On
this date, May 10, 1945, a Nazi War Criminal, Richard Glucks who was one of the
Holocaust Perpetrators, committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide
capsule. I will post information about him from Wikipedia and other links.
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Richard Glücks in his SS uniform
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Born
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April 22, 1889
Odenkirchen, German Empire |
Died
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May 10, 1945 (aged 56)
Flensburg, Germany |
Allegiance
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Nazi Germany
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Service/branch
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Schutzstaffel
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Rank
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Gruppenführer, SS (Major General)
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Service number
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NSDAP #214,805
SS #58,706 |
Unit
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SS-Totenkopfverbände
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Battles/wars
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World War I
World War II |
Other work
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One of the primary organizers of The Holocaust, he
organized slave labor, medical atrocities, and mass murder.
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Richard Glücks (April 22, 1889, Odenkirchen, Rhine Province – May 10, 1945)
was a high-ranking Nazi official. He attained the rank of a SS-Gruppenführer and a Generalleutnant
of the Waffen-SS and from 1939 until the end of World War II was the head of Amt
D: Konzentrationslagerwesen of the WVHA;
the highest-ranking Concentration
Camps Inspector in Nazi Germany. Close to Reichsführer-SS
Himmler, he was directly responsible for
the forced labour of the camp inmates, and was also the supervisor for the
medical practices in the camps, ranging from human experimentation to the
implementation of the "Final Solution", in particular the mass
murder of inmates with Zyklon-B gas. When the Nazi regime fell and Germany
capitulated, Glücks committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide
capsule.
Early
life
Glücks
was born 1889 in Odenkirchen (now part of Mönchengladbach) in the Rhineland.
Having completed gymnasium in Düsseldorf, he worked in his father's business, a
fire insurance agency. In 1909, Glücks joined the army for one year as a
volunteer, serving in the artillery. In 1913, he was in England, and later
moved to Argentina as a trader. When World War I broke out, Glücks returned to
Germany under a false identity as a sailor on a Norwegian ship in January 1915
and promptly joined the army again. During the war, he eventually became the
commander of a motorized artillery squad and was awarded the Iron Cross I and
II. After the war, he became a liaison officer between the German forces and
the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control, the allied body for
controlling the restrictions placed upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles
regarding re-armament and strength of their armed forces. Until 1924, he stayed
in that position, before joining the staff of the 6th Prussian Division. He
also served in the Freikorps.
Rise
under the Nazi regime
Glücks
joined the NSDAP in 1930 and two years later, the SS. From September 6, 1933 to
June 20, 1935, he was a member of the staff of the SS-Group "West"
and rose to the rank of an SS-Sturmbannführer. Subsequently, he became
the commander of the 77th SS-Standarte of the Allgemeine SS with the
rank of an SS-Obersturmbannführer. On April 1, 1936, he became the head
of staff of Theodor Eicke, then Concentration Camps Inspector and head of the
SS-Wachverbände, first with the rank of a Standartenführer and
later rising to Oberführer. When Eicke became field commander of the SS
Division Totenkopf, which had been created following his instigation, Glücks
was promoted to Concentration Camps Inspector and named by Himmler as Eicke's
successor on November 18, 1939. On April 20, 1941, Glücks was promoted to the
rank of an SS-Brigadeführer, and on March 29, 1942, he became the head
of Amt D: Konzentrationslagerwesen of the newly formed SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
(WVHA), the Economics and Administrative Department of the SS. On July 23,
1943, Glücks was made SS-Gruppenführer and a Generalleutnant of
the Waffen-SS.
Concentration
Camps Inspector
Glücks
was described by Rudolf Höss as a static administrator and bureaucrat, afraid
of Himmler and mostly occupied with maintaining the concentration camps as
Eicke had set them up. At the same time, Höss described Glücks as a man unable
to grasp the consequences of his directives, and claimed Glücks had risen to
his high position (and stayed there) only as a protégé of Eicke and Oswald
Pohl, the head of the WVHA.
Glücks's
responsibilities at first mainly covered the use of concentration camp inmates
for forced
labour. In this phase, he urged camp commandants to lower the death
rate in the camps, as it went counter to the economic objectives his department
was to fulfill. Other orders of his were to ask for the inmates to be made to
work continuously. At the same time, it was Glücks who recommended on February
21, 1940, Auschwitz, a former Austrian cavalry barracks, as a suitable site for
a new concentration camp to Himmler, Pohl, and Heydrich. The camp opened on
June 14, 1940, and Glücks was quick to provide slave labour from the camp to
the new coal-oil and rubber plant erected nearby by I.G. Farben.
From
1942 on, Glücks was increasingly involved in the implementation of the
"Final Solution", along with Oswald Pohl. In July 1942, he participated
in a planning meeting with Himmler on the topic of medical experiments on camp
inmates. From several visits to the Auschwitz concentration camps, Glücks must
have been well aware of the dire conditions, and he certainly was aware of the mass
murders and other atrocities committed there. Orders for the extermination went
through Glücks' office and hands; and he specifically authorized the purchase
of Zyklon B for gassing in Auschwitz.
Death
When
the WVHA offices in Berlin were destroyed by Allied bombing on April 16, 1945,
the WVHA was moved to Born on Darß in Pomerania on the Baltic sea. Owing to the
advances of the Russian forces, Glücks and his wife fled to Flensburg at the
end of April. It is known that Glücks met Himmler for the last time there.
After the capitulation of Germany, he is believed to have committed suicide on
May 10, 1945 by swallowing a capsule of potassium cyanide at the Mürwik naval
base in Flensburg, although the lack of official records or photos gave ground
to speculations about his ultimate fate.
In
popular culture
Richard
Glücks is featured as a minor character in the novel The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth. The
novel is set in post-war Germany at the year 1963. In the novel, it is revealed
that Glücks did not commit suicide but instead, manages to evade capture by the
Allied forces and flees to Argentina. He changes his name to Ricardo Suertes (Suerte
and Glück having the same meaning, Luck in Spanish and German
respectively), obtains Argentine citizenship and joins the ODESSA (the international network of former SS
officers).
He
is reputed to be the number two man in the ODESSA, direct deputy of Martin Bormann
on whom the mantle of the Führer had fallen after 1945. To avoid being
captured, he does not return to Germany and instead, operates out of his lavish
apartment in Buenos Aires, issuing orders and dictating policies to be
implemented by his subordinate, codenamed "Werewolf", in West Germany.
{Although "Werewolf" is not named he is implied to have been the head
of the Werwolf organization-which was headed by SS General Hans-Adolf Prützmann-who
committed suicide in 1945}
The
novel erroneously puts Glücks to be in his early sixties. However, given his
year of birth as 1889, he would have been 74 in 1963 had he actually survived
the war. He is portrayed as having become immensely rich as a result of his
wartime activities, which includes widespread looting of Jews, communists, and
other political prisoners under his supervision as head of the Reich Economic
Administration Main Office of the SS.
During
a meeting in Madrid with Werewolf, Glücks tells him to hasten the research
operation aimed at developing a tele-guidance system for the Egyptian rockets,
Al Kahira and Al Zafira. Since the research is being headed by ODESSA man
codenamed "Vulkan", Glücks also orders him to protect Vulkan until
the end of the operation. After the meeting has taken place, he returns to
Buenos Aires and is never again mentioned in the novel.
In
the film adoptation of "The Odessa File" the part of Glücks was
played by Hannes Messemer who had also played the POW Commandant in The Great Escape.
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