Gottlob Christian Berger (16 July 1896 – 5 January 1975) was a German senior Nazi official who was the chief of the SS Main Office responsible for Schutzstaffel (SS) recruiting during World War II. At the post-war Ministries Trial, Berger was convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity and spent six and a half years in prison.
While serving in the German Army during World War I, he was wounded four times and awarded the Iron Cross First Class. Immediately after the war, he was a leader of the Einwohnerwehr militia in his native North Württemberg. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 but lost interest in right-wing politics during the 1920s, training and working as a physical education teacher. In the late 1920s, he rejoined the Nazi Party and became a member of the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1931. He clashed with other leaders of the SA and joined the Allgemeine-SS in 1936. Initially responsible for physical education in an SS region, he was soon transferred to the staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as head of the sports office.
In 1938, he was appointed as head of the recruiting office of the SS Main Office (SS-HA) and took over as chief of the SS-HA the following year. To a significant extent, Berger was the father of the Waffen-SS, as he implemented its recruiting structures and policies and later extended Waffen-SS recruiting to peoples who in no way reflected Himmler's ideas of "racial purity". He consistently advocated greater ideological training for the Waffen-SS but did not view SS ideology as a replacement for religion. He also sponsored and protected his friend Oskar Dirlewanger, whom he placed in command of the SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger who subsequently committed many war crimes. Berger often clashed with senior officers of the Wehrmacht and even with senior Waffen-SS officers over his recruiting methods, but he took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves to grow the Waffen-SS to 38 divisions by the war's end. He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS (lieutenant general).
Berger undertook several other roles in the latter stages of the war while continuing as chief of the SS-HA. In the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories he proposed the Heuaktion operation that kidnapped and enslaved 50,000 Eastern European children. In response to the Slovak National Uprising in August 1944, Berger was appointed Military Commander in Slovakia and was in charge during the initial failure to suppress the revolt. The following month he was appointed one of the two chiefs of staff of the Volkssturm militia and as chief of the prisoner-of-war camps. In the final months of the war he commanded German forces in the Bavarian Alps, which included remnants of several of the Waffen-SS units he had helped recruit. He surrendered to U.S. troops near Berchtesgaden and was promptly arrested. He was tried and convicted in the Ministries Trial of the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals for war crimes and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. His sentence was soon reduced to 10 years, and he was released after serving six and a half years. After release he advocated for the rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS and worked in several manufacturing businesses. He died in his hometown in 1975. Described as blustery, cynical, and "one of Himmler's most competent and trusted war-time lieutenants", Berger was also an ardent antisemite and a skilled and unscrupulous bureaucratic manipulator. Due to his organisational and recruiting skills, Berger was kept as the chief of the SS-HA throughout the war.
Early life and involvement with Nazi Party Gottlob Christian Berger was born on 16 July 1896 at Gerstetten in the Kingdom of Württemberg, the son of saw-mill owners Johannes and Christine (), and was one of eight children. He attended Volksschule (elementary school) and Realschule (junior high school) and then teacher training in Nürtingen. He volunteered for military service at the beginning of World War I, and rose to the rank of Leutnant in the infantry by the time of his discharge in 1919. Wounded four times, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, and was considered 70 per cent disabled at the time of his discharge. During the war, all three of his brothers died, two killed in action and the other executed as a spy in the United States. Berger's combative temperament and very conservative politics fitted him for a leadership role with the North Württemberg Einwohnerwehr militia in 1918–19. He married Maria () in 1921. After joining the Nazi Party in 1922, he was arrested and briefly held in custody after Adolf Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923. He trained and worked as a physical education teacher, despite his injuries, and lost interest in politics for some years, before rejoining the Nazi Party in 1929, and the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) in January 1931.
Berger's SA career was limited by his soldierly ideas of politics and leadership, but after the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, he was found to be very suitable to lead Schutzhaft operations, which involved the rounding up of Jews and "political undesirables". In April 1933, his clashes with younger leaders meant his SA career had met a dead-end. His SA peers criticised Berger's ambitious nature, outspokenness and lack of self-reflection. Beginning in July 1934, Berger worked with the SA training chief SA-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger. Between 1933 and 1935, he was a school inspector in Esslingen am Neckar near Stuttgart, and in 1935 was a senior official in the Gau Württemberg – Hohenzollern Ministry of Culture. He was recruited into the Allgemeine-SS by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler in 1936, on Krüger's recommendation. Initially appointed to oversee sports and physical training for SS-Oberabschnitt Südwest (SS Regional Headquarters Southwest), he then moved to Himmler's personal staff as head of the sports office.
