Category Archives: Personalities

Gladow, boy gangster of postwar Berlin

22 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Crime, Everyday life, Personalities, postwar

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His name was Werner Gladow, and his hero was Al Capone.

He reflected just about the worst of postwar Germany. As became clear later when he was on trial for murder, he was only interested in getting rich, and it didn’t matter how he did it — or who he had to hurt. It could be argued any sense of morality had been kicked out of him by the war and Germany’s defeat; he was 14 when the Russians took Berlin. But it was just as likely he was a sociopath to begin with. His short and violent criminal career ended with him being one of the first people to be executed in the new East Germany.

Born in 1931, he bounced from one school to another (11 by the age of 15), and landed after the war in the criminal elements around Alexanderplatz and Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, where he did what many teenagers did — tried to make a quick profit in the black market. During one of his first attempts at swindling customers, he landed in prison for a few months, where he recruited some of the first members of what would become the Gladow Gang. Between 1947 and 1949 he committed 375 robberies in banks, markets, shops and jewelry stores.

He was a smart kid and knew how to use the political situation in the divided Berlin to his advantage. His gang would commit robberies in West Berlin, then flee back into East Berlin (it was easy to go back and forth in the years before the Berlin Wall was built). The western police had no authority in the east, and couldn’t pursue them. The eastern police wouldn’t pick up the chase since the crime had been committed in the west. The next time, Gladow committed his robbery in the east and fled to the west. After awhile he got cocky, leaving visiting cards at the scene of robberies and playing up to the press.

He also got more violent. His gang acquired firearms any way they could, including mugging police. They killed the driver of a chic car and stole it, only to get it stuck in the sand near Müggelsee. They tortured a businessman and his wife for the key to their safe.

Betrayed by one of his gang, the police caught him in a gun battle worthy of a Chicago gangster. (Here’s a 1950 Spiegel report on Gladow’s arrest). He was lightly wounded on the chin, and at the sight of his own blood, he fainted. He was convicted of murder, attempted murder and assorted other crimes. When he was hanged, he was only 19.

 

 

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War criminals move in

15 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Allies, Crime, Personalities, postwar

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6th_Inf_Regt_Spandau_Prison_1951

Spandau Prison 1951, public domain

I’ve always considered Spandau Prison a bit like something in “news of the weird.”

On July 18, 1947, the seven top German war criminals to survive World War 2 moved into their new prison in the Spandau district in Berlin. Rudolf Heß, odd bird and formerly Hitler’s favorite, had a lifetime sentence. So did the economic minister Walther Funk and the head of the navy, Erich Raeder. The wily Albert Speer got twenty years, not for being Hitler’s architect, but for feeding the Third Reich’s armaments factories with slave labor from occupied lands. Baldur von Schirach got 20 years for his role in the Hitler Youth. Konstantin von Neurath got 15, and Karl Dönitz, Reichspresident after Hitler’s death, got 10.

The Allies weren’t taking any chances. The criminals were locked into individual cells in the former fortress prison with guards from all four victorious powers, who rotated the duty every month.

If there was any sign of how dangerous the Allies considered these men, this was it. An entire prison for 7 people in isolation as if they were a cancer – which they were. Still, it’s amazing how much time, effort, resources and money the Allies poured into that prison for so few men for thirty years.

I’m not sure if the special treatment helped these men maintain a certain status that it would’ve been best to wipe out right away via keeping them in a normal prison. In isolation, but a run-of-the-mill one, same as any other max security prisoner would get. It would’ve been nice to see these war criminals cut down to size.

The prison isn’t there anymore, and here’s why. Rudolf Heß, 93 and the last inmate, killed himself in 1987. With that, the prison had fulfilled its purpose. It was torn down so that neo-Nazis who revered Heß couldn’t use it as a shrine.

Destined to Witness

28 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Personalities

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Some people live amazing lives.

On a visit to Berlin a few years back, I went to a book reading by a remarkable 80 plus-year-old who I’d never heard of until then. I haven’t forgotten him since.

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi spoke softly into the microphone in a German tinted with his native Hamburg accent though he left Germany in 1947. HHans Jürgene was a journalist, former managing editor of Ebony Magazine, introducing his autobiography Destined to Witness.

He witnessed Nazi Germany and the postwar years like few others did. His mother Bertha raised him alone in a Hamburg neighborhood. His father, a Liberian student and grandson of the consul general of Liberia in Germany, rarely visited.

So there he was, a half-African German boy under one of the most racist regimes that ever was. He couldn’t hide from the Nazis; his skin would always betray him. Ironically, he didn’t have to hide. He went to school, lived happily with a loving mother, and later learned a trade. The network of people who knew him in his Hamburg neighborhood sheltered him somewhat from the worst of the regime. But the Nazis made it clear he was a second class citizen, and he endured racism from classmates, teachers and others. For him, being second class had a few advantages. He wasn’t persecuted like the Jews, Sinti and Roma. He was forbidden from joining the army, a blessing in disguise.

desinted coverReading his book, I came away with the feeling that his story wasn’t only about growing up mixed race under the Nazis. It was about a boy who desperately wanted to belong, and couldn’t. He wanted to join the Jungvolk, the Hitler Youth for younger children. He wanted to join the Wehrmacht. I didn’t get the impression he was ashamed of having felt this way, and he shouldn’t have been. It’s natural for a child to want to fit in, no matter what environment he grows up in.

He survived the war, the fire bombing of Hamburg, and entered the postwar years. For the first time, he saw men who looked like him, African-American soldiers. After a short stint in Liberia, he emigrated to the United States — a country with its own problems with race. But there, he found what he was looking for. He served in the army, went to college, launched a successful career as a journalist.

At the book reading, he seemed to enjoy every minute of the respect and wonder the German audience gave him. I shook his hand and asked him to sign my copy of his book. A brief encounter, but one I won’t forget.

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi died on January 19, 2013. RIP.