Franz Schwede Franz Reinhold Schwede ( 5 March 1888 - 19 October 1960 ) was a Nazi German politician , Lord Mayor of Coburg and Gauleiter of Pomerania . An early supporter of Adolf Hitler in Coburg , Schwede used intimidation and propaganda to help elect the first Nazi - majority local government in Germany . This contributed to a personality cult surrounding Schwede and he became known as " Franz Schwede - Coburg " . During World War II he ordered secret executions of the infirm and mass deportations of Jews . He also played a key role in abandoning the Pomeranian civilian population to the advancing Red Army , while escaping their fate himself . In 1945 he was captured by the British Army and in 1948 he was tried and convicted of war crimes . Early years . Franz Schwede was born in the small town of Drawöhnen near Memel , East Prussia ( now Dreverna near Klaipėda , Lithuania ) in 1888 , when it was part of the German Empire . He trained as a millwright and in 1907 joined the Imperial German Navy as a machinist . By the end of the First World War he had risen to the rank of technical deck officer . After the Scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919 , Schwede wound up in British custody as a prisoner of war . Upon his release he joined the German Army in 1920 , but was discharged after the 100 , 000 - man limit imposed by the Versailles Treaty was reached in 1921 . He then took a job as operations manager at a sawmill in Sankt Andreasberg , Lower Saxony before being hired as foreman at the Coburg Municipal Works in March 1922 . During this period , Schwede became active in the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund , a " völkisch " anti - Semitic organization . Rise to power in Coburg . In October 1922 Schwede co - founded a Nazi Party Branch Office ( ) in Coburg , a historic city in northeastern Bavaria . One year later he became local Party chairman , by which time it had about 800 members . Under Schwede ' s guidance , anti - Semitic demonstrations and street battles instigated by the Sturmabteilung became commonplace in the city . Following the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch , the NSDAP was temporarily banned in 1924 . The National Socialist Freedom Movement became its front organization and during the 1924 Coburg city council elections the Nazis managed to get 14 . 3 % of the vote . This entitled them to 3 seats on the council and Schwede took one of them . After the NSDAP ban lifted in 1926 , Schwede founded " Der Weckruf " ( " The Wake - Up Call " ) , the first National Socialist propaganda newspaper at the local level in Germany . Here he ran an extra - parliamentary opposition with lurid articles about alleged " scandals " designed to destabilize the political system of the Weimar Republic . In 1928 , the paper began a slander and harassment campaign against Abraham Friedmann , the jewish General Director of the Coburg meat company Großmann AG . Friedmann was initially successful in fighting these attacks and managed to get the city council to fire Schwede from his job at the Municipal Works in 1929 . The outraged Nazis demanded Schwede ' s immediate reinstatement and when the city refused a petition began circulating to dissolve the City Council . On 5 May 1929 the recall passed with 67 % of the vote . In the ensuing re - election campaign , which included public speeches in Coburg by Adolf Hitler himself , the Nazi ' s won 43 . 1 % of the popular vote and 13 of the 25 seats on the city council in June 1929 . This was the first instance where the NSDAP held an absolute majority in a local government in Germany . At the newly elected Council ' s opening session , Schwede was promptly rehired to the Municipal Works . He then managed to get himself elected , after the fifth try , as third deputy mayor ( " Bürgermeister " ) on 28 August 1930 , becoming the first Nazi to reach such a position . Early in 1931 he was elected second " Bürgermeister " and , on 16 November 1931 , first " Bürgermeister " . Coburg became the first city in Germany to see the swastika flag raised on a public building , City Hall , which occurred on 18 January 1931 two years before Hitler came to power . Schwede also got the city to grant Hitler an honorary citizenship on 16 October 1932 , also the first to do so . All this created a cult of personality around Schwede , a highlight of which was the 1933 dedication of Coburg City Hall ' s new bell , bearing the rhyming inscription " Zu Adolf Hitler ruf ich dich , Franz Schwede - Glocke heiße ich " ( roughly translated " To Adolf Hitler I call , I am called the Franz Schwede Bell " ) . Following the Nazi Seizure of Power in January 1933 , Schwede was directly appointed as Coburg ' s Lord Mayor ( " Oberbürgermeister " ) . In March 1933 , a terror campaign was launched against Jews and opponents of the Nazis under his leadership . By the end of April , 152 people had been arrested and harshly mistreated while in " protective