Erhard Kroeger or Kröger (24 March 1905 – 24 September 1987) was a

Baltic German Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are Germans, ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), their resettlement in 1945 after the end ...

SS officer involved in the resettlement of

Baltic Germans Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their resettlement in 1945 after the end of World War II, Baltic Germans have drastically decli ...

before

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. He commanded an

Einsatzgruppe (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the impl ...

in 1941, and was later attached to General

Andrey Vlasov Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (, – August 1, 1946) was a Soviet Russian Red Army general. During the Eastern Front (World War II), Axis-Soviet campaigns of World War II, he fought (1941–1942) against the ''Wehrmacht'' in the Battle of Moscow ...

and the German sponsored Russian Liberation Army of World War II. He was convicted of war crimes in 1969.

Early years

Erhard Kroeger was born and grew up in

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, a member of the historic

minority there. In his youth, he played

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

with Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt. Kroeger made his name as an SS activist challenging the conservative

leadership of Wilhelm von Rüdiger and trying to Nazify the Latvian German minority before 1939. “In July 1937 the new

VOMI In Nazi Germany the or (Coordination Center for Ethnic Germans) was a Nazi Party agency founded to manage the interests of the —the population of ethnic Germans living outside the Third Reich. Ultimately coming under '' Allgemeine-SS'' admin ...

chief ordered Eric Mundel, who in 1935 had replaced Rüdiger as the leader of the Volksgemeinschaft atvian German minority association to bring Kröger into the leadership.”

Germany

At the height of the Sudetenland crisis and Hitler’s guarantees that he had no further territorial interests in Europe: “Kröger.…without authorization from Berlin, assured his followers that the Führer had not abandoned them, implying that revision remained a possibility.” SS

Sturmbannführer __NOTOC__ ''Sturmbannführer'' (; ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to Major (rank), major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the Sturmabteilung, SA, Schutzstaffel, SS, and the National Socialist Flyers Corps, NSFK ...

Kroeger was admonished by his SS and VOMI superiors and visited

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in September 1939 where he was secretly advised of the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

plans to trade Latvia and

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

. In a post-war document he related:

The only thing that rushed through my mind was the salvation of an essential and closely linked ethnic group which, it seemed to me, was at this moment already threatened with certain destruction without even knowing it.

At a meeting with

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...

, Kroeger stressed the serious hostility and animosity of the Communists to the

following the

Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...

The next day Himmler received him for a second time. He had spoken to Hitler, and he told Kroeger that “the Führer agreed with the evacuation of the Baltic German community as a whole, but stipulated that this should be done with the approval of the Soviet government.” Himmler also reported that the Baltic Germans were to be settled in those parts of Poland annexed to the Reich, including Posen and West Prussia.

Erhard Kroeger then worked extremely hard to ensure as many as 60,000 Baltic Germans were allowed to leave Estonia and Latvia over the autumn of 1939 to be settled in Germany.

Einsatzkommando

Following the Nazi attack on

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, SS-Sturmbannführer Erhard Kroeger was part of an

between June and November 1941. From June to November 1941 commanded Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C. While in command of this unit it murdered 100 Jews at Dobromyl. Kroeger had initially been ordered to kill 307 Jews, but the number to be murdered was reduced after he complained. He was personally present for the killings. Kroeger was decorated with the Iron Cross while commander of the Einsatzkommando. SS-Oberführer. Head of Sonderkommando Ost which was set up by the SD. In 1943 was enlisted in Division SS "Hohenstaufen". Also Head of the Russian desk in Leitstelle Ost under Arlt from July 1944.

Vlasov

In 1944 the SS took an interest in General

and his Russian Liberation Movement and in summer the head of the SS main leadership office, SS Obergruppenführer

Gottlob Berger Gottlob Christian Berger (16 July 1896 – 5 January 1975) was a German senior Nazi official who held the rank of '' SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS'' (lieutenant general) and was the chief of the SS Main Office responsibl ...

, specifically appointed Kroeger as a formal liaison officer between Vlasov and the SS.

Postwar

Until 1962 he lived under assumed names in the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland and in Bologna. On 10 January 1962 the District Court of Wuppertal issued an arrest warrant for Kroeger on suspicion that he had been involved in massacres during the war. He was subsequently arrested on 31 December 1965 in Steinmaur-Sünikon in the canton of Zurich. The Land of North Rhine-Westphalia then made a formal extradition request. Kroeger argued that the twenty-year limitation period for prosecution had expired, and that the killings were politically motivated, that he was not present for most of the killings, and that those that he did admit involvement in legitimate wartime reprisals under international law. The Swiss Federal Court rejected this argument, however, and agreed to his extradition. After extradition to Germany and the issuance of a second arrest warrant on 22 February 1966, Kroeger was held in custody from 17 May 1966 until 5 October 1967. On 31 July 1969 Kroeger was sentenced by the District Court of Tuebingen to three years and four months in prison for the mass killing of Jews in Western Ukraine between June 1941 and February 1942.

Literature

* Lumans, Valdis O., “Himmler’s Auxiliaries; The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945” – 1993. / *

Debórah Dwork Debórah Dwork is an American historian, specializing in the history of the Holocaust. She is the Founding Director of thCenter for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanityat the Graduate Center—City University of New Yo ...

and Robert Jan van Pelt, “Auschwitz; 1270 to the Present” – 1996. * Erhard Kroeger, Dokument 314, in Dietrich A. Loeber, ed. Diktierte Option: Die Umsiedlung der Deutsch-Balten und Lettland (Neumünster : Karl Wachholtz), 1972. * Strik-Strikfeldt, W. Against Stalin and Hitler: Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement, 1941–1945. — NY: Day, 1970.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kroeger, Erhard 1905 births 1987 deaths Military personnel from Riga People from Riga county Baltic-German people Nazi Party politicians Members of the Reichstag 1938–1945 20th-century German memoirists SS-Oberführer Einsatzgruppen personnel Waffen-SS personnel German male non-fiction writers Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine Latvian emigrants to Germany Nazis convicted of war crimes Prisoners and detainees of Germany