The Holocaust, the murder of millions of innocent people and the thorough ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe were just some of the policies of Nazi Germany before and during World War II.
The leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, considered his main goal to expand the territory of the German Empire as much as possible, as well as to remove all Jews and representatives of other " unwanted» nationalities from the territory of Europe. The names of most Nazi criminals, such as Hitler, Josef Mengele, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering became known throughout the world, but a significant part of the equally, and sometimes more bloodthirsty followers of national fascist ideology remained in the shadows.
So, here are 10 bloodthirsty Nazis you haven't heard of.
10. Friedrich Jeckeln – developer of the “Jeckeln system” for eliminating “undesirables”
SS Obergruppenführer (second rank in the SS after Heinrich Himmler), Friedrich headed one of the largest " Einsatzgruppen" - a "tactical group" or "deployment group", whose main task was mass murder in the territory of the occupied Soviet Union. By personal order of Jeckeln, more than 100 thousand Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other representatives were brutally murdered. unwanted» nationalities in territories captured during World War II.
Having joined the Nazi Party in October 1929, within a year Jeckeln became a member of the SS, and three years later he was elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament. Remembered for his ruthlessness and cruelty, Jeckeln took a personal part in the liquidation of members of the left and other opposition parties.
Using a self-invented method of mass murder known as " Jeckeln system", in which still living people were forced to undress and lie down in freshly dug mass graves, Jeckeln carried out three of the most terrible Nazi executions of the Second World War: in Rumbala (November-December 1941, 25 thousand people were executed), in Babi Yar (September 1941, more than 180 thousand people were executed) and in Kamenets-Podolsky (June 1941, about 24 thousand Jews were executed).
For the mass execution in Rumbula, Jeckeln was awarded the Iron Cross. In April 1945 he was captured by Russian troops and in early 1946 he appeared before a Riga military court. At the trial, the killer was calm and admitted his guilt: " I must bear responsibility for everything that the SS, SD and Gestapo have done in the eastern lands. My fate is in the hands of the court and I only ask that mitigating circumstances be taken into account. I consider my sentence fair and accept it in full repentance".
Convicted of war crimes, Jeckeln was hanged on Victory Square in Riga on February 3, 1946..
9. Elsa Koch – “The Bitch of Buchenwald”
Elsa Koch - wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, Karl-Otto Koch, recognized as one of the most cruel women of the entire Nazi regime. Her bloody deeds earned her the nicknames "Bitch of Buchenwald", "Red Witch of Buchenwald", "Beast of Buchenwald", "Queen of Buchenwald", and "Butcher's Widow", but even these cannot convey her inhuman cruelty.
A member of the Nazi Party since the early 1930s, Koch met her husband through mutual friends and began her career as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. She came to Buchenwald after her husband was appointed camp commandant in 1937.
Koch treated prisoners in both camps horribly and is said to have enjoyed killing “undesirables” without the slightest remorse. She did not even hesitate to rip off areas of tattooed skin from prisoners, using them as lamp shades, book covers and pillowcases. On Elsa's orders, the camp guards raped, tortured and killed prisoners right in front of her eyes, which gave her undisguised pleasure and joy.
In August 1943, Elsa and Karl Koch were arrested by the Nazis themselves on charges of embezzlement and embezzlement, but just a year later Elsa was released. A year later, in June 1945, she was arrested by the US Army.
One of the first Nazis tried by the US military, Koch was tried in 1947 in Dachau and, despite being pregnant, was sentenced to life imprisonment "for violating the laws and customs of war." In 1948, General Latsis Clay commuted the sentence to 4 years, citing insufficient evidence, but Elsa was again arrested and retried. This time she was found guilty of multiple murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with deprivation of all civil rights.
Elsa Koch hanged herself in the women's prison of the city of Aichach in September 1967 and was buried in the city cemetery in an unmarked grave.
8. Hertha Bothe – “Sadist of Stutthof”
Another equally brutal Nazi was Hertha Bothe, a concentration camp guard nicknamed “ sadist Stutthof"because of his disgusting actions.
A member of the League of German Girls (the women's wing of the Nazi Party) since 1939, Bothe was called up to serve as a guard at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in September 1942 and was soon transferred to the Stutthof camp near Danzig. It didn't take long before Hertha became famous for her brutal beatings of prisoners and her undisguised pleasure in watching the suffering of prisoners who were tortured and raped.
But her crimes were not limited to Stutthof. While escorting a group of female prisoners from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Herta was beaten to death wooden beam Jewish girl Eva and shot two other prisoners, although she never admitted it.
Arrested in April 1945 by Allied forces during the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Borte was brought before a military court, where she was found to be a "ruthless follower of the Nazi regime." Sentenced to ten years in prison, she was pardoned by the British government on December 22, 1951, after serving only 6 years. Hertha Bothe died on March 16, 2000 (79 years old)..
7. Eugene Fischer - creator of Nazi eugenics, German concentration camps and “Biology of the Aryan Race”
Some Nazi doctors, such as Joseph Mengele, were more famous than Eugen Fischer, but his work was the basis for many of Hitler's revolutionary ideas and policies.
Occupying the position of director of the Institute of Anthropology, Heredity and Eugenics named after. Kaiser Wilhelm from 1927 to 1942, Fischer created the theory of “racial biology”, justifying the superiority of the Aryan race over other races of “subhumans”.
