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Wolfram Sievers

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Wolfram Sievers
Sievers in U.S. custody
Born10 July 1905
Hildesheim, German Empire
Died2 June 1948(1948-06-02) (aged 42)
Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech, Allied-occupied Germany
Cause of deathExecution by hanging
Political partyNazi Party
Criminal statusExecuted
Conviction(s)War crimes
Crimes against humanity
Membership in a criminal organization
TrialDoctors' trial
Criminal penaltyDeath

Wolfram Sievers (10 July 1905 – 2 June 1948) was a Nazi and convicted war criminal for medical atrocities carried out while he was managing director (Reichsgeschäftsführer) of the Ahnenerbe from 1935–1945. He was convicted of war crimes in the Doctors' Trial in 1947 and executed by hanging in 1948.

Early life and nationalism

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Sievers was born in 1905 in Hildesheim in the Province of Hanover (now in Lower Saxony), the son of a Protestant church musician. It is reported that he was musically gifted, that he played the harpsichord, organ, and piano, and loved German baroque music. He was expelled from school for being active in the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund and studied history, philosophy, and religious studies at Stuttgart's Technical University while working as a salesman. A member of the Bündische Jugend, he became active in the Artamanen-Gesellschaft ("Artaman League"), a nationalist back-to-the-land movement.[1]

Nazi Party membership and war crimes at the Ahnenerbe

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Sievers joined the Nazi Party in 1929. In 1933, he headed the Externsteine-Stiftung ("Externsteine Foundation"), which had been founded by Heinrich Himmler to study the Externsteine in the Teutoburger Wald. In 1935, having joined the SS that year, Sievers was appointed Reichsgeschäftsführer, or General Secretary, of the Ahnenerbe, by Himmler. He was the actual director of Ahnenerbe operations and was to rise to the rank of SS-Standartenführer by the end of the war.

In 1943, Sievers became director of the Institut für Wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung (Institute for Military Scientific Research), which conducted extensive experiments using human subjects. He also assisted in assembling a collection of skulls and skeletons for August Hirt's study at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg as a part of which 112 Jewish prisoners were selected and killed, after being photographed and their anthropological measurements taken.[2]

Trial and execution

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Sievers was tried during the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg after World War II, where he was dubbed "the Nazi Bluebeard" by journalist William L. Shirer because of his "thick, ink-black beard".[3] The Institute for Military Scientific Research had been set up as part of the Ahnenerbe, and the prosecution at Nuremberg laid the responsibility for the experiments on humans which had been conducted under its auspices on the Ahnenerbe. Sievers, as its highest administrative officer, was accused of actively aiding and promoting the criminal experiments.[4]

Sievers was charged with being a member of an organization declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal (the SS), and was implicated in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In his defense, he alleged that as early as 1933, he had been a member of an anti-Nazi resistance movement which planned to assassinate Hitler and Himmler, and that he had obtained his appointment as Manager of the Ahnenerbe so as to get close to Himmler and observe his movements. He further claimed that he remained in the post on the advice of his resistance leader to gather vital information which would assist in the overthrow of the Nazi regime.[5]

Sievers was sentenced to death on 20 August 1947 in the Doctors' trial, and hanged on 2 June 1948, at Landsberg Prison in Bavaria.

Influence

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Russian far-right political philosopher Alexandr Dugin adopted in the 1980s an alter ego with the name of "Hans Sievers", a reference to Wolfram Sievers.[6]

References

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  1. ^ Lixfeld, Hannjost; James R. Dow (1994). The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich. Indiana University Press. pp. 198–199. ISBN 0-253-31821-1.
  2. ^ "Nuremberg – Explore the Nuremberg Trials!". nuremberg.law.harvard.edu.
  3. ^ Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Simon and Schuster. p. 981.
  4. ^ Epstein, Fritz T., War-Time Activities of the SS-Ahnenerbe (in On the Track of Tyranny: Essays Presented by the Wiener Library to Leonard G. Montefiore, on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Ayer Publishing. 1971. pp. 79–81.)
  5. ^ McDonald, Gabrielle Kirk; Olivia Swaak-Goldman (2000). Substantive and Procedural Aspects of International Criminal Law: The Experience of International and National Courts. Brill. p. 1755. ISBN 90-411-1134-4.
  6. ^ Clover, Charles (26 April 2016). Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-22394-1. He adopted the nom de plume 'Hans Sievers', which added a hint of Teutonic severity to an already colourful and fairly camp militaristic–folklore style. The impression he created was, as his later collaborator Eduard Limonov described it, a 'picture of Oscar Wildean ambiguity'. Sievers was not just a stage name: it was a complete persona and alter ego. This was painstakingly composed of as many antisocial elements as its creator could find – a total and malevolent rebellion not just against the Soviet Union, but against convention and public taste as a whole: his namesake, Wolfram Sievers
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