Martin Sandberger

Sandberger's father, a retired production director of IG Farben, used his connections with West German president Theodor Heuss. Heuss in turn contacted the US Ambassador at that time James B. Conant with the request for pardon. Numerous pleas for leniency from influential individuals including Minister of Justice Wolfgang Haußmann and Landesbischof (bishop) Martin Haug were made. The renowned lawyer and vice-president of the West German parliament Carlo Schmid worried about Sandberger's conditions in Landsberg Prison and spoke out in favor of a commutation. Over time these and other well-connected people lobbied for Sandberger's early release. By late 1957, there were only four war criminals held in prison in West Germany. One of them was Sandberger. He had been denied parole several times. In 1958 the Federal Foreign Office filed parole applications on the behalf of all four inmates still serving time in Landsberg Prison. Sandberger was denied parole, but the board recommended that his life sentences and that of the other three be commuted to time served. The commutations were granted on 6 May 1958, and Sandberger was released three days later. Subsequently, through the mediation of Bernhard Müller, he received a position as legal counsel in the Lechler Group. Until 1972, Sandberger was repeatedly called as a witness in Nazi war crimes trials, such as in 1958 in the trial against the "Einsatzkommando Tilsit", the so-called Einsatzgruppen trial, in Ulm. A prosecution by the public prosecutor's offices in Munich (1962) and Stuttgart (1971/72) for his responsibility for the "shooting of numerous persons, including communists, Jews and parachutists in the years 1941 – 1943" (investigation of the public prosecutor's office at the Regional Court of Stuttgart in June 1971, p. 1 – the group of Romani is not mentioned here) was discontinued. The reason was that Sandberger had already been convicted in 1948 in the trial before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. This excludes prosecution by German judicial authorities in accordance with the 1955 Treaty on the Regulation of Questions of War and Occupation, the so-called Transition Treaty(see Bundesarchiv B 162/5199 p. 26). Sandberger died on 30 March 2010, at the age of 98.

Despite political pressures, General Lucius D. Clay confirmed Sandberger's death sentence in 1949. In 1951, Sandberger's sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by the "Peck Panel" clemency board acting under the authority of John J. McCloy, the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. McCloy had received political pressure to grant the reprieve from William Langer, U.S. Senator from North Dakota. Many of Langer's constituents were of German descent, and Langer felt that trial of anyone other than the highest Nazis was contrary to American legal tradition and helped Communism.

Sandberger was found guilty on all counts. In September 1947, Judge Michael Musmanno pronounced the tribunal's sentence:

In January 1944 Sandberger became head of the Department A in the Reich Security Main Office Amt. VI (Ausland-SD, the foreign intelligence service); in this position he reported directly to Walter Schellenberg. He kept the domestic and foreign accounts and financial records of the organization. As the first assistant to Schellenberg, Sandberger acted as his liaison man with Heinrich Himmler.

Sandberger returned to Germany in September 1943. In the fall of 1943, Sandberger was appointed the Gestapo chief for the Italian city of Verona. In this capacity he was involved in arresting the Jews of Northern Italy and organizing their transportation to Auschwitz concentration camp.

In June 1941 Sandberger was appointed chief of Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A. During the first two weeks of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, Sandberger traveled with Franz Walter Stahlecker, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A. Sandberger was involved since March 1941 in the distribution of a business plan for the RSHA and a director of the curriculum organization of the schools (Lehrplangestaltung der Schulen).

In early July 1941, Sandberger was sent to Estonia on the orders of Stahlecker. According to Sandberger's later testimony, Stahlecker made it clear that Sandberger was being sent to Estonia to carry out the Führer order in that country. A variety of shooting actions of Jews, Romani, Communists and the mentally-ill began once Sandberger and his kommando entered Estonia. A report dated 15 October 1941 on executions in Ostland during Sandberger's tenure included one item under Estonia of 474 Jews and 684 Communists.

Others were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Report No. 17, dated 9 July 1941 carried the item —

On 10 September 1941, Sandberger promulgated a general order for the internment of Jews which resulted in the internment of 450 Jews in a concentration camp at Pskov, Russia. The Jews were later executed.

On 3 December 1941 he became commander of the Security Police and SD for Estonia.

Following the German invasion and occupation of Poland in September 1939, Heinrich Himmler embarked on a program, known as Heim ins Reich (approximate translation: Return to the Nation) which involved driving out the native population in areas of Poland and replacing them with ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from various countries, such as the Baltic states and Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. On 13 October 1939 Heinrich Himmler appointed Sandberger the boss of the Northeast Central Immigration Office (Einwandererzentralstelle Nord-Ost) and tasked with the "racial valuation" (rassische Bewertung) of the various Volksdeutsche immigrants.

He began a career with the SD and by 1938 he had risen to the rank of SS Sturmbannführer (major). Sandberger worked as an assistant judge in the Interior Administration of Württemberg and became a government councillor in 1937.

By 1935 he had obtained his doctorate degree. As a functionary of the Nazi student League he eventually became a university inspector. In 1936 he became an enlisted member of the SS and under the command of Gustav Adolf Scheel for the SD in Württemberg.

Martin Sandberger was born in Charlottenburg, Berlin as a son of a director of IG Farben. Sandberger studied law at the Universities of München, Köln, Freiburg and Tübingen. At the age of 20 he joined the Nazi Party and the SA. From 1932 - 1933 Sandberger was a Nazi student activist and student leader in Tübingen. On 8 March 1933 Sandberger and fellow student Erich Ehrlinger raised the Nazi flag in front of the main building at the University of Tübingen. (Like Sandberger, Ehrlinger would take charge of an Einsatzkommando in 1941, and in so doing, commit thousands of murders.)

Martin Sandberger (17 August 1911 – 30 March 2010) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era and a convicted Holocaust perpetrator. He commanded Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A, as well as the Sicherheitspolizei and SD in Estonia. Sandberger perpetrated mass murder of the Jews in the Baltic states. He was also responsible for the arrest of Jews in Italy, and their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. Sandberger was the second-highest official of the Einsatzgruppe A to be tried and convicted. He was also the last-surviving defendant from the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.