Friedrich Hildebrandt

Hildebrandt was born in Parchim, Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He entered service in the German Army on 19 April 1916 as a "Kriegsfreiwilliger" (literally, "war volunteer") and was assigned to Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 24 on the Western Front. He was severely gassed in Flanders in 1917, and wounded twice before the end of the First World War. During January 1919, he returned to Mecklenburg and joined the 1.Kompanie/Freikorps "von Brandis" (in Silesia and on the Baltic). He served there until his capture and imprisonment by the Red Army in Riga. He was later released and returned to Germany, being discharged from the German Army as a Vizefeldwebel in January, 1920. From March, 1920 to June, 1920, he was a member of the Sicherheitspolizei in Halle, with which he participated in the suppression of the "Kapp-Putsch" in March, 1920. In the wake of the Putsch, he was tried for excessive brutality against captured Spartakists in Osterfeld/Weissenfels. Although acquitted, he was dismissed from police service. He found employment as a farm worker and gardener.

He joined the Nazi Party in February 1925. On 27 March 1925 he was appointed Gauleiter of Gau Mecklenburg-Lübeck. Briefly suspended in July 1930 for criticism of Hitler's alliance with industry, he was reinstated on 31 January 1931.[1] He was elected to the Reichstag in September 1930. After the Nazi seizure of power, he was made Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and the City of Lübeck on 26 May 1933. He thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdictions. On 1 January 1934, the two Free States in his jurisdiction were combined into a unified Mecklenburg. Under the Greater Hamburg Act the City of Lübeck was transferred to Gau Schleswig-Holstein on 1 April 1937 and Hildebrandt's Gau was renamed Gau Mecklenburg.[2]

A member of the SS since 1933, on 30 January 1942 Hildebrandt was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer, and on 16 November he was named Reich Defense Commissioner for his Gau. After World War II ended, he was arrested and interned by U.S. forces, and tried in the Allied Dachau Trials. He was sentenced specifically in the Airmen's Trial, for contraventions of the Hague Conventions by issuing orders to shoot parachuting U.S. aircrewmen. Friedrich Hildebrandt was then put to death by hanging at Landsberg am Lech on 5 November 1948.[3]

Michael D. Miller and Andreas Schulz: Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders Of The Nazi Party And Their Deputies, 1925–1945 (Herbert Albrecht, H. Wilhelm Huttmann), Volume 1, R. James Bender Publishing, 2012.

• Newspaper clippings about Friedrich Hildebrandt in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW