Lothar Beutel (6 May 1902 – 16 May 1986) was a German pharmacist by profession and ''

Schutzstaffel The ''Schutzstaffel'' (; ; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ''ᛋᛋ'') was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It beg ...

'' (SS) officer in World War II serving on behalf of the ''

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence ...

'' (SD) branch of the SS.

Biography

Born in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

in 1902, Beutel served as a volunteer in the Infantry Regiments 11 and 38 from 1921 to 1923 while studying pharmacy, economy and art history, finishing his degree in

Chemnitz Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt (); ; ) is the third-largest city in the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden, and the fourth-largest city in the area of former East Germany after (East Be ...

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

. Beutel originally joined the 'Orgesch' (from 'Organisation Escherich), an anti-Semitic paramilitary group, and, later, the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

in June 1929. In May 1930 he joined the ''

'' (SS). From 1933 to 1938 he was in charge of the ''

'' for south east Germany, based in Leipzig. At the same time, since 1933, he was also the assistant ''Reichsapothekerführer'', the head of the national Nazi-controlled association of pharmacists. Beutel was involved in the

Night of the Long Knives The Night of the Long Knives (, ), also called the Röhm purge or Operation Hummingbird (), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ord ...

, the 1934 purge of the SA, leading a death squad in Saxony. From 1937 to 1939 Beutel commanded the Bavarian branch of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

. He was drafted to the

Waffen-SS The (; ) was the military branch, combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscr ...

on 28 August 1939, during 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 ...

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

. By then an SS-''

Brigadeführer ''Brigadeführer'' (, ) was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that was used between 1932 and 1945. It was mainly known for its use as an SS rank. As an SA rank, it was used after briefly being known as '' Untergruppenführer'' in ...

'', Beutel commanded ''

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 ...

IV''. In this position Beutel organised the initial capture of

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

population and set in motion their ghettoization. Beutel was also active in

Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz is a city in northern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Kuyavia. Straddling the confluence of the Vistula River and its bank (geography), left-bank tributary, the Brda (river), Brda, the strategic location of Byd ...

where he personally ordered a number of

mass shootings A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers use a firearm to Gun violence, kill or injure multiple individuals in rapid succession. There is no widely accepted specific definition, and different organizations tracking su ...

including the murder of around 120–150 Poles taken to nearby woods and shot on 11 and 12 September 1939. Jochen Böhler, Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jürgen Matthäus: ''Einsatzgruppen w Polsce'' ("Einsatzgruppen in Poland"), Bellona, Warszawa 2009, pp. 80, 141 This figure is given as 900 by another source. Criminal police ( Kripo) commander Arthur Nebe ordered that Beutel, who quickly became noted for his corruption, be investigated for the rape of a Polish girl whose mother cooked for the SS. By mid-October 1939 Beutel had been replaced as ''Einsatzgruppe IV'' chief by Josef Albert Meisinger. Barbara Engelking,

Jacek Leociak Jacek Leociak (born 2 June 1957, in Warsaw) is a Polish literary scholar and historian as well as author. He is a professor of humanities and an employee of the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Ce ...

, ''The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City'',

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became a department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and ope ...

, 2009, p. 31 Beutel was arrested on charges of embezzlement and for living with a Jewish woman and spent four weeks in

Dachau concentration camp Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, s ...

. He was demoted in rank in October 1939 and lost his SS membership. He subsequently served in a penal unit of the SS-Totenkopfdivision in France before returning to civilian life, working as a pharmacist again. Beutel was once more drafted into the Waffen-SS in 1944 and wounded and captured by Soviet forces in Hungary. Beutel spent the next ten years as a prisoner of war, before being released in October 1955. He returned to his profession of pharmacist, living in

West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...

. Beutel was arrested in May 1965, and released on bail in 1967. In 1971, charges were dropped against him due to a lack of evidence. He died in West Berlin in 1986.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beutel, Lothar 1902 births 1986 deaths Military personnel from Leipzig Military personnel of the Kingdom of Saxony Einsatzgruppen personnel Waffen-SS personnel SS-Brigadeführer 20th-century Freikorps personnel Holocaust perpetrators in Poland Dachau concentration camp survivors German pharmacists German prisoners of war in World War II held by the Soviet Union