Ludolf Jakob von Alvensleben (9 August 1899 – 23 August 1953) was a German SS-Standartenführer who during the Second World War served as a senior staff member of Operation Reinhard, by which Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler planned to systematically murder the Jews of Europe. Alvensleben ended the war as the SS and Police Leader (SSPF) for Adria-West in Northern Italy/South Tyrol. He avoided prosecution after the war and died in an automobile accident.
Family
Ludolf "Ludi" Jakob von Alvensleben was a member of the House of Alvensleben, one of the oldest German aristocratic families. He was born in Wittenmoor, then in the Prussian Province of Saxony, the third of the four sons of Ludolf Udo von Alvensleben (de) (1852–1923). His oldest brother, Busso, died in 1918, in the First World War. His remaining older brother Udo (1897-1962) was a famed art historian and diarist.
His younger brother Wichard (1902-1982) and their cousin, Hauptmann Gebhard von Alvensleben were Wehrmacht officers who helped rescue 139 prominent hostages from members of the SS, who had escorted their truck convoy from Dachau concentration camp to Niederdorf in South Tyrol, during the last days of the Second World War. The prominent hostages, who had been gathered from various camps and prisons throughout Germany, included Werner von Alvensleben, who remained at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, when his convoy stopped there on the way to Dachau. .The other hostages were transported, to the Dachau concentration camp before being collectively sent on to South Tyrol. As SS und Polizeiführer Adria West (SSPF), Ludolf Jakob von Alvensleben was the most senior SS and SD Officer active in the area at the time. Why Wichard and Gebhard von Alvensleben did not identify themselves to the threatening SS/SD prison guards, remains a mystery.
Early life
Like his two older brothers, Ludolf Jakob von Alvensleben attended school at the Knights Academy (de) in Brandenburg an der Havel until he volunteered for service in the First World War, joining the 10th (Magdeburg) Hussars, headquartered in Stendal. He was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class, was discharged as a 19-year-old Leutnant of reserves and was then active in a Freikorps company. He next took over the management of the family estate, which he received as an inheritance from his father, in Plutowo, Kreis Kulm, in West Prussia. As a consequence of the German territorial losses mandated by the Treaty of Versailles, Alvensleben became one of a large number of Junkers who lost their lands to the new Polish state. He was compensated by the Weimar Republic, however, he lost this compensation in the hyperinflation that was rampant in Germany in the early 1920s. He was also involved in a Ford auto franchise in Danzig (today, Gdańsk) that went bankrupt in the Great Depression.
Financially ruined, Alvensleben returned to Saxony, became a member of the SS (SS member number 52,195) in June 1932 and joined the Nazi Party (membership number 1,313,391) in September of that year. He was assigned to the staff of SS-Abschnitt (District) VII, based in Königsberg, and was commissioned an SS-Untersturmführer on 9 November 1933. He rose rapidly through the ranks and served as an adjutant to the Reichssportführer, SA-Gruppenführer Hans von Tschammer und Osten. He was also assigned to the staff of the Reichsführer-SS from 1935 to 1936 and the SS Main Office from 1936 to 1939. His formal posting from 1939 to 1943 was with the SS Personnel Main Office. On the fifth anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power, Alvensleben was promoted to his highest rank, SS-Standartenführer.
Second World War
Poland and Russia
Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Alvensleben's familial connections to Reichsführer-SS Himmler's Personal Adjutant, SS-Oberführer Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben, resulted in his being assigned as Inspektionsführer in Danzig-West Prussia for the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, an ethnic German paramilitary unit. He reported directly to his namesake and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz commander, Ludolf-Hermann. The similar name, Selbstschutz involvement, shared fanaticism and areas of murderous activity, has resulted in the identities of both men at times being confounded by historians. Alvensleben established his headquarters on his dispossessed estate in Plutowo and exacted revenge. The cellars of the estate house became the scene for torture and murder of hundreds of Jews and ethnic Poles.