Nazi Officer List

[Rosette Allaband]

Between1925 and 1945, the German Schutzstaffel (SS) grew from eight members to over a quarter of a million Waffen-SS and over a million Allgemeine-SS members. Other members included the SS-Totenkopfverbnde (SS-TV), which ran the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. The following list of SS personnel gives the names of notable persons who are counted among the organization's most famous, influential or notorious members. Women were not allowed to join the SS[citation needed] but were allowed into the SS-Gefolge and many served within the concentration camps.

Prior to 1934 the SS were nominally under the command of the Sturmabteilung[1] and so it could be said that both Adolf Hitler as Oberster SA-Fhrer and Ernst Rhm as Stabschef SA outranked the most senior SS position of Reichsfhrer-SS. Following the Night of the Long Knives Hitler "raised the SS, hitherto subordinate to the SA, to the rank of an independent organisation".[2] Hitler also was considered SS Member No. 1, Emil Maurice (considered the founder of the SS) was member No. 2, although leadership was assumed by Julius Schreck who was member No. 5. Himmler was SS member No. 168. Based on the seniority system of SS membership number, this made Hitler senior in the SS to all other members even if not by rank.

After the Night of the Long Knives, when the SS became independent from the SA, Hitler was listed on SS officer rolls as member No. 1 and considered supreme commander of the entire SS (Oberster Fhrer der Schutzstaffel: Literally, "Supreme Leader of the SS") by virtue of his position as the Fhrer of Germany. There is no photographic record of Hitler ever wearing an actual SS uniform nor was there a special SS insignia for Hitler above that worn by Himmler.

Following is the list of persons holding the title positions as well as actual highest ranks of the Schutzstaffel (SS) since the earliest inception of the armed SS units in Nazi Germany. The ranks include distinctive insignia designs worn on the collar at one points by all officers.

The indictment against 24 major war criminals and seven organizations was filed on October 18, 1945 by the four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal. On November 20, the trial began with 21 defendants appearing before the court. The United States held 12 additional trials in Nuremberg after the initial International Military Tribunal. In all, 199 defendants were tried, 161 were convicted, and 37 were sentenced to death.

Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Great Britain would serve as the court's presiding judge. The proceedings would be simultaneously translated into English, French, German, and Russian. The trial would make history being the first of its kind with judges from four countries.

During the Moscow Conference on October 30, 1943, the Declaration of Atrocities was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin stating:

"The United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union have received from many quarters evidence of atrocities, massacres and cold-blooded mass executions which are being perpetrated by Hitlerite forces in many of the countries they have overrun . . . those German officers and men and members of the Nazi party who have been responsible for or have taken a consenting part in the above atrocities, massacres and executions will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done in order that they may be judged and punished according to the laws of these liberated countries and of free governments which will be erected therein..."

Nuremberg, Germany was chosen as the location of the trials for being a focal point of Nazi propaganda rallies leading up to the war. The Allies wanted Nuremberg to symbolize the death of Nazi Germany. The court convened in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg that was previously expanded by German prisoners to fit up to 1,200 detainees.

The indictment of 24 Nazi government officials and organizations was filed on October 18, 1945 by the four chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal: Robert H Jackson of the United States, Sir Hartley Shawcross of Great Britain, Francois de Menthon of France, and Roman A Rudenko of the Soviet Union. The jurisdiction of the Tribunal included crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The IMT defined crimes against humanity as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation...or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds."

The indictment was read on November 20, 1945 with 21 defendants appearing in court. The suicides of top Nazi leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler prevented them from standing trial. Head of the German Labor Front, Robert Ley, committed suicide the day before the trial.

On October 1, 1946, the Tribunal convicted 19 of the defendants and acquitted three. Of those convicted, 12 were sentenced to death. Three defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment and four to prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years. On October 16, executions were carried out by hanging in the gymnasium of the courthouse. Hermann Gring committed suicide the night before his execution. In 1947, the prisoners sentenced to incarceration were sent to Spandau Prison in Berlin.

