The 30th of January 1933, Germany. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, is appointed
chancellor of Germany by the German President Paul von Hindenburg. The Nazi regime quickly
begins to restrict the civil and human rights of the Jews and opens the first concentration
camp – Dachau – situated near Munich. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its European allies
would establish more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites, including ghettos. The
perpetrators would use these locations for forced labor, detention of people deemed to be "enemies
of the state," and the mass murder of millions. Among the members of this criminal Nazi regime are
the former German nobles who believe that Hitler would restore their abolished monarchies, and
with it, their lost inheritances. One of them is Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont.
Josias, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont was born on the 13th of May 1896 at the ruling family's castle
in Arolsen, then part of the German Empire. He was the eldest son and heir of Prince Friedrich,
the last ruler of Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont which was a constituent state of the
German Empire, and Princess Bathildis. Josias was also the cousin the Dutch
Queen Wilhelmina who reigned from 1890 until her abdication in 1948.
The First World War began on the 28th of July
1914. Waldeck enlisted in the German Army as a cadet of the infantry regiment
and suffered serious injuries after being wounded in action multiple times.
The First World War ended on the 11th of November 1918 when the German leaders signed the armistice
in the Compiègne Forest in France. The introduction of new weapons like the machine gun
and gas warfare led to enormous losses and the war claimed the lives of ten million soldiers.
Property and industry losses were catastrophic. As a result, the victorious powers imposed a series
of treaties upon the defeated powers. Among the treaties, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles
held Germany responsible for starting the war and liable for massive material damages.
The treaty imposed harsh penalties on the Germans including the loss of 13%
of its prewar territories, extensive reparation payments and demilitarization of the Rhineland.
The Reichswehr – the German Army – was restricted to 100,000 men.
Following Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication in November 1918,
and the German Revolution, all German nobility as a legally defined class was abolished.
On promulgation of the Weimar Constitution on the 11th of September 1919, all members
of the German nobility who until the German Revolution of 1918 had enjoyed legal status
and privileges that separated them from the rest of society, were declared equal before the law.
Josias’s family lost their Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont as it became the Free State of
Waldeck-Pyrmont within the Weimar Republic which was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933.
In 1919 Josias Waldeck was discharged from the army and fought as a Freikorps officer
in Upper Silesia. In the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of 1918–19,
Freikorps consisting largely of World War I veterans, were raised as paramilitary
militias. They were ostensibly mustered to fight on behalf of the government
against the Communists attempting to overthrow the Weimar Republic. However, many Freikorps
also largely despised the new Weimar Republic and were involved in assassinations of its supporters.
Between 1921 and 1923 Josias studied agriculture, economics and law in Munich without graduating.
On the 25th of August 1922 he married Duchess Altburg of Oldenburg and they had 5 children.
Beginning in 1925, some members of higher levels of the German nobility joined the Nazi Party.
Following Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication, there were Kings, Grand Dukes, Dukes, and Princes,
who along with all of their heirs, successors and families, lost their titles and domains.
And they wanted them back. Hitler, Goering, Himmler,
and other Nazi leaders, frequently appealed to these former nobles by expressing sympathy for
a restoration of their abolished monarchies, and with it, their lost inheritances. As a result,
many aristocrats were early Nazi Party supporters, but they fatally misjudged the Führer.
One such aristocrat was Josias, prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont. On the 1st of November
1929, he joined the Nazi Party and in March 1930
he joined the SS. He was immediately appointed adjutant to Sepp Dietrich, a leading member of
the SS, before becoming Heinrich Himmler's Adjutant and staff chief in September 1930.
This enabled Waldeck to rise rapidly in the SS hierarchy.
At the end of 1931, the anti-Nazi press reported that Hitler had put Waldeck in
charge of setting up the SS intelligence service. In 1932, Waldeck became an SS group leader.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in January 1933
and Josias was elected as the member of the Reichstag - the German parliament.
The same year he was promoted to the rank of SS Lieutenant General.
In 1934, Waldeck participated in the Night of the Long Knives which was the murder of
the leadership of the SA – the Storm Troopers - which was the Nazi paramilitary formation led
by Ernst Röhm, a longtime friend of Adolf Hitler. Hitler, pressured by German army commanders, whose
support he would need to become the President, directed the SS, led by Heinrich Himmler,
to murder SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and his top commanders. The murders took place between
the 30th of June and the 2nd of July 1934 and the SS also murdered several conservative critics of
the Nazi regime including Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher.
At Hitler’s request, the German parliament declared the killings legal after the fact, based
on a false accusation that Röhm and his commanders had planned to overthrow the government.
This purge demonstrated the Nazi regime’s willingness to go outside of the law to
commit murder as an act of state for the perceived survival of the nation.
