August Becker

August Becker (17 August 1900 – 31 December 1967) was a mid-ranking functionary in the SS of Nazi Germany and chemist in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). He helped design the vans with a gas chamber built into the back compartment used in early Nazi mass murder of disabled people, political dissidents, Jews, and other "racial enemies", including Action T4 as well as the Einsatzgruppen (mobile Nazi death squads) in the Nazi-occupied portions of the Soviet Union. Generally his role was to provide important technical support, but on at least one occasion he personally gassed about 20 people.

Early life August Becker was born on 17 August 1900 in Staufenberg in the German state of Hesse. He was the son of a factory owner. He was inducted into the German Army towards the end of World War I. Afterwards, Becker studied chemistry and physics at the University of Giessen where, in 1933, he earned a PhD degree in chemistry. From 1933 to 1935, he remained as an assistant at the university.

Early SS career By September 1930, Becker had joined the Nazi party, and in February 1931, he also became a member of the SS. From February to April 1934, he was occasionally active in the Gestapo office at Giessen before he finally left the university in 1935. At his trial on 4 April 1960, Becker testified that in May 1935 he was assigned to the SS-regiment "Germania" at Bad Arolsen, a small resort town near Kassel, the major city in the northern part of the German state of Hesse, in central Germany. During this time, Becker held the rank of SS-Oberscharführer and was concerned only with military affairs. He remained with this regiment up to 28 February 1938.

According to his 1960 testimony, Becker was then transferred to Berlin, to the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA), Office (Amt)VI, foreign intelligence. This agency was on the Bernerstrasse in the Grunewald. At this time Werner Best was in charge of RSHA Amt VI. Becker was responsible for the department replicating inks and photocopies.

Setting up the first gas chamber According to Becker's testimony at the trial of Werner Heyde, the first medical director of Action T4, in the first half January 1940, Becker drove to the Brandenburg institute, where buildings had been prepared specially for this purpose. An area resembling a shower room with shower heads was laid out, about 3 meters by 5 meters in floor size, with a ceiling about three meters high.

A pipe ran around the walls of the room, and in the pipe were small holes, out of which the carbon monoxide gas flowed. The gas bottles stood outside the area and were already attached to the supply pipe. The assembly of the plant was accomplished by a mechanic of the SS-principal office Berlin. The gas-tight entrance door (Gasdichttür) included an observation port through which the behavior of the delinquents (Delinquenten) could be observed during the course of the gassing. Becker watched through the observation port. After about one minute, the victims fell down and lay on top of one another. Becker said he saw no scenes or tumult. After a further five minutes the area was aired out. At this point, using specially designed stretchers, SS personnel cleared the bodies out of the area and took them to the incinerators. in Ludwigshafen orders, giving KTI as the purchaser. Widmann then sent the order and supply confirmations to Becker, who was working at the Führer Chancellery arranging for their delivery to the individual institutes.

The Einsatzgruppen Killing of Jews at Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942. A woman is attempting to protect a child with her own body just before they are fired on with rifles at close range.

In October 1941, Becker was used again in the Central Reich Security Office and assigned to department II D 3 A under Friedrich Pradel. This was responsible for the Kraftfahrwesen of the state police. The director of department D (technical affairs), SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff, assigned Becker in December 1941 the inspection of the gas vans with the Einsatzgruppen, a Nazi bureaucratic term which technically meant "Special Task Group". In fact, the Einsatzgruppen were Nazi killing squads that roved about Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe and organized the mass murder of Jews prior to the invention of the death camps. These included, among others, Gypsies, communists, and especially Jews. While there were some variations (see Friedrich Jeckeln), typically the way this was done was to have a trench dug by prisoners of war, with the local population of "undesirables" rounded up by intimidation or force, sometimes with the aid of local collaborators, and then they would be shot with one bullet per victim by an SS man. In this manner, and with the aid of a good number of people to catch, guard, and force-march the victims to the killing site, 10 or 12 shooters could kill 12,000 people in a single day.

