Friedrich Hildebrandt

Hildebrandt was born in Parchim, Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He entered service in the German Army on 19 April 1916 as a "Kriegsfreiwilliger" (literally, "war volunteer") and was assigned to Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 24 on the Western Front. He was severely gassed in Flanders in 1917, and wounded twice before the end of the First World War. During January 1919, he returned to Mecklenburg and joined the 1.Kompanie/Freikorps "von Brandis" (in Silesia and on the Baltic). He served there until his capture and imprisonment by the Red Army in Riga. He was later released and returned to Germany, being discharged from the German Army as a Vizefeldwebel in January, 1920. From March, 1920 to June, 1920, he was a member of the Sicherheitspolizei in Halle, with which he participated in the suppression of the "Kapp-Putsch" in March, 1920. In the wake of the Putsch, he was tried for excessive brutality against captured Spartakists in Osterfeld/Weissenfels. Although acquitted, he was dismissed from police service.

The farmworker had several positions bestowed upon him as an early Nazi Party activist: Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Mecklenburg and until 1937 also of Lübeck. After World War II ended, he was tried in the Allied Dachau Trials. He was sentenced specifically in the Airmen's Trial, for contraventions of the Hague Conventions. Friedrich Hildebrandt was then put to death at Landsberg am Lech in 1948.

• Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders Of The Nazi Party And Their Deputies, 1925–1945 (Herbert Albrecht, H. Wilhelm Huttmann), Volume 1 by Michael D. Miller and Andreas Schulz, R. James Bender Publishing, 2012.

• Newspaper clippings about Friedrich Hildebrandt in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW