SUICIDE OF AN EX-NAZI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600300023-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 1999
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: June 13, 1964
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

FOIAb3b
SUICIDE Of
E~-NAZI
Wherever Chancellor Erhard went, Ewald Peters was sure to go. How did a Nazi
N the last few weeks of his life Ewald
Peters was a figure whom many people
might have envied. A tall, handsome,
smiling man of 49, he had reached the top
level of his profession as department chief
of the West German secret service, and so
he accompanied Chancellor Ludwig
Erhard on ceremonious visits to the lead-
ers of the Western world. In Texas Peters
was a guest at President Lyndon John-
son's ranch, attended a Presidential bar-
becue, and listened to a chorus of Ger-
man-Americans singing Deep in the Heart
of Texas in German-Tief in das Herz
von Texas. And when he left, they pre-
sented him with a ten-gallon hat. .
In London, Peters had accompanied
Chancellor Erhard to a Lord Mayor's
banquet, and in Paris he had shaken the
hand of President Charles de Gaulle.
Then came Rome, where Peters, a Cath-
olic, stood by the chancellor during a
Vatican audience with Pope Paul VI.
Peters noted down all the details so that
he could report them to his elder sister, a
nun in a German convent. There were
other meetings that also impressed Peters.
Chancellor Erhard conferred with Pietro
Nenni, the Socialist vice premier whose
daughter died in a concentration camp.
Erhard publicly expressed his sympathy
for Nenni's sufferings, and the Italian
press commented favorably on the tactful
candor of the new German leaders.
Peters understood the importance of such
gestures, for he was part of this new
Germany. One colleague described him
as "shy, compassionate, modest," the
antithesis of the strutting Gestapo offi-
cial. To his wife, Wanda, Peters wrote
that the trip to Rome was the most en-
joyable he ever made in the line of duty.
Sanitized - Approved
exectdioner become Germany's secret-service chief?
By EDWARD BEHR
On January 3n th
calls that he was, "so happy, so gay. Then,
while he still had his coat on, two men
came. They said they were from the po-
lice, and I thought they were subordinates
reporting to my husband on some busi-
ness or other. 1 was making coffee. A few
moments later niy husband came into the
kitchen. He was white. In one minute he
had changed very much.... He was cry-
ing. God, how he was crying."
prison. The charge was mass murder.
Two days later, on February 2, Peters
bed in his cell, knotted them together,
and tied one end around the iron bed.
Then he made a crude noose for himself.
rations, includih the French Legion of
Honor; there was a silver-framed photo-
graph of President Kennedy, whom
Peters had b Jp, d to guard during the
inscribed: `;ptwald Peters, with very
,
best wishes, John.Kennedy." In the West The case of Ewald Peters is not an iso-
German prison cell, Ewald Peters slipped lated one, nor can it be isolated from the
guards reached mm, veters was aeaa. mans have really purged themselves of the
concerned," said Dr. Ernst Bruckner, the, 1945, and Allied troops recoiled at the
'
overall head ofwBonn
s Security Group, grimacing skeleton creatures who tried to
t Q(i tf 110. Hb+l~~ ~,~~1P~51* et! r ~
a skilled etcher, the last person you bulldozed the fetid barracks to avert
Conti nt d
Wanda Peters, an attractive, intelligent,
diminutive blonde who teaches music at a
Bonn public school, is also convinced that
a "monstrous judicial error" was perpe-
trated. "My husband's conscience was
absolutely clear," she told me. "We had
discussed the war quite freely. When
cases of war criminals came up, my hus-
band would say, 'I really am lucky not to
have been mixed up in that sort of thing,.
[ was only in thecriminal police. I wouldn't
have liked to have been in their shoes.""
But the German prosecutors responsi-
ble for tracking down war criminals re-
fuse to believe that Peters's death came as
the result of any judicial error. "It was
tragic that he should kill himself," said Dr.
Heinrich Hesse, chief prosecutor for the
State of North-Rhine Westphalia, where
Peters would have been tried. "But if he
had come to trial, justice would have been
done. Believe me, our evidence was solid."
And the evidence against Ewald Peters
indicated that the chief of Chancellor
Erhard's security guard was indeed a war
criminal, that in German-occupied Russia
between October, 1941, and March, 1942,
he had taken part in rounding up and
000 Ukrainian Jews.
killing 12
 CPYRGHT
cholera-there firsStgslestjpproJlyF~rt~~l~~'S?('154
Who did these tlungshh.'' oug Hlft?j claim to be victims o ast Cerman om-
Himmler and Goering all escaped pun-
ishment by suicide, 21 top Nazis were
condemned by the International Military
Tribunal at Nuremberg. But 21 men
could not have operated all the machine
guns, the torture chambers, and the gas
ovens-yet neither could all 80 million
Germans have been guilty of mass mur-
der. For those in between the 80 million
and the 21, the destruction and chaos of
1945 brought an opportunity for a re-
prieve. Not only towns and factories had
gone up in flames, but so had archives and
records. Some Germans could change
their names and become completely new
people-as did Richard Baer, the last
commandant of Auschwitz, who spent
more than 10 postwar years as an obscure
woodcutter named Neumann. Still others
could forget the details of the past and
maintain that they had only followed their
chosen careers as doctors, lawyers, bank-
ers, diplomats, generals and policemen.
As time passed, and memories faded
and prosperity returned, Germany came
to need its doctors, lawyers, bankers, dip-
lomats, generals and policemen. With the
start of the cold war, says Prosecutor
Henrich Hesse, "it seems an incontro-
vertible fact that the Allies lost interest in
prosecuting war criminals." It is taken
almost for granted that nobody asks
questions about the Krupps, the Flicks
and the Opels-the leaders of Germany's
huge industrial combines, which were
substantially operated with concentration-
camp slave labor during the war. As for
the belated prosecution of war criminals,
the German police magazine Krimina/-
statistik recently complained that there
was "public reaction against dragging up States and Britain for photostatic copies
Nazi crimes ... causing deep emotional of essential documents. Under the Bonn
distress among the police involved...." . constitution, moreover, criminal prosecu-
In such a tolerant climate of amnesia, it tions are the primary responsibility of lo-
was only natural that a number of ex- cal state governments, and the federal
Nazis should find room at the top. De- police have only limited authority. And
spite former Chancellor Konrad Aden- there was reluctance of the kind expressed
auer's impeccable record of hostility to by one Auschwitz survivor, now a cook in
Nazism, his Minister of Refugees, Theo- a restaurant, who refused to give evidence
dor Obcrlaender, had to resign in 1960 on the grounds that "my customers dis-
after being accused of serving in a approve of the trial, and I don't want t
"Nightingale" police battalion in eastern get involved in any unpleasantness which
Europe. Despite Chancellor Erhard's would lead to a loss of business."
equally impeccable record, his own Ref- It was only in 1958 that Bauer obtaine
ugee Minister, Hans Kruger, turned out a full list of Auschwit2r(;uards. A half
to have been a Nazi judge in German- charred copy containingitheir names ha
occupied Poland. At first, Kruger insisted fluttered from the chiiiiney of a Gestap
he had been merely a "nominal" member building in Breslau in 1945. It had bee
of the Nazi Party-but the East German picked up by a Gestajo risoner who hel
Communists, who have somewhat fuller it as a souvenir forars, unaware o
wartime records than the West Germans, its importance. Onl .fli year a cupboard
produced documents showing that Krii- full of documents as fWund in a Wes
ger had joined every Nazi association German police station. It, contained th
open to him, and had even abjured his Order of Battle of the wartime Ein
Protestant faith to curry favor with the satzkommandos, the .'special securit
Nazis. It was symptomatic of Kruger's troops which arrested .and killed by th
attiftMe, and not his alone, that he de- tens of thousands in German-occupie
scrib'dd"himself primarily as a victim. In areas of eastern Europe. Yet as the evi
his letter of resignation, he wrote that dence kept flowing in, one clue led to an
"even today I am still unaware of any other, one prosecution to another. Out o
conduct which can be seen as a contra- the fires and shadows of that period, they
vention of law anS t ." : ApprQ dtForet leatS?11aet rRD
munist propaganda, for the Communists
have tirelessly insisted that West Ger-
many is run by ex-Nazis. The East Ger-
mans themselves, of course, have had no
difficulty in finding useful work for ex-
Nazis who are willing to profess their
support for Communism. But the East
German charges have an embarrassing
way of turning out to be true. And the
theory that the West can rely on ex-Nazis
as stanch anti-Communists has an em-
barrassing way of turning out to be false.