Gas van operations A destroyed Magirus-Deutz van found in 1945 in Koło (Kolo), Poland, not far from the Kulmhof (Chelmno) extermination camp. The same type of van was used by the Nazis for suffocation, with the exhaust fumes diverted into the sealed rear compartment where the victims were locked in. This particular van has not been modified yet. To lessen the psychological impact on the killers of the one-on-one style of killing that had characterized Einsatzgruppen operations, the SS, at the direction of Heinrich Himmler, invented the gas van, a type of mobile gas chamber consisting of a van or truck with an air-tight cargo area capable of carrying a number of people. The exhaust pipe of the van could be set to exhaust into the cargo area, so that when the van was loaded with victims, and the cargo door closed and locked, all that was needed was to drive down a road for a time while the carbon monoxide in the exhaust gas killed the people in the van. Once this process was finished, the bodies were pulled out, and the van driven on to another location to kill another group of people.

In practice, however, it was more difficult to carry out van killings than the original theory had anticipated. Becker was assigned to solve the problems. He later testified that when, in December 1941, he was transferred to Rauff's command, Rauff explained to Becker that the plan was to gas people rather than shoot them, because the psychological burden of so many shootings could no longer be borne by the killers. Rauff told Becker that the gas vans and drivers had already arrived at the Einsatzgruppe locations or they were on their way. Rauff assigned Becker to investigate the gas van procedures used by the Einsatzgruppen. Specifically, Becker was to ensure the mass killings (Massentötungen) made in the gas vans were conducted efficiently. In the middle of December 1941, Becker drove to Riga to inspect the gas vans used by Einsatzgruppe A. On 4 or 5 January 1942, Becker, on the direction from Rauff, moved on to Einsatzgruppe D in the south, which was commanded by Otto Ohlendorf near Simferopol. It took Becker about three weeks to get there. Becker stayed with Einsatzgruppe D until the beginning of April 1942, when he returned to Einsatzgruppe A at Riga.

Becker worried however not only about the technology of the gas vans, but was also concerned about their camouflage as well as the physical and moral health of the SS troops carrying out the execution procedure. Thus he reported on 16 May 1942 from Kiev to Rauff:

I ordered the vans of Einsatzgruppe D to be camouflaged as house-trailers by putting one set of window shutters on each side of the small van and two on each side of the larger vans, such as one often sees on farm-houses in the country. The vans became so well-known, that not only the authorities, but also the civilian population called the van "death van", as soon as one of these vehicles appeared. It is my opinion, the van cannot be kept secret for any length of time, not even camouflaged....

Because of the rough terrain and the indescribable road and highway conditions the caulkings and rivets loosen in the course of time. I was asked if in such cases the vans should be brought to Berlin for repair. Transportation to Berlin would be much too expensive and would demand too much fuel. In order to save those expenses I ordered them to have smaller leaks soldered and if that should no longer be possible, to notify Berlin immediately by radio, that Pol. Nr ............. is out of order. Besides that I ordered that during application of gas all the men were to be kept as far away from the vans as possible, so they should not suffer damage to their health by the gas which eventually would escape. I should like to take this opportunity to bring the following to your attention: several commands have had the unloading after the application of gas done by their own men. I brought to the attention of the commanders of those S.K. concerned the immense psychological injuries and damages to their health which that work can have for those men, even if not immediately, at least later on. The men complained to me about head-aches which appeared after each unloading. Nevertheless they don't want to change the orders, because they are afraid prisoners called for that work, could use an opportune moment to flee. To protect the men from these damages, I request orders be issued accordingly.

In this letter, Becker criticized also the incorrect execution of the gassings: The application of gas usually is not undertaken correctly. In order to come to an end as fast as possible, the driver presses the accelerator to the fullest extent. By doing that the persons to be executed suffer death from suffocation and not death by dozing off as was planned. My directions now have proved that by correct adjustment of the levers death comes faster and the prisoners fall asleep peacefully. Distorted faces and excretions, such as could be seen before, are no longer noticed. 97,000, with no down-time on the vehicles." Becker was condemned to ten years prison, but on 15 July 1960, due to his bad state of health he was released from detention and admitted to the home for the elderly at Butzbach. When in 1967, the State Criminal Court in Stuttgart sent a summons to Becker, it turned out that Becker had been taken out of the Butzbach home on 3 January 1966 by persons unknown, and his current whereabouts could not be determined. On 16 June 1967, the Baden-Wuerttemberg state criminal police agency issued a bulletin to be on the look out for Becker. By then, however, Becker had been checked into another nursing home, where he remained in a state of almost complete mental and physical breakdown. August Becker died on 31 December 1967.