page_title: Walter Braemer
section_title: Poland
hierarchical_section_title: Walter Braemer / Nazi period / Criminal activities / Poland
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Polnische Geiseln vor ihrer Exekution (Bydgoszcz, Sept. 1939)English: Polish hostages before the execution. Bydgoszcz - September 1939. Polski: Polscy zakładnicy na moment przed egzekucją. Bydgoszcz - wrzesień 1939.
context_page_description: Walter Braemer was a general in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht and a high-ranking SS commander during the Nazi era. He was a Nazi criminal responsible for mass murders of the civilian population of Bromberg/Bydgoszcz in Poland at the outset of the Second World War, and later for crimes against humanity in the Hol­o­caust in the Soviet Union. He escaped prosecution and punishment after the war despite having been held for 2½ years as a prisoner of war by the British.
context_section_description: Shortly after the strike on Poland Braemer found himself with the Nazi invasion force in the Polish region of Cuyavia, where according to latest scholarship he was appointed by the 4th German Army — in his capacity as Ko­rück 580 — the commandant of the northern Polish city of Bydgoszcz, a position in which he formally styled himself in his written proc­la­ma­tions as the "chief in executive authority" (Inhaber der voll­zie­henden Gewalt in Brom­berg). His short stint as the supremo of Bydgoszcz lasted with effect from 5 Sep­tem­ber 1939 — some earlier published sources cite the date of 8 Sep­tem­ber 1939 for his assumption of this post. The dates are significant, as his appearance on the Bydgoszcz stage is said in some sources to have lasted for a total of only six days (although the far limit of his "tour of duty" is in fact uncertain). Within just four days of Braemer's beginning to exercise his "executive authority" he be­came personally re­spon­si­ble for the murder of 370 Polish civilians in Bydgoszcz in the large-scale pacification operations he ordered (the so-called säu­be­rungs­ak­ti­on­en or "cleanup op­e­ra­tions"). These included the public execution by a firing squad in the city's historic Old Market Square (the Stary Rynek) on 9 September 1939 of a large group of civilians ran­dom­ly round­ed up in the streets a short while earlier in the day (see the historical photographs to the right), a crime which provoked in the ensuing months a protest from the Vatican (as the victims included Catholic priests: see Piotr Szarek). By 8 September 1939 the total number of civilian victims of Bydgoszcz executions grew to 200–400 by various es­ti­mates; on 9 Sep­tem­ber 1939 another 120 were shot. The next day, 10 September 1939, in a Braemer-ordered raid on the working­-class Byd­goszcz neigh­bour­hood of "Swedish Heights" (Szwederowo) between 120 and 200 ci­vil­ians were killed,­­­ while another public execution staged on that day in the centrally located Old Market Square claimed 20 victims. It is said that the mass murders of civilians in Bydgoszcz went on at such a pace that Braemer, although a "com­pe­tent commandant", eventually lost all count of how many had been killed — and he allowed the slaughter to con­tin­ue. Apparently the level of atrocities was such that on occasion it produced qualms of conscience in his own executioners, but never in Braemer himself (as evidenced by his entries in the personal diary he kept). While carrying out his actions against the townsfolk of Bydgoszcz, in reprisal for the stiff resistance that the civilian population put up against the German invaders after the Polish armed forces withdrew from the city on 4 September 1939, Braemer instituted at the same time ethnic-cleansing policies against the Jewish minority of the town (which numbered about 2,000 before the War), being able as a result to report on 14 November 1939, in the 11th week of the war, that "the Jewish question does not arise in Bydgoszcz... because during the säu­be­rungs­ak­ti­on­en all the Jews who did not deem it advisable to flee from the city beforehand were eliminated". The Bydgoszcz massacres are the primary reason for which some German his­to­ri­ans have con­sid­er­ed Braemer an "extremist" among the Nazi Wehrmacht's corps of generals. Others have described him as a "fanatical Nazi" who resorted to (by then, i.e. in September 1939) "unheard-of brutality".
  Little is known of Braemer's activities immediately following his disappearance from the Bydgoszcz scene, a community on which he left an indelible mark, and there is no clear record of his departure as such. Historians (such as Stani­sław Na­wro­cki) have merely noted that he did not play any role in the occupation of the historical region of Greater Poland (Wielko­pol­ska), i.e. of the lands to the west of Cuyavia where Bydgoszcz is located, thereby suggesting that his activities were of interest to researchers in other areas. It is on record, how­ever, that Braemer continued as Ko­rück 580 (a position which put him in charge of "law and order" in areas 
caption: Public execution in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square of civilians randomly caught in a street roundup  (łapanka in Polish) on 9 September 1939 (historical photo from Jastrzębski 1974).
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