77 Facts About Gottlob Berger

Gottlob Christian Berger was a German senior Nazi official who held the rank of SS-Obergruppenfuhrer und General der Waffen-SS and was the chief of the SS Main Office responsible for Schutzstaffel recruiting during World War II.

Gottlob Berger was convicted as a war criminal and spent six and a half years in prison.

Gottlob Berger joined the Nazi Party in 1922 but lost interest in right-wing politics during the 1920s, training and working as a physical education teacher.

Gottlob Berger clashed with other leaders of the SA and joined the Allgemeine-SS in 1936.

Gottlob Berger consistently advocated greater ideological training for the Waffen-SS but did not view SS ideology as a replacement for religion.

Gottlob Berger sponsored and protected his friend Oskar Dirlewanger, whom he placed in command of the SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger who subsequently committed many war crimes.

Gottlob Berger often clashed with senior officers of the Wehrmacht and even with senior Waffen-SS officers over his recruiting methods, but he took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves to grow the Waffen-SS to 38 divisions by the war's end.

Gottlob Berger undertook several other roles in the latter stages of the war while continuing as chief of the SS-HA.

Gottlob Berger surrendered to US troops near Berchtesgaden and was promptly arrested.

Gottlob Berger was tried and convicted in the Ministries Trial of the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals for war crimes and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Gottlob Berger's sentence was reduced to 10 years, and he was released after serving six and a half years.

Gottlob Berger was born on 16 July 1896 at Gerstetten in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, the son of saw-mill owners Johannes and Christine, and was one of eight children.

Gottlob Berger attended Volksschule and Realschule and then teacher training in Nurtingen.

Gottlob Berger volunteered for military service at the beginning of World War I, and rose to the rank of Leutnant in the infantry by the time of his discharge in 1919.

Gottlob Berger trained and worked as a physical education teacher, despite his injuries, and lost interest in politics for some years, before rejoining the Nazi Party in 1929, and the paramilitary Sturmabteilung in January 1931.

Gottlob Berger was recruited into the Allgemeine-SS by Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler in 1936, on Kruger's recommendation.

Gottlob Berger interceded on behalf of his World War I comrade Oskar Dirlewanger, who had been imprisoned for two years in 1935 for offences against a minor.

On his release from prison, Gottlob Berger used his influence to ensure Dirlewanger could join the Condor Legion and fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Gottlob Berger later claimed that he had come up with the idea of SS combat troops wearing camouflage jackets from his own hunting days, and had suggested it to SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Sepp Dietrich, commander of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Regiment.

Gottlob Berger had achieved the rank of Major der Reserve in the Wehrmacht by 1938, but his initial rank upon joining the Allgemeine-SS was SS-Standartenfuhrer, based upon his SA service.

Gottlob Berger played a key role in directing the fifth column Sudetendeutsches Freikorps during the Sudeten Crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the organisational skills he displayed there marked him as highly suitable for the SS recruiting role.

The fact that Gottlob Berger was able to expand the SS combat troops so quickly was a tribute to his improvisational skills.

Gottlob Berger used the new term to smooth over friction between the SS-VT and SS-TV, as they were combined in new formations.

In early 1940, Himmler and Gottlob Berger were outmaneuvered by Generaloberst Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht on a number of issues around Waffen-SS recruiting, reflecting the strong influence the Wehrmacht still had with Hitler.

Gottlob Berger created a recruiting structure throughout the Reich, mirroring that of the Army, but while the Wehrmacht, which controlled the draft, was willing to allow Gottlob Berger enough recruits to maintain the three divisions and the LSSAH, it did not want to see any further expansion.

Three weeks after the invasion of Belgium, Gottlob Berger was appointed as the president of the German-sponsored pro-Nazi Belgian political party, DeVlag, in Flanders.

Gottlob Berger worked to bring the Yugoslav Volksdeutsche under the influence of the SS, which he was able to achieve six months prior to the invasion of that country by the Axis in April 1941.

Gottlob Berger's recruiting work with the Flemish and Croatian communities was facilitated by his chairmanship of both the Deutsche-Flamischen Studiengruppe and the Deutsche-Kroatischen Gesellschaft.

Gottlob Berger boasted to Himmler that during the whole recruiting campaign, he had signed up 15,000 men for SS-Division-Totenkopf, when Hitler had only authorised the recruiting of 4,000 for the division in the same period.

Gottlob Berger realised that the Wehrmacht quotas for the Waffen-SS would fall short of its manpower needs by at least 6,000 per year.

Gottlob Berger's SS-HA had a problematic relationship with the SS-FHA, which was responsible for organising, training and equipping the Waffen-SS.

Gottlob Berger's well-researched report to Himmler on these failures was damning, and the Reichsfuhrer-SS soon issued detailed instructions on the handling of these new recruits, from the moment they joined the Waffen-SS.

In late 1940, in order to ensure that Himmler's instructions were carried out, Gottlob Berger established a special camp at Sennheim in occupied Alsace, where non-Reich German recruits could be brought up to physical standards and ideologically indoctrinated prior to Waffen-SS training.

Gottlob Berger created a network of offices throughout German-occupied Europe to ensure the welfare of the families of such recruits, influence the local communities to support Waffen-SS recruiting, and prepare potential recruits for indoctrination.

Himmler, unhappy with the work of VoMi in supporting SS recruiting, did not abolish VoMi, he just authorised Gottlob Berger to circumvent it.

In March 1941, Gottlob Berger founded the German Guidance Office which was responsible for the recruitment of "Germanic" men for the Waffen-SS.

The expectations on Gottlob Berger's recruiting network continued to increase, just as casualties began to mount in earnest.