For years the CIA subsidized the unoffi-
cial intelligence apparatus of General
Reinhard Gehlen, wartime intelligence
chief of the German Army High Com-
mand, but last year three of Gchlcn's ex-
Nazi associates were convicted of passing
everything they knew to the Soviets.
"You must remember," says Frank-
furt's chief prosecutor, Fritz Bauer, "that
80 percent of the Germans were for Hit-
ler. The reaction of most adult Germans,
confronted with war criminals on trial, is:
There, but for a certain amount of luck,
go I." Bauer is more outspoken than
many other Germans, for he is Jewish,
one of the 30,000 Jews still alive today o
a prewar population of about 500,000. It
was Bauer-and younger men similarly
interested in remembering justice more
than in forgetting the past-who gathered
the evidence which led to the present trial
of 21 staff members of Auschwitz. But i
was not easy. Germany recovered her full
sovereignty only in 1955, and the firs
trials of German war criminals in German
courts took place only in 1958. The Wes
German government lacked background
information, and had to go to the United
CPYRGHT
'75-00149 R000600300023-1
Devoutness and death
Ewald Peters was born Ewa_FdC`zempReF_
in the long-disputed province of Silesia,
now part of Poland. His father was a
small-grocery-store owner, and the family
was devoutly Catholic. He began study-
ing law at Leipzig University, but, accord-
to his superior, Bruckner, "he gave up his
university studies because his father died
suddenly, and he lacked money to con-
tinue. As a young man he worked in a
bank. He joined the criminal police only
because opportunities for promotion were
good for someone like himself, with a
knowledge of accountancy." He was
"well-noted" by his superiors, says
Wanda Peters, adding that he was ex-
tremely thorough and meticulous, spend-
ing endless hours in tracking down minor
criminals. "He liked his work and was
good at it," says Wanda, "but he was per-
haps too humane, too soft. He was al-
ways an easy touch and often helped
destitute ex-criminals out of his own
pocket." Despite his softheartedness,
Peters apparently kept in mind what
Bruckner describes as "opportunities for
promotion." Not too long after he joined
the police in 1935, he dutifully became it
member of the Nazi Party. And in 1940,
under a "Germanization" law which en-
abled German Aryans with foreign-
sounding names to adopt new ones,
Ewald Czempiel became Ewald Peters.
By this time Germany was at war-
1940 was the year of the great break-
through in the Low Countries, the fall of
France, the Battle of Britain, and, for a
moment, we lose sight of Ewald Peters,
although his police duties took him to
Gotenhafen after that Polish seaport was
annexed by Germany. Then he reappears
with Einsatzkommando 6 in the Ukraine
in 1941. There is a group photograph of
officers of the unit, with Peters in SS
uniform. Wearing the uniform did not
mean that Peters was a full-fledged SS
member. His name appears nowhere in
the register of SS members discovered
after the war. Peters refused to abjure
his Catholic faith, says Wanda, and this
barred him from the SS. But the Einsatz-
kommandos were created to help carry
out Hitler's "Final Solution of the Jewish
Problem." Peters himself, confronted by
two denazification boards before reenter-
ing the police, explained that he had sim-
ply been a sort of provost marshal at an
army headquarters in Kiev in 1941, to
investigate crime in the German units.
At the time, there was no evidence that
he had been in the Einsatzkon>nandos.
But there was considerable confusion
about all members of these commando
groups. After June 22, 1941, when Hitler
attacked the Soviet Union, the German
Army's advance was speedy and relatively
bloodless. in Lithuania, in the Ukraine,
in certain parts of Russian-occupied
Poland, hatred for the Soviets took the
form of 1
 3
( PYP( .l~T Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600300023-1
and Poles were hastily enrolled in ~11_ some five years. They married in 1946. The former soldiers of Einsatzkom.
