„Veselý, dobrosrdečný, pevný charakter“
“Merry, Wholehearted and Strong in Character”

The Kriminalrat Heinrich Gottschling and his Service for the Gestapo

Summary/Abstract: “Merry, Wholehearted and Strong in Character” – this was how his superiors saw the Kriminalrat (Criminal Investigation Officer) Heinrich Gottschling. In fact he was a highly agile and fanatic Gestapo officer who left an especially dark mark on occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia. He worked in several key posts in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and repeatedly showed great fervour in suppressing the local resistance movement. He was also especially inventive when building up networks of informers. He was in charge of hundreds of arrested members of resistance. He sent more than a hundred men and women to their deaths or to concentration camps as the chairman or associate judge of the martial court in Brno. This article aims to reconstruct Gottschling’s career in the security apparatus of Nazi Germany and his postwar life.

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