Allegiance Nazi Germany Name Walter Reder | Years of service 1934 - 1945 | |
 | ||
Rank Sturmbannfuhrer (Major) Unit 3. SS-Division Totenkopf, 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsfuhrer-SS Awards Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross | ||
Walter Reder (4 February 1915 – 26 April 1991) was an Austrian SS commander and war criminal during World War II. He served with the SS Division Totenkopf and the SS Division Reichsführer-SS. He and the unit under his command committed the Marzabotto massacre in Italy in 1944. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes in Italy.
Marzabotto massacre
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, on the coast north of Naples, on October 1951 for ordering the destruction of town of Marzabotto and other villages near Bologna in Aug-Sept 1944 during so-called anti-partisan sweeps and for ordering the execution of 2,700 Italian civilians in Tuscany and Emilia during the same period.
The citizens of Marzabotto and survivors of the massacre voted 237-1 against freeing Reder. Local officials had stated that as many as 1,830 civilians died in massacres in and around Marzabatto.
Years later, a group of SS men whom Reder had commanded in 1944 were tried and convicted for their role in the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre. Their convictions and sentences, however, were in absentia.
Reder was paroled in January 1985, after which he returned to Austria. He died in 1991.
