English source-aligned edition

Erich Naumann

convicted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial and executed in 1951 1905–1951

Erich Naumann served as commander of Einsatzgruppe B and earlier commander of Einsatzgruppe VI. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Poznań region, occupied Belarus and western Russia through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.

Crimes against humanity

Confirmed findings

Naumann commanded Einsatzgruppe VI in the Poznań region during the 1939 invasion of Poland and later took command of Einsatzgruppe B in November 1941.
Under his command Einsatzgruppe B carried out mass shootings and gas-van killings of Jews, Soviet prisoners and people classified as communists or partisans.
The Einsatzgruppen Trial convicted him of war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership in the criminal SS and SD.

Place in the chain of responsibility

Naumann held operational command over mobile killing units in two major phases of German occupation violence. The whole operational record of Einsatzgruppe B extended beyond his term, so group totals and killings he specifically admitted must remain differentiated.

Key events and mechanisms

Einsatzgruppe VI operations during Aktion Tannenberg in the Poznań region in 1939
mass shootings in the Smolensk, Mogilev and Minsk regions under Einsatzgruppe B

No victim-count ranking

The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.

Postwar accountability

An American military tribunal sentenced Naumann to death in April 1948. After clemency requests failed, he was hanged at Landsberg Prison on 7 June 1951.

Limits of the evidence

Einsatzgruppe B killed more than 130,000 people over its entire activity, while Naumann admitted responsibility for more than 17,000 killings around Smolensk. These measures overlap but are not interchangeable as an individual total.

Sources

The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.