1. Kurt Meyer was an SS commander and convicted war criminal of Nazi Germany.
42 Facts About Kurt Meyer
1. 2.
Kurt Meyer served in the Waffen-SS and participated in the Battle of France, Operation Barbarossa, and other engagements during World War II.
3.
Kurt Meyer was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
4.
Kurt Meyer was a leading Waffen-SS apologist and HIAG's most effective spokesperson, depicting most of the Waffen-SS as apolitical, recklessly brave fighters who were not involved in the crimes of the Nazi regime.
5.
Kurt Meyer's father, a miner, joined the German Army in 1914 and was an NCO in World War I Meyer began a business apprenticeship after completing elementary school, but became unemployed in 1928 and was forced to work as a handyman before becoming a policeman in Mecklenburg-Schwerin the following year.
6.
Politically active at an early age and a fanatical supporter of Nazism, Kurt Meyer joined the Hitler Youth when he was fifteen, became a full member of the Nazi Party in September 1930, and joined the SS in October 1931.
7.
In May 1934, Kurt Meyer was transferred to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.
8.
Kurt Meyer was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, on 20September 1939.
9.
Kurt Meyer participated in the Battle of France and was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class.
10.
Kurt Meyer gained a reputation as an "audacious" leader during Operation Barbarossa, and was awarded the German Cross in Gold in 1942 while still with the LSSAH.
11.
Kurt Meyer reportedly ordered the destruction of a village during the fighting around Kharkov and the murder of all its inhabitants.
12.
Kurt Meyer was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves for a successful attack on the village of Yefremovka on 20 February 1943, where his forces took no prisoners and killed about 1500 Soviet soldiers.
13.
Kurt Meyer ran to the door and saw an SS commander who demanded to see the company commander.
14.
Kurt Meyer continued to serve in the LSSAH until the summer of 1943, when he was appointed commander of a regiment of the newly-activated, still-forming SS Division Hitlerjugend stationed in France.
15.
Fierce fighting was going on when Kurt Meyer visited the battalion in the early evening; just as he arrived the battalion commander's head was taken off by a tank shot.
16.
That evening, elements of the division under Kurt Meyer's command committed the Ardenne Abbey massacre; eleven Canadian prisoners of war, soldiers from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and the 27th Armoured Regiment were shot in the back of the head.
17.
Kurt Meyer was wounded during the fight with the 3rd Canadian Division, but escaped from the Falaise pocket with the division's rearguard.
18.
Kurt Meyer was then interned at Trent Park in England, where his conversations with other high-ranking prisoners of war were covertly tape-recorded by British military intelligence.
19.
Kurt Meyer was frank about his Nazi-orientated political beliefs in these exchanges; Meyer had dedicated himself to its ideology, saying that a person "could only give his heart once in life".
20.
Kurt Meyer was held as a prisoner of war until December 1945, when he was tried in the German town of Aurich for the murder of unarmed Allied prisoners of war in Normandy.
21.
The fifth charge was related to a separate group of prisoners; in this case, the prosecution did not allege that Kurt Meyer had directly ordered their deaths.
22.
Kurt Meyer was found responsible for the deaths at the Abbaye Ardenne, but acquitted of directly ordering the killings.
23.
The sentence was subject to confirmation by higher command; Kurt Meyer was originally willing to accept it, but was persuaded by his wife and his defence counsel to appeal.
24.
Kurt Meyer initially refused to file for clemency, and he seemed to bitterly accept his upcoming death.
25.
Nothing came of this and Kurt Meyer was transported to Canada to begin his sentence in April 1946.
26.
Kurt Meyer served five years at the Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick, where he worked in the library and learned English.
27.
Kurt Meyer petitioned for clemency in late 1950, offering to serve in a Canadian or United Nations military force if released.
28.
Kurt Meyer was released from prison on 7September 1954, after the Canadian government approved a reduction of his sentence to fourteen years.
29.
Kurt Meyer became active in HIAG, the Waffen-SS lobby group formed in 1951 by former high-ranking Waffen-SS men including Paul Hausser, Felix Steiner and Herbert Gille, when he was released from prison.
30.
Kurt Meyer announced at a 1957 HIAG rally that although he stood behind his old commanders, Hitler made many mistakes and it was time to look to the future rather than the past.
31.
Kurt Meyer said to about 8,000 ex-SS men at the 1957 HIAG convention in Karlsberg, Bavaria, "SS troops committed no crimes, except the massacre at Oradour, and that was the action of a single man".
32.
The book, detailing Kurt Meyer's exploits at the front, was an element of Waffen-SS rehabilitation efforts.
33.
Kurt Meyer condemned the "inhuman suffering" to which Waffen-SS personnel had been subjected "for crimes which they neither committed, nor were able to prevent".
34.
In July 1958, Kurt Meyer shook hands with SPD politician Ulrich Lohmar at a HIAG meeting.
35.
Many SPD members criticised Lohmar, saying that Kurt Meyer remained unapologetic about SS crimes and was an enemy of democracy despite his claims to the contrary.
36.
One of HIAG's de facto leaders, Kurt Meyer was appointed the organization's spokesperson in 1959.
37.
Kurt Meyer presented himself in this capacity as pragmatic and loyal to the West German state, and HIAG as an apolitical group.
38.
Kurt Meyer responded by dissolving the most extreme chapters of HIAG, and restructuring the group to solidify the control of its central leadership over the members.
39.
Kurt Meyer's tactics met with some success, and he met with numerous politicians to advocate for better treatment of former Waffen-SS members, convincing some that he and HIAG had distanced themselves from far-right extremism.
40.
The latter was supposed to gauge Kurt Meyer's supposed conversion to democracy, as the SPD was prepared to support a moderate wing of HIAG to counteract more extreme elements of the group.
41.
Regardless of his claims, Kurt Meyer always remained a covert, steadfast adherent of Nazism.
42.
Kurt Meyer experienced poor health later in life, with heart and kidney disease and requiring the use of a cane.