2017-09-25. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
  8. Friedmann, Jan (23 June 2010). "Adolf Hitler's Time in Jail. Flowers for the Führer in Landsberg Prison". Spiegel Online.
  9. Kellenbach, Katharina von (2013-07-25). The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi Perpetrators. OUP USA. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-19-993745-5.

References
  • Ezergailis, Andrew (1996). The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944—The Missing Center. Riga: Historical Institute of Latvia and USMM. ISBN 9984-9054-3-8.
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