Franz Walter Stahlecker

Franz Walter Stahlecker (10 October 1900–23 March 1942) was Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF: Higher SS and Police Leader) of Reichskommissariat Ostland. Stahlecker commanded Einsatzgruppe A, the most "efficient" (i.e., murderous) of the four Einsatzgruppen (Nazi death squads) active in German–occupied Eastern Europe.

Born in Sternenfels in 1900, he joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and in 1934 was appointed head of the Gestapo in the German state of Württemberg. He was then assigned to the main office of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and in 1938 became SD chief of the Danube district (Vienna), a post he retained even after being promoted to SS-Standartenführer. Differences of opinion with Reinhard Heydrich motivated him to move to the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), after which he held posts in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under SS-Brigadeführer Karl Hermann Frank and, in 1940, in Norway, where he was promoted to SS-Oberführer.

In June 1941 Stahlecker became SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei and took over as commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe A in the hope of furthering his career with the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), Nazi Germany's security police headquarters. Einsatzgruppe A followed Army Group North and operated in the Baltic states and areas of Russia up to Leningrad. Its mission was to hunt down and annihilate Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and other "undesirables": by winter 1941, Stahlecker reported to Berlin that Einsatzgruppe A had murdered some 249,420 Jews.

At the end of November 1941, Stahlecker was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader of Reichskommissariat Ostland, which extended over Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. He was killed on March 23, 1942, in a clash with Soviet partisans at Krasnogvardeisk, Russia.