Peter Eduard Crasemann

Peter Eduard Crasemann was born on 5 March 1891 in Hamburg, into a Hanseatic trading family. His father was a notary, his Italian-born mother the daughter of the consul of the North German Confederation in Ancona. Crasemann was the youngest of three brothers. One brother became a delegate of the national-liberal German People’s Party in the Weimar Republic period, the other a Hamburg judge who sat on various company boards. Crasemann initially attended a private school. After graduating from the Uhlenhorst Oberrealschule, he joined the Prussian army as an officer cadet, then serving as an artillery officer in the First World War. His regiment was deployed alternately on the Western and Eastern Fronts and participated in many battles. In August 1918 he was promoted to captain.

In April 1919, Crasemann was dismissed from the army and entered civilian life. He was first active in agriculture, with plans to purchase his own country estate. But these plans eventually changed and in 1920, he took a position in the Hugo Stinnes Shipping Company in Hamburg, a main responsibility being the organization of coal transport along the Alster and Elbe rivers. A few months later, he received a prominent position in a large iron-trading company in Hannover. In November 1921, Crasemann married the owner’s daughter.

In the 1920s Crasemann took courses at Hannover’s Technical University, following which he became a partner in the Hannover-based Owin radio-instrument firm, serving as its sales director between 1931 and 1936.

In May 1933, Crasemann joined the Nazi Party, possibly more from opportunism than genuine conviction: His firm was not especially successful, despite it having started to produce so-called “people’s radios” – Volksempfänger – in 1933. Development of these budget-friendly instruments had been commissioned by Joseph Goebbels to serve as a propaganda tool. Nevertheless, in March 1936 the firm filed for bankruptcy; it was liquidated in July. 

In August, Crasemann joined the Wehrmacht. He was first stationed at the War Ministry in Berlin, later with the Army High Command. He was on active duty as an officer starting in 1938, serving in artillery units.

Crasemann would be deployed in all the major theatres of the Second World War. In 1939, he was battery commander in the Polish campaign. The following year he commanded an artillery group of the 7^th Panzer Division under Erwin Rommel on the Western Front. In May 1941, Panzer Artillery Regiment 33 of the 15^th Panzer Division was under his command in North Africa. During his 18 months there, Crassmann accompanied nearly the entire campaign, fighting in all the major battles. In December 1944, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross, one of Nazi Germany’s highest military medals.

He also gained experience on the Eastern Front, although he was deployed there relatively late. In April 1943 he took command of the 5^th Panzer Division’s artillery regiment there. In September, he became Artillery Kommandeur of the XXIV Panzer Corps in the central sector of the Eastern Front, participating in anti-partisan action.

After taking a course for division Kommandeure, in July 1944 Crasemann took command of the 26^th Panzer Division at the Italian Front. The division was in the process of withdrawing along the Era Valley, between the Cecina and Arno rivers. In the second half of August, when the division was being transferred to the front on the Adriatic coast line, Crasemann ordered his Reconnaissance battalion to comb through the Fucecchio Marshes. Convinced that many partisans were located there, he specified that the operation was to be carried out in a ‘consciously severe’ way. Any possible obstacle to movement of his troops was to be eliminated. In fact, few partisans were in the marshes, and they remained hidden. Instead of partisans, only civilians were murdered, above all women and children – 175 persons in total. 

Following the massacre, the division was transferred to the front on the Adriatic coast line as planned. In Oct. 1944 Crasemann was promoted to Generalmajor. He maintained command of his division until the end of the year. In Jan. 1945 he was appointed commanding general of the XII SS Army Corps, deployed in the Rhineland between Aachen and Cologne. On 16 April 1945, he surrendered to British troops in the Ruhr Pocket.

Together with many other high-ranking Wehrmacht and SS officers, after capitulating, Crasemann was imprisoned in Island Farm Special Camp 11 in Wales. Meanwhile British military justice was investigating the massacre in the Fucecchio marshes. In Oct. 1946, while Crasemann was awaiting trial, he was summoned to London’s Kensington Palace interrogation centre, known as the London District Cage.

In Feb. 1947, Crasemann was summoned to testify as a witness in the trial of Field Marshall Albert Kesselring in Venice. Then, between 13 and 22 May, his own trial was held in Padua on account of the massacre in the Fucecchio Marshes. Crasemann was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. On 29 April 1950, he died in the British military prison in Werl (Westphalia).