Page 92 - History of War - Issue 10-14

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HITLER’S FIRST VICTIMS AND ONE MAN’S RACE FOR JUSTICE

Author Timothy W Ryback £12.99 Publisher The Bodley Head

herehaslongbeenadebateabout As his investigation progressed, Hartinger Hartinger was removed from office. As he later
whether the Nazi Holocaust was pre- began to uncover what was really going on recalled,“Itwasasignofasickworld.Yes,the
T planned or whether their international behind Dachau’s wrought-iron gates, as a world was ill. And unfortunately especially the
networkofdeathcampsandmurder disturbing culture of brutality and violence German people.”
squads evolved over time as an inevitable begantoemerge.Beforelong,theinitial Although the Nazis discussed his
consequence of policy. It’s one of history’s quartet of deaths were supplemented by a slew extermination, Hartinger was spared. Initially
darkestsubjects,andin Hitler’s First Victims of suspicious suicides and further shootings, transferred to another jurisdiction and then
TimothyWRybackexploresitwithacompelling the official accounts of which just didn’t stack drafted into the Wehrmacht, ending the war
tale of a quiet hero who stood up to the might up against the forensic evidence. as a POW. Miraculously, his meticulous case
of the Third Reich at the precise moment the For a brief period, the stink Hartinger studiesalsosurvivedtheconflict,andasthe
killing began. caused managed to paralyse the Nazi killing newly democratic Germany began to atone
When the Nazis first came to power, one of machine, the camp commandant was removed for its past, these documents were used to
thefirstactsofthenewlyelectedregimewas and the murders stopped. But one man was finally bring those guilty for the very first of
to establish a concentration camp in Dachau never going to hold up history for long, nor was what eventually totalled more than 20 million
– a chocolate-box town just outside of Munich HartingergoingtoseetheSSguardswho’d murders to justice. However, when efforts
that was, at the time, an artists’ colony and committed the murders brought to justice while were made to honour Hartinger for his courage
home to some of Germany’s most progressive the Nazis controlled Germany’s judicial system. and decency, the ever-pragmatic civil servant
intellectuals. That was on 22 March 1933. His proposed indictments were quashed by dismissedthemall,insisting,“Iwasonly
Within three weeks of operation, the first Munich’s Chief Prosecutor, who’d evidently doing what my sense of duty demanded.” Truly
deaths had occurred at the camp when four been got at by Himmler and his hoods, and humbling stuff.
Jewish inmates were shot while apparently
trying to escape. “Hartinger began to uncover what was
CueJosephHartinger,aby-the-book
prosecutor from Munich tasked with behind Dachau’s wrought-iron gates”
investigating the killings. He arrives at the
newly established camp not knowing what
toexpect,anddiscoversahugebarbed-
wire complex filled with inmates terrorised
by paramilitary thugs. He also finds the four
victims’still-warmcorpsesdumpedinashed,
all with precision gunshot wounds to their
heads. Something, he
Up until then, the 39
had dealt mainly with
misdemeanors, and ju
crimes.Thiswassome
entirely different, thoug
andstirredinthestraig
lacedlawyeradeepse
of injustice. He couldn’
knownit,butGermany
onthecuspofadarka
where criminal acts wo
soon become state po
The four murders were
thefirstcluesastowh
in store for the country
the newly elected Nazi
butatthisstagetheki
toHartingeratleast,w
simply illegal – and he Originally opened for political prisoners, Dachau - pictured in 1945 following its liberation by US
to prove it. troops - served as the prototype for the concentration camps that followed.

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