And although he joined the Nazi Party only in 1940, before that Fischer carried out the illegal examination and sterilization of 600 children - descendants of French-African soldiers, and also wrote 2 scientific works early National Socialism: " Fundamentals of heredity and racial hygiene" And " Theory of human heredity and racial hygiene" Fischer's work became the scientific basis for the adoption of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, as well as the scale for determining racial purity.
His numerous experiments with Gypsies, Jews and Germans of African descent, aimed at finding evidence of racist theories, made Fischer so famous among the Nazis that even Hitler himself mentioned his work in Mein Kampf. Another invention of this pseudo-doctor's fevered brain was the concentration camps, the first of which was built in 1904 in south africa to isolate "inferior" races.
Incredibly, after retiring in 1942, E. Fisher was not put on trial for war crimes and lived in peace until his death in 1967.
6. Josef Kramer and Irma Grese – “The Beast of Belsen” and “The Hyena of Auschwitz”
The commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Joseph Kramer, did not feel any pity for his prisoners at all, nor did his “comrade-in-arms” Irma Grese.
Nicknamed the "Beast of Belsen", Kramer worked at the Natzweiler-Struthof, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz camps, killing tens of thousands of prisoners with brutal and uncompromising methods. Kramer began his “working” career in the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, the only one in modern France, where he personally gassed 80 Jewish men and women, and then preserved their skeletons for the Institute of Anatomy at the Imperial University of Strasbourg.
From May to December 1944, Kramer was in charge of the operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, happily killing thousands upon thousands of prisoners on an industrial scale previously unknown to mankind. After this, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where he continued his brutal dictatorial rule until the liberation of the camp by the British, for whom he even gave something of a tour.
Irma Grese first worked in the Ravensbrück camp, then in Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, and everywhere she was equally cruel. Known as the "Hyena of Auschwitz", she took pleasure in observing the suffering of the sick and weak. Possessing extraordinary external characteristics, Irma had many lovers among SS workers, including Josef Mengele.
At trial, both sadists were found guilty of war crimes and hanged in December 1945 at Hamlyn Prison. Moreover, at the time of her execution, Irma was only 22 years old, making her the youngest criminal of the 20th century sentenced to death under English law.
5. Reinhard Heydrich - the mastermind of the Holocaust and the “Final Solution”, nicknamed by Hitler “the man with the iron heart”
Despite his position as one of the most important Nazi leaders during World War II, Reinhard Heydrich's atrocities often remain in the shadows. If Adolf Hitler himself calls someone “a man with an iron heart,” then this is probably one of the most bloodthirsty Nazis.
An SS general and head of the Reich Security Main Directorate (which included the Gestapo, criminal police and SD), Heydrich also oversaw the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia. One of the founders of the SD, Heydrich neutralized opponents of Nazism even before they came to power, and also participated in the preparation and conduct of Kristallnacht (mass pogroms of Jewish families in Germany and Austria in 1938).
During World War II, he was involved in the suppression of Czech cultural identity and the elimination of pockets of resistance in Bohemia and Moravia, and also had a hand in the creation of the Einsatzgruppen - units that systematically eliminated the local population and Jews. In addition, Heydrich personally presided over the 1942 conference in Wanza, where the “final decision” was made to deport and exterminate all Jews in German-occupied territories, which became his main crime and led to the Holocaust.
In May 1942, Heydrich’s atrocities were put an end to by a British-trained group of Czech soldiers sent to eliminate him as part of a special operation code-named “anthropoid.” Hitler long lamented the loss of one of his most devoted generals, who unquestioningly carried out all his extravagant wishes.
4. Maria Mandel – the “beast” directly involved in the murder of more than half a million women at Auschwitz
Maria Mandel is considered directly involved in the murder of more than 500 thousand women prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It is not surprising that for her boundless cruelty she received the nickname “beast”.
Born in Austria-Hungary, Mandel became an employee of the Lichtenburg camp immediately after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, after which, in May 1939, she was transferred to the Ravensbrück camp. Impressing her superiors, Maria quickly moved up the ranks and was soon put in charge of conducting roll calls and punishing offenders - beating and flogging prisoners gave her sadistic pleasure.
Mandel gained her notoriety after her transfer to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in October 1942. The female commandant could not surpass the men, but she had absolute control over the female part of the camp prisoners, thanks to which she became the manager of all female units of the Auschwitz camp, including Hindenburg, Rajsko and Lichteverden.
Mandel became famous for ordering the immediate death of any prisoner passing by if she dared to glance at her. Approving the lists of camp prisoners to be exterminated, she sent more than 500 thousand women and children to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Mary also chose from among the Jews the so-called “ pets", forcing them to walk around the camp and carry out various errands, after which she became tired of them and was subject to destruction. In an attempt to increase the efficiency of the process of extermination of prisoners, Mandel created " Auschwitz Women's Orchestra”, which played for the prisoners dancing on the way to the gas chambers.
In August 1945, M. Mandel was captured by the US Army and, despite requests for clemency, was hanged in January 1948 after her trial at Auschwitz.
3. Friedrich Wegener - scientist who conducted experiments on prisoners but was never convicted of his crimes
The pathologist who discovered the disease originally known as Wegener's granulomatosis, Friedrich Wegener was involved in horrific experiments on prisoners in concentration camps and Jewish ghettos, although he was never convicted of any crimes.
An ardent supporter of Nazism, engaged in propaganda with a party card in hand, and joining the National Socialists even earlier than Adolf Hitler, Wegener played an important role in shaping the views of the future leader of Germany.
Occupying a high position in the German military medicine system, Friedrich Wegener served in a medical institution near the Lodz ghetto in Poland, where he conducted his experiments on Jews. Wegener is accused of testing new drugs, injecting various substances into the bodies of victims, and performing autopsies on living people to study organs that were still functioning.
Wegener managed to maintain his Nazi past until his death in 1990 and even received an award from the American Lung Institute for the discovery of a new disease. However, less than a year after Wegener's death, information about connections with the Nazis and sadistic experiments was made public. The scientific community deprived him of all awards and titles, renamed the open disease and consigned Wegener to complete oblivion.
2. Odilo Globocnik - a man called by one historian "the nastiest guy in the nastiest organization ever known"
Described by historian Michael Allen as "the nastiest guy in the nastiest organization ever known," SS warlord and Austrian Nazi Globocnik committed a litany of war crimes during World War II.
One of the main organizers of "Operation Reinhard", Globocnik took part in the murder of over a million Polish Jews during the Holocaust, ensuring their identification and delivery to the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzek concentration camps. He also took a direct part in the extermination of 500 thousand Jews in the largest Warsaw ghetto in Europe, and subsequently in the extermination of the inhabitants of the Bialystok ghetto who resisted the Nazi occupation.
An ardent supporter of the Nazi theory of racial superiority and ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe, he created and oversaw the Lublin Reservation, in which about 95 thousand Jews worked in labor camps. According to Globocnik, Jews in labor camps had to provide themselves with everything they needed or, otherwise, die of hunger.
It is also believed that it was Globocnik who convinced Heinrich Himmler of the need to use scientifically based methods of exterminating people in concentration camps and received permission to test gas chambers in the Belzek camp, after which they began to be used in all “death camps”.
After fleeing to Austria in May 1945, Globocnik was captured by British soldiers, but in prison he bit through a cyanide capsule and avoided trial. The priest of the local church refused to desecrate the sacred ground of the church cemetery with the body of a Nazi criminal, and Globocnik was buried away from the cemetery.
1. Oskar Dirlewanger – child molester and necrophiliac, the most “vicious and bloodthirsty” of the Nazis
Oskar Dirlewanger is closely associated with the most terrible and inhumane crimes of the Second World War, most of which were committed by his subordinates - soldiers of the SS penal unit "Dirlewanger".
For raping two 13-year-old girls in the 1930s, Dirlewanger was sentenced to prison, but was later released after believing that the brave fighter in the Spanish Civil War could be useful to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in their military campaigns.
Participation in the First World War and Civil War in Spain not only made Dirlewanger a first-class soldier, but also contributed to the formation of his sadistic tendencies, fully realized during the Second World War.
It was thanks to his military experience that Oscar quickly made a career in the SS and received command of his own penal unit, known for its brutal methods.
This SS commander recruited most of his soldiers from convicted criminals, concentration camp prisoners, and even from asylums for the mentally ill, whose bestial cruelty was experienced in the occupied territories of the USSR. They killed, tortured and raped adults and children, while their commander watched with pleasure. Dirlewanger even thought of feeding the prisoners rat poison to entertain his soldiers, allowing them to rape the agonizing women.
Timothy Synder, Chris Bishop, Richard Rhodes and other historians in their writings confirmed the inhuman anger and bestial cruelty of this Nazi, calling Dirlewanger the most cruel sadist of the SS and the entire Second World War, with whom no one can compete.
Captured by French troops in June 1945, Dirlewanger died in the Altshausen prison camp due to mistreatment and constant beatings. The death certificate of the sadist says that he died of natural causes, but many are sure that the SS man was simply beaten to death by Polish soldiers.
Next trial, associated with Nazi crimes, may take place in Germany. As TASS reports with reference to the prosecutor's office of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, a 91-year-old woman who from April to July 1944 served in a concentration camp located in Poland as a signalman and “provided assistance to criminals and their accomplices in the systematic murders of those brought from Jews of all Europe." Law enforcement agencies believe that this woman assisted in the murder of 260 thousand prisoners of Auschwitz. The name of the 91-year-old suspect has not been released.
A new round of investigation into cases related to Nazi crimes began after the verdict in the case of a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp Ivan Demjanjuk, who was found guilty of complicity in the murder of 28 thousand people.
In the Demjanjuk case, the court considered information about “indirect participation” in the crime sufficient to find the defendant guilty. This precedent made it possible to bring to justice those elderly Nazis who had previously escaped responsibility.
When it comes to talking about Nazi criminals whose atrocities shocked the world, they are most often called male names. However, the history of World War II knows examples when heinous crimes were the work of women.
Irma Grese. "Blonde Devil"
The warden of the death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen went down in history under the nicknames “Blonde Devil” and “Angel of Death”.
