Page 448 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

448 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Dr. Franz Riedweg and the Enforcement of non-German
‘Germanic Civilians’ to SS Standards during the Second
World War

MARCO WYSS

intrOductiOn
The life of Franz Riedweg, a Swiss Medical Doctor from Lucerne and labelled the ‘most
successful Hitler Swiss’ and ‘Himmler’s advisor on Swiss matters’, is only superficially
known. This former Pan-European, after having temporarily struggled for the Swiss extreme
right wing party the National Front, joined in the second half of the 1930s the Swiss National
Action against Communism (Action nationale suisse contre le communisme) of former Fed-
eral Councillor Jean-Mary Musy. Through the latter organisation’s anticommunist network
and not – as often stated – through his marriage with Marshal von Blomberg’s daughter, he
could join the SS in 1938 with the rank of an officer without major difficulties. During his
whole lifetime, anti-bolshevism was the ideological and political principle which seemed to
be the driving force for his actions .
1
As I have already discussed the lack of attention Riedweg has received by Swiss histori-
ans and his efforts regarding the recruitment of non-German volunteers for the Waffen-SS ,
2
in this article I would like to emphasise another aspect of his zealous service in the SS: the
enforcement of non-German ‘Germanic’ civilians to SS standards. In a total war like the
Second World War, a large variety and amount of resources are mobilised in order to win the
war. In regard to the non-German ‘Germanics’ in occupied Europe, the Nazis not only tried
to enforce them in order to win the war, but also according to an ideological design, a ‘Ger-
manic Reich’. The question was, however, which form this Reich would have. Riedweg saw
the future Europe as a ‘Confederation of Germanic tribes, with the Germanic countries bor-
dering Germany allied to the Reich, but without political dependence’ . Himmler seemed
3
to agree, because Riedweg later recalled the Reichsführer-SS saying: ‘You can be reassured:
it does not matter at all if the President of the coming Europe will be a Swiss, a German or
a Dutch!’ .
4
Riedweg came to the position to influence the enforcement of non-German ‘Germanic’ ci-
vilians after having participated as a medical doctor in the campaign against France and
after having been somehow ‘prepared’ for it through ‘internships’ in the Reichssicherheit-
shauptamt (RSHA) (Reich Security Head Office) and the Auswärtige Amt (AA) (Foreign

1 Wyss, Marco, « Un Suisse au service de la SS. Dr. Franz Riedweg et le « travail germanique de la SS », in
Revue Suisse d’Histoire, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2007, pp. 417-418.
2 Ibid., pp. 418-419, 423-429.
3 Seidler, Franz W., Die Kollaboration, München; Berlin: Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1995, p. 451.
4 AfZ (Archiv für Zeitgeschichte) ETH Zürich, Nachlass Riedweg / 3, Das Spruchgericht Hiddesen 20.
Spruchkammer, Urteil in dem Spruchgerichtsverfahren gegen den ehemaligen Zivilinternierten Dr. med.
Franz Riedweg, 18. November 1948.