From December 1946 to April 1949, a series of twelve additional military tribunals for war crimes against Nazi Germany leaders were held by the United States in the Palace of Justice. The defendants were 177 high-ranking physicians, judges, industrialists, SS commanders and police commanders, military personnel, civil servants, and diplomats. The trials uncovered the German leadership that supported the Nazi dictatorship. Of the 177 defendants, 24 were sentenced to death, 20 to lifelong imprisonment, and 98 other prison sentences. Twenty five defendants were found not guilty. Many of the prisoners were released early in the 1950s as a result of pardons. Thirteen of the 24 death sentences were executed.

Following victory, the Allies turned to the legal system to hold Axis leaders accountable. In an unprecedented series of trials, a new meaning of justice emerged in response to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both the Germans and the Japanese throughout the war.

Dormant bank accounts, transfers of gold, and unclaimed insurance policies, all taken by the Nazis and hidden primarily in Swiss bank accounts during World War II, are now the subject of economic and financial research. Museums and galleries are researching the provenance of paintings, decorative arts, and sculpture in their collections in order to confirm that none of the pieces were looted during World War II. Although the Nazis were known for their thorough recordkeeping, a significant amount of artwork still is missing and unaccounted for. The Allied armies salvaged many of these German records, but do these records clearly tell the story of an art piece? And what is the story of the Allied attempts to find the owners of more than two million looted art pieces and bring German art dealers and Nazi collaborators to justice?

In recent years, renewed interest in Holocaust-era assets has prompted heirs, art historians, and curators to ask these questions concerning art provenance and claims research. Until recently, very few researchers were interested in economic and financial aspects of the Nazi regime and the war; even fewer in Holocaust-related assets.1 Now, provenance research of looted art has become an important activity for auction houses, art dealers, and art museums.2

To address the dual concerns of researchers' demand for records that document the locating and restituting of confiscated art and the preservation problems associated with overuse of fragile World War II records, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) created the Holocaust Records Project (HRP). The project has the task of identifying, preserving, describing, and microfilming more than twenty million pages of records created by the Allies in occupied Europe regarding Nazi looted art and the restitution of national treasures. These materials include documents generated by various U.S. government civilian agencies, U.S. military branches, and the Office of Military Government, U.S. Zone (OMGUS).

The HRP emerged from a meeting in the summer of 2001 between NARA and art historians and curators to identify NARA's key and relevant holdings concerning art provenance and restitution claims research. These records tell the story of Allied programs created in mid-1943 to protect art from being damaged or stolen by the Allied military forces, to prevent art from being used as a financial asset by the Axis powers, to keep Nazi looted art from being sent to a safe haven (somewhere outside of Germany, in the neutral countries or Latin America), and to aid Allied restitution efforts.

The HRP is microfilming documents in more than fifteen different records groups, including Records of the Office of Strategic Services (RG 226), General Records in the Department of State (RG 59), Records of the Office of Alien Property (Foreign Funds) (RG 131), and the "Ardelia Hall Collection" in Records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II (RG 260). The project's progress can be monitored on NARA's art provenance web page at www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/.

Our primary goal is to aid archival research in looted cultural property records and to create specialized inventories and finding aids. Our finding aids allow researchers to narrow their search for archival records and also help to preserve the records by minimizing the amount of handling to which they are subjected. Two additional project goals are the posting of inventories and indexes on NARA's art provenance web page.

The first set of records to be microfilmed are the records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas ("The Roberts Commission");3 the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) inventory card files; the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA&A) files; the Cultural Property Claims Applications; and the records of the four temporary collecting points under U.S. Army command: Marburg, Offenbach, Wiesbaden, and Munich.4 The army occupation forces in Germany, Italy, and Austria created massive quantities of records in the process of the recovery, administration, and restitution of looted art and cultural property and treasures. The paperwork involving property claim applications made to OMGUS from individuals and institutions was routed through the collecting point to the object's country of origin. For example, if an object had been taken out of Poland by the Nazis, moved to France, and shipped to Munich, then the claim was made to the Allies by the Polish government. Each European government was to determine ownership of artworks taken from its own country. Also in these records are U.S. Army interrogations and field reports on looted art, including information on the discovery and recovery of looted art, and captured German and French documents containing packing lists and bills of sale. One section of OMGUS records relating to the location and restitution of looted art alone amounts to several million pages.

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