Immediately after his marriage, Peters mando 6.gave further details. The platoon
man-officered militia units, some of them
was arrested by a U.S. Army investigator. commander called Peters, they said, had
in Einsatzkomnxmdos, moving in the
This time it apparently was a judicial been born in Polish Silesia; before the war
wake of advancing German army units. error. The investigator was looking for a ' he had been a detective with the criminal
Recruitment into the battalion-sized
subordinate of the Nazi agent Otto Police and he had held a police job in
Einsatzkommandos was haphazard-one judge at the Nuremberg trials described Skorzeny with the name of Peters. Ewald Gotenhafen; and he had changed his
Peters remained in a U.S. Army detention name to Peters only recently from some
the recruits as "an intellectual riffraff." A
barracks in Regensburg for several foreign-sounding name. Then came an
large proportion of officers were ex-
months until the other Peters was traced. anonymous tip: "The man you want is
policemen. German soldiers who had
With some embarrassment, the American living in the Bonn area." Peters is a
committed minor offenses were offered
authorities in Regensburg offered Peters common German name, but the investi-
the choice of volunteering for "special
and his wife jobs teaching in a school for gators finally came across Ewald Peters
During the summer of 1941, Hirnmlcr the children of U.S. servicemen. Wanda of the security police. Three people recog-
taught music and physical train i ng; Ewald, nized him from a photograph.
ordered the Einsatzkommandos to remain
Latin. "We got on marvelously well with This was sufficient to convince a Ger-
on the sidelines as much as possible. They
everyone connected with the school," ,man magistrate that a warrant should be
were to lull the eastern Europeans into a Wanda recalls. "Parents and other school- issued for the arrest of Ewald Peters. And
sense of security and compile a list of all
teachers were so nice to us. It was as on January 30, two men called at the
Jews in their areas, with the help of local
though there had never been a war." Peters home in Bonn. That was the mo-
Jewish leaders. Jews were told this was
necessary because they would shortly be did not teach Latin long. West nient that Wanda Peters recalls with
Germany
"resettled" in Germany was rapidly building up its bewilderment. "He said that the men had
areas specially set aside
for them. Then, in October of 1941 ' the economic strength, and there was a come to take him away for something
shortage of accountants. For seven years th'it had haprered during the war in
Einsatzkommandos struck. Jews were told
Peters worked for a Regensburg factory It nssia, hut. he said, 'I had nothing to do
to assemble with their portable belong-
i as an accountant while Wanda taught at will tl.esc t' ings.' I helped him pack,
for "resettlement." They were taken
the U.S. dependents' school. "His em- "Tic next day I saw him for 40 min-
to remote spots where mass graves had
ployer," said Wanda, "was most reluc- utcs. He was very depressed. I comforted
already been dug, and where the noise
of tant to let him go." He wrote Peters a hint. and he did not cry anymore. He
gunfire could not be overheard. One
survivor, a merchant named Oskar glowing testimonial. even cracked a joke with the policeman
Berger, recalled the operation this way: Reinstated in the police in 1952, Peters who sat with us. He said: 'I will see this
"Just before the 'resettlement,' all the was transferred to the secret service squad thing through if you will.' He again said
sick, in homes as well as in the hospi- in 1956, and eventually headed it. He was lie had nothing to do with any atrocities
talc-some four or five hundred per- respected, liked, and trusted-"several during the war." In a letter written just
sons-together with the inmates of the cuts above the usual police officer," says before his suicide, Peters assured Wanda,
homes for the aged and the orphans in the
orphan homes, were either shot or killed
by injection.... The bodies were flung
into the pits dressed as they were, after we
had searched them for jewels, gold and
money, which had to be delivered to the
SS. When the work had been done, we
were assembled in the synagogue and
Gestapo Chief Thomas picked some of us
for shipment to Treblinka. The trip was a
nightmare. We crouched in the cars,
crowded together, children crying, women
going mad.... We were herded out of
the carriages as German and Ukrainian
Bruckner. "A cultivated man, with a "I am not involved. I did not do the
knowledge of music and so on." things I am accused of. If there are wit-
But unknown to Peters, or to any of messes, they are not telling the truth."
his superiors, some prosecutors investi- After Peters's death, all his neighbors
gating war crimes were gathering evi- called on Wanda to express their sym-
dence. When the first Einsatzkommando patty. She received hundreds of letters
trials before German courts occurred in from friends, dozens of telephone calls.