Gottlob Berger wanted a legion to be raised from each of the occupied countries of Western Europe, but Himmler was only interested in recruiting "Germanic" people into the Waffen-SS.

Himmler decided that there were large numbers of potential pro-German but nationalistic recruits available from the "Germanic" races in occupied countries, and directed Gottlob Berger to explore this manpower source.

Gottlob Berger even went so far as to recommend to Himmler that Flemings no longer be treated as foreigners, but be given full citizenship rights as Germans.

Not content with this fairly minor and surreptitious recruiting effort, Gottlob Berger proposed to raise a seventh Waffen-SS division from the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia.

The division was formed around an existing SS-controlled Selbstschutz drawn from ethnic Germans in the Banat, but Gottlob Berger had misread the willingness of the local ethnic German population to volunteer for service outside their homeland.

In September 1942, the SS-FHA complained bitterly about Gottlob Berger's recruiters, stating that many of the recruits were medically unsuitable, had been coerced or duped into enlisting, or were in fact ethnic Hungarians.

In February 1943, in the wake of the German losses at Stalingrad, Gottlob Berger again told Himmler that the SS needed stronger ideological training.

Himmler and Gottlob Berger hosted representatives from the Wehrmacht who were keen to learn from SS expertise in ideological indoctrination.

Gottlob Berger implored Himmler to appoint him as the commander of this new division, but the Reichsfuhrer demurred, telling Gottlob Berger not to be impatient.

On 5 July 1943, Gottlob Berger was awarded the German Cross in silver.

In November 1943, when German-installed Latvian authorities threatened to resign over conscription, Gottlob Berger suggested they be sent to a concentration camp.

In relation to these recruits, Gottlob Berger cynically observed, "For every foreign-born soldier who dies, no German mother weeps".

Gottlob Berger concluded further agreements with Hungary and Romania, and imposed on the puppet regimes of the Independent State of Croatia and the Slovak State, to effectively authorise the unrestricted conscription of ethnic Germans in those territories.

Gottlob Berger was concerned that the SS was losing its previous dominance in ideological matters, as the Wehrmacht had largely adopted the ideological maxims of the SS.

In July 1942, Gottlob Berger was appointed as Himmler's liaison officer with the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg.

On 10 August 1943, Gottlob Berger convinced Rosenberg to appoint him as the Chief of Political Operations in the Occupied Eastern Territories.

Gottlob Berger claimed that Hitler had told him to destroy stored Red Cross supplies, stop Red Cross inspections, and block the arrival of further Red Cross supplies to the camps.

Gottlob Berger arranged for them to be evacuated from Colditz and transported south and handed over to advancing US Army troops.

In doing so, Gottlob Berger disobeyed a direct order from Hitler for them to be executed.

Gottlob Berger's tasks were to disarm the Slovak Army, ensure lines of communication to the Eastern Front and restore order.

Gottlob Berger was to work with the right-wing Hlinka Guard to establish a new armed force in the puppet state.

Gottlob Berger was then appointed to organise the Volkssturm in Germany.

Himmler was given responsibility for the military organisation and equipment of the new militia, which he delegated to Gottlob Berger, who became one of two chiefs of staff for the organisation.

Gottlob Berger commanded a Kampfgruppe of remnants of the XIII SS Army Corps, including fragments of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Gotz von Berlichingen, 35th SS and Police Grenadier Division, and the 2nd Mountain Division.

Gottlob Berger intended to surrender separately to American forces, and after two days delay, managed to locate a regimental commander of the 101st Airborne Division near Berchtesgaden south of Salzburg.

Gottlob Berger has been described as "blustery", cynical, and "one of Himmler's most competent and ruthless war-time lieutenants".

Gottlob Berger was referred to by the phrase "Praise God" and another nickname was "The Duke of Swabia", reflecting his Swabian origins.

Ultimately, Gottlob Berger was responsible for the large numbers of non-Reich foreign recruits that joined the Waffen-SS between 1940 and 1945.

Gottlob Berger was initially to be a defendant in the proposed "Prisoners of War" Trial, but was eventually included in what became known as the Ministries Trial of the subsequent Nuremberg trials.

Gottlob Berger's lawyer went on in an attempt to mitigate Gottlob Berger's actions by claiming that the Cold War bore strong parallels to the Nazi fight against "Jews and Bolsheviks", and the possibility that the US would have to fight the Soviet Union in the near future.

The court determined that Gottlob Berger had disobeyed orders and placed himself in danger in order to intervene on behalf of the POWs in question.

In contrast, Gottlob Berger was found guilty of transporting Hungarian Jews to concentration camps and recruiting concentration camp guards.

Gottlob Berger stated in his evidence that he considered Himmler "an unassimilated half-breed and unfit for the SS".

Gottlob Berger was acquitted under counts one, and two, and some parts of counts three, and five, and was acquitted under count six.

Gottlob Berger was convicted under that part of count three relating to the murder of Mesny, and under those parts of count five relating to his involvement with the SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, for being a conscious participant in the concentration camp program, and the conscription of nationals of other countries.

Gottlob Berger was convicted under that part of count seven relating to the children and youth slave labour program, including the Heuaktion, and was convicted under count eight.

Judge Powers handed down a dissenting opinion, stating that he was of the view that Gottlob Berger was not responsible for the murder of Mesny.

Gottlob Berger was released from Landsberg prison in December 1951, having spent a total of six and a half years in custody.

Gottlob Berger contributed articles to the monthly right-wing journal Nation Europa published in Coburg, and occasionally wrote articles encouraging the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to give greater consideration to former members of the Waffen-SS.

Gottlob Berger received the following awards and medals during his life:.