Erich Ehrlinger
German general (1910–2004)
Erich Ehrlinger (14 October 1910 – 31 July 2004) was a member of the Nazi Party (number: 541,195) and SS (number: 107,493). As commander of Special Detachment (Sonderkommando, also known as Einsatzkommando or EK) 1b, he was responsible for mass murder in the Baltic states and Belarus.
He was also the commander of the Security Police (SiPo) and the Security Service (SD) for central Russia as well as a department chief in the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA). He eventually rose to the rank of SS-Oberführer.
Youth and education
Ehrlinger was the son of the mayor of Giengen an der Brenz, a small town in southwestern Germany, in what is now the state of Baden-Württemberg. In 1928 he completed high school (Abitur) in Heidenheim, then studied law in Tübingen, Kiel, Berlin. There in 1931 he joined the SA and continued at Tübingen. The nationalist and xenophobic atmosphere at the University of Tübingen (already by 1931 there were no longer any Jewish professors there) fit in well with his later legal career in the SD, the RSHA, and the Einsatzgruppen.
Ehrlinger was not only active at the university. According to his SA certificate of good conduct, "Ehrlinger was one of the few Tübingen-connected students, who even before the seizure of power put himself regularly where he was needed with the propaganda or other service."
Nazi career
After he completed an SA leadership training course in 1934, Ehrlinger gave up his legal career and became a full-time SA functionary.
The public source identifies “Erich Ehrlinger” as german general (1910–2004). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Erich, Ehrlinger and German.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erich Ehrlinger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.