Irma Grese, concentration camp guard. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
She was born on October 7, 1923 into an ordinary family of German peasants. At the age of 15, the girl left school, devoting herself to a career in the Union of German Girls. She tried to become a nurse, but the career did not work out, and in 1942, 19-year-old Irma enlisted in the SS auxiliary units, starting with a post in the Ravensbrück camp. In 1943, she became the senior guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
Heavy boots, a wicker whip and a pistol - with the help of these things the young woman enjoyed her power over the prisoners. She beat women to death, personally selected people to be sent to the gas chambers, and shot prisoners in random order. One of Grese’s favorite pastimes was baiting prisoners with guard dogs, who were starved in advance.
On April 17, 1945, she was captured by British troops. In September 1945, Grese became one of the defendants in the trial of the administration of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, her last place of service. In November 1945, the "blond devil" was sentenced to death.
No remorse 22 year old Irma Grese I haven't experienced it. The night before her execution, she had fun and sang songs. The Nazi was hanged on December 13, 1945.
Irma Grese and Josef Kramer in captivity. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Ilsa Koch. "Frau Lampshaded"
Wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps Karla Koch Ilse Koch known as the "Witch of Buchenwald".
She was born on September 22, 1906 in Dresden, into a working-class family. In her youth, Ilsa studied diligently and was a cheerful girl. Already in adulthood, at 26 years old, she joined the Nazis on the eve of their rise to power. In 1936, Ilse began working as a secretary and guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the same year, she married like-minded Karl Koch, who in 1937 was appointed commandant of Buchenwald.
Ilsa Koch. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
From the moment Ilse Koch appeared in Buchenwald, she became famous for her harshness towards prisoners. Surviving prisoners said that the “Witch of Buchenwald,” while walking around the camp, beat people she met with a whip and set a shepherd dog on them.
Another passion of Mrs. Koch was original crafts made from human skin. She especially valued the skin of prisoners with tattoos, from which gloves, book bindings and lampshades were made. This is how Ilse Koch’s second nickname appeared - “Frau Lampshade”.
In July 1942, when the Koch couple were already working in Majdanek, Karl Koch was accused of corruption and removed from office. In the summer of 1943, Ilse and Karl Koch were arrested by the SS. In addition to corruption, Koch was accused of murdering two prisoners who secretly treated the concentration camp commandant for syphilis. In April 1945, shortly before the fall of Nazi Germany, Karl Koch was executed and his wife was released.
Ilse Koch was again arrested by representatives of the American army in June 1945. In 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against concentration camp prisoners.
A few years later, the military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany, General Lucius Clay, who considered her guilt unproven and released Ilsa Koch.
This decision caused widespread outrage in Germany, and in 1951 Ilse Koch was again arrested and re-sentenced to life imprisonment.
On September 1, 1967, Ilse Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell in the Bavarian prison of Aichach.
Antonina Makarova. "Tonka the Machine Gunner"
The woman who became the executioner of the so-called Lokot district became notorious under the nickname “Tonka the Machine Gunner.”
She was born in 1920 in the Smolensk region, into a large peasant family. At the age of 8, Tonya and her parents, brothers and sisters moved to Moscow. After graduating from school, she entered college and then technical school, planning to become a doctor.
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, 21-year-old Antonina Makarova went to the front as a nurse. In October 1941, part of Makarova was surrounded near Vyazma. After a long wandering around the German rear and living in various villages, Makarova voluntarily entered the service of the German occupiers, becoming the executioner of the Lokot District, or the Lokot Republic, a puppet territorial formation of collaborators in the Bryansk region.
During her service as an executioner, Makarova shot about 1,500 people. After the executions, for which the woman received 30 Reichsmarks, she took the clothes and belongings of those executed.By the time the territory of the Lokot District was liberated by Soviet troops, Makarova managed to go to the German rear. In 1945, in Königsberg, using stolen documents, she got a job in a Soviet military hospital. Married to a Soviet soldier Victor Ginzburg and taking her husband’s surname, Antonina Makarova fell out of sight of the intelligence services for many years.
“Tonka the Machine Gunner” was discovered and arrested only in 1978. On November 20, 1978, the Bryansk Regional Court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to death. On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out.
Maria Mandel. "Melomaniac"
Woman, during three years who headed the women's department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, was known as a music lover. On her initiative, a women’s orchestra was created from prisoners who had previously studied music, which at the gates of the concentration camp greeted people arriving to die with cheerful melodies.
Maria Mandel, concentration camp guard Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Maria Mandel born in Austria, in the city of Munzkirchen, on January 10, 1912. In the 1930s, Maria joined the growing Nazis, and in 1938 she entered service in the auxiliary units of the SS. She served as a guard at various women's concentration camps for several years and established herself as a "dedicated professional."
The pinnacle of her terrible career was her appointment in 1942 to the post of head of the women's department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. She held this post for three years.
Mandel was personally involved in the selection of prisoners sent to the gas chambers. Having fun, the Nazi took some of the doomed under her protection, giving people hope for salvation. After a while, when she got bored with the game, Maria Mandel sent the “saved” to the gas chamber, recruiting a new group of “lucky ones.”
At one time, it was Maria Mandel who provided patronage for the promotion of another murderer, Irma Grese.
In 1944, Maria Mandel was transferred to Dachau, where she served until the end of the war. In May 1945, she tried to take refuge in the mountains near her hometown of Münzkirchen. In August 1945, Maria Mandel was arrested by representatives of American troops. At the request of the Polish authorities, Mandel was extradited to this country, where the trial of the Auschwitz-Auschwitz workers was being prepared.
