Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 ‘I went to school with quite a number of Jewish co-religionists and never knew hatred for Jews’: childhood, youth and early adulthood, 1905–1932
- 2 ‘In terms of his character he is irreproachable in every respect’: Nazi Party membership and career in the SS Security Service, 1932–1939
- 3 ‘Pity that the scoundrel didn't perish’: brother's imprisonment and career stagnation, 1939–1941
- 4 ‘So, we've finished off the first Jews’: SS-Einsatzkommando 9 and deployment in the East, June–July 1941
- 5 ‘In Vileyka, the Jews had to be liquidated in their entirety’: genocide of Belarusian Jewry, July–October 1941
- 6 ‘Was it thinkable that I, a jurist and a soldier, would do such a thing?’: suspension from the Reich Security Main Office and reinstatement until the war's end, 1941–1945
- 7 ‘My son, who has not yet returned home from the war’: post-war submergence and reintegration into West German society, 1945–1959
- 8 ‘A trial of this magnitude has never previously taken place before a German court’: arrest and trial, February 1959–June 1962
- 9 ‘A limited, lower middle class, status-and-promotion seeking philistine’: imprisonment and early release, 1962–1975
- 10 ‘A chess game of egos’: Wundkanal and aftermath, 1975–1990
- Concluding thoughts
- Notes
- Sources and literature cited
- Index
2 - ‘In terms of his character he is irreproachable in every respect’: Nazi Party membership and career in the SS Security Service, 1932–1939
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 ‘I went to school with quite a number of Jewish co-religionists and never knew hatred for Jews’: childhood, youth and early adulthood, 1905–1932
- 2 ‘In terms of his character he is irreproachable in every respect’: Nazi Party membership and career in the SS Security Service, 1932–1939
- 3 ‘Pity that the scoundrel didn't perish’: brother's imprisonment and career stagnation, 1939–1941
- 4 ‘So, we've finished off the first Jews’: SS-Einsatzkommando 9 and deployment in the East, June–July 1941
- 5 ‘In Vileyka, the Jews had to be liquidated in their entirety’: genocide of Belarusian Jewry, July–October 1941
- 6 ‘Was it thinkable that I, a jurist and a soldier, would do such a thing?’: suspension from the Reich Security Main Office and reinstatement until the war's end, 1941–1945
- 7 ‘My son, who has not yet returned home from the war’: post-war submergence and reintegration into West German society, 1945–1959
- 8 ‘A trial of this magnitude has never previously taken place before a German court’: arrest and trial, February 1959–June 1962
- 9 ‘A limited, lower middle class, status-and-promotion seeking philistine’: imprisonment and early release, 1962–1975
- 10 ‘A chess game of egos’: Wundkanal and aftermath, 1975–1990
- Concluding thoughts
- Notes
- Sources and literature cited
- Index
Summary
On 23 August 1932, more than a year before the end of his university studies in Giessen and five months prior to the Nazi takeover of power in Germany, Alfred Filbert joined the SS, which was still officially a sub-organisation of the SA (Sturmabteilung, i.e. Storm Detachment), in Worms. His SS identity card carried the number 44,552. Only days after joining the SS, Filbert also joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP) in Worms. His NSDAP membership number was 1,321,414. It is tempting to surmise that Filbert may have been one of the 30,000 people who attended Adolf Hitler's speech of 12 June in the Wormatia Stadium on Alzeyer Straße.
According to Filbert's SS certificate of service (Dienstleisstungszeugnis) from 15 December 1934:
During this period he performed his duties at all times gladly and to the satisfaction of all his superiors. It is in particular to be cited with praise that he thoroughly proved himself as a member of the SS during the main years of struggle in formerly red Worms in the year 1932 until the takeover of power. He was always a good comrade.
During the period in question, from August 1932 to December 1934, Filbert belonged to the SS-Sturm 4/II/33, later renamed the SS-Sturm 8/33. A Sturm, literally meaning ‘storm’ was a sub-unit of the SS corresponding to a company in the regular army and contained between 70 and 120 members. On Shrove Tuesday (28 February) 1933, Filbert was ‘in the front line’ during the ‘heavy fighting’ in Worms, though he was incapacitated from 23 March to mid-May of the same year by a serious case of liver poisoning. In view of the date on which Filbert's incapacitation began, it is tempting to speculate that this may have been caused by excessive alcohol consumption in celebrating the passing of the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) on 23 March. The Enabling Act allowed the German government under Hitler to enact legislation without the participation of the German parliament, the Reichstag. Filbert's involvement in the ‘heavy fighting’ in Worms on Shrove Tuesday 1933 provided him with an opportunity to ‘distinguish’ himself within the Nazi Movement by engaging in (pre-war) physical violence.
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- The Making of an SS KillerThe Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905–1990, pp. 21 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016