Walter Buch (born 24 October 1883 in Bruchsal; died 12 November 1949 in Ammersee) was a German jurist and war criminal. October 24 is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 68 days remaining. ... 1883 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Bruchsal is a city approximately 20 km to the northeast of Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany. ... November 12 is the 316th day of the year (317th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 49 days remaining. ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) is a common year starting on Saturday. ... Ammersee with German Alps Ammersee (Lake Ammer) is a lake in upper Bavaria, Germany located in the southwest of Munich between the towns of Herrsching and Diessen. ... JURIST is an online legal news and research service hosted by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, edited by Professor Bernard Hibbitts and a staff of more than 20 law students. ... A war crime is a punishable offense, under international (criminal) law, for violations of the law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. ...

Life

Born to a Senate President at the Baden High Court, Buch became a soldier in the First World War as a career officer. In 1918, he was released from the army as a major and then busied himself in the Baden Veterans' League. For other uses, see Baden (disambiguation). ... Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ...

By 1922, he had already become a member of the NSDAP and in August 1923 in Nuremberg, leader of the SA in Franconia. In mid 1923, after Hermann Ehrhardt on the one side and Ernst Röhm and Adolf Hitler on the other had fallen out with each other, the Stoßtrupp Adolf Hitler ("Adolf Hitler Raiding Patrol") was formed out of 12 SA members. The Nazi swastika The National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), better known as the NSDAP or the Nazi Party was a political party that was led to power in Germany by Adolf Hitler in 1933. ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The seal of SA The â–¶ (help· info) (SA, German for Storm Division and is usually translated as stormtroops or stormtroopers) functioned as a paramilitary organisation of the NSDAP – the German Nazi party. ... The Franconian Rake is originally is a heraldic symbol of the bishops of Würzburg, who - though nominally Dukes of Franconia - only ruled in parts of Franconia. ... Hermann Ehrhardt (1881-1971) was a Freikorps commander during the period of turmoil in Germany from 1918 to 1920, he commanded the famous II.Marine Brigade, better known as the Ehrhardt Brigade or Marinebrigade Ehrhardt Born in 1881, he later joined the German Imperial navy and served as a Korvettenkapit... Ernst Röhm Ernst Julius Röhm (often written as Roehm in English) (November 28, 1887, Munich; July 1, 1934, Munich-Stadelheim prison, murdered) was a German military officer and commander and co-founder of the Nazi Sturmabteilung or storm troopers (the SA). ... (help· info) (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 and Führer (Leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. ...

The Stoßtrupp was run by two former members of the Stabswache ("Staff Watch") who had also once belonged to the Brigade Ehrhardt. The first leader was Julius Schreck, who founded the SS's forerunner organization, to which Buch also belonged. He thus found himself tied into the later SS and over time became an Honorary Leader of the SS ("Ehrenführer der SS ") with the rank of Obergruppenführer (under a new rank system brought in in 1938, this became Stab Reichsführer SS). This article needs to be wikified. ... Julius Schreck in 1933 Julius Schreck (July 13, 1898 – May 16, 1936) was an early Nazi Party member and also the first commander of the Schutzstaffel (SS). ... The infamous double-sig rune SS insignia. ...

After the so-called Beerhall Putsch failed on 9 November 1923, most SA leaders fled the country. Buch came back to Munich as early as 13 November, sent by Hermann Göring – who had fled to Innsbruck – to ensure that the shaken Party troops' cohesion would not weaken. He also built up ties with the now outlawed SA groups, which could now only operate under cover. The Hitler Putsch (also commonly referred to in English as the Beer Hall Putsch) occurred in the evening of Thursday, November 8 to early afternoon of Friday, November 9, 1923 when the nascent Nazi partys Führer Adolf Hitler, the popular World War I General Erich Ludendorff, and other leaders... November 9 is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 52 days remaining. ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Munich and the Bavarian Alps Munich (German: München (pronounced listen) is the largest city and capital of the German Federal State of Bavaria. ... November 13 is the 317th day of the year (318th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 48 days remaining. ... Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (also Goering in English) (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946) was an early member of the Nazi party, founder of the Gestapo, and one of the main leaders of Nazi Germany. ... Innsbruck is a city in western Austria, and the capital of the federal state of Tyrol. ...

Buch maintained regular contact between Hitler, who was sitting in prison now in Landsberg am Lech, and the illegal Party leadership in Austria. In the time that followed, when the NSDAP was banned, Göring's earlier fears began to come true as the party broke up. After Hitler's reëstablishment of the Party after his release from Landsberg, the Inquiry and Mediation Board (Untersuchungs- und Schlichtungs-Ausschuss or USCHLA), whose chairman Buch became in 1927, was also set up. The secret Party commission was also feared among the Party's followers because it behaved rather like a Party secret police force. Landsberg am Lech is a town in the southwest of Bavaria, Germany, about 50 kilometers west of Munich and 35 kilometers south of Augsburg. ...