At the trial, which took place at the end of 1947, Maria Mandel was found responsible for the extermination of 500 thousand women prisoners and sentenced to death. The Nazi was hanged in Krakow prison on January 24, 1948.
Hermine Braunsteiner. "Trampling Mare"
Deputy Commandant of the Women's Section Majdanek was born in Vienna on July 16, 1919, into a working-class family. Blue-eyed blonde Hermine I dreamed of becoming a nurse, but due to lack of funds I was forced to become a housekeeper. After the Anschluss of 1938, a native of Austria became a German citizen and moved to Berlin, where she got a job at the Heinkel aircraft plant.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Hermine became a supervisor not for ideological reasons, but for the sake of money, since the supervisor’s salary was four times higher than that of an aircraft factory worker.
Hermine Braunsteiner. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Braunsteiner learned the “basics of craftsmanship” in 1939 in Ravensbrück under the guidance of Maria Mandel. A few years later, they quarreled on official grounds; Braunsteiner achieved a transfer to Majdanek.
Here Hermine Braunsteiner received the nickname "Trampling Mare" for her penchant for trampling women with her boots. She beat prisoners to death, took children from their mothers and personally threw them into gas chambers. Surviving prisoners called her one of the most cruel guards.
The work of the Trampling Mare was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class.
At the end of the war, Braunsteiner worked as a guard at a camp in Gentin, and with the arrival of Soviet troops she managed to escape to Vienna. Here she was arrested and put on trial.
The court examined the activities of Hermine Braunsteiner only at her last place of service, knowing nothing about the adventures of the “Trampling Mare” in Majdanek. As a result, she received only 3 years in prison, and was soon released under an amnesty.
Like Antonina Makarova, marriage helped Hermine Braunsteiner in her later life. American citizen Russell Ryan, while in Austria, met her, after which a romance began. The couple moved to Canada, where Hermine and Russell married in 1958. In 1959, Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan entered the United States, and four years later she became an American citizen.
In the United States, everyone knew Mrs. Ryan as a sweet housewife, without knowing about her previous life.
In 1964, a Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal discovered the Trampling Mare in New York, reporting it to American journalists. In a conversation with one of the reporters, Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan admitted that she was the same warden from Majdanek.
After several years of proceedings, US authorities stripped Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan of her citizenship. On August 7, 1973, she became the first Nazi criminal to be extradited from the United States to Germany.
Hermine Braunsteiner became one of the defendants in the so-called “Third Majdanek Trial,” which took place in 1975-1981. She was accused of involvement in the murder of 200,000 people. Due to a lack of evidence, the court found the Nazi responsible only for the murder of 80 people, complicity in the murder of 102 children and assistance in the death of 1000 people. This, however, was more than enough to sentence her to life imprisonment.
But Hermine Braunsteiner was not destined to die in prison. In 1996, she was released due to a serious illness (diabetes, which led to the amputation of her leg). The Trampling Mare died in Bochum, Germany on April 19, 1999.
Second World War, undoubtedly, became the most important and catastrophic event in the entire world history. The echoes of the most devastating conflict of all time can still be heard and will probably always be heard. It’s scary to remember those times when humanity lost its human appearance, and real monsters broke out.
Looking at the main antagonists of World War II who walked under Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany and their crimes, it seems that humanity has forever lost its humanity. Of course, the Nazis are not the only ones who distinguished themselves in the competition for the most sophisticated atrocity, but this TOP 10 is dedicated only to the fascists.
1. Friedrich Jeckeln.
A World War I veteran, Friedrich Jeckeln became the leader of the SS police in the occupied Soviet Union. He was also in charge of the Einsatzgruppen, which completed the final stage of the plan to cleanse the occupied territories of “racially inferior” ones. He had his own system for committing mass murders, from which even experienced executioners were shocked. He ordered trenches to be dug, where the future dead lay face down, most often on fresh corpses, and then they were shot. He is responsible for the murders of more than 100 thousand people. In 1946, he was hanged by the Red Army.
2. Ilse Koch.
Ilse Koch earned many nicknames during her meteoric career at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Beast, Bitch, She-Wolf of Buchenwald - all these nicknames belong to the wife of Karl Koch, the head of this concentration camp. Officially, she was a simple guard, but by abusing her husband's power, she eclipsed many Nazis in the matter of cruelty. Despite her happy childhood, she made souvenirs and jewelry from human skin. She especially liked the bindings made from tattooed leather. But this could not be proven in court. She beat, raped and tortured prisoners without any reason, and if someone looked askance in her direction, she executed the unfortunate person right on the spot. The SS themselves executed her husband for the murder of a local doctor who treated him for syphilis, and she was acquitted, but later the Americans arrested Ilsa. Already in prison she committed suicide.
3. Greta Bosel.
A nurse practitioner before World War II and then a staff member in concentration camps, Greta Boesel selected prisoners fit for hard work for the benefit of the Third Reich. She threw the sick, crippled and other “defective” into the gas chamber without remorse. The motto of her heart was the words: “If they cannot work, then the path will rot.” After the war, Bosel was accused of mass murder and sentenced to death.
