Richard Hildebrandt

Richard Hermann Hildebrandt (13 May 1897, Worms – 10 March 1952, Warsaw) was a German politician in Nazi Germany, member of the Reichstag, and a high-ranking Schutzstaffel (SS) commander.

SS career

From 1943 until his capture in 1945, he led the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (SS-Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt; RuSHA). He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer. He was convicted in the phase of the Nuremberg trials known as the RuSHA Trial, for measures put into force in the furtherance of the "germanization" component of the Generalplan Ost program in the Danzig-West Prussia area. This involved the resettlement of Germans in the Nazi occupied territory after ejecting the native families from those lands. As RuSHA chief, he was also responsible for conducting the official Race test on the population of the occupied territories for racial selection. He was executed for war crimes.

Crimes against humanity

International War Crimes Tribunal I found he was guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of the following crimes against humanity:

  • kidnapping of alien children;
  • forced abortions on Eastern workers;
  • taking away infants of Eastern workers;
  • illegal and unjust punishment of foreign nationals for sexual intercourse with Germans;
  • hampering the reproduction of enemy nationals;
  • forced evacuation and resettlement of populations;
  • forced Germanization of enemy nationals; and
  • utilization of enemy nationals as slave labour.[1]

On a separate charge of carrying out a program of euthanasia, the tribunal found it was carried out by Hildebrandt only against citizens of Germany, and for that reason did not constitute a crime against humanity.[1] Because of his membership in the SS, he was also found guilty of membership in a criminal organization.[1]

The Tribunal sentenced him to 25 years in prison, but he was then turned over to Polish authorities for further criminal proceedings.[2] As a result of the Polish proceedings, he was hanged in Warsaw in 1952.

References
  1. United Nations War Crimes Commission, "Law reports of Trials of War Criminals," pp. 33-34, 36 (1997).
  2. Giles MacDonogh, "After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation," p. 464 (2009).
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