Hans-Adolf Prützmann

The Riga Ghetto in 1942. Prützmann was responsible for setting up this ghetto. Most of its inhabitants were killed in the Rumbula massacre.[11]

From June to November 1941, Prützmann held the post of HSSPF in the Baltic States under Hinrich Lohse, who was in charge of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The killing of Jews and other persons began almost immediately, and at first they were primarily conducted by a specialized mobile killing group (Einsatzgruppe A). In late July 1941, Einsatzgruppe A moved out of the Baltics as it followed the German Army Group North further east into the Soviet Union, and primary responsibility for organizing the murder of Jews then moved to the Riga office of the SD. As HSSPF, Prützmann was in charge of the SD, and the person responsible for locally implementing the Final Solution.[12]

After the departure of Einsatzgruppe A, a dispute arose among the Nazi rulers about their so-called "Jewish problem." One group, consisting mainly of civilian Nazi Party administrators headed by Lohse, and backed by Alfred Rosenberg, the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, wanted to confine the Jews to ghettos, confiscate all their property and work them as slave laborers in support of Germany's war effort. Reichsführer-SS Himmler, the overall head of the SS and SD, and Prützmann's direct superior, wanted the Jews exterminated as quickly as possible. Up until November, 1941, the Lohse/Rosenberg faction had prevailed. Although about 30,000 of Latvia's approximately 70,000 Jews and 80,000 of Lithuania's 210,000 had been killed by then, Himmler was unhappy with the pace.[13] He replaced Prützmann in mid-November 1941 with Friedrich Jeckeln, who in Ukraine had developed his own "Jeckeln system" of killing 10,000 or more people in a single day. Prützmann was assigned to Ukraine in Jeckeln's place.[12] By the time Jeckeln took over as HSSPF, massive numbers of Jews had already been killed under Prützmann's administration, including those in the early Liepāja massacres. Also, Prützmann was responsible for rounding up additional masses of Jews and confining them together into ghettos, which allowed them to be more readily killed later by Jeckeln and others.[12]

When Prützmann arrived in Ukraine in November 1941, mass murders of Jews and other Ukrainians had already been underway since shortly after the German invasion in June. In fact, some of the most notorious mass executions such as those at Babi Yar (29-30 September) and Nikolaev (16-30 September) had already taken place under the direction of Prützmann's predecessor, Jeckeln. There were two Einszatsgruppen (designated C and D) operating in Ukraine and they continued their gruesome work throughout Prützmann's tenure. Shortly after his arrival, the massacre at Drobytsky Yar on 15 December took place in which over 16,000 were murdered. In Dnepropetrovsk in February 1942, Einsatzgruppe D reduced the city's Jewish population from 30,000 to 702 over the course of four days.[14] In the Lutsk Ghetto on 19–23 August 1942 another 14,700 victims were murdered. At Volodymyr-Volynskyi on 1-3 September an estimated 13,500 were shot.

SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann (right) meets with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, during Himmler's visit to Ukraine, September 1942.

Ongoing executions continued to take place throughout the remainder of the Nazi occupation under Prützmann's administration. Though most mass killings were committed by the Einsatzgruppen, as HSSPF, Prützmann commanded the SS, SD, Order Police and Auxiliary Police battalions that also took part in the suppression, persecution and murder of Jews and other Ukrainians, as the following illustrates:

Throughout 1942, Prützmann was heavily implicated in the actions against the Jews and the partisans of the Ukraine ... and Prützmann showed himself to be a willing participant by his ruthless methods ... On 27 October 1942, Himmler directed Prützmann to clear the ghetto at Pinsk, with the intention of making the Ukraine Judenfrei, and by 26 December 1942, Prützmann was able to report to Himmler that 363,211 Jews had been liquidated.[9]

In January 1944, Prützmann was placed in command of his own Kampfgruppe (Battle Group) "Prützmann" under the command of Army Group South and was awarded with the German Cross in Gold for his actions. As Red Army advances on the eastern front pushed the German forces out of Ukraine, he moved back to Königsburg where he was still the titular HSSPF, though others had acted on his behalf during his long assignment in the Soviet Union. In June 1944, he was made Himmler's liaison officer to OKW (Armed Forces High Command) and, on 1 July 1944, he was made a General of the Waffen-SS.[15]

One of his last major assignments came in September 1944 when Prützmann was appointed by Himmler as Generalinspekteur für Spezialabwehr (Inspector General for Special Defense) and assigned the task of setting up Operation Werwolf headquarters in Berlin, and organizing and instructing this force for operations behind the enemy lines. Prützmann had studied the guerrilla tactics used by Russian partisans while stationed in Ukraine and the idea was to teach these tactics to the members of Operation Werwolf.[16] As originally conceived, the Werwolf units were intended to be legitimate uniformed military formations trained to engage in clandestine operations behind enemy lines in the same manner as Allied Special Forces such as commandos.[17][18]

On 21 November 1944, Prützmann was named the General Plenipotentiary to the Nazi puppet state established in Croatia. In early 1945, under orders from Himmler, Prützmann directed the assassination by Werwolf operatives of the Allied-appointed mayor of Aachen, Franz Oppenhoff. After Adolf Hitler's suicide, Prützmann briefly acted as Himmler's representative to the Flensburg government of Großadmiral Karl Donitz, until Dönitz made it clear that he had no interest in Himmler's involvement in the administration. Shortly after the war ended, Prützmann was captured in Lüneburg by elements of the British 2nd Army on 15 May 1945. The next day, while being transported to the interrogation center in Diest, he committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule he had hidden in a cigarette lighter. Some sources incorrectly give 21 May as his date of death, but 16 May is documented by the contemporaneous diary entry of British Major Norman Whittaker who was present at Lüneburg.[19]