Franz Six - Nazi Official

Nazi Official

Six joined the Nazi party in 1930 with member number 245,670 and the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1932, for whom he was a student organizer. Six joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in 1935 and his SS membership number was 107,480. Impressed by his academic achievements and outstanding curriculum, Reinhard Heydrich appointed him as head of Amt VII, Written Records of the RSHA which dealt mainly with ideological tasks. These included the creation of anti-semitic, anti-masonic propaganda, the sounding of public opinion and monitoring of Nazi indoctrination by the public. He held this post until 1943 when he was succeeded by Paul Dittel.

On 17 September 1940, the same day on which Hitler abandoned the idea of an invasion of Great Britain, Heydrich charged him to plan the elimination of anti-Nazi elements in Britain following a successful invasion by the Wehrmacht, since this task would be appointed to the RSHA, which included the SD. Among other things, his responsibilities included the detention of some 2,300 individuals immediately after the conquest of Britain by Germany. Their names came from a list previously compiled by Walter Schellenberg, Chief of Amt VI, Ausland-SD that made up the foreign intelligence branch of the SD. This list included British politicians, namely Winston Churchill and other members of the Cabinet, writers like Sigmund Freud, even though he had died in September 1939, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, members of exiled governments, financiers such as Bernard Baruch and many other anti-Nazi elements. According to William L. Shirer's book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Churchill was to be placed into the hands of RSHA Amt VI Ausland-SD, but most of the rest of the people on the list were to be turned over to RSHA Amt IV (Gestapo). A separate list also named many organizations who would have to be dismantled as well, namely the Freemasons, the Jehovah's Witnesses and even the Boy Scouts.

Franz Six was also charged with the creation of six Einsatzgruppen to be located in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and either Edinburgh or Glasgow. These death squads would be charged with the elimination of civilian resistance members and Jews all over Great Britain.