28 Facts About Otto Ohlendorf

In 1941, Ohlendorf was appointed the commander of D, which perpetrated mass murder in Moldova, south Ukraine, the Crimea and, during 1942, the North Caucasus.

Otto Ohlendorf was tried at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging in 1951.

Otto Ohlendorf joined the Nazi Party in 1925 and the SS in 1926.

Otto Ohlendorf studied economics and law at the University of Leipzig and the University of Gottingen, and by 1930 was already giving lectures at several economic institutions.

In 1931, Otto Ohlendorf was awarded a two-semester scholarship to the University of Pavia.

Otto Ohlendorf was active in the National Socialist Students' League in both Kiel and Gottingen and taught at the Nazi Party's school in Berlin.

Otto Ohlendorf participated in major debates between the SS, the German Labour Front, and the Quadrennial Organization on economic policy.

Historian Christian Ingrao quips that for Otto Ohlendorf, Nazism was a "quest for race" in the historical continuum, and even though he never stated it that way, his faith in Germandom was akin to that of his fellow SS intellectuals.

Otto Ohlendorf joined the SD in 1936 and became an economic consultant of the organisation.

Nonetheless, Otto Ohlendorf was instrumental as a member of the SD in shaping Nazi economic doctrine, which became "increasingly virulent as the war progressed" as he attempted to mould the economy "in an ethnic context".

Otto Ohlendorf disliked the use of the oft-employed and preferred to line up victims and fire at them from a greater distance; this method allegedly alleviated personal responsibility for the individual murderers.

Many of the killing operations were personally overseen by Otto Ohlendorf, who wanted to ensure they were "military in character and humane under the circumstances".

The number of persons killed under the leadership of Einsatzgruppen commanders such as Otto Ohlendorf are "staggering", despite the use of varying murder techniques.

On 1 August 1941, Einsatzgruppen commanders, including Otto Ohlendorf, received instructions from Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller to keep headquarters informed of their progress in the East; Muller encouraged the speedy delivery of photographs showing the results of these operations.

Nonetheless, just a month prior in September 1941, Otto Ohlendorf announced to his men that "from now on the Jewish question is going to be solved and that means liquidation".

Between February and March 1942, Himmler ordered that gas vans should be used to murder women and children so as to reduce the strain on the men, but Otto Ohlendorf reported that many of the Einsatzkommandos refused to utilize the vans since burying the victims proved an "ordeal" afterwards.

Otto Ohlendorf devoted only four years of full-time activity to the RSHA, for in 1943, in addition to his other jobs, he became a deputy director-general in the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs.

In May 1945, Otto Ohlendorf participated in Himmler's flight from Flensburg.

For several weeks after his arrest, Otto Ohlendorf was carefully interrogated, during which he revealed the criminal nature of the German campaign in the East.

Otto Ohlendorf was called as a witness by the prosecution during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg on 3 January 1946.

Otto Ohlendorf's apparently reliable testimony was attributed to his distaste for the corruption in Nazi Germany and a stubborn commitment to duty.

At his trial, Otto Ohlendorf insisted that he, as a loyal Nazi, had acted properly and done nothing wrong.

Otto Ohlendorf expressed no remorse for his actions, telling prosecutor Ben Ferencz, who was Jewish, afterwards that the Jews of the United States would suffer for what Ferencz had done.

Otto Ohlendorf seemed more concerned about the moral strain on those carrying out the murders than those being murdered.

Otto Ohlendorf's defense claimed that Hitler had ordered the murder of all Jews before the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Otto Ohlendorf justified the systematic murder as anticipatory self-defense against the mortal threat supposedly posed by Jews, Romas, Communists, and others.

Otto Ohlendorf argued that the killing of Jewish children was necessary since they would have grown up to hate Germany.

Otto Ohlendorf was sentenced to death in April 1948 and spent three years in detention before being hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria on 7 June 1951.