The USCHLA's headquarters were at the Braunes Haus ("Brown House") in Munich and internally it was even likened to the Cheka. Buch did not confine himself merely to rulings in internal Party disputes, but also had Party members monitored or put under pressure if they strayed from the Party line. The Board could render judgments freely within the country and without, against which there was no appeal, except by Hitler. Cheka-KGB emblem: sword and shield The Cheka (ЧК - чрезвычайная комиссия) was the first of many Soviet secret police organizations, created by decree on December 20, 1917 by Lenin and led by Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. ...

On 2 September 1929, then SS member and later Hitler's secretary, Martin Bormann wed Walter Buch's daughter Gerda (born 23 October 1909 in Konstanz). Buch and Hitler were witnesses. 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Hitler and Bormann in the early 1940s Martin Bormann (June 17, 1900 – May 2, 1945?) was a prominent German National Socialist (Nazi) official who became head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and Private Secretary to Adolf Hitler, gaining his trust and deriving immense power within the Third Reich by controlling... Konstanz (English typically Constance) is a university town of around 80,000 inhabitants on the shore of Lake Constance in the south-west corner of Germany, bordering Switzerland. ...

In the time that followed, until the Nazis seized power, Buch continually strengthened his status. In 1934, he described the importance of Party tribunals thus: Machtergreifung is a German word meaning seizure of power. ...

"The Party tribunals always have themselves to consider as the iron fasteners that hold together the proud building of the NSDAP, which political leaders and SA leaders have built up. Saving it from cracks and shocks is the Party tribunals' grandest task. The Party magistrates are bound only to their National Socialist conscience, and are no political leader's subordinates, and they are subject only to the Führer."

Buch acted quite like this. At the so-called Röhm Putsch, he travelled at Hitler's behest to Bad Wiessee and was present at Ernst Röhm's arrest and allegedly also at his shooting at Stadelheim Prison in Munich. Bad Wiessee is a spa town on Lake Tegernsee, Bavaria, Germany. ...

By way of thanks for having given Röhm's murder the outward appearance of legality, Buch was made the supreme Party magistrate and an SS Gruppenführer on 9 November 1934. SS-Gruppenführer collar patch SA-Gruppenführer rank insignia Volkssturm Gruppenführer insignia Gruppenführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party, first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA. SA Rank Translated as “Group Leader”, a Gruppenführer was typically in charge of...

In 1936 it was claimed in an anonymous letter that Buch was married to a half-Jew. In the course of a Gestapo investigation it came to light that the letter had been written by Wilhelm Kube, whom Buch had investigated owing to concerns over his private life and his leadership style in the Kurmark Gau. Buch saw to it that Kube was removed from all his posts. Only on Hitler's orders was he allowed to remain a Gauleiter, albeit without his own Gau. The Deaths Head emblem similar to Skull and crossbones, often used as the insignia of the Gestapo The ▶ (help· info) (acronym of Geheime Staatspolizei; secret state police) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. ... Gau can denote Gau, the German term for shire. ... A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP (more commonly known as the Nazi Party) or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau. ...

Buch was also responsible for the "legalization" of Party members' excesses during the so-called Kristallnacht (9 November 1938). He declared after his investigation that the "small Party comrades" who were responsible for more than a hundred Jews' deaths had only been following orders. Die Kristallnacht, also known as die Reichskristallnacht (literally Imperial Crystal Night), die Pogromnacht and in English as the Night of Broken Glass, was a massive nationwide pogrom in Germany and Austria on the night of November 9, 1938 (including the early hours of the following day). ...

However, he found no need to question those who had given these orders, such was his deep-seated Anti-Semitism, and he publicly brought the law for Jews into question. In his opinion, Jews were literally "not humans". The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ...

After the war, Buch was seized and sentenced to five years in a labour camp. In July 1949, in the course of yet another wave of Denazification, he was classified as a "Hauptschuldiger" ("main guilty one"), meaning that he was considered to be among those who were "guiltiest" of war crimes. On 12 November, he ended his own life by slitting his wrists and throwing himself into the Ammersee. A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are engaged in forced labor. ... Denazification (German: Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary and politics of any remnants of the Nazi regime. ... Ammersee with German Alps Ammersee (Lake Ammer) is a lake in upper Bavaria, Germany located in the southwest of Munich between the towns of Herrsching and Diessen. ...

External link

• Works of and about Walter Buch in the DDB catalogue