Willy Schmelcher
Willy Schmelcher was a Nazi Party politician and police official who rose to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer and was the chief of police in Saarbrücken and Metz. He was also a member of the Reichstag throughout most of Nazi Germany and served as an SS and Police Leader in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the Reichsgau Wartheland during the Second World War. After the war, he was interned, underwent denazification and secured a civil service position in the Saarland.
Early life
Schmelcher, the son of a master glazier, completed Realschule in Eppingen in 1911. Until 1914, he studied at the building trade school in Stuttgart. On the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the Imperial German Army and served on the western front as a combat engineer. Commissioned a Leutnant in July 1917, he was captured by the British in September 1918, earning the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class. Released in January 1920, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart and graduated with an engineering degree in 1925. He passed his state engineering examinations in 1927 and worked as a construction engineer.SS and Nazi Party career
Schmelcher joined the Nazi Party and the Sturmabteilung, its paramilitary unit, in June 1928. As an early Party member, he later would be awarded the Golden Party Badge. He was the SA leader in Gau Baden from 1928 to August 1930. In June 1930, he became a member of the Schutzstaffel. On 1 August, he left the SA with the rank of SA-Standartenführer. Schmelcher became the Führer of the 10th SS-Standarde in Neustadt in September 1932, remaining in that command until July 1935. He next held SS staff positions with Abschnitt XXIX in Mannheim and with Oberabschnitte "Südwest" in Stuttgart and "Rhein" in Wiesbaden, before being assigned to the Sicherheitsdienst Main Office, later a part of the Reich Security Main Office. From March 1935 to October 1942, he also was the Polizeipräsident in Saarbrücken.Apart from his SS duties, Schmelzer also was involved in Nazi Party politics. In 1929, he was elected to the Neustadt city council, serving as the leader of the Nazi parliamentary group and becoming the council chairman. Following the Nazi seizure of power, he became chairman of the Nazi parliamentary group in the Rhenish Palatinate district assembly in March 1933, and held this office until 1937. At the November 1933 parliamentary election, he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 27 and retained that seat until the end of the Nazi regime.