Franz Rademacher (20 February 1906 – 17 March 1973) was a German lawyer and diplomat. As an official in the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
government of the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, he was known for initiating action on the
Madagascar Plan
The Madagascar Plan was a plan to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar which was proposed by the Nazi German government. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, ...
.
Nazi beginnings
Rademacher was born on 20 February 1906 in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Strelitz. His father was a railway engineer. He studied law in Rostock and Munich, and entered the profession as a jurist in April 1932. He held membership in the ''
Sturmabteilung
The (; SA; literally "Storm Detachment (military), Detachment") was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing pro ...
'' (Nazi stormtroopers) between 1932 and 1934. In 1933, he joined the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
. He was a vocal
anti-semite
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Ant ...
.
From 1937, he was a diplomat with the German Foreign Office, serving at the German embassy in
Montevideo, Uruguay
Montevideo () is the capital and largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . Montevideo is situated on the southern ...
until May 1940. In 1940, he was selected to lead ''Referat D III'', or ''Judenreferat'', of Ribbentrop's Foreign Affairs Ministry. His direct superior was Nazi diplomat
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Luther ...
. It was during his tenure in this office, throughout the spring and summer of 1940, that Rademacher initiated the
Madagascar Plan
The Madagascar Plan was a plan to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar which was proposed by the Nazi German government. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, ...
, which sought to forcibly deport all of Europe's Jews to the island of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. He clashed briefly with
Adolf Eichmann
Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann" ''
In October 1941, he was responsible for mass deportations and executions of Serbian Jews. He also had a hand in the deportation of Jews from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After his visit to Belgrade, Rademacher filed an expense claim stating that the official purpose of the trip was to "liquidate the Jews." In 2010, the German Foreign Ministry released an 880-page report on the diplomats of the Third Reich entitled '' The Ministry and the Past'' (''Das Amt und die Vergangenheit''), which mentioned that particular expense claim, bringing Rademacher a degree of latter-day notoriety.
In 1943, Rademacher became embroiled in Luther's attempted coup to oust Ribbentrop. He was dismissed from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and sent to fight in the navy as an officer for the remainder of the war, ending up with Admiral Doenitz' cypher-breaking unit at Flensburg- Mürwik under the command of Captain Kupfer. Immediately following the war this unit was put at the disposal of Sefton Delmer's news agency in Hamburg. Rademacher was arrested by British military police in November 1945, who ultimately released him. He was eventually brought to trial in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
in February 1952 for the murders he supervised in Serbia. However, with the aid of Nazi sympathizers, he fled to Syria in September of that year while released on bail. A German court convicted him ''in absentia'' for the murder of Serbian Jews, and sentenced him to 3 years and 5 months imprisonment.
Later years
In 1962, Israeli spy
Eli Cohen
Eliyahu Ben-Shaul Cohen ( he, אֱלִיָּהוּ בֵּן שָׁאוּל כֹּהֵן, ar, إيلياهو بن شاؤول كوهين; 6 December 1924 – 18 May 1965), commonly known as Eli Cohen, was an Egyptian-born Israel ...
delivered a letter bomb to Rademacher in a failed assassination attempt. In 1963, he was arrested in Syria on charges of spying, but was released in 1965 due to ill health. He returned voluntarily to West Germany on 30 November 1966, where he was arrested at the Nuremberg airport. Reportedly ill at the time, he was taken to a prison hospital in Bayreuth, while awaiting prosecution in Bamberg."Former top Nazi held on return from Syria," ''Jerusalem Post,'' 2 October 1966, pg. 2. He was again convicted of war crimes and sentenced to five and half years' imprisonment. However, his sentence was never carried out, the court having considered it already served. In 1971, a German high court in Karlsruhe overruled this judgment against Rademacher, and ordered a new trial for his crimes during World War II. He died on 17 March 1973, before proceedings began.