Helmut Herbert Christian Heinrich Knochen (March 14, 1910 – April 4, 2003) was the senior commander of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and Sicherheitsdienst in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. He was sentenced to death first by a British military court in 1947, and then by a Parisian military tribunal in 1954. After his sentences were commuted and reduced a few times, he was pardoned by President de Gaulle and released in 1962.
Early life
He was born in Magdeburg, Germany. Before joining the Nazi Party in 1932, he worked as a teacher and editor.
Nazi career
Knochen joined the SS in 1936 and became involved in the SD. By 1940, he was the senior commander of security in Paris. In 1942, the jurisdiction under his control stretched from northern France to Belgium and he was promoted to the rank of Standartenführer. Knochen was involved in deporting French Jews to concentration camps and was responsible for the execution of thousands of Frenchmen. He was also responsible for the arrest and torture of SOE agents.
During the plot to assassinate Hitler of July 20, 1944, together with the top security man in Paris, SS-Gruppenführer Carl Oberg, he was arrested by Army troops under the command of Paris military governor, General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel. He was released after the coup collapsed. Following the liberation of Paris, Knochen was transferred to the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and he was degraded to the rank of SS-Grenadier.
Post-war trials, sentences, and reprieve
In March 1947, a British Military Court sentenced Knochen, alongside Hans Kieffer, to death for the murder of a number of British parachute troops on or around 9 August 1944. However, in 1947, he was extradited to France. There, in 1954, he was sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. After he obtained a presidential pardon in 1958, Knochen was released on November 28, 1962, by President Charles de Gaulle, simultaneously with his former chief Carl Oberg. Back in Germany, he retired to Baden-Baden and died a free man in 2003.
In popular culture
The Eye of Vichy, a French documentary film directed by Claude Chabrol where Knochen himself appeared Les Bienveillantes, a 2006 historical fiction novel written in French by Jonathan Littell, where Helmut Knochen is featured meeting the main character Maximilian Aue. Field Gray, a 2010 fiction novel by Philip Kerr where Knochen featured. 93 Rue Lauriston, a 2003 TV Film about French Gestapo. The Great Arrangement, a 2007 TV Film about the collaborator Rene Bouquet.
Notes
References
Brunner, Bernhard, Der Frankreich-Komplex. Die nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen in Frankreich und die Justiz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, Klee, Ernst, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S. 320. Moisel, Claudia, La France et les criminels de guerre allemands. Politique et pratique de la poursuite pénale après la deuxième guerre mondiale, Éd. Norbert, 2004, .
Magazine Historia, N° 337, décembre 1974 par Philippe Aziz. Magazine Historia, Hors Série N° 20, 1971, Les SS. 1 - L'ordre noir. Magazine Historia, Hors Série N° 26, 1972, par Serge Klarsfeld. Magazine Historia, Hors Série N° 27, 1972, La Gestapo en France. 2. L'oeil de Vichy, (The Eyes of Vichy), documentary film directed by Claude Chabrol, Delarue, Jacques, SS et Gestapo s'imposent à la Wehrmacht, in Le Journal de la France de l'occupation à la libération, les années 40, Historia-Tallandier, n° 47, p. 1289-1290.