4. Joseph Goebbels.
Meet the man who coined the phrase "total war" - Joseph Goebbels. It was he who was responsible for all government materials and information released to the general public. In other words, he was the Minister of Propaganda. Because of him, the German people turned into aggressive fascist bastards, thirsty for the blood of innocents. Even when the Germans began to lose all their positions at the front, he continued to firmly stand his ground, not allowing his faith in a just cause to succumb to doubt. Goebbels remained in Germany until the very end, until the Red Army found him in 1945. That day he shot and killed his six children, then killed his wife, and finally committed suicide.
5. Adolf Eichmann.
Using his knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish culture, this man became the architect of the Holocaust. He helped lure Jews into the ghetto by promising them a “better life.” His person was most responsible for the deportation of Jews within the Third Reich. When his mother-in-law gave the go-ahead to start, Eichmann took sole command of the distribution of Jews from the ghettos to concentration camps. After the war, he managed to escape and hide in South America, however, secret Israeli units tracked him down and executed him in Argentina in 1962.
6. Maria Mendel.
A native of Austria, Maria became the commandant of the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1942-1944. Known as “the monster,” Mendel became the grim reaper for more than half a million women. Her specialty was human pets, with whom she played for a short time until they died. The Third Reich awarded her a second class cross for her services to the Motherland. For her crimes against humanity, she was executed in 1948.
7. Joseph Mengele.
"Angel of Death" Josef Mengele is the embodiment of the devil on Earth. Being the head of one of the many concentration camps and a doctor by training, he did not spare the prisoners in his experiments. His favorite path was genetics and heredity. Mutilation, amputation, injections are a barbaric mockery of human nature. But his perverted fantasy did not stop there. One day Josef sewed his brother's twin eye onto the back of his head. He was one of the few who managed to escape at least some punishment for his crimes. In 1979, he died of a stroke.
8. Reinhard Heydrich.
“The Executioner from Prague” is one of the most cruel and terrible Nazis in all of Nazi Germany. Even Hitler considered him a man with an “iron heart.” In addition to governing the Czech Republic, which became part of the Reich in 1939, he was actively involved in the suppression and persecution of political dissidents. He is responsible for organizing Kristallnacht, the Holocaust, and creating death squads. Even some SS men, from Berlin to the most remote occupied settlements, were afraid of him. In 1942, he was killed by Czech special forces. agents in Prague.
9. Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler was an agronomist by training. This “collective farmer” counts 14 million people, 6 of whom are Jews. He was one of the “architects of the Holocaust” and became famous for harsh repressions in the Czech Republic. He repeatedly held conferences on the topic: “The extermination of the Jewish people.” When Germany began to concede the war, he negotiated with the Allies in secret from Hitler. Having learned about this, the Fuhrer accused him of treason and ordered his execution, but the British caught the traitor first. In May 1945, he committed suicide in prison.
10. Adolf Hitler.
Elected in democratic Germany, Adolf became the embodiment of horror in just 50 years. There is a debate among historians about who is more worthy of the first place on this list: Adolf Hitler or Heinrich Himmler, but both sides agree that without Hitler the world would not have seen Himmler.
An artist by vocation, a veteran of the First World War, an unsurpassed speaker, he was able to convince the entire nation that the Jews were to blame for all their troubles, and that without war the Aryans would disappear. All of the above sins are attributed primarily to him: genocide, massacres, outbreak of war, persecution, etc. He is personally involved in the death of 3% of the human population of the planet.
P.S. Have you not noticed how clearly “SS-sheep” is written in Russian? Peace to you and don’t be blind patriots.
Material prepared by Marcel Garipov and Admincheg site
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You read these names and you are amazed! How were they able to escape punishment? These are the very top leadership and ideologists of cruelty. They always say that a simple German soldier is not to blame for anything - he was sent by his leaders, so they must be held accountable for atrocities and millions of human lives. But it turns out that there is nothing or it is not profitable to judge managers either. Monsters who committed savage acts and were responsible for the death of millions sometimes die happy, in old age, without repenting a bit.
Here are some of the examples: 
Adolf Eichmann's Argentine refuge and Mossad retribution
During the war, officer Eichmann was in a special position in the Gestapo, personally carrying out the orders of Reichsführer SS Himmler. In 1944, he organized the sending of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, after which he reported to the leadership about the extermination of 4 million people. After the war, Adolf managed to escape to South America.
In 1952, he returned to Europe under a different name, remarried his wife and took his family to Argentina. But 6 years later, Israeli intelligence located Eichmann in Buenos Aires. The operation was personally led by Mossad chief Isser Harel. Secret agents grabbed Eichmann on the street and took him to Israel under tranquilizers. The court indictment consisted of 15 points, which, in addition to the extermination of Jews, included: deportation of Gypsies and Poles to camps, and the extermination of hundreds of Czech children. Eichmann was hanged on the night of June 1, 1962. This case was the last death penalty in Israel by judicial decision.
Unrepentant 90-year-old Holocaust activist Alois Brunner
Brunner is credited with the idea of creating the gas chambers in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed. The former head of the SS special forces fled after the war to Munich, where he worked as a driver under an assumed name. In 1954 he moved to Syria, beginning cooperation with the Syrian intelligence services.
According to Turkish authorities, Brunner led the training of armed Kurdish units. The fact that a Nazi was in Syria was proven, but the Syrian government denied everything. At the same time, Mossad agents did not stop trying to destroy Alois Brunner on foreign territory. He repeatedly received bombed packages that deprived him of an eye and four fingers.
