Richard Glucks

Richard Glücks ( Odenkirchen , Rhine Province , 22 of April of 1889 - Flensburg , October of maypole of 1945 ) was a German officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS) that reached the rank of general. From 1939 until the end of World War II he was head of the SS-Totenkopfverbände and Inspector of the Concentration Camps. Close to the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler , Glücks was directly responsible for the appalling conditions faced by internees in the concentration and extermination camps, as well as forced labor programs, mass killings and the implementation of Called ” Final Solution “.

Biography

Early years

Glücks lived in Argentina a few years before the First World War . At the beginning, this one returns to Germany to bodo of a ship of Norwegian flag, with a false identity, and joins to the Imperial Army , where it obtained the Iron Cross of (1st and 2nd class) and the Cross to the Merit of War (1st and 2nd class with swords). He was stationed as an officer of artillery in the Western Front throughout the war. ¹At the end of this, he was an officer on a Liaison Committee for the Armistice. After the contest he served in the 6th Prussian Division of the Reichswehr , ¹ and also joined the Freikorps .

Race in the SS

In 1930 he joined the Nazi Party , and two years later joined the Schutzstaffel (SS).

On 1 April 1936 he became Chief of Staff of Theodor Eicke , then Inspector of the Concentration Camp and chief of the SS-Wachverbände , first with the rank of Standartenführer and shortly thereafter promoted to Oberführer . When Eicke became field commander of the SS Division Totenkopf , which had been created at his instigation, Glücks was promoted to Concentration Camp Insopector and head of the SS-Totenkopfverbände , being named by Himmler as successor to Eicke, 18 Of November 1939. ² This made him the commander of the concentration camps , so he moved his residence to the Oranienburg concentration camp between 1937 and 1945 with his wife.

On March 29, 1942, he became head of the “Amtsgruppe D” Section in the SS Office of Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt ( WVHA ). The 9 of November of 1943 received the rank of SS-Gruppenführer (General Division) and Lieutenant General of the Waffen SS . ¹

The end

The 16 of April of 1945 , the offices of the WVHS in Oranienburg were destroyed by Allied bombing. The seat was then transferred to the city of Born on the Baltic Coast, that same day Glücks and his wife traveled by car towards the Ravensbruck concentration camp . On 26 April they settled in Born, but on April 30, before the advance of the Red Army , they moved to Warnemünde.

On 2 May, a convoy of WVHA officers moves to Flensburg under Glücks. The next day, May 3 , some members of the group moved to the Naval War Academy in Flensburg - Mürwik ; Glücks and his wife are not mentioned in this group, which has fueled theories about their subsequent whereabouts. During those days he met with Heinrich Himmler . On May 10, 1945, Glücks was dying in the hospital of Murwik using the name of Sonnemann. A certificate of death was issued to Glücks giving as a reason for death the suicide by cyanide capsule ( Vergiftung durch Cyankali ) at 3:00 pm , ¹ giving the place of death as the Marina Murwik II Hospital.

Glücks in fiction

It was always speculated on the fate of Richard Glücks after the war. In the fictional novel The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth , Glücks is identified living in Argentina in the sixties with the name of Ricardo Suertes.

Ranges and ascents in the SS

References