Diehm, Christoph Ludwig.

Diehm, Christoph Ludwig, born on 01-03-1892 in Rottenacker, Baden Würtenburg , the son of a farmer, who after attending elementary school for seven years want to advanced training from 1906 to 1909. From 1911 Diehm was a professional soldier and took part in the First World War from August 1914. From January 1919 Diem belonged to a volonteer Free Corps  for two years and was then a professional soldier in the Reichswehr. From 1922 to 1925 he attended the army technical school and then worked in agriculture until 1929. From October 1926 to January 1928 Diehm was a member of the Stahlhelm, a paramilitary Organisation, founded in December 1918 by Hauptmann der Reserve and Schnapps manufacturer Franz Seldte . Seldte was captured and arrested in Mondorf-les-Bains at the end of the war and died, age 64, in a US military hospital in April 1947 at Fürth, before the Nuremberg Tribunal had the chance to formally hang him on charges. As an old fighter, Christoph Diehm was a member of the NSDAP from 1921 to 1923. After the party ban, he rejoined the NSDAP in 1930 (membership number 212.531). Diehm also became a member of the SA at the beginning of March 1928 and switched from the SA to the SS in March 1932 (membership number 28,461). In his home village Rottenacker he founded the local branch of the NSDAP. From 1929 he was adjutant in the SA sub-group Württemberg and from 1931 leader of the SA group southwest. From 24-04-1932 to 20-11-1933 he was a member of the state parliament of Württemberg. From 1933 Diehm was a member of the Reichstag of the NSDAP for the constituency 32 Baden in the National Socialist Reichstag from the 9th to the 11th electoral term. Diehm, who was promoted to SS-Oberführer in 1932, was leader of SS-Section X from March 1932 to July 1933, from mid-July 1933 to mid-March 1936 of SS-Section XIX and from mid-March 1936 of SS-Section I. From September 01-09-1939, Diehm was the leader of the SS Upper Section West S as a SS Gruppenführer.

After the outbreak of World War II, Diehm was from late September 1939 to early January 1942 Police President of Gdynia, all Jews were murdered their, (see Anne Frank and (see Simon Wiesenthal) (Settela Steinbach)  following Saarbrücken and at the end of February SS and Police Führer in Shitomir. All Jews in Shitomir are also murdered by the Einsatztruppen. Diehm was Chief of Staff of the Kaminiski Brigade. This unit was commanded by a Russian named Bronislaw Kaminiski

   and was involved in fighting partisans on the East Front. S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A., also known as the Kaminski Brigade  was an anti partisan formation composed of people from the so-called Lokot Autonomy territory in the Nazi Germany-occupied areas of Russia during World War II

.  The unit took part in the fighting in Warsaw in 1944, defended by General Juliusz Rommel, where its behavior was so brutal that it was ordered disbanded and its leader shot. After the end of World War II in Europe, some of the former RONA and Lokot personnel were repatriated by Western Allies to the Soviet Union. At the end of 1946 a Military Court of the USSR handed Yury Frolov and several others a death sentence. In the 1950s and 1960s in the USSR, dozens of other former members were found, some of them also sentenced to death. The last member of Lokot/RONA personnel, responsible for more than a thousand murders, was found in 1978 and sentenced to death. From August 1944 to September 1944, Diehm was temporary commander of the 29^th Waffen SS Grenadier Regiment, Rhona. Diehm succeeded SS Obergruppeführer , Friedrich Jeckeln, Jeckeln was hanged age 51, in Riga,   until October 1944, in the Region Belgium/ North of France. Diehm then became the SS Führer of the SS Hauptamt under Reinhard Heydrich.

  Diehm hunted Jews until the end of the war, but wasn’t trailed for his crimes. As police chief of Gdynia, Diehm was involved in mass murders in his catchment area and in June 1944, shortly before the liberation of the district of Galicia, had refugees tracked down in the forests of Galicia Diehm was only released from the Soviet prisoner-of-war nine years later, in mid-January 1954, and returned to Germany, where he lived for a short time in Zuffenhausen, then again with his family in Rottenacke

  He lived for 6 years in Rottenacker where he died at the age of 68, on 21-02-1960 and he is buried on the small cemetery of Rottenacker.

   

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