On the 1st of August 1934, one day before President Hindenburg's death,
Hitler’s cabinet passed the "Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich," which
stipulated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of the president – head of state - would
be abolished and its powers merged with chancellor - head of government - under the title of Führer.
On the second of August 1934, two hours after Hindenburg's death,
Hitler proclaimed himself the Führer of Germany and claimed absolute power.
The onset of World War II, which began on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland,
brought accelerated persecution and deportation and later, mass murder, to the Jews of Germany.
One year before, in October 1938, Waldeck, who remained loyal to the Nazi regime until
its very end, had been promoted again to the Higher SS and Police Leader for Weimar.
In this position he had supervisory authority over Buchenwald concentration camp.
Established in July 1937, Buchenwald
was one of the largest concentration camps established within German borders.
Prisoners lived in the Buchenwald main camp which was surrounded by an electrified
barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries outfitted with automatic machine guns.
At the entrance to the main camp, there was a notorious punishment block, known as the Bunker,
where prisoners who violated the camp regulations were punished and often tortured to death.
In addition to the punishment block, the main camp included 33 wooden barracks, disinfection
buildings, a brothel, and a crematorium. Most of the early inmates at Buchenwald
were political prisoners, people who had been arrested for some form of political opposition
to the Nazi regime. One of the camp’s most prominent prisoners was a daughter of the
Italian king - Princess Mafalda of Savoy. She was imprisoned in Buchenwald on the order of
Adolf Hitler who believed that Mafalda and her family were complicit in Mussolini's downfall.
She bled to death at Buchenwald on the night of the 28th of August 1944 at the age of 41.
In addition to political prisoners and Jews, Buchenwald prisoners also included repeat
offenders, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma people and German military deserters.
In 1941, when Buchenwald had first caught the attention of Josias Waldeck,
the camp's commandant was Karl-Otto Koch. Waldeck, when glancing over the camp's death list,
came across the name of Walter Krämer, a head hospital orderly at Buchenwald whom
Waldeck recognized because Krämer had successfully treated him in the past.
Waldeck investigated the case and discovered that Karl-Otto Koch
had ordered both Krämer and Karl Peix, a hospital attendant, killed as "political prisoners"
because they had treated him for syphilis. A fact that Koch wished to keep secret.
Waldeck also received reports that a certain prisoner had been shot while attempting to escape
By that time, Koch had been transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in
German occupied Poland, but his wife, Ilse, who belonged to the Buchenwald personnel,
was still living at the Commandant's house in the camp. Waldeck ordered a full-scale
investigation of the camp. It was discovered that the prisoner who had been "shot while
trying to escape" had been told to get water from a well some distance from the camp
and was then shot from behind because he had also helped to treat Koch for syphilis.
Throughout the investigation, more of Koch's orders to kill prisoners
at the camp were revealed, as well as evidence of embezzlement of possessions stolen from prisoners.
When it was revealed that the Kochs had used the massive Nazi apparatus to gain an enormous amount
of wealth, their downfall became inevitable as all the possessions stolen from murdered
Jews was regarded as the property of the Reich. While Ilse was acquitted for lack of evidence,
Karl-Otto Koch was executed by firing squad on 5th of April 1945.
Waldeck himself was then arrested by American forces on the 13th of April 1945.
In May the following year, while under arrest, his father Friedrich died.
Josias thus became head of the House of Waldeck and Pyrmont.
Waldeck was then tried at the Buchenwald trial which started
on the 11th of April 1947 and lasted 4 months.
One of the defendants was Ilse Koch who had already been investigated by Waldeck during the
Nazi era. She became infamous for her sadistic and brutal treatment of prisoners and was accused by
former inmates of taking souvenirs from the skin of murdered prisoners with distinctive tattoos
as she was obsessed with this form of body art as well as beating pregnant women with a whip
which had been fitted with razor blades at the end. In the courtroom Ilse Koch stated that
she was eight months pregnant but for her crimes the tribunal sentenced her to life imprisonment.
One of the charges against Waldeck was that he had ordered the execution of her husband
Karl-Otto Koch. The second was that he had been personally responsible for crimes at Buchenwald,
since the camp was located in his jurisdictional area, even though he was never in command of it.
On the 14th of August 1947, the US military tribunal sentenced Waldeck to life imprisonment.
However, this sentence was reduced to 20 years and in November 1950, after serving only 3 years,
Waldeck was released from the Landsberg prison for health reasons.
In 1953 he was granted an amnesty and spent the last years of his life in seclusion as a free man.
Josias, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont
died at the age of 71 on the 30th of November 1967 at Schaumburg Castle.
He was succeeded as head of the house by his only son Prince Wittekind who has been the head of the
House of Waldeck and Pyrmont ever since and today lives with his family at Arolsen Castle.
Wittekind, now 86 years old, was born in 1936 and his two middle names are Adolf and Heinrich
which can be explained by the fact that his godfathers were Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.
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