Walter Blume (SS officer)

Walter Blume (born 23 July 1906 in Dortmund — died 13 November 1974 in Dortmund) was a lawyer, an SS-Standartenführer (colonel), leader of Sonderkommando 7a, which formed part of the extermination commando group Einsatzgruppe B, which distinguished itself with the killings of thousands of Jews in Belarus and Russia, and was responsible for the deportation of Greek Jews to Auschwitz.

Early life
Blume was born into a Protestant family in Dortmund, Germany. His father was a schoolteacher and held a doctorate in law. Walter also studied law at the Universities of Bonn, Jena, and formally graduated from the University of Münster in 1933. His first steps as a practitioner of law was as a consultant without pay in a district court of Münster. Opportunities emerged after he joined the SA and Nazi Party (member 3,282,505) on 1 May 1933, and found gainful employment as a police inspector in his hometown of Dortmund on 1 March 1933, serving under Wilhelm Schepmann. Blume exercised the same functions in the SD and finally was registered on 11 April 1935 in the ranks of the SS (member 267,224), joining the staff of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).

It is at this point Blume became known for his initiatives in the persecution of Jews. Gaining the attention of his superiors, in 1939 he was appointed the Director of Staff of the Gestapo.

Gestapo career
In March 1941, Blume received the responsibility to collect, reorganize and select the components of the Einsatzgruppen squads, assuming the leadership of Sonderkommando 7 a attached to Einsatzgruppe B (under Arthur Nebe) assigned to the 9th Army, overlooking Operation Barbarossa which started on 22 June 1941.

Blume had been personally informed by Reinhard Heydrich that he and the 91 men under his command had a single task: the Judenvernichtungsbefehl (order to exterminate the Jews). Heydrich made it clear that this was on Hitler's orders.

Activities in Belarus and Russia
Blume and his squad ravaged the region of Belarus (Vitebsk), and parts of western Russia (Klintsy, Nevel, Smolensk) killing 1,517 Jews, a figure quickly reached by September 1941 and of which Blume personally took a careful record. Blume himself shot an unspecified number of victims at point-blank range with his revolver. Blume also prepared the extermination contingent for operation in Moscow when it was conquered, which ultimately did not occur. Blume only stayed in command of Sonderkommando 7 a for one and a half months and was succeeded in this post by Eugen Steimle. It appears that he was recalled to Berlin due to his reluctance to shoot women and children, which led him to acquire a reputation among his fellow SS officers for being "weak and bureaucratic".

Later during his affidavits Blume stated:

Activities in Greece
For his accomplishments, Blume was promoted to SS-Standartenführer and assigned as commander in charge of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo, Security Police) in Athens, together with Hauptsturmführer Anton Burger, during the Axis occupation of Greece in late 1943.

Between October 1943 and September 1944 Blume managed, under the direction of Adolf Eichmann, the deportation of over 46,000 Greek Jews, the majority of them from Salonika and including several thousand from Rhodes, Kos, Athens, Ioannina, and Corfu, to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Blume rewarded his subordinates with gold coins, jewelry and fine clothes stolen from the victims of deportation.

In mid-1944 Blume gained some notoriety among his Nazi colleagues for proposing the "Chaos Thesis", arguing that if the Germans were forced to leave occupied territories, they should blow up factories, docks and other installations; they should also arrest and execute the entire political leadership of Greece, leaving the country in a state of anarchy. Blume also proposed sending the entire able-bodied male population of Athens to forced labor in Germany, to prevent them from joining the andartes. Hermann Neubacher at the German Foreign Office did not receive this suggestion favorably, however Blume proceeded with plans to arrest Greek politicians and send them to Haidari concentration camp. On 4 September, 1944 Neubacher ordered Blume to cease his "chaos operations", and on 7 September Ernst Kaltenbrunner ordered Blume to leave Greece.

When the Nazis left Greece in September 1944, the country was considered Judenfrei ("free of Jews"), and Blume returned to RSHA headquarters in Berlin.

Nuremburg conviction
In 1945, Blume was captured in Salzburg by the Americans and brought to Landsberg Prison. He was tried for his crimes, which included crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in three criminal organizations, the SS, SD and Gestapo. At first Blume was sentenced to death by hanging, but the sentence was commuted to 25 years at a 1951 amnesty. Blume was released from prison in 1955 after serving only four years of the penalty.

Concerning his motivation in helping to perpetrate the Holocaust, Blume said:

Second trial
From 1957 Blume worked as a businessman in the Ruhr Valley, remarried in 1958 and had six children (including two by adoption).

In 1968 he was arrested and tried again by a state court in Bremen, together with his subordinate Obersturmführer Friedrich Linnemann, for charges related to the deportation of Jews in Greece. In spite of considerable evidence against him, all charges were dropped on 29 January 1971.

Blume died in 1974 at the age of 68 years.

In 1997 a cache of luxury watches, rings, gold bars and gold teeth worth approximately $4 million, together with identity documents and Gestapo promotions belonging to Colonel Walter Blume were uncovered in Brazil in the possession of a family member, pawnbroker Albert Blume.