Walter Braemer


Walter Braemer was a general in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht and a high-ranking SS commander during the Nazi era. He was a Nazi criminal responsible for mass murders of the civilian population of Bromberg in Poland at the outset of the Second World War, and later for crimes against humanity in the Hol­o­caust in the Soviet Union. He escaped prosecution and punishment after the war despite having been held for years as a prisoner of war by the British.

Early career

Braemer was born at Königsberg, then an East Prussian port city on the Baltic Sea, on 7 January 1883. His military career under the German Empire and the Weimar Republic bears the unmistakable hallmarks of patronage commonly accorded at the time to people of high birth.
On 2 March 1901, at the age of 18, he enlisted as a Fähnrich in the 2nd Hanoverian Dragoon Regiment No. 16, a unit of the 20th Division of the Prussian Army stationed in the northern garrison town of Lüneburg in the Prussian Province of Hanover. Less than eleven months later, on 27 January 1902, he was promoted, without much education, military or other­wise, to the commissioned rank of Leutnant his commission as an officer having been issued on 22 June 1900, that is, actually prior to his enlistment in the army, at a time when he was a civilian minor of 17 years of age.
Only subsequently, for two years between 1906 and 1908, did he study at the Military School of Equitation in Hanover. This course was followed by 2 years 9 months and 3 weeks he spent at a military academy where he was enrolled until 21 July 1911.
In April 1912, was detached to the central military command known as the "Great General Staff", the governing body of the army. While there, he was given the higher rank of Rittmeister on 17 February 1914, and five days later formally inducted into the Great General Staff at the age of 31.
When the First World War broke out, Braemer was transferred on 2 August 1914 to the headquarters of the 9th Cavalry Division, a formation newly raised specifically for the war effort, where he served as a third-in-command under the fellow-Prussian commander Eberhard Graf von Schmettow and the latter's right hand or "Ia", Major Herwarth von Bittenfeld.
Braemer married Erika Freiin von der Goltz on 27 December 1915; they had three children. Between 9 September 1916 and 18 April 1917 he circulated between the General Staffs of such formations as the 75th Reserve Division, and the 6th and 7th Cavalry Divisions, before being appointed to the General Staff of the XII Corps at Dresden. On 17 January 1917 he was decorated with the Royal Prussian Hohenzollern House Order for military exploits that remain a complete mystery. He then served for a few months between November 1917 and March 1918 under the Ober­quartier­meister within the command known as the 10th Army in Cologne, before being posted very briefly on 28 March 1918 to the General Staff of the 234th Infantry Division, and the next month again to that of the XXVI Reserve Corps.
After the War he served in the 20th Reichswehr Brigade based at Allenstein in Ermland, 126 km south of his native Königsberg in East Prussia, before being delegated to a desk job at the Bendlerblock in Berlin the Ministry of the Reichswehr for a period of 2 years and months between 13 December 1919 and 1 April 1922. While there he was again promoted to the rank of Major on 1 January 1922. For 18 months between April 1922 to October 1923 he was squadron leader in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment Rei­ter-Re­gi­ment that garrisoned both Allenstein and Osterode in Ermland, then within the Province of East Prussia. Next, over the period of 3 years and 4 months from October 1923 to Feb­ru­a­ry 1927, Braemer served on the General Staff of the 6th Division at Münster in Westphalia: here he saw another ad­vance­ment in rank to Oberst­leutnant on 1 April 1926. From 1 February 1927 to 1 Jan­u­a­ry 1931 he held the command of the 6th Cavalry Regiment headquartered in the northern town of Pasewalk, about 40 km west of Stettin in Western Pomerania a post in which he spent 3 years and 11 months. A promotion to the rank of Oberst was accorded him there on 1 October 1929. Lastly, Braemer held the military command of the city of Inster­burg in East Prussia, some 100 km east of his native Königsberg, during the nearly 22-month period from 1 January 1931 to 30 November 1932. He was promoted to General­major on 1 October 1932, and two months later retired from the Reichswehr at the age of 49.

