Obersturmbannführer

SS-Obersturmbannführer Manfred Schönfelder of the Waffen-SS

SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss at Auschwitz.

Obersturmbannführer was a paramilitary Nazi Party rank used by both the SA and the SS. It was created in May 1933 to fill the need for an additional field grade officer rank above Sturmbannführer as the SA expanded. It became an SS rank at the same time. Translated as "senior assault (or storm) unit leader", Obersturmbannführer was junior to Standartenführer and was the equivalent to Oberstleutnant (lieutenant colonel) in the German Army. The insignia for Obersturmbannführer was four silver pips and a stripe, centered on the left collar of an SS/SA uniform. The rank also displayed the shoulder boards of a Wehrmacht Oberstleutnant and was the highest SS/SA rank to display unit insignia on the opposite collar.

Notable recipients

Amongst the more notorious holders of the rank of Obersturmbannführer were Rudolf Höss, Adolf Eichmann, Herbert Kappler, Joachim Peiper, and Otto Skorzeny. Höss was commandant of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, whilst Eichmann is generally regarded as a key architect of the Nazis' Endlösung (Final Solution) policy in which Auschwitz played so major a role. Herbert Kappler was the head of German police and security services (Oberbefehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) in Rome who conducted the infamous Ardeatine massacre. Joachim Peiper was the commander of the eponymous Kampfgruppe responsible for the Malmedy massacre during the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge.

Eichmann was promoted to Obersturmbannführer in 1940 and was listed as such in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference that began the Endlösung. During Eichmann's trial for war crimes in 1962, chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner drew attention to the significance and responsibility of Eichmann's Obersturmbannführer rank when, in response to Eichmann's claim that he was merely a clerk obeying orders, Hausner asked him, “Were you an Obersturmbannführer or an office girl?”

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, however, Hannah Arendt disputes the notion that Obersturmbannführer was a rank of significance, pointing out that Eichmann spent the war "dreaming" about promotion to Standartenführer. Arendt also points out that "... people like Eichmann, who had risen from the ranks, were never permitted to advance beyond a lieutenant colonel [i.e., the rank of Obersturmbannführer] except at the front." Another who obtained the rank was Karl Küpfmüller, a German electrical engineer and post-war university lecturer in the fields of communications engineering, measurement and control technology, acoustics, information theory and theoretical electrical engineering.

Insignia

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  Shoulder mark

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  Gorget patches

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  Military camouflage

Junior Rank Sturmbannführer

SS rank and SA rank Obersturmbannführer

Senior Rank Standartenführer

See also

• Table of ranks and insignia of the Waffen-SS