Berger interceded on behalf of his World War I comrade Oskar Dirlewanger, who had been imprisoned for two years in 1935 for offences against a minor. On his release from prison, Berger used his influence to ensure Dirlewanger could join the Condor Legion and fight in the Spanish Civil War.
On 1 July 1938, Himmler appointed Berger as chief of the recruiting department of the SS-Hauptamt (SS Main Office, or SS-HA), which he quickly developed into a powerful tool for Himmler's ambitions. According to Berger, the German Army was initially dismissive of the idea of SS combat troops. He quoted the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Generaloberst Werner von Fritsch as saying, "If the Reich Transport Minister has his militarily-trained Railway Police, why shouldn't Himmler also play at soldiers?"
Berger later claimed that he had come up with the idea of SS combat troops wearing camouflage jackets from his own hunting days, and had suggested it to SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, commander of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Regiment (LSSAH). From 1938, various forms of Flecktarn camouflage were issued. The author Adrian Weale doubts Berger's account.
Berger had achieved the rank of Major der Reserve in the Wehrmacht by 1938, but his initial rank upon joining the Allgemeine-SS was SS-Standartenführer, based upon his SA service. Berger played a key role in directing the fifth column Sudetendeutsches Freikorps during the Sudeten Crisis in Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the organisational skills he displayed there marked him as highly suitable for the SS recruiting role.
Chief of the SS-Hauptamt
1939–40
Initial expansion of the Waffen-SS
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the SS-HA had been responsible for organising an erstwhile "civilian" political organisation, the Allgemeine-SS. After the war began, it was clear that those departments of the SS-HA looking after the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS dispositional troops or SS-VT) had performed poorly. During the invasion of Poland, deficiencies in organisation, equipment and training had become obvious. The SS-HA, and specifically its chief, SS-Obergruppenführer August Heissmeyer, were held responsible, and Heissmeyer soon made way for Berger. As head of recruiting, Berger had already unified the recruiting system for the three main SS organisations, the Allgemeine-SS, SS-VT and police, and in August 1938 he negotiated a recruiting agreement between Himmler and the Reichsjugendführer (Reich Youth Leader) Baldur von Schirach which created a strong recruiting pathway for the young men of the Hitler Youth into the SS.
Following the Polish campaign, Hitler approved the expansion of the SS combat troops to three divisions as well as bringing the LSSAH up to the strength of a reinforced motorised regiment. To achieve this goal before the commencement of the planned invasion of France and the Low Countries, Berger needed at least partially trained personnel. To do this, he circumvented the recruiting primacy of the Wehrmacht by transferring men from forces already under Himmler's control, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) that ran the concentration camps, and combat-trained police reinforcements of the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police or Orpo). By adding these men to the LSSAH and the existing three regiments of the SS-VT, he expanded the force to the approved ceiling, including 50,000 trained replacements. The three new divisions were: the SS-Verfügungs-Division (later given the name Reich and then Das Reich) commanded by the Inspector of the SS-VT, SS-Gruppenführer Paul Hausser; the SS-Division-Totenkopf commanded by the Inspector of Concentration Camps, SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Eicke; and the Polizei-Division, commanded by SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch. This rapid transformation was theoretical to a significant extent, as Eicke and the SS-TV continued to resist exchanges of personnel with the SS-VT.
The fact that Berger was able to expand the SS combat troops so quickly was a tribute to his improvisational skills. On 1 December 1939, Himmler promoted Berger to chief of the SS-HA. To a significant extent, Berger was the "father" of the Waffen-SS (or Armed SS), a term he coined in an agreement dated 2 March 1940. He used the new term to smooth over friction between the SS-VT and SS-TV, as they were combined in new formations. Berger's new-found authority for SS recruiting matters irritated the chiefs of the Allgemeine-SS districts, who had previously been responsible for this function. This came to a head when the chief of SS-Oberabschnitt Südwest, SS-Gruppenführer Kurt Kaul refused to recognise Berger's delegate in his district, referring to Berger as a "low-ranking empire builder". Kaul's series of letters to Berlin came to nothing, as the power and influence of the Allgemeine-SS had waned with the outbreak of war and the conscription of many of its members into the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and police. Ultimately, when Kaul threatened to arrest Berger's delegate in SS-Oberabschnitt Südwest, Himmler intervened personally in February 1940, stating that "the most unpleasant consequences" would befall Kaul if he did not throw his support behind Berger and his recruiting organisation. Kaul acquiesced, and Berger's supremacy as SS recruiting supremo was firmly established.
The first "Germanic" recruits