The Austrian Franz Stangl was commander of the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps during the Nazi era and was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and was involved in the murder of two million other victims in the course of "Operation Reinhardt". Yet despite these acts, the image of this mass murderer, even in academia, does not always capture the true extent of his murderous misanthropy, as one historian has noted.
The level of violence and suffering for which Franz Stangl is responsible seems almost incomprehensible apart from numbers: the native Austrian was, among other things, commander of the Nazi death camps Treblinka and Sobibor in occupied Poland. Here he participated in the systematic murder of almost two million Jewish people, Romnja and Roma, in the course of "Operation Reinhardt". The former police officer and Gestapo official had already made a name for himself in “Action T4” and managed the Hartheim killing center, among other things. "The T4 collective, which organized the euthanasia, later formed the collective of perpetrators of Aktion Reinhardt," explains historian Florian Gregor from the Fernuniversität in Hagen.
After the end of the Second World War, Stangl was temporarily imprisoned, but was able to escape from custody to Syria in 1948. He later emigrated to Brazil and initially lived there with his family under his real name. It was only through the research and efforts of Simon Wiesenthal that Stangl was arrested by the Brazilian authorities in February 1967 and shortly afterwards extradited to Germany. In 1970, the Düsseldorf district court sentenced the Nazi perpetrator to life imprisonment for the joint murder of at least 400,000 people. Although Stangl's lawyers appealed, the convicted man died in 1971 before a new trial could take place.
Distorted picture to this day
But after his death, Stangl managed to decisively influence the view of his deeds and himself, as Florian Gregor discovered almost by accident. The historian had originally planned to create a typology of various Nazi perpetrators and compare them. Franz Stangl should be one of them. In the course of his archival work, however, Florian Gregor realized that he had encountered a scientific gap: "What emerges from the sources about Franz Stangl often does not match the picture of him that is circulating in science. I had to investigate more intensively here,” says the researcher.
After studying the historical sources more closely, Gregor comes to the conclusion: on the one hand, the mass murderer knew how to put himself in a strategically favorable light, on the other hand, for decades there were not enough doubts about his self-portrayal. A series of interviews that Stangl gave to the British journalist Gitta Sereny in the nine weeks before his death proved to be decisive for the picture that has prevailed to this day. The resulting book was published in 1974. "On the basis of this book, an image of Stangl was established that has been simply received to this day - mostly also by science - without being questioned," says Gregor. At the time, Sereny did try to critically reflect on Stangl's version of the truth. "But you have to say: Ultimately, she fell for him," says the historian.
Cynical murderer instead of a mere vicarious agent
Specifically, the camp commander presented himself in the interviews and even during the trial as a mere vicarious agent. As a civil servant, he had no choice but to submit, so his narrative. "Stangl said he was just fatefully involved in the system, just trying to get through, doing good and not doing anything bad to anyone," reports Gregor. The descriptions of the few survivors were often too fragmentary to prove the true extent of Stangl's responsibility. But as the historian explains, there are numerous documents in the historical sources that expose the alleged follower as a convinced National Socialist: "It is clear that he got his managerial post because - as it was, for example, in an official assessment of the Gestapo from 1941 means – 'reliable in terms of ideology' and was an old fighter for the cause,” says Gregor.
Eyewitness reports also show how little Stangl was bothered by the mountains of corpses surrounding him. "He was described by the survivors as having a very lofty demeanour. He wore a white fantasy uniform with a cap,” says Gregor. “He had rings with life and death runes made for himself and his comrades. In this uniform – as the survivors describe it – he didn’t appear to be military-straight but very self-confident, jovial and happy.” This did not change even when Stangl witnessed the burning of thousands of corpses in the extermination camps: “Stangl stood by greeted the inmates in a casual conversational tone or even threw them a cigarette in a patronizing manner," says the historian, reflecting the reports.
The influence of the perpetrator's perspective still has an effect
According to the historian, the Stangls case is an example of how the Nazi perpetrators were not just, or even forced, henchmen or cogs in the gears of the automated killing factories. “When you look at the accounts of survivors, the actions of individuals suddenly become very visible. They have little to do with an automated process, but with personal initiative," says Gregor. Ultimately, the perpetrators benefited from behaving as helpless vicarious agents without personal responsibility and distancing themselves from excessive perpetrators, at a time when courts supported this interpretation.
In the 1960s, even historical expert reports spoke of the binding "final solution order", according to which most of the accused were not attributed direct perpetrators. Although this assumption has long since been rejected by science, it continues to shape the image of perpetrators indirectly. "The influence of the perpetrator's perspective on our knowledge of Nazi crimes was neglected for a long time," explains the historian. Based on this observation, Florian Gregor would like to encourage Nazi research in general to remain critical of itself and its sources.
Source: FernUniversität in Hagen