Friedrich Jeckeln

Friedrich August Jeckeln (2 February 1895 – 3 February 1946) was a German Nazi Party member, police official and SS-Obergruppenführer during the Nazi era. He served as a Higher SS and Police Leader in Germany and in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. Jeckeln was the commander of one of the largest groups of Einsatzgruppen death squads and was personally responsible for ordering and organising the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Romani and others designated by the Nazis as "undesirables". After the end of the war in Europe, Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in Riga and executed by hanging.

Early life

Jeckeln was born the son of a textile factory owner in Hornberg in the Black Forest area. He attended the local Volksschule and the Realschule in Freiburg im Breisgau. He studied engineering at the Friedrichs-Polytechnikum in Köthen for a year before enlisting in the Royal Prussian Army as a one-year volunteer with the 76th (5th Baden) Field Artillery Regiment at Freiburg im Breisgau in October 1913. After the outbreak of the First World War, he engaged in combat on the western front. Promoted to Leutnant of reserves in March 1915, he was transferred to the 40th Fusiliers Infantry Regiment in the same month and became regimental adjutant. He was seriously wounded in March 1916 and transferred to the Luftstreitkräfte where he trained as a pilot and served with Air Replacement Detachment 5 until the end of the war. He then briefly served in the Grenzschutz Ost, a Freikorps unit, and was discharged from military service on 20 January 1919, having earned the Iron Cross, 2nd class and the Wound Badge, in black.