custody " , many in Schwede ' s presence . In 1939 Coburg was officially granted the title " First National Socialist City in Germany " ( ) . Schwede was also made an honorary citizen of Coburg , as Hitler had been , and was awarded use of the suffix " Coburg " in his name . Gauleiter of Pomerania . In 1934 Schwede ' s political career rose further . He had already won election to a seat in the Bavarian Landtag in 1930 and in the Reichstag since 1933 . On 1 July 1934 , he was appointed district president of Lower Bavaria / Upper Palatinate . Around the same time the existing Gauleiter of the Prussian Province of Pomerania , Wilhelm Karpenstein , ran afoul of NSDAP headquarters and was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives . Schwede ' s loyalty was rewarded when Hitler appointed him to the powerful Gauleiter position in Pomerania on 21 July 1934 and made him Oberpräsident one week later . Schwede moved to Stettin , forced 23 of the 27 District Kreisleiters out of office , and replaced Karpenstein ' s staff with loyal friends from Coburg , including : Arno Fischer as state building surveyor , Kuno Popp as Gau propaganda leader and regional representative of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , Alfred Seidler as Gau treasurer , Johannes Künzel as a regional representative of the German Labor Front , Emil Mazuw as SS - Stabsführer of SS District XIII Pomerania , and Werner Faber as Lord Mayor of Stettin . In 1937 Schwede was promoted to SA - Gruppenführer and in 1938 to SA - Obergruppenführer . That same year , he became Chairman of the Reich League of Former Professional Soldiers ( ) . During 1938 - 39 , the German Pomeranian province was enlarged . Most of Grenzmark Posen - West Prussia and two counties in Brandenburg were made a district , further expanding the area he controlled . During the Reichskristallnacht on 9 November 1938 , Schwede oversaw the destruction of the Pomeranian synagogues . The next day , all male Stettin Jews were deported to Oranienburg concentration camp and kept there for several weeks in order to increase the level of terror . World War II and war crimes . At the outbreak of World War II , Hitler gave the Gaulieters increased power over their regions and Schwede was appointed Reich Defense Commissar ( ) for Defense District II . Civil administration and important industrial sectors were now subject to his direct control . Starting in October 1939 , Schwede – or " Nero " as the Pomeranians nicknamed him – used this position to sweep Pomerania with an iron broom . He worked closely with the SS to make way for the resettlement of ethnic Germans arriving from the Baltic States . After learning of the Aktion T4 program , he immediately ordered the evacuation of psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes in Treptow , Ueckermünde , Lauenburg , Meseritz - Obrawalde and Stralsund . Patients were transported to Neustadt in Westpreußen to be shot by SS - Kommando Eimann or murdered by Sonderkommando Lange in gas vans . On February 12 and 13 , 1940 , the remaining 1 , 000 to 1 , 300 Pomeranian Jews , regardless of sex , age and health , were deported from Stettin and Schneidemühl to the Lublin - Lipowa Reservation that had been set up following the Nisko Plan , to their ultimate demise . In 1943 Pomerania became a target of allied air raids and throughout 1944 and early 1945 Stettin ' s industrial and residential areas were hit . Despite this , the province was regarded as " safe " compared to other parts of the Third Reich and it became a shelter for evacuees from hard hit Berlin and the industrial areas of western Germany . Pomerania finally turned into a battlefield on 26 January 1945 , when Red Army tanks entered the province near Schneidemühl during the East Pomeranian Offensive . Schwede believed in victory up until the very end , so evacuation orders for the civilian population were issued either too late or not at all . He even ordered authorities to repel any flight attempts as " defeatist " . However , even as the Soviets advanced , he managed to get himself onto a ship out of Sassnitz on 4 March 1945 in time to escape towards the direction of Schleswig - Holstein . The official post - war West German Schieder commission estimated civilian losses in Schwede ' s province at 440 , 000 dead . Imprisonment and death . On 13 May 1945 , Schwede was captured by the British Army and once again ended up in custody as a prisoner of war . Interned until 1947 , he was tried for war crimes in a Bielefeld court and on 25 November 1948 sentenced to nine years in prison for membership in the " SS - Führerkorps " . On April 7 , 1951 a court in Coburg sentenced him to another ten years ' imprisonment on 52 counts of abuse of power and grievous bodily harm that he participated in during the terrors of March , 1933 . His sentence was commuted to probation on 24 January 1956 on grounds of ill health and he died four years later at the age of 72 in Coburg .