The Making of an SS Killer

The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905–1990

Alex J. Kay

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781107146341
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316560488
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In this pioneering biography of a frontline Holocaust perpetrator, Alex J. Kay uncovers the life of SS Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Filbert, responsible as the first head of SS-Einsatzkommando 9, a mobile killing squad, for the murder of more than 18,000 Soviet Jews - men, women and children - on the Eastern Front. He reveals how Filbert, following the political imprisonment of his older brother, set out to prove his own ideological allegiance by displaying particular radicalism in implementing the orders issued by Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. He also examines Filbert's post-war experiences, first in hiding and then being captured, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Released early, Filbert went on to feature in a controversial film in the lead role of an SS mass murderer. The book provides compelling new insights into the mindset and motivations of the men, like Filbert, who rose through the ranks of the Nazi regime.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Introduction
• 1 ‘I went to school with quite a number of Jewish co-religionists and never knew hatred for Jews’: Childhood, youth and early adulthood, 1905–1932
• 2 ‘In terms of his character he is irreproachable in every respect’: Nazi Party membership and career in the SS Security Service, 1932–1939
• 3 ‘Pity that the scoundrel didn’t perish’: Brother’s imprisonment and career stagnation, 1939–1941
• 4 ‘So, we’ve finished off the first Jews’: SS-Einsatzkommando 9 and deployment in the East, June–July 1941
• 5 ‘In Vileyka, the Jews had to be liquidated in their entirety’: Genocide of Belarusian Jewry, July–October 1941
• 6 ‘Was it thinkable that I, a jurist and a soldier, would do such a thing?’: Suspension from the Reich Security Main Office and reinstatement until the war’s end, 1941–1945
• 7 ‘My son, who has not yet returned home from the war’: Post-war submergence and reintegration into West German society, 1945–1959
• 8 ‘A trial of this magnitude has never previously taken place before a German court’: Arrest and trial, February 1959–June 1962
• 9 ‘A limited, lower middle class, status-and-promotion seeking philistine’: Imprisonment and early release, 1962–1975
• 10 ‘A chess game of egos’: Wundkanal and aftermath, 1975–1990
• Concluding thoughts
• Notes
• Sources and literature cited
• Index