Herbert Lange, the first commandant of the Kulmhof death camp. Part 3 of five. Murder in Novgorod.

In parts one and two we saw how Herbert Lange got a job with the Gestapo at Stettin and then was transferred to Aachen. As the National Socialist regime in Germany attacked Poland, Lange was appointed to the Gestapo in occupied Poznań where he made a concentration camp and started the first homicidal gas chamber in Fort VII of that city. The victims were the mentally and physically challenged from care homes in the Reichsgau Wartheland, a province created from part of occupied Poland which was annexed to the Third Reich. Lange found that killing people in that gas chamber was not efficient so he devised a way of speeding up the process through gas vans which would drive to the care homes and kill people in situ whilst prisoners dug the graves of the victims. In this way Lange was able to kill thousands of Polish and German people from the Warthegau, East Prussia and other parts of Germany.
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. Lange was soon to have work to do here too.
Veliky Novgorod, one of the oldest cities in Russia. It was the first capital of Russia and in the Middle Ages – the second most important center of Kievan Rus after Kiev. There are many who would regard this town as being the very cradle of Russian civilisation. In 1478 it was captured by the Moscow principality under its ruler Ivan III. After the creation of St. Petersburg, the city lost its economic importance, but its historic buildings remain, almost all were damaged or destroyed during the war, but they have been rebuilt. In 1727, Novgorod became the center of the Novgorod province and 200 years later in 1927 it become part of the Leningrad Region .
In mid August 1941, Leuitenant General Otto Sponheimer’s 21st Infantry Division, part of General Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group, pushed its way through swamps and along a strongly fortified main road towards Novgorod. Resistance was fierce, the terrain suited the defence. German casualties were mounting. However a stroke of luck aided the attackers, a map taken from a Soviet major killed in action was found. It showed the Soviet Forty-eighth Army’s entire position along the Verenda river, which flows into Lake Ilmen. The map gave the exact locations of fortified positions, dummy positions, gun emplacements, and machine-gun posts. Then there was another piece of luck. A prisoner from the Karelian ethnic minority, a Finn, was captured and he provided the fortification maps of Novgorod as well as the plans of the minefields.
On the morning of 15th August the 3rd Infantry Regiment saw the glint of the golden church domes of Novgorod in the morning sun. At 1730 hours that day, the VIII Air Corps began a heavy air raid on the Russian positions in front of and in Novgorod. This destroyed a large part of the ancient capital and it would be many years again before anyone again witnessed such a glint of golden church domes in the morning sun.
By dawn the following day, the 16 August 1941, the German assault companies were inside the ruined city. At 0700 the swastika flew over the Novgorod Kremlin.
Some 50km to the north east of Novogorod is Chudovo, this was an important transport hub and Manstein ordered its capture, in order to severe the link between Leningrad and Moscow.
Spanish troops of the volunteer Blue Division arrived in Novgorod.
Following the capture of Novogorod, after a short period of military rule, the Nazis installed their own government assisted by people such as Vasily Ponomarev and Boris Filistinsky. The city’s first mayor under Nazi occupation, Fyodor Ivanovich Morozov, was killed by a young Spanish soldier during an attempted robbery. During the occupation, a great deal of the cultural heritage of the first capital of Russia was lost. All wooden buildings burned down. Collections on archeology, history and art were stolen from the Novgorod museum. Industries were destroyed. The material damage caused to Novgorod, according to the report of the Extraordinary Commission on the atrocities of the fascist invaders, amounted to over 11 billion rubles. During the Main Nuremberg Trial on 20 November 1945, Novgorod alongside Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Smolensk, Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Stalino, and Leningrad was mentioned as being amongst the most damaged cities of the Soviet Union.
On the very day that German troops were preparing to enter Novgorod, 15 August 1941, Himmler was in Minsk. Here he witnessed a shooting, this is the famous event where he clearly found it very stressful and would appear to have come close to fainting.

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