Waffen SS Obergruppenführer Heinz Lammerding

Heinz Bernard Lammerding, possibly Heinrich Bernhard Lammerding, born August 27, 1905 in Dortmund, was a German engineer and SS Obergruppenführer of the Waffen-SS. As the main contributor to the massacres of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “The Reich” on French civilians in Oradour-sur-Glane
and Tulle
in June 1944, he was condemned to death by a French court in absentia; but he went underground until 1958. The then federal government did not deliver him to France. And there was no court proceedings against him in the Federal Republic.
After joining the SA and NSDAP (membership number 722.395), Lammerding soon became head of the Pioneer School of the SA. On April 1, 1935, he entered the SS (SS No. 247.062) and was promoted to SS Obersturmführer in May. From November 1940 he was the first general staff officer of the SS Division Totenkopf under command of SS-Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke.
After a br ief assignment in the staff of an Panzer corps, he became the Chief of Staff of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Erich von der Bach-Zelewski,
the head of the Bandenkampfbände.
Lammerding ordered the destruction of numerous villages and cities in the Soviet Union as “atonement”. At the end of 1943, he was given command of a battle group of the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich” in partisan combat, and on January 25, 1944, command of the entire division. He had the appointment as a commander-in-chief of his close personal relationship with Heinrich Himmler,
as his military abilities were not enough. On 25 July 1944 Lammerding was wounded
in the inspection
of the SS Panzer Regiment 2 in Normandy. After his recovery, he took command of the 2nd SS Panzer Division again, until Himmler finally made him the head of the “Army Group of the Vistula” on February 2,
After the war, he was charged with the massacres in Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle in June 1944 in France and sentenced to death in absentia for the murder of Tulle in 1951. At that time he was submerged; when it was again in 1958, forbade the basic law to surrender Germans to foreign countries, and the transfer agreement, which came into force in 1955, prevented long-term accusations of criminal offenses already before an Allied court 1975 – after Lammerding’s death . But this only concerned the Tulle massacre, in which Lammerding denied his participation. In the case of Oradour, the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office investigated him, but the proceedings were terminated in 1964. There were continual diplomatic efforts by France to bring him to justice, especially after the historian Jacques Delarue published a book on German crimes during the occupation of France in 1968, in which he presented evidence of the lamentation of Lammerding. After the war, Lammerding, here at the funeral of Sepp Dietrich,
lived as a successful construction contractor in Düsseldorf and enjoyed his old part at the Tegernsee. He died of cancer January 13, 1971 in Bad Tolz.. At his funeral, 200 former SS comrades met and turned into a large reunion of former SS ‘comrades’,
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