Rudolf Lange (18 April 1910 – 23 February 1945) was a German SS functionary and police official during the Nazi era. With the invasion of the Soviet Union, he served in Einsatzgruppe A before becoming a commander in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and all RSHA personnel in Riga, Latvia. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned, and was largely responsible for implementing the murder of Latvia's Jewish population during the Holocaust.
Early life and career
Lange was born in Weißwasser, Prussian Silesia, a town in present-day Saxony. His father was a railway construction supervisor. Lange finished high school in Staßfurt in 1928 and studied law in the University of Jena. He received a doctorate in law in 1933, and was recruited by the Gestapo office of Halle. He joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) in November 1933, but soon felt that this had been a bad career move. Thus, in 1936 Lange joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) (member number 290,308).
As a mid-level Gestapo official, Lange rose rapidly. He adopted the SS ideology wholeheartedly, and resigned from the church in 1937. From 1936 he worked in the Gestapo office in Berlin. In May 1938, Lange was transferred to Vienna to supervise the annexation of the Austrian police system. There, he met and worked with Franz Walter Stahlecker, who later became his superior in Riga. In June 1939 Lange was transferred to Stuttgart.
In September 1939 the security and police agencies of Nazi Germany (with the exception of the Orpo) were consolidated into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) of the SS, headed by Reinhard Heydrich. The Gestapo became Amt IV (Department IV) of the RSHA and Heinrich Müller became the Gestapo Chief, with Heydrich as his immediate superior. From May to July 1940, Lange ran the Gestapo offices of Weimar and Erfurt, while working as the deputy head of the office of the Inspector of the SiPo in Kassel. In September 1940, Lange was promoted as the deputy head of police for Berlin. In April 1941, he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer (major).
Mass murder in Latvia
On 5 June 1941 Lange was ordered to Pretzsch and the command staff of Einsatzgruppe A, headed by SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei Dr. Franz Walter Stahlecker.
Lange was a Teilkommando (detachment) leader in Einsatzkommando 2, or EK2. He was one of the few people aware of the Führerbefehl or "fundamental orders" for the so-called "Jewish problem" in Latvia. According to Lange himself: From the very beginning, the goal of EK2 was that radical solution of the Jewish problem by killing all Jews.
On 3 December 1941, he was promoted as commander of EK2, replacing Eduard Strauch. Lange was also the area chief of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi Security Service, with the title Kommandant des Sicherheitsdienst. He was in charge of Department IV of the SD in Latvia. The department was the "hub of the whole SD organization in Latvia, the other departments served it." Matters of formal rank and titles were never clear in the Nazi occupation regime for Latvia, as the lines of authority within agencies and the relationship between one agency and others were "ambiguous, overlapping, and unclear". Nevertheless, Lange is widely recognized as one of the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust in Latvia.
His headquarters were in Riga, on Reimersa Street. From the beginning of his involvement in Latvia, Lange gave orders to squads of Latvians, such as the Arajs Kommando, that the Germans had organised to carry out massacres in the smaller cities. According to one historian, Viktors Arājs was "held on a short leash" by Lange. Another local organisation receiving orders from Lange was the Vagulāns Kommando, which was responsible for the Jelgava massacres in July and August 1941.
Lange also personally supervised executions conducted by the Arājs commando. He appears to have ordered that all the SD officers should personally participate in the killings.