Herbert Mehlhorn
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Herbert Mehlhorn | |
|---|---|
| Born | 24 March 1903 Chemnitz, German Empire |
| Died | 30 September 1968 (aged 65) Tübingen, Germany |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Service |  Schutzstaffel |
| Years of service | 1933–1945 |
| Rank | SS-Oberführer |
| Battles / wars | World War II |
Georg Herbert Mehlhorn (24 March 1903 – 30 October 1968)[1][2] was a German SS Oberführer,[3] Nazi legal expert, and Gestapo official. Mehlhorn was involved in the camouflage of the mass graves of the Jewish victims in the forest of the Chełmno extermination camp.[4][5] He operated gas wagons at the Chełmno camp to murder the sick Jewish prisoners who were sent from the Wartheland ghettoes.[6] He was also a director of Stiftung Nordhav, a front organization of the Sicherheitsdienst founded in 1939 by Reinhard Heydrich, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.[7] He was the mentor of SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg while at the SS-Hauptamt.[8]
Mehlhorn was the son of a wealthy industrialist.[9] Other sources say that he was a son of a church worker. He was born in 1903 in Chemnitz[2][10] He attended Realschule in Chemnitz. As a schoolboy, he became a member of nationalist paramilitary organizations. At 16 years of age, he resisted the rules set forward by the Allied Disarmament Commission for Germany, by taking part in exercises involving the camouflage of weapons.[11]
Although too young at the time to participate in armed fights between German paramilitaries and Polish fighters over the threatened annexation of Silesia, he still resisted by participating in the underground resistance.[11] Later on, Mehlhorn became an expert on armaments and military policy and used to give lectures in meetings organized by youth sports societies such as Turnerschaft Mundenia.[11] Melhorn has been described as a "strange character".[9]
Education
Mehlhorn attended university from January 1923 to December 1926 for a total of 8 trimesters, studying in Göttingen, Munich and Leipzig, eventually obtaining his Ph.D. in 1928. His thesis was on "law history and penal practices related to poaching" (Die Bestimmung der Strafe für die Wilderei). His grade was very high and upon graduation he was the only one from his class not to become a civil servant, opting instead to join the ranks of a famous law office at Chemnitz.[11]
Career
Mehlhorn became a member of NSDAP in 1931 and a member of the SS in 1933.[10] His career in the SD started when the organization was a small nucleus of officers at its formative stage. He was deemed important enough to be hired along with Lothar Beutel, Hermann Behrends, and Wilhelm Albert in order to help with the formation of SD as an organization.[11][12]
Mehlhorn was given the task of organizing the administrative apparatus of the new service and became head of its administration between 1932 and 1937.[11][12] On 1 September 1933 he became deputy leader of the Gestapo branch in Saxony.[13][14] In 1935, Mehlhorn was sent to the Berlin headquarters of the SD to assume a high-echelon position, probably due to legal advice he provided concerning the financial affairs of Heydrich's mother.[14] Post-1945, Mehlhorn worked as legal officer in the town of Oberndorf am Neckar.[2]
