Ludwig Ruckdeschel

Ludwig Ruckdeschel (15 March 1907 – 8 November 1986) was the Acting Nazi Gauleiter of Bayreuth during the final month of the Gau's existence before the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945. Before this, from 1933, he served as the Deputy Gauleiter, first to Hans Schemm, and then to Fritz Wächtler, whom he had executed on orders by Martin Bormann. From 1933 to 1945 he was also a member of the German Parliament, the Reichstag.

During the Second World War Ruckdeschel served in the Waffen-SS, rising to the rank of Obersturmbannführer. After the war he was arrested in 1947 and sentenced to 13 years in prison but released in 1952.

Early life Ruckdeschel was born in Bayreuth, then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria within the German Empire in 1907. After finishing his education he became a merchant.

Nazi Party career Ruckdeschel joined a nationalist youth organisation in 1921 and the SA in 1923. He was a founding member of the Ortsgruppe (local branch) of the Nazi Party in Bayreuth in February 1925 and became a close protégé of Ortsgruppenleiter Hans Schemm. He served as the Ortsgruppe secretary 1926–1927. From 1928 onward he became a permanent employee of the Gau administration. In this role he was responsible for the publication of right-wing books and newspapers.

On 1 February 1933 Ruckdeschel became Deputy Gauleiter of the newly formed Gau Bavarian East March (Bayerische Ostmark) again under Schemm. (This Gau was renamed Gau Bayreuth in June 1942.) He also was elected a member of the Reichstag in November 1933 from electoral constituency 25, Lower Bavaria–Upper Palatinate and held this seat until 1945.

In September 1934 Ruckdeschel transferred from the SA to the SS, joining as a Sturmhauptführer but receiving frequent promotions after this. With the death of Hans Schemm in a plane crash on 5 March 1935, Ruckdeschel temporarily became Acting Gauleiter for nine months until Fritz Wächtler was appointed as permanent Gauleiter on 5 December 1935.

Post-war life In post-war Germany Ruckdeschel was arrested in August 1947 and sentenced to eight years in jail the following year for attempted manslaughter and negligence for the execution of two citizens of Regensburg, one of them the preacher Johann Maier, who had advocated the peaceful surrender of the city. The sentence was expanded to 13 years in 1949. Released in 1952 he worked for Volkswagen until 1968 and died in Wolfsburg in 1986.