Obersturmbannführer

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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 Storm Unit Leader”, Obersturmbannführer was junior to Standartenführer and was the equivalent to Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel) in the German Army.

Amongst the more notorious holders of the rank of Obersturmbannführer were Rudolf Höss and Adolf Eichmann. Höss was commandant of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, whilst Eichmann is generally regarded as a key architect of the Nazi's Endlösung policy in which Auschwitz came to play so major a role.

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 colonelcy [i.e., the rank of Obersturmbannführer] except at the front."^[1]

A highly decorated Obersturmbannführer of the Waffen-SS. Note the Knight's Cross with swords and oak leaves.

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.

1. ^ Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem, Penguin Classics (edition 2006). p 147.