Otto Bradfisch (10 May 1903 – 22 June 1994) was an economist, a jurist, an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant colonel), leader of Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei or SiPo) and the SD, and Commander of the Security Police in Litzmannstadt (Łódź) and Potsdam.
Early life and education
Dr. Otto Bradfisch was born in 1903 in Zweibrücken (then Palatinate district of Kingdom of Bavaria) as the second of grocery salesman Karl Bradfisch's four children. In Kaiserslautern he went to the Volksschule for four years and afterwards to the Gymnasium. In 1922, he did the school-leaving examination. At the Universities of Freiburg, Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Innsbruck Bradfisch studied economics. He ended his studies with a graduation to Dr. rer. pol. at the University of Innsbruck in 1926. Afterwards, Bradfisch studied law in Erlangen and Munich to improve his professional chances in difficult times. He sat for the state law examination on 17 February 1932, and the second on 20 September 1935.
Professional and political career
Engaged first as an Assessor in the Upper Bavarian government, he was transferred to the Bavarian State Ministry for the Interior as a Government Assessor. Already by 1 January 1931, Bradfisch had joined the NSDAP with membership number 405,869. At the time he was studying in Munich, he was working as the acting local group leader (Ortsgruppenleiter) in Munich-Freising. In 1936, he joined the National Socialist Motor Corps. On 26 September 1938, he joined the SS (membership no. 310,180) as an SS-Obersturmführer (First lieutenant).
At an acquaintance's urging, Bradfisch applied for service in the Gestapo, into which he was hired on 15 March 1937. He was also given the acting leadership of the State Police post at Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Appointed a government adviser on 4 November 1938, Bradfisch stayed there until his assignment as leader of Einsatzkommando (EK) 8, attached to Einsatzgruppe (EG) B of the Security Police and the Sicherheitsdienst in June 1941.
Leader of Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B
Einsatzgruppe B was one of four Einsatzgruppen deployed for special operations during Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union. This Einsatzgruppe was led by SS-Brigadeführer (major general) Arthur Nebe, Chief of the Kripo, and was subdivided into Einsatzkommandos 8 and 9, and the Sonderkommandos 7a and 7b, as well as the Vorkommando Moskau. It was also attached to Army Group Middle.
The Einsatzgruppen tasks were established by oral Führer order and a written directive from Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) Chief Reinhard Heydrich on 2 July 1941, to secure areas to the advancing army's rear and the performance of standard police tasks until the establishment of a civil administration in the conquered eastern areas, and the "special handling of potential opponents", i.e. their elimination. Heydrich identified these in order: "all Comintern functionaries (all professional Communist politicians), the higher, middle and radical lower functionaries of the Party, the Central Committee and the regional and area committees, people's commissars, Jews in Party and state posts, various radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, agitators, and so on)". This circle of persons was later expanded to all "politically intolerable elements" among prisoners of war and eventually all "racial inferiors" such as Jews, Gypsies, and "Asiatic elements".
Meant at first to take the job as staff consultant on Einsatzgruppe B's staff, Bradfisch took part in a major discussion at the Pretzsch Border Police School at which Heydrich and the Chief of RSHA Department IV (Gestapo), Heinrich Müller, explained to the Einsatzgruppe and Einsatzkommando leaders in all plainness their task. After the presentation of this instruction, which without doubt was recognized by all participants as wrongful and criminal, the originally foreseen leader of Einsatzkommando 8, the provisional leader of the Liegnitz State Police post Ernst Ehlers appealed to Einsatzgruppe B's leader Nebe with the wish to be released from this duty. Nebe complied with Ehlers's wish and appointed Bradfisch as his replacement. Bradfisch had no doubts about the work that lay ahead. The Einsatzkommando 8, led by Bradfisch from the beginning of the Russian Campaign onwards, consisted of six subdivisions varying in strength, each under an SS leader. The unit's total strength was about 60 to 80 men. In view of his official position as government adviser and Leader of the Neustadt an der Weinstraße State Police post, Bradfisch, as the EK 8 leader, was awarded the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major).