1958, more and more names came to Some of the letters were from parents and
light. One case was to prove crucial: A fellow teachers they had known during
former Einsatzkommando leader, Robert their Regensburg days, and all expressed
Mohr, was brought to trial in 1963. their firm belief in Peters's innocence.
Mohr's unit had murdered tens of thou- Only one telephone call expressed any.
sands of Ukrainian Jews, and the prose- thing but sorrow. A blurred, cracked
cutors based their case against Mohr on voice said on the phone, the night after
SS men mounted to the roofs and began evidence given by former rank-and-file
to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd. members of the Einsatzkommando, who,
Men, women and children writhed in as private soldiers carrying out orders
their own blood...." from above, were not themselves charged
What was Ewald Peters doing during with crimes. Some of the witnesses came
this period? The evidence is incomplete. ' from Einsatzkommando 6. They gave
In those days of vast military movements' names of platoon commanders. One of
across vast areas of southwestern Russia, the platoon commanders of Einsatzkom-
there was indiscriminate killing on a vast mando 6, they said, was culled Peters.
scale on both sides-some in military ac- They told how they had, under Peters's
lion, some not. The actions of Ewald commandondozensofoccasions,rounded
Peters, who always had a modest inclina- up Jews, dug mass graves and served on
lion to let others take credit for his work, firing squads. Official reports from the
remained shrouded in mystery. He ap- Peters unit-sent to Berlin and found in-
parently left the Ukraine after 1942, and tact in 1945-had documented '12,000
is known to have held police jobs in Hun- executions in the Kiev area between
gary and Romania. In 1945 he was taken October, 1941 and March, 1942. A new
prisoner by American troops. He ap-'. file was started: the Peters file.
peared before a board grading ex-Nazis
and was given grade D, the least important
grade. I t was then, in the confusion of de-
Peters's death: "Has your old man met
the Devil yet?"
feat, that Peters aSa~d roved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600300023-1
sweetheart, Wanda, a ter a separation
JUN 1 3 1964
 4
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600300023-1
CPYRGHT
JUN 13 1964
who received a ten-gallon hat at the LBJ
ranch in Texas, died because of the zeal
of a relative handful of investigating
attorneys. About 100 of them are pursu-
ing the guilt of the past into the respect-
ability of the present, and theirs is not
a popular job. At the Auschwitz trial in
Frankfurt, at the Limburg trial where
four doctors are being prosecuted for
murdering some 100,000 feebleminded
and psychotic patients, the galleries may
contain a certain number of young people
who come to learn of the crimes of their
elders, who gasp at the daily testimony
about shootings and gassings, about
manacled prisoners set on fire and naked
women machine-gunned as they fled
through the snow, and children swung by
the heels until their heads bashed against
stone walls. Nobody can say what the
Germans feel about these events today,
but it is probably true that a majority of
them wish that such testimony did not
have to be heard, that such trials did not
have to be held. And after May 8, 1965,
most such trials will not be held. Except
for specific cases of murder, the 20th
anniversary of the German surrender will
mark the day when the prosecutors' time
runs out. A statute of limitations will
absolve all war criminals not already
charged. How many Germans, one won-
ders, are anxiously waiting for 1965-
not only the guilty but the innocent too?
No trial, however, would have solved
the mystery of. Ewald Peters. Here was a
man who, from all accounts, was an
admirable human being, cultivated, re-
fined, kindhearted. Yet for a brief war-
time period, according to substantial
evidence submitted to German courts,
he was prepared to engage in the mass
murder of what the German government
then termed "subliumans." And when it
was all over he showed no signs of re-
morse, no signs, even, of remembering
that any wrong had ever been done.
Perhaps if his prosecutors had been less
energetic, or if the Mohr trial had been
delayed a year or two, Ewald Peters
would be alive today, touring the capitals
of the Western world, bowing, shaking
hands, and smiling. THE END
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600300023-1