By the end of his life, Brunner did not even think about repentance. In 1987, he gave a telephone interview to the Chicago Sun Times, saying that he did not regret his active participation in the Holocaust and would do it again. According to some reports, the war criminal lived to be almost 90 years old, dying at a ripe old age.
Auschwitz experimenter Josef Mengele dies of heart attack
Joseph Mengele is rightfully considered the personification of the cruelest experiments on people in death camps. Work in the concentration camp was a scientific mission for the senior doctor, and he carried out experiments on prisoners in the name of science. Mengele had a special interest in twins. The Third Reich urged scientists to develop ways to increase the birth rate. So artificial multiple pregnancies became the goal of his research. Experimental children and women were subjected to all sorts of experiments, after which they were simply killed.
After the war, Mengele was recognized as a war criminal. Until 1949, he hid in his homeland, and then left for South America. In 1979, the heart of one of the most terrible Nazis stopped, unable to withstand constant fears and concerns. And Mengele was afraid for good reason: the Mossad was tirelessly hunting for him.
Life after death of Heinrich Müller
The last time Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller was seen in Hitler's bunker was in April 1945. The Nuremberg Tribunal was provided with documentary evidence of his death. However, to this day, the circumstances of Mueller's disappearance are ambiguous.
In the post-war years, witnesses continually surfaced who claimed that Mueller was alive. Thus, the famous Nazi intelligence officer Walter Schellenberg wrote in his memoirs that Muller was recruited by the secret services of the USSR, which helped him fake his death and flee to Moscow. Eichmann, captured by the Mossad, testified that the Gestapo man was alive. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal did not rule out the possibility of staging Müller’s death. And the ex-head of Czechoslovak intelligence Rudolf Barak said that since 1955 he led the operation to capture Muller in Argentina. And he even claimed that one of the main Nazis was captured by the Soviet secret services, becoming an informant for the Russians.
Not long ago, American journalists published documents indicating Mueller’s escape from besieged Berlin on the eve of the fall of the Reich. Allegedly, the Gruppenführer landed in Switzerland, from where he later went to the United States. According to this version, American intelligence gave Mueller the position of a secret consultant. There he married a high-ranking American woman and lived quietly for 83 years.
Interest in the true fate of Heinrich Müller does not decrease, however, the folder with his case is still under lock and key.
The head of military intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, received only 6 years
The figure of the head of military intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, who received a record short sentence for high-profile war crimes, is also very mysterious. After the fall of Germany he lived for some time in Sweden. But by mid-1945, the allied countries managed to achieve the extradition of the war criminal.
Schellenberg was answering in court in a case against major leaders, officials and ministers of Germany. During the proceedings, he was accused of only one count - membership in the criminal organizations of the SS and SD, as well as involvement in the execution of prisoners of war. Schellenberg was sentenced to only 6 years in prison, released after a year for health reasons. Last year The terminally ill Walter lived in Italy, where he died at the age of 42.
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According to statistics most maniacs and perverts are men. However, there are women who can give a head start to any maniac, whom one would dare not call the weaker or fairer sex. One of them is Ilse Koch, or “Frau Lampshaded,” who, together with another SS woman, tops the list of the most terrible women throughout world history.
To bring Hitler's ideas to life, executors were needed - people without pity, compassion and conscience. The Nazi regime painstakingly created a system that could produce them.
The Nazis created many concentration camps in the territory they occupied, intended for the so-called “racial cleansing” of Europe. The fact that the prisoners were disabled people, old people, and children did not matter at all to the sadists from the SS. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau and Buchenwald became the epitome of hell on earth, where people were systematically gassed, starved and beaten.
Ilse Köhler was born in Dresden into a working-class family. At school she was a diligent student and a very cheerful child. In her youth, she worked as a librarian, loved and was loved, enjoyed success with the village boys, but always considered herself superior to others, clearly exaggerating her merits. In 1932 she joined the NSDAP. In 1934 she met Karl Koch, whom she married two years later.
How did Ilse turn from a quiet, inconspicuous librarian into a monster who kept the entire Buchenwald in fear?
It’s very simple: “like attracts like” and when her egoism combined with the ambitions of the SS man Karl Koch, Ilse’s hidden perversity became obvious.
In 1936, Ilse voluntarily got a job at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where Karl served. In Sachsenhaus, Karl even among “his own people” acquired a reputation as a sadist. At that time, Koch reveled in power, observing the daily destruction of people, his wife received even greater pleasure from the torture of prisoners. In the camp they feared her more than the commandant himself.
In 1937, Karl Koch was appointed commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, where Ilse became notorious for her cruelty towards prisoners. The prisoners said that she often walked around the camp, dispensing lashes to everyone she met in striped clothes. Sometimes Ilse took a hungry, ferocious shepherd dog with her and set it on pregnant women or exhausted prisoners; she was delighted with the horror experienced by the prisoners. It is not surprising that behind her back they called her “the bitch of Buchenwald.”
Frau Koch was inventive and constantly came up with new tortures, for example, she regularly sent prisoners to be torn to pieces by two Himalayan bears in a regular zoo.
