Dunckern, Anton.

Dunckern, Anton, born 29-06-1905 in Munich , the son of a judicial bailiff Dunckern grew up in Munich. After attending a grammar school he studied Law at the University of Munich, passing the First State Examination in 1930 and the Great State Examination in early 1933. Early on in life Dunckern got involved in far right-wing politics in Southern Germany: A man of small stature, Dunckern became a friend of Himmler from the street battle days of the 1920’s, and an early member of both the NSDAP  and SS.  In 1922, when he was seventeen, he joined the Freecorps Lauterbach, an association of volunteers serving as a supplementary to the regular German Army, where he met Heinrich Himmler.  Both men became close friends at that time, remaining on a first-name basis for the rest of their lives. In 1923 Dunckern became a member of the Free Corps, Bund Oberland, Oberland Association, an organization similar to the Lauterbach Corps, with which he took part in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 Gustav von Otto Kahr

  (see Andreas Bauriedl)

  (see Theodor Pfordten). The later SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, SS Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, SS StandartenführerEmil Maurice, SS GruppenführerFranz Hayler, Eleonora Baur, SS-Oberführer in KZ Dachauand SS Gruppenfüher Karl Gebhardt were also a member of this Free Corps . In September 1930 Dunckern joined the NSDAP and the SS, which by that time was spearheaded by his friend Himmler. Being a personal friend of the SS-chief and a highly educated academician Dunckern managed to advance swiftly within the ranks of the SS after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933:  During the coup that brought the NSDAP to power in the State of Bavaria in March 1933 Dunckern, on behalf of Himmler, commanded the SS-troopers that occupied and guarded the Government buildings in Munich. In April he was appointed as an officer in the Bavarian Political Police, which at that time was Himmler’s central power tool within the state apparatus. When Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich   migrated from Munich to Berlin in April 1934 in order to take control of the Gestapo they took Dunckern along. In the following months he participated in reorganizing the Gestapo  in accordance with the plans of the SS-leaders, thus decisively contributing to consolidating their power. During the Nazi-government’s purge of June 30 to 02-07-1934 Dunckern played a key-role in clamping down on his masters’ adversaries in Berlin: He led the SS-troop that occupied the offices of Hitler’s conservative Vice-Chancellor Franz “Fränzchen” von Papen

   . During this raid Papen’s chief of press Herbert von Bose,   the organizer of the political opposition to Nazi Rule within the government apparatus, was shot 30-06-1934, age 41 in Berlin during the Night of the long Knives  and several other staffers were taken prisoner and dragged to concentration camps. In the night of June 30 to July 1 Dunckern led a group of Gestapo agents who tried to execute the disgraced former NSDAP politician Paul Schulz  in a forest outside of Berlin, who, however, managed to slip out of his would-be-killers clutches. From July to December 1934 Dunckern reorganized the Gestapo  in Breslau and Liegnitz in Silesia. In March 1935 he was appointed to the office of chief of the Gestapo in Saarbrücken thus being placed in charge of the Gestapo within the whole Saar area. In early 1938 Dunckern was transferred to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA)  in Berlin, as the central institution supervising all police- and SS-organizations in the area of public security. In July 1940 Dunckern was appointed as Commander of the Security Police and the SD in Saar-Lorraine. Now holding the rank of an SS-General Dunckern was henceforth in charge of the all SS-forces in that area. In 1942 he was promoted to the rank of a SS-Brigadeführer. Following the Allied invasion of Europe in the Summer of 1944 Himmler placed Dunckern in charge of the SS and Police in the defense section of Metz. During the liberation of Metz  Troops of the U.S. 5^th Infantry Division  , nicknamed the Red Diamond, the Red Devils, or die Roten Teufel, under command of General Irwin, Stafford LeRoy,    entering Metz on 18-11-1944 by American troops of the 3^rd US-Army  in the night of 19-1944 and Dunckern was taken prisoner. Their casualties in World War II, total battle casualties: 12.818, killed in action: 2.298, wounded in action: 9.549, missing in action: 288 and prisoner of war: 683.
Due to the fact that Dunckern by that time was the highest-ranking SS-member to have been captured within his area of command, General George Smith Patton  took it upon himself to interrogate the prisoner personally.

 Patton, deciding that Dunckern was a ″viper″ and a ″low type″ of policeman, had him classified as a political detainee instead of a prisoner of war. Until early April 1945 Dunckern was kept as a prisoner in England. Afterwards he was transferred to a camp for captured Generals in the US. In the summer of 1946 Dunckern was returned to Europe. From the summer of 1946 until the autumn of 1947 he was imprisoned in a camp for generals in Garmisch in Southern Germany. Afterwards he was imprisoned in a military penitentiary in Metz until Spring 1953. From May 31 to 01-07-1953, Dunckern was tried as a war criminal before the Military Court of the 6^th Region in Metz: he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. In June, 1954, Dunckern was granted an early release from a prison in the Loos district of Lille. He returned to Germany where he settled down in Munich, opening a law firm in 1956. Following a severe encephalitis attack in 1962 he became paraplegic. Due to his old age and feeble health he gave up his law license in 1970. In 1970 and 1971 the District Attorney in Munich investigated Dunckern due to the suspicion that he had aided mass murder in his capacity as chief of police in Metz during World War II. Specifically it was assumed that the agency run by Dunckern had been involved in the organization of the deportation of French Jews to Eastern Europe in the years 1942 to 1944. Since Dunckern denied those charges and since no evidence could be uncovered proving the opposite, the investigation was finally dropped in May 1971.

He fell ill in January 1962 with encephalitis which paralysed half of his body. Dunckern died in 1985 following a lengthy ailment.   He is buried with his wife Marie, born Schlüter, who died age 85 on 22-10-1976, on the Ostfriedhof of Munich. In accordance with his instructions, Dunckern’s sister burned all his private papers after his death. Close by his grave the graves of the publisher of “Mein Kampf”  and Hitler’s WWI sergeant Max Amann,  further away the Nazi doctor SS Gruppenführer, Karl Gebhardt,  Generalmajor der Kavallerie,  Rudolf Gersdorff, he wanted to blow himself together with Hitler, SS Gruppenführer, stayed in the Führerbunker till the end, Johan Rattenhuber, Nazi Banker, Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s adjutant, SS Obergruppeführer, Julius Schaub,

  SA leader, August Schneidhuber, victim of the Night of the long Knives, Flyer Ace Oberst, Kommandeur ./N.J.G.1, Werner Streib and Hitler’s secretary, Christa Schroeder

and  secretary, Johanna Wolf.