Karl von Eberstein (14 January 1894-10 February 1979) was a German noble and NSDAP member who served as chief of the Munich Police under Nazi Germany.
Biography[]
Karl von Eberstein was born in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, German Empire in 1894, and he served as an Imperial German Army artillery battery commander during World War I. After the war, he fought with the Freikorps in Silesia, and he joined the NSDAP in 1922 before leaving after the failure of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch; he rejoined the party in 1925. He became the 1,386th member of the SS, and he was a member of the SA from 1930 to 1933. He introduced Reinhard Heydrich to Heinrich Himmler, resulting in Heydrich's rise to power, and he went on to serve in the Reichstag and as president of the Munich Police from 1938 to 1945, presiding over Kristallnacht in 1938 and the Dachau concentration camp. He was dismissed for defeatism in 1945, as he refused to liquidate the camps under his supervision. He later served as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials, and he died in 1979 at the age of 85.