Hans Röhwer

Author: Alena Jasiak, Benjamin Rosenstengel & David Schober

* 5 December 1915 – Altona
† 15 October 1995 – Saarbrücken

Hans Röhwer served as an officer in the ’Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ SS division, participating in campaigns in Czechoslovakia, France, and the Soviet Union. In 1943, he was one of the perpetrators of the massacres at Lago Maggiore, in which over 50 Jews were murdered. During the war’s further course, Röhwer was wounded a number of times; he fought on the Eastern Front until 1945. Following the German surrender, he became an American POW; he was released in 1948. He then pursued a civilian career before being arrested in 1964 for participating in war crimes, charges leading to a sentence of life in prison passed in 1968. In 1970, West Germany’s Federal Court of Justice overturned the sentence on appeal. Röhwer died in 1995 in Saarbrücken. His role as a war-crimes perpetrator is documented in the files of the SS and trial minutes.

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Nationality: German
Armed Force: Waffen-SS
Unit: SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler”
Years of Service: 1935-1945
Rank: SS-Hauptsturmführer
Campaign: France 1940
Balkan campaign 1941
Russian campaign 1941
Eastern Front 1943
Italy 1943
Eastern Front 1943-1944
Confirmed Massacres: Lago Maggiore
Post war period: Until 1948: American POW
After 1949: commercial agent in Saarbrücken
1964-1968: defendant in criminal trial, Osnabrück regional court, on account of massacres at the Lago Maggiore
1968: sentenced to life in prison on account of murder of 22 persons
1970: appeal and overturning of sentence by West German Federal Court of Justice on account of statute of limitations

Training and war experience

Childhood in ’red Altona’ and the early path to the SS

Hans Röhwer was born on 5 December 1915 in Altona and grew up in an educated middle-class family of modest means. In the 1920s, Altona was considered a socialist and communist stronghold. On 17 July 1932, what became known as Alton’s ’bloody Sunday’ broke out there, when a march by around 7,000 SA-men culminated in violent clashes with workers and residents. The police shot into the crowd, and 18 people were killed, and more than 60 were wounded. This incident served as an excuse for the 1932 Prussian coup d’état and marked a turning point in the crisis of the Weimar Republic.

Nearly a year later, on 7 July 1933, Röhwer joined the SA. After receiving his school-leaving certificate (Abitur) in 1935, his efforts to join the police and the Wehrmacht failed. Instead, on 1 April 1935, he joined the SS-Verfügungstruppe and was assigned to SS-Standarte 2 in Hamburg-Veddel. In May of the same year, he joined the Nazi Party.
From SS-junker to battalion leader: ascent in the Waffen-SS

On 1 October 1937, Röhwer began a ten-month officer’s training program at the SS officer candidate school (SS-Junkerschule) in Bad Tölz; he was made an Oberjunker in September 1938, then moved to the 2nd Sturmbann unit of the SS’s ’Der Führer’ Standarte in Graz. In March 1939, as a platoon leader, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he led troops participating in the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Also in 1939, he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer.

In June 1940, Röhwer was transferred to the Leibstandarte SS ’Adolf Hitler’ (LSSAH), with which he took part in the campaign in the west. Following the campaign, the unit was newly organized in Metz, where he was again promoted, now to SS-Obersturmführer. In 1941, he participated in the Balkan campaign and the invasion of the Soviet Union, where he was wounded twice. After a period of recovery and reorganization for the LSSAH in France, in 1943, Röhwer took over command of the 3^rd company of the 2^nd regiment; in November 1943, he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer.

In early 1943, the LSSAH, now expanded into a division, was deployed in the Kharkiv area. Although Röhwer was again wounded there, he quickly returned to the division in May 1943, taking over command of a replacement training battalion. In late summer 1943, the division’s main force was transferred to northern Italy, where on 25 August 1943 at the latest, Röhwer became acting head of the 1^st battalion.

Hans Röhwer, in his capacity as acting leader, ordered the arrest of local Italian Jews and personally supervised the order’s execution. In a meeting he headed in Baveno, the unit’s leaders agreed to murder the arrested Jews.

Complicity in the Lago Maggiore massacres

On 14 September 1943, the 1^st battalion of the LSSAH reached the western bank of the Lago Maggiore. Hans Röhwer, in his capacity as acting leader, ordered the arrest of local Italian Jews and personally supervised the order’s execution. In a meeting he headed in Baveno, the unit’s leaders agreed to murder the arrested Jews.

Based on testimony by Walter Lange, who in 1943 had been an SS-Untersturmführer in the battalion’s headquarters, the Osnabrück regional court later determined that Röhwer had central responsibility for the massacres. According to the court, on 22 September, he issued the order to shoot and kill the prisoners; what remained unclear was when, precisely, the command was returned to the regular battalion commander, Hans Becker, thus whether Röhwer was still the battalion’s leader on the day of the executions.
The last years of the war: on the Eastern Front and in retreat

After Hans Becker returned from his vacation, Röhwer was transferred to regiment headquarters, then took over command of the division’s replacement training battalion. In October 1943, the LSSAH was again transferred to the Eastern Front, where the replacement training battalion was made responsible for security tasks behind the front. In December, Röhwer temporarily returned to the 1^st battalion at the front and, while defending against an attack, was once again wounded.

