Theodor Eicke

Theodor Eicke , (October 17th 1892 - February 26th 1943) was a leading Nazi known to have paricipé with Michel Lippert, with the assassination of Ernst Röhm at the time of the Nuit of the Long Knives. It was one of the person in charge of the creation and the organization of the concentration camps. S Obergruppenführer , it ordered 3 {{E}} Panzerdivision S Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS. Theodor Eicke was killed the February 26th 1943 during an air recognition above the Russia.

Before the Nazi party

Eicke was born with Hampont, close to Castle-Saline, in German Lorraine, the October 17th 1892. His/her father was station master. After having given up the school at the seventeen years age, it engages like volunteer in the 23e regiment of infantry Bavarian. Later, at the time of the First World War, he is the officer payer of 3rd, then in 1916, of the 22e regiment of Bavarian infantry.

Decorated with the Cross of iron, he escapes the judgment and, on the instructions of Heinrich Himmler, takes refuge in Italy to deal with camp for fugitive of the S, where are then held: 2000 prisoners. He immediately sets up at it the bases of the system concentrationnaire Nazi, in particular with regard to the blind obedience of the guards to the orders, and the monitoring system, of discipline and punishment of the prisoners, of which the “goal is to break psychologically, morally and physically the prisoners”. With Dad Eicke , nickname which is given to him by the guards of camp, one passes from the undisciplined brutality of SA to the planned terror of the S. Its results make strong impression on Himmler which promotes it S Brigadeführer the January 30th 1934.

Eicke shows of a Antisémitisme and a radical antibolchevism. He proclaims “his hatred against all that is not German and not national-Socialist”. He imposes to the guards a blind and unconditional obedience towards him, as a commander of the camp, but also towards the S and Führer. These " qualités" impress Heinrich Himmler which names it, the July 4th 1934 inspector of the concentration camps and ordering units Totenkopf ( Inspekteur of Konzentrationslager und Führer of the S Totenkopfverbände ). As an inspector of the camps, it depends on RSHA directed by Reinhard Heydrich, and more particularly on the Gestapo; as commander of the Totenkopfverbände , it concerns the central office of the S, the SS-Hauptamt , and takes its orders directly at Himmler.

Eicke also takes part in the Nuit of the Long Knives: with some guards, sorted on the shutter, of the concentration camp of Dachau, it brings its assistance to Sepp Dietrich, ordering of SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, to imprison the principal leaders of SA.

On this occasion, on July 1st, 1934 1, it proves its total fidelity with Himmler and Hitler by assassinating Ernst Röhm. This murder is worth to him to be promoted S Gruppenführer , which places it at the second rank of the hierarchy S. In its function of inspector of the concentration camps, Eicke sets up a deep reorganization completed in 1939. Beginning 1935, it removes the small concentration camps to preserve only six of them approximately gathering: 3500 prisoners, of which Dachau; starting from 1936, it extends the system concentrationnaire with the creation of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald (1937), Flossenbürg (1938), supplemented after the Anschluss, by Mauthausen in (1398), then by the camp of women of Ravensbrück in 1939. The organization and the administration of all the camps are copied on the model set up at Dachau and except for this model , all the old camps are closed. Since 1936, Eicke impels the arrest and the internment in the camps of new categories of prisoners who do not have any relationship with the opponents with the mode, “beggars, criminals, recidivists of the minor delinquency, drunkards, unemployed professional, tramps, Tziganes and zealoies of sects nuns”. He pleads for the enlarging of the existing camps and the construction of new detention centres and plans to use them like tank of servile labor.}}

The inflexible attitude of Eicke, its determination to be exploited without measurement labor concentrationnaire have a deep influence on the personnel of the concentration camps. The permanent endoctrination, the brutality of Eicke itself, prevent any feeling of humanity of the guards: Eicke wanted to remove at the S any feeling of pity with regard to the internees. Its speeches, the orders in which he insisted on the criminal and dangerous character of the activity of the internees, could not remain without effects.

In all the camps set up a violence, a cruelty controlled and disciplined, a true system of terror codified well which will continue after the departure of Eicke. It will have in particular formed of the commanders of camp like Rudolf Höß with Auschwitz, Franz Ziereis with Mauthausen and Karl Otto Koch with Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.

At that time, how much time I should not have dominated to me to show a relentless hardness. ! I thought whereas what one continued to require of me exceeded the man power; however, Eicke continued its exhortations to encourage us with a hardness even larger. An S must be able, said to us it, to destroy even his/her closest parents if they rebel against the State or the designs of Adolf Hitler|Rudolf Höß

Eicke seems however appreciated by its troops, which explains probably its nickname. According to Wolfgang Sofsky, it systematically sets up a policy of copinage , contrary to the military traditions which it hates: Eicke requires of its men to be addressed as tu, amalgamates the messes of the warrant officers and from the officers, protects its men, even in the event of distorsion with the rules, except if it express a feeling of pity towards the prisoners, seeks the contact, at the time of its frequent rounds of inspection, with the privates, in the absence of their superiors. When guards kill a prisoner for attempt at escape , he asks that one avoids to them undergoing a interrogation, not the to worry .

