Published on 2 September 2016
(24. 8. 1909 in Obercolmnitz / Saxony - 10. 4. 1945 Königsberg, officially declared dead on 11.12.1954) Horst Böhme was the son of Max Böhme the butcher and Lidda Böhme nee Hoyer. He trained as a car mechanic and freight forwarder in Dresden. Later, he had his own business and supply company. In his youth, he was involved in several political organizations, such as Oberland – the successor organization to the Viking Association. He also completed various paramilitary courses, including ones under the patronage of Marinebrigade Ehrhardt and the Jungstahlhelm.
On 1 March 1933, he joined the NSDAP (membership number 236651) and the SS (membership number 2821). Later, he got injured in a motorbike accident. After his recovery, he worked as a customs dispatcher in a cigarette factory. Due to a work injury, he did not stay there for long. In September 1933 he was assigned to a Gestapo office (Geheime Staatspolizei – Secret State Police) and became the local head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD – Security Service) in the Dresden region and later in Kiel.
In August 1939 he was appointed to a post in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as Deputy Commander of the Security Police - Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (BdS) - while also being the chief of the SD’s head office in Prague – SD-Leitabschnitt Prag. After the depature of SS-Brigadeführer Stahlecker, Böhme merged both offices. One of the main tasks of SD was intelligence surveillance of all areas of life of the Protectorate’s population. Even though formally H. Böhme was superior to the boss of the Gestapo and the German Kripo (Kriminalpolizei – criminal police), there was rivalry between these high-ranking men often bordering on a struggle for power. These minor conflicts concerning the cooperation of the SD and the Gestapo were never solved to the satisfaction of both offices.
One of the first major operations in which Böhme took part in the Protectorate comprised the official Nazi measures against the studentry, in fact against the intelligentsia in general, and so, in effect, against the whole of the Czech nation. This operation used the people’s movement to mark the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the independent republic of Czechoslovakia, on 28. 10. 1939, and the funeral of the student Jan Opletal, shot during demonstrations.
The SD's task was to produce a clear report about student demonstrations, their organizers and the the functionaries of student organizations. The order for this task was received by the head of the SD Leitabschnitt in Prague, H. Böhme. At 18:00 on 16 November 1939 he called a meeting of all special officers, with the aim of learning what information had been found about the recent demonstrations and obtaining reports about the leardership of the student movement. As it was apparent that there was not enough verified information about the demonstrations, the commander of the Prague SD decided to get a list of student leaders, who would then give information under interrogation about the initiators. The selection was entrusted to SS-Obersturmführer Walter Jacobi. The whole operation culminated in the execution of nine selected people on 17 November 1939 in the Ruzyně barracks. All Czech universities were closed down. By virtue of his office, H. Böhme also participated in the deportation of over 1,200 students to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
H. Böhme is seen as one of the main initiators and executors of the toughest and cruelest crackdowns on the population of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. On 29 October 1941, a mere two days after Reinhard Heydrich took office as Deputy Reich Protector, Böhme was promoted to the position of SS-Standartenführer. His colleagues saw him as exceptionally capable, but also as self-regarding and suffering from many hang-ups. He was brutal to the bone and did not shrink away from even the most savage acts against humanity.
The post-war interrogations of the aforementioned Walter Jacobi showed that H. Böhme was a member of the foundation Volks und Reich, a Reich organization whose task was to publish books and propaganda material. From 1942 it had its subsidiary in Prague with K. H. Frank as president. Böhme was a member of the “select committee". His was an honorary, unpaid position, but as a member of the committee he would get a copy of every book published by the Prague subsidiary.
Böhme’s zeal and initiative were most apparent at the time of the second martial law, when together with Dr. Hansem Geschke he led the operation to liquidate the village of Lidice. According to witness statements, he gave orders for executions and the burning of houses. On his own initiative he tried to find whatever could be used as a justification for dealing with the village of Čabárna u Lidic in the same way as Lidice.
In order to look at the Lidice tragedy from the perspective of Böhme’s involvement, we can use the various post-war statements of Gestapo staff. One of those who revealed the most was SS-Hauptsturmführer Harald Wiesmann, who from 1 October 1939 to 30 September 1943 was commander of the Gestapo office in Kladno, and who was one of those responsible for the liquidation of Lidice. In one of his post-war testimonies he stated that Böhme: “…came to Kladno and said that Gruppenführer Frank ordered the total destruction of Lidice and another town located about 15 km north-east, because the parachutists had spent a night there. These towns were to be destroyed completely and the inhabitants shot to death. I asked Böhme how this was justified and he answered: “It is justified and you don’t need to ask how.” (…) After that he talked over the phone with Frank, and they came to an understanding during this conversation that only the liquidation of Lidice was justifiable, not of the other town. All police orders had to come either from Frank or Böhme. Frank was Heydrich’s deputy, and when Heydrich died Frank became the head of Bohemia and Moravia. At least twenty phone calls were made during that night between Frank and Böhme.”
