March 19th, 2010
Headsman
On this date* in 1945, Friedrich Fromm found out that you have to pick a side.
The cunning career army officer had been serving as the head of the Replacement Army.
This position provided access to the Fuhrer for Fromm — and for his chief of staff, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg. And it gave his office the authority to issue the “Valkyrie” orders for quelling civil unrest that Stauffenberg’s circle would use to attempt to seize Berlin.
Fromm realized that his underling was involved in a plot against the Nazi dictator, but neither joined it nor smashed it.
This play-it-safe approach turned out not to be safe at all. When Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler failed, Fromm hastily attempted to cover his tracks by summarily executing Stauffenberg and co-conspirators.
Not all that subtle, really. “You’ve been in a damned hurry to get your witnesses below ground,” Joseph Goebbels sneered.
Heinrich Himmler quickly had Fromm arrested. “Fate does not spare the man whose convictions are not matched by his readiness to give them effect,” wrote July 20th conspirator Hans Speidel. (As cited by Shirer.)
Although in Friedrich Fromm’s case, that wasn’t entirely true.
In recognition of the general’s calculated but not-unhelpful show of loyalty on the decisive date (enacted when Fromm realized the plotters had made a dog’s breakfast of everything) Hitler generously permitted the general to be “honorably” shot … rather than strangled from a meathook.
* Some sources give March 12, rather than March 19. I have been unable to establish primary documentation, but the sites for March 19 are far more numerous.
Also On This Date
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Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Capital Punishment, Cycle of Violence, Death Penalty, Execution, Germany, History, Notable for their Victims, Power, Shot, Soldiers, Treason, Wartime Executions
Tags: 1940s, 1945, claus schenk graf von stauffenberg, claus von stauffenberg, cowardice, Fascism, friedrich fromm, heinrich himmler, joseph goebbels, naziism, plot to kill hitler, valkyrie, world war ii
August 28th, 2009
Headsman
On this date in 1944, the Gestapo eliminated more-trouble-than-he-was-worth Russian SS man Bronislav Kaminski.
The St. Petersburg-born Kaminski was Soviet by citizenship, but not Russian by nationality. Half-German and half-Polish, he’d done time twice for his questionable loyalties during the paranoid 1920’s and 30’s.
Turns out the commissars were on to something … or maybe, to paraphrase the old saying, that a Nazi is a Communist who’s been to the gulag.
Either way, when the front swept past Belarus where Kaminski was serving his post-release internal exile, the engineer jumped on an opportunity to join a classmate with the Russian National Liberation Army (RONA, or ROA). Kaminski soon rose to command the anti-partisan “army,” and earned an Iron Cross and the rank of Major General when it was incorporated into the Waffen-SS.
Unfortunately for Kaminski — and more so for anyone who happened to be in his unit’s vicinity — the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division was much better at roughing up partisans and their presumed civilian sympathizers than conducting disciplined military operations.
Little more than a roving band of armed thugs,* it was completely ineffective in the Siege of Warsaw earlier in August 1944, spending its time raping and looting instead.
That, evidently, was enough for Himmler, who had Kaminski eliminated** in punishment for his own looting (the booty was supposed to belong to the Reich), and the alleged rape-murder of German women along with all the expendables in Warsaw.
The exact trigger for this execution (for the juridical machinery always veils acts of discretion and intentionality; certainly, this is evident in a state like Nazi Germany) has never been completely clear; it may have been that between Kaminski and turncoat Red Army general Andrei Vlasov, the shrinking Reich had room enough for only one Russian commander.
Devil knows what he was commanding, anyway.
When, post-Kaminski, Vlasov assigned the remains of the RONA to Ukrainian collaborator Sergei Bunyachenko, the latter fumed, “So that’s what you’re giving me, bandits, robbers and thieves! You’ll let me have what you can no longer use!” … and soon bailed on his “patrons” by switching sides in the war yet again.
* It had some operations with the notorious Dirlewanger Battallion.
** The official announcement was that Kaminski had been killed in a partisan ambush; crazy conspiracy theorists refused to buy it.
Also On This Date
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Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Disfavored Minorities, Execution, Germany, History, Occupation and Colonialism, Pelf, Poland, Power, Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Russia, Shot, Soldiers, Summary Executions, The Worm Turns, USSR, War Crimes, Wartime Executions
Tags: 1940s, 1944, andrei vlasov, bronislav kaminski, Fascism, heinrich himmler, ochota massacre, roa, rona, russian liberation army, russian national liberation army, sergei bunyachenko, warsaw, world war ii
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