Karl Giering (17 August 1900, in Skwierzyna – 9 November 1945, in Halle) was SS-Hauptsturmführer and Criminal Councillor in the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt Berlin (Gestapo) and later Head of Department IV A 2 (Defence against Sabotage) in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). Giering is regarded as one of the most dangerous persecutors of the communist resistance against the Nazi regime. He commanded the Gestapo to smash the apparatus of the Betriebsberichterstattung (BB) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and conducted investigations against the Soviet espionage network known as the Red Orchestra while part of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle.
Life
Giering was the son of a farmer, Reinhold Giering, who was also head of the local municipality. From 1907 to 1914, Giering undertook his early education at the primary school in Wiejce. Afterward, he was active in his father's official affairs and also worked on the farm. On 14 June 1918, he was drafted into the 50th Infantry Regiment in Rawicz. However, he did not take part in active service, as the war ended with the armistice. After his discharge from military service, he became a member of the Lüttwitz Freikorps on 25 March 1919. On 1 April 1920, he began service in the Reichswehr in the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin. He left the Reichswehr on 5 November 1923 due to illness and then took up a job in plant security at the Osram company in Berlin. Between 1924 and 1925, he worked for the Viking League.
On 1 April 1925, Giering joined the preparatory service of the criminal investigation department in Berlin. After passing his probationary period, he was taken on as a civil servant. He then took up his service in the political police department I Ad II at the Berlin police headquarters where he remained until 1933. When the Nazis seized power in 1933, he was transferred to the Secret State Police, i.e. Gestapo. He then worked in Department II A 1 of the Communism Department, which was responsible for investigating members of communist resistance and espionage organisations. Giering lived in Berlin at the S-Bahn station Charlottenburg at Gervinusstrasse 12.
As a policeman, Giering preferred the use of psychological methods and a careful investigation.
Early investigations
On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag was burnt down. The Nazi government interpreted this event as the beginning of a communist conspiracy against the regime. The Nazi regime regarded this event as the starting point of a political manoeuvre aimed at taking over the judicial apparatus and thus eliminating the political opposition. Further, this was intended to gain the support of the bourgeois-national conservative parties in the Reichstag to ensure the necessary majority to pass the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933, in order to then disempower the parliament.
A police search was made for the leading communist functionaries. However, the chairman of the Reichstag faction of the KPD, Ernst Torgler, thwarted the search, as he voluntarily surrendered to the authorities. This amazed the Gestapo. He wanted to protest against the false accusation of arson. In the trial that followed, Torgler was acquitted because he had decided to cooperate with the Nazi regime while in prison.
Karl Giering was involved in these searches as the leader of the B investigative team in Berlin. Following a denunciation, the chairman of the KPD, Ernst Thälmann, was arrested in Berlin on 3 March 1933. On the following day, Giering and his companion, Detective Secretary Niels Graben, searched the accommodation where Thälmann was hiding. Giering also prepared the first report on the arrest of Thälmann. Since Giering was able to show that investigations against the KPD had been very successful even before 1933, he was also assigned the interrogation of Thälmann. Giering probably proceeded with great violence. To this day there is no proof that Giering was able to force a confession from Thälmann that there had been a conspiracy against the Nazi regime. In this respect, the prosecution in the Reichstag fire trial, as with Ernst Torgler later, remained unsuccessful.
Search for Herbert Wehner
Central Committee of the KPD member Georg Schumann, was arrested in June 1933. The name Wehner appeared in the Gestapo interrogation transcript on his case, along with his political function in the KPD. As a result of the interrogation, the Berlin Gestapo discovered that Herbert Wehner was responsible for the organisation of the last cadres of the KPD in Germany. Wehner had barely escaped arrest in Berlin on 3 March 1933, after trying to warn KPD members at the Wittenbergplatz, the location of the KPD headquarters.