Totenkopf division

See also: Waffen S

It is under the command of Eicke in 1939, that the transformation begins from the SS-Totenkopfverbände i.e. of the personnel of the concentration camps, in order to make of them units ready to fight on the face which will constitute the 3 {{E}} Panzerdivision S Totenkopf. As of its taking of, it mobilizes all its contacts within the S to ensure good equipment its division, in particular in terms of anti-tank weapons, to motorize it and equip it with a group of recognition.

As from this moment, Eicke starts a new career and does not have any more responsibilities in the organization of the concentration camps. Richard Glücks succeeds to him as an inspector of the camps, under the authority of Oswald Pohl.

The man changes function, but its convictions remain the same ones. convinced Anti-catholic, it arrives, in 1940, with to convince a whole company of his division to give up the Christian religion, by doing it acter by an administrative court. He takes care scrupulously of the respect of the drastic criteria of recruitment of Waffen-SS, not hesitating to return candidates however accepted but only he judges personally nonin conformity with the physical, racial standards or morals of the S. and balks to see its officers leaving Totenkopf division to reinforce other units.

During the war, Eicke and its division are characterized by their brutality and the number of their war crimes. At the time of the countryside of Poland, three regiments of the units Totenkopf ( Oberbayern , Brandenburg and Thüringen ) follow the German troops “to apprehend the refugees recently made in the country and to track the hostile elements with the mode, among which freemasons, Jews, Communists, the intelligenstia, clergy and aristocracy”. The brutality of the Totenkopf units and the number of the assassinations which they make, are the subject of critical sharp of the general of the Wehrmacht, Johannes Blaskowitz: “The feelings of the troop towards the S and the police force oscillate between the repulsion and hatred. All the soldiers are taken of dislike and loathing in front of the crimes committed in Poland”.

During the countryside of France, Totenkopf division makes the massacre of the Paradise , on May 27th, 1940, during which she assassinates a hundred British prisoners in France, under the orders of lieutenant Fritz Knöchlein, condemned to died and carried out for war crimes after the end of the conflict and the summary execution of troops sénégalaises and Morrocan women who tried to go.

For the release of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Eicke insists that its division is equipped with military trucks designed for the transport of troops in the place of the various vehicles which it received: “Made Abstraction that we have the air of gipsies and that such an appearance sied not with the S, one cannot lead any war to the East with this kind of vehicles”. Its insistence enables him to obtain win. Before the release of the operation, it brings together its officers on several occasions “to show them the stake of the fight which was going to oppose national-socialisme to the judéo-Bolchevism ”. “Thereafter, this division was undoubtedly most pitiless of the Russian face, and also most irreducible”. Under the command of Eicke, then after its death, division Totenkopf shows of an unequalled fanaticism and ferocity at the time of advanced in 1941, of the offensive of the summer 1942, the conquest of Kharkov, the battle of the pocket of Demyansk, and at the time of the defense of Warsaw then of Budapest beginning 1945. It shows remarkable aptitudes for the defensive action against the Red Army. On the face of the East, it is guilty assassination of prisoners and civilians in Soviet Union, destruction and plundering of many Russian villages. Eicke makes moreover reign a discipline of iron and sometimes expeditious, like the execution of a soldier incentive to the mutiny before the confirmation of the verdict by Reichsfürhungs-SS, which leads immediately to its dispossession of judge of its division.

Shortly after its promotion with the rank of Obergruppenführer, Theodor Eicke is killed on February 26th, 1943 1. During an air recognition in preparation with the third battle of Karkhov, its plane, a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, is cut down by the Red Army in the surroundings with Orel. Its troops immediately launch an attack to make safe the site where the plane was crushed and to recover the body of their commander.

Propaganda draws up of Theodor Eicke a portrait of hero. Shortly after its death, one of the regiments of Totenkopf division is baptized " Theodor Eicke" , name which it will raise on the cuff, “privilege rare and arranged hierarchically”. Its military reputation remains however discussed.

Since 1940, at the time of the countryside of France, the attitude of Eicke for which “the losses, that does not have importance” not made the object of criticism of officers of Wehrmacht, frightened by the number of died and of wounded within Totenkopf division. These criticisms renew at the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union: from June 1941 in March 1942, division loses: 12000 men on an initial manpower of: 17000.

For Charles Sydnor “the most constant characteristic, in the way in which it tackled the problems of command on the ground, was its fanaticism, which overrode pragmatism and logic in the relative questions with the instruction, the discipline, logistics and the tactic. Eicke regarded the extermination of the enemy as the main aim of the war and had the feeling that the fanatic determination and the complete absence of pity, that it is in the attack or the defensive, were the keys to success tactical”. Jean-Luc Leleu insists as for him on the attention given by Eicke to the training of his men on an empirical and pragmatic basis, particularly for better preparing them in the hard conditions of the face of the East. Heinz Höne underlines the difference between “the spirit of the formations death's-head of dad Eicke ” and that of the other units of Waffen S.

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