But this lady's true passion was tattoos. She ordered the male prisoners to undress and examined their bodies. She wasn't interested in those who didn't have tattoos, but if she saw an exotic pattern on someone's body, her eyes lit up, because it meant that there was another victim in front of her.
Ilse was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". She used the tanned skins of murdered men to create a variety of household utensils, of which she was extremely proud. She found the skin of gypsies and Russian prisoners of war with tattoos on the chest and back most suitable for crafts. This made it possible to make things very “decorative”. Ilsa especially liked lampshades.
One of the prisoners, the Jew Albert Grenovsky, who was forced to work in the pathology laboratory of Buchenwald, said after the war that prisoners selected by Ilse with a tattoo were taken to the dispensary. There they were killed using lethal injections.
There was only one reliable way to avoid being lampshaded by the “bitch” - disfigure your skin or die in gas chamber. To some, this seemed like a good thing. Bodies of “artistic value” were taken to the pathology laboratory, where they were treated with alcohol and the skin was carefully torn off. Then it was dried, lubricated vegetable oil and packaged in special bags.
Meanwhile, Ilse improved her skills. She began to create gloves, tablecloths and even openwork underwear from human skin. “I saw the tattoo that adorned Ilse’s panties on the back of one of the gypsies from my block,” said Albert Grenovsky.
Apparently, the savage entertainment of Ilse Koch became fashionable among her colleagues in other concentration camps, which multiplied in the Nazi empire like mushrooms after rain. It was a pleasure for her to correspond with the wives of the commandants of other camps and give them detailed instructions, how to turn human skin into exotic book bindings, lampshades, gloves or tablecloths.
However, one should not think that Frau Lampshaded was alien to all human feelings. One day Ilse saw a tall, stately young man in a crowd of prisoners. Frau Koch immediately liked the broad-shouldered, two-meter hero and she ordered the guards to intensively fatten the young Czech. A week later he was given a tailcoat and brought to the mistress’s chambers. She came out to him in a pink peignoir, with a glass of champagne in her hand. However, the guy grimaced: “I will never sleep with you. You are an SS woman, and I am a communist! Damn you!
Ilse slapped the impudent man in the face and immediately called security. The young man was shot, and Ilse ordered the heart, in which the bullet was stuck, to be taken out of his body and preserved in alcohol. She placed the capsule with the heart on her night table. At night, the light was often on in her bedroom - Ilse, in the light of a “tattooed” lampshade, looking at her dead heroic heart, composed romantic poems...
Soon the authorities drew attention to Ms. Koch’s “cannibalistic craft.” At the end of 1941, the Koch couple appeared before the SS court in Kassel on charges of “excessive cruelty and moral corruption.” However, that time the sadists managed to escape punishment. And only in 1944 a trial took place, at which they were unable to evade responsibility.
On a cold April morning in 1945, literally a few days before the liberation of the camp by the Allied forces, Karl Koch was shot in the courtyard of the very camp where he had recently controlled thousands of human destinies.
The widowed Ilse was no less guilty than her husband. Many prisoners believed that Koch committed crimes under the diabolical influence of his wife. However, in the eyes of the SS her guilt was insignificant. The sadist was released from custody. However, she did not return to Buchenwald.
After the collapse of the “Third Reich,” Ilse Koch hid, hoping that while the SS and Gestapo were catching “big fish,” everyone would forget about her. She remained free until 1947, when justice finally caught up with her.
Once in prison, Ilse made a statement in which she insisted that she was only a “servant” of the regime. She denied making things from human skin and claimed that she was surrounded by secret enemies of the Reich, who slandered her, trying to take revenge for her official zeal.
In 1951, a turning point came in Ilse Koch’s life. General Lucius Clay, High Commissioner of the American occupation zone in Germany, with his decision shocked the world on both sides of the Atlantic - both the population of his country and the Federal Republic of Germany, which arose from the ruins of the defeated “Third Reich”. He granted Ilse Koch her freedom, saying that there was only “slight evidence that she ordered the execution of anyone, and there was no evidence of her involvement in the manufacture of tattooed skin items.”
When the criminal was released, the world refused to believe the validity of this decision. Washington lawyer William Denson, who was the prosecutor at the trial that sentenced Ilse Koch to life in prison, said: “This is a terrible miscarriage of justice. Ilse Koch was one of the most notorious sadists among Nazi criminals. It is impossible to count the number of people who want to testify against her, not only because she was the wife of the camp commandant, but also because she is a creature cursed by God.”
However, Frau Koch was not destined to enjoy freedom, as soon as she left the American military prison in Munich, she was arrested by the German authorities and put back behind bars. The Themis of the new Germany, trying to somehow make amends for the mass crimes of the Nazis, immediately put Ilse Koch in the dock.
The Bavarian Ministry of Justice began searching for former prisoners of Buchenwald, obtaining new evidence that would allow the war criminal to be locked in a cell for the rest of her days. 240 witnesses testified in court. They talked about the atrocities of a sadist in a Nazi death camp.
This time, Ilse Koch was tried by the Germans, in whose name the Nazi, in her conviction, faithfully served the Fatherland. She was again sentenced to life imprisonment. She was firmly told that this time she could not count on any leniency.
That year, on September 1, in a Bavarian prison cell, she ate her last schnitzel and salad, tied up the sheets and hanged herself. The “bitch of Buchenwald” took her own life.