On 13 February 1944, he again took command of the battalion, whose command post was overrun by Soviet troops that evening. Röhwer here suffered grave bullet wounds and was treated in various field hospitals until July 1944. After recovering, he initially returned to the SS-Panzergrenadier replacement training battalion, then located in Berlin-Spreenhagen. In August, he was transferred to the Kienschlag SS-Panzer Grenadier school near Prague, where he was deployed as an instructor in military tactics for officer candidates.

According to his own information, starting in March 1945, Röhwer took command of an armed fighting group tasked with slowing down the advance of Allied troops. He spent the last weeks of the war with this unit in the border area between Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The postwar period

Surrender, internment, and the early postwar years

After the German surrender in May 1945, Röhwer handed himself over to the Americans to avoid capture by the Red Army. He was taken prisoner on 10 May near Oberhaid and first placed in the Klein-München POW camp near Linz. Following several transfers, he ended up in mid-1946 in the Regensburg camp, which was transformed into a civilian internment camp. In a memoir, Röhwer reflected on the reclassification of the Regensburg camp from a POW to a civilian internment facility, remarking that for the internees, the change was purely nominal: ‘barbed wire remains barbed wire’.

On 14 October 1946, the Allies handed administration of the camp to German officials. Röhwer remained in Regensburg at least until the summer of 1947, before receiving a last transfer in early 1948 to the Theley camp. In June 1948, he was finally released from internment.

On 24 October 1964, Röhwer was arrested in Saarbrücken and taken into custody. He disputed any role in the murder and claimed Lange’s accusations were mendacious.

From the return to civilian life to the Osnabrück trial

After regaining his freedom, Röhwer returned to his family and settled in Saarbrücken, first selling goods from a truck for a fish and speciality-food wholesaler, later working in the fruit and vegetable wholesale trade. Starting in 1949, he was employed as a sales agent, then, beginning in 1953, in the pharmaceutical industry.

Röhwer only drew the attention of German legal authorities in the 1960s, in the course of investigations into the Lago Maggiore massacres: testimony by a former comrade, Walter Lange, had gravely incriminated him as the man who had issued the orders for the mass murder. On 24 October 1964, Röhwer was arrested in Saarbrücken and taken into custody. He disputed any role in the murder and claimed Lange’s accusations were mendacious.

On 20 March 1967, the Osnabrück prosecutor’s office filed charges of collaboration in murder against Röhwer and two other men. The main proceedings began in 1968 and ended on 5 July 1969 with a sentence of life in prison for Röhwer for all three men for the murder of 22 persons. In March 1970, the West German Federal Court of Justice overturned the guilty verdict on account of a statute of limitations, freeing Röhwer after five years in the penitentiary. He then returned to Saarbrücken, where he lived until he died in 1995.

Sources

The most important source for putting together a biography of Hans Röhwer is furnished by the SS-personnel files located in the German Federal Archives, Berlin-Lichterfelde (R 9361-III/165686 and R 9361-III/550869). Further documents concerning his wartime deployment and time as a POW are likewise kept there (these include B 563-1 KARTEI/R-767/565; ZA 12/62426 und ZA 12/81887). For his eventual prosecution the most important documents are in the files of the Osnabrück regional court (proceedings 17 Ks 3/67; Lower Saxon State Archives, Osnabrück branch, Rep 945, Akz. 2003/038, Nr. 48). A memoir written by Röhwer in the summer of 1967 while in prison also exists; it is in the possession of his family.

Literature

Lutz Klinkhammer, Stragi naziste in Italia. La guerra contro i civili (1943-1944), 2^nd edn., Rome, Donzelli, 2006, pp. 55-79.

Marco Nozza, Hotel Meina, la prima strage di ebrei in Italia, Milan, Mondadori, 1993.

Jens Westemeier, Himmlers Krieger. Joachim Peiper und die Waffen-SS in Krieg und Nachkriegszeit, 2nd edn., Paderborn, Schöningh, 2019.

Hans Röhwer

Training and war experience

Childhood in ’red Altona’ and the early path to the SS

From SS-junker to battalion leader: ascent in the Waffen-SS

Hans Röhwer, in his capacity as acting leader, ordered the arrest of local Italian Jews and personally supervised the order’s execution. In a meeting he headed in Baveno, the unit’s leaders agreed to murder the arrested Jews.

Complicity in the Lago Maggiore massacres

The last years of the war: on the Eastern Front and in retreat

The postwar period

Surrender, internment, and the early postwar years

On 24 October 1964, Röhwer was arrested in Saarbrücken and taken into custody. He disputed any role in the murder and claimed Lange’s accusations were mendacious.

From the return to civilian life to the Osnabrück trial

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