The fate of the little village and its 503 inhabitants was sealed; and it was fulfilled just a few hours after midnight, on 10 June 1942. H. Wiesmann said: “After that, Böhme left with me to Lidice to oversee that everything was done. He gave an order to search the town and bring out all the live cattle, food, machines and everything else that could be moved. It was also ordered that the cattle especially be herded up. Everything was hurried and was to be done with greatest possible speed. Women and children were gathered in the school. They were allowed to take with them whatever they could carry. Men were in an open yard of one of the homesteads. (…) Around twelve or eleven, women and children were taken by cars to Kladno. Then they were transported to Prague, either the same day or the next, I don’t know exactly. Around eleven o'clock the town was evacuated. Then the men were dealt with. Böhme ordered them all shot. This was done by the Schutzpolizei. All the men in the town were shot. (…) Before they were shot, Böhme read to them all a report in which they were told that they must die because parachutists had been hiding in the town. (…) Böhme himself set fire to the church. (…) After the executions, Böhme left to Prague; that was around two or three o’clock. He returned around six or seven with Frank. Frank brought with him members of the Arbeitsdienst from Prague. He ordered the ground to be levelled in order to grow grain on it. (…)
The town was still burning the next day. Most of it, however, had burned down the previous evening. The town was surrounded by guards until the next morning. The stone walls that remained after the fire were pulled down by trench troops. The ruins were used by the Arbeitsdienst to fill the pits and level the ground.”
On the order of K. H. Frank and under the supervision of H. Böhme and Dr. H. U. Geschke, 173 men of Lidice were shot in the garden of Horák's farm on that fateful day.The women and children were taken to the gym hall of the former grammar school in Kladno. Three days later, the children were forcibly taken from their mothers, and with the exception of a few that were selected for Germanization and children aged under one year, they were poisoned with exhaust fumes in cars specially adapted for the purpose in the Nazi extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem, Poland. The women were transported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
The Lidice massacre was de facto ritualized revenge. Lidice was different from other towns burned down by the Nazis. This was a village in a hinterland, in the very centre of the “protection area" of the Protectorate. It was meant to be revenge, not just exemplary punishment of the Czech people, but an operation that was to erase Lidice from the map and from the memory of the people. The houses were first burned to the ground and then the ruins were destroyed by plastic explosives. The demolition squad demolished the Church of St. Martin and the local cemetery. The final landscaping was done in 1943; and after the living village, only a bare plain remained. Yet in one thing the Nazis did not succeed - Lidice and its victims have not been forgotten. But who nowadays knows the real culprits and the conspirators behind this evil deed? Unfortunately, it did not end with Lidice. Fourteen days later, the settlement of Ležáky in the Chrudim region met with the same fate. Here too, H. Böhme was behind the decisions, although he was not present at the operation.
After the massacre in Lidice, H. Böhme lived a normal personal and working life. Although he was registered at a Prague address - Trója 194 - he often travelled to Germany. In June 1942 he divorced his first wife and on 2 July of the same year he got married again in Minden. Despite being one of the closest collaborators of K. H. Frank, after an alleged dispute with him Böhme was transferred to Bucharest in September 1942 as a police attaché.2 From March 1943 he led Operational group “B”, which worked in the area of Belarus and the central part of the USSR. This unit was involved in the murder of over two hundred thousand civilians. From September 1943 H. Böhme served as BdS in Kiev, and from March 1944 was a Sipo inspector in Wroclaw. From there he was appointed to the position of BdS in Königsberg (Kalinigrad) in August 1944. Here he saw the approach of the Eastern Front, when in April 1945 the city was besieged by Soviet forces. On the night from 9 to 10 April, only a few individuals and small groups remained in the ruins, offering resistance. Commanders found their last refuge in the castle in the historical centre of the town.
General Otto Lasch gave an account of Böhme's death: “The situation was hopeless and Voigt (the castle commander) decided to hand over the castle at around midnight. He ordered the remaining fighters to form small groups and fight their way separately through the enemy forces towards the west. Their goal: Pillau (nowadays Baltiysk in the Vistula Lagoon). No one reached that destination. After leaving the castle, the majority of these little groups encountered the enemy and were destroyed Major Voigt was apparently beaten to death. Oberführer Böhme was apparently shot while trying to cross the Pregolya on a boat, and he fell into the water and drowned.”
Probably, at least according to available sources, this is how the life of one of the Nazi war criminals active in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ended. It remains to say that H. Böhme was officially proclaimed dead on 11 December 1954.