Nazi period

The beginning

Two years and eight months after Hitler's rise to power and nearly three years after his leave-taking of the army, on 1 October 1935, Braemer then aged 52 joined the SS with the rank of Standartenführer, and in this rank was posted as a "training consultant" to the General Staff of the SS circuit or Ober­abschnitt known as command Nord, where he stayed until 15 April 1936, to be transferred to the Ober­abschnitt ''Nord­west for one month, before being moved again to the Ober­abschnitt Nord­see, where he stay­ed until 1 July 1938. All three SS districts in question were at the time head­quar­ter­ed at Altona in Hamburg. In the course of his SS service Braemer gained two promotions, ultimately to Bri­ga­de­füh­rer, the fourth-highest rank in the SS, a remarkably quick climb accomplished in less than 2 years and 9 months since joining the ranks. The latter rank of Bri­ga­de­füh­rer was conferred on him only after he had be­come member of the Nazi party sometime in 1937 with the membership number 4012329. At this time Braemer involved himself with Himmler's Lebens­born So­ci­e­ty, an or­gan­i­za­tion whose purpose was to devise ways and means of en­gi­neer­ing the genetic makeup of the German nation by promoting Nazi eugenics and "breeding" pure "Aryans".
On 1 July 1938 Braemer was appointed to the rank of Generalmajor'' of the Wehrmacht, the same rank he last held in the Reichswehr, and was placed by the SS once again at the disposal of the army. At the time of mobilization mounted in preparation for the Nazi attack on Poland Braemer was appointed as the Commander of the 580th Army Rear Area, a position abbreviated to "Korück 580". He received that command on 26 August 1939, six days before the invasion of Poland.
Four days after becoming Korück 580, on 30 August 1939, Braemer gave the order for the formation of the concentration camp at Liepe, 8 kilometres west of the current German-Polish border, which camp was es­tab­lish­ed on 1 September 1939, the first day of the Second World War. As Korück 580 Braemer was also responsible for the creation of the camps located at Łopienek and other localities.

Criminal activities

Poland

Shortly after the strike on Poland Braemer found himself with the Nazi invasion force in the Polish region of Cuyavia, where according to latest scholarship he was appointed by the 4th German Army in his capacity as Ko­rück 580 the commandant of the northern Polish city of Bydgoszcz, a position in which he formally styled himself in his written proc­la­ma­tions as the "chief in executive authority". His short stint as the supremo of Bydgoszcz lasted with effect from 5 Sep­tem­ber 1939 some earlier published sources cite the date of 8 Sep­tem­ber 1939 for his assumption of this post. The dates are significant, as his appearance on the Bydgoszcz stage is said in some sources to have lasted for a total of only six days. Within just four days of Braemer's beginning to exercise his "executive authority" he be­came personally re­spon­si­ble for the murder of 370 Polish civilians in Bydgoszcz in the large-scale pacification operations he ordered. These included the public execution by a firing squad in the city's historic Old Market Square on 9 September 1939 of a large group of civilians ran­dom­ly round­ed up in the streets a short while earlier in the day, a crime which provoked in the ensuing months a protest from the Vatican. By 8 September 1939 the total number of civilian victims of Bydgoszcz executions grew to 200400 by various es­ti­mates; on 9 Sep­tem­ber 1939 another 120 were shot. The next day, 10 September 1939, in a Braemer-ordered raid on the working­-class Byd­goszcz neigh­bour­hood of "Swedish Heights" between 120 and 200 ci­vil­ians were killed,­­­ while another public execution staged on that day in the centrally located Old Market Square claimed 20 victims. It is said that the mass murders of civilians in Bydgoszcz went on at such a pace that Braemer, although a "com­pe­tent commandant", eventually lost all count of how many had been killed and he allowed the slaughter to con­tin­ue. Apparently the level of atrocities was such that on occasion it produced qualms of conscience in his own executioners, but never in Braemer himself. While carrying out his actions against the townsfolk of Bydgoszcz, in reprisal for the stiff resistance that the civilian population put up against the German invaders after the Polish armed forces withdrew from the city on 4 September 1939, Braemer instituted at the same time ethnic cleansing policies against the Jewish minority of the town, being able as a result to report on 14 November 1939, in the 11th week of the war, that "the Jewish question does not arise in Bydgoszcz... because during the säu­be­rungs­ak­ti­on­en all the Jews who did not deem it advisable to flee from the city beforehand were eliminated". The Bydgoszcz massacres are the primary reason for which some German his­to­ri­ans have con­sid­er­ed Braemer an "extremist" among the Nazi Wehrmacht's corps of generals. Others have described him as a "fanatical Nazi" who resorted to "unheard-of brutality".
Little is known of Braemer's activities immediately following his disappearance from the Bydgoszcz scene, a community on which he left an indelible mark, and there is no clear record of his departure as such. Historians have merely noted that he did not play any role in the occupation of the historical region of Greater Poland, i.e. of the lands to the west of Cuyavia where Bydgoszcz is located, thereby suggesting that his activities were of interest to researchers in other areas. It is on record, how­ever, that Braemer continued as Ko­rück 580 for a total of nearly 21 months until 19 May 1941.
After his appointment as Ko­rück 580 came to an end on 19 May 1941, Braemer spent 35 days, until 24 June 1941, officially mothballed in the füh­rer­re­ser­ve or officers' reserve pool within the German Army High Command as his new assignment was being prepared for him.