Ludolf "Bubi" von Alvensleben – The Executioner Who Escaped the Gallows

Ludolf "Bubi" von Alvensleben, a Nazi criminal and SS-Gruppenführer, has been the subject of a new biography detailing his evasion of justice. Alvensleben held the rank of SS-Gruppenführer and lieutenant general of police, playing a direct role in the mass extermination of the Polish population in the Pomeranian and Kuyavian regions in 1939. He commanded the Selbstschutz Westpreussen, a formation estimated by historians to be responsible for the deaths of 20,000 to 30,000 residents of the pre-war Pomeranian Voivodeship, primarily Poles and Jews.

His brutality extended beyond Poland. Alvensleben later served in the occupied Crimea, where he ruthlessly suppressed the partisan movement. The new biography, compiled by Filip Gańczak using archives from Poland, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Britain, Italy, Austria, and Argentina, aims to shed light on the life of this "Polonophobe" and Nazi criminal who escaped the gallows.

Alvensleben's actions in September 1939, following the German occupation of Bydgoszcz, included public executions of Polish hostages in the Old Market Square. His command of the Selbstschutz, a paramilitary organization composed largely of ethnic Germans from Poland, was instrumental in carrying out widespread terror and murder in the region. The book promises a comprehensive look at his wartime activities and his post-war life, where he successfully avoided accountability for his atrocities.