Walter Reder

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Walter Reder

SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Reder (February 4, 1915 - April 26, 1991) was a German Waffen-SS officer who served with the 3.SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf and the 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS. He was a Knight's Cross and German Cross in Gold winner. After the war he was convicted of war crimes in Italy.

Walter Reder was born in Freiwaldau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary, in the today's Czech Republic. He joined the SS on February 9, 1933 as a former member of the Hitler Youth. He graduated 60th in his class from the SS-Führerschule Braunschweig in 1936 and went on to command various elements of the 3rd Waffen-SS Totenkopf Division during World War II. He lost his left arm during the Third Battle of Kharkov, in March 1943.

In 1943, Reder became the commander of the SS-Panzer-Aufklärungsabteilung 16 of the 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS which committed war crimes in the Marzabotto area of Italy in September 1944.

Reder was extradited to Italy in May 1948 for war crimes. He was tried by an Italian military court in Bologna and sentenced to life imprisonment at Gaeta fortress prison, south of Naples, on October 1951 for ordering the destruction of town of Marzabotto and other villages near Bologna in Aug-Sept 1944 during anti-partisan sweeps and for ordering the execution of 2,700 Italian civilians in Tuscany and Emilia during the same period.

Reder expressed profound repentance in a December 1984 letter to the citizens of Marzabotto. He was released from prison on January 24, 1985 and died in Vienna, Austria in 1991.