Bruno Sattler dating history

Details

Bruno Sattler (17 April 1898 - 15 October 1972) became a member of the German National Socialist ("Nazi") Party during the closing months of 1931. After the Hitler government took power at the start of 1933 he joined the "Geheime Staatspolizei" ("Gestapo"), achieving a succession of promotions during the ensuing decade. In 1942 he was posted to Belgrade with the rank of "SS-Sturmbannführer", as Gestapo Police Chief for occupied Serbia. He remained in post till October 1944, when the German occupation of the territory was ended. He turned up with a false name in Berlin during 1947, but was evidently identified. In October 1947 he was abducted by the Soviet security services from what later became known as West Berlin, and taken to the eastern part of the city in the Soviet occupation zone. His family heard nothing more from him and in 1949 he was pronounced dead. He had actually been detained, probably in the occupied zone that became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in October 1949. Several major atrocities committed during the twelve Hitler years were associated with Sattler, and it became known much later that in 1952 he faced trial "for his Gestapo activities". It was only by chance that a year later his wife learned that he was still alive. By that time he had been sentence to life imprisonment by the Greifswald District Court. According to some sources, the circumstances of Sattler's death in the prison hospital at the jail in Leipzig-Meusdorf in 1972 never became clear. Elsewhere it is stated that he was shot dead in his prison cell.