pencil sketch of a Nazi by Dr K Prabhakar Rao

FRANZ SCHWEDE COBARG. NAZI.........

Franz Reinhold Schwede (5 March 1888 – 19 October 1960)[1] was a Nazi German politician, Lord Mayor of Coburg and Gauleiter of Pomerania. An early supporter of Adolf Hitler in Coburg, Schwede used intimidation and propaganda to help elect the first Nazi-majority local government in Germany. This contributed to a personality cult surrounding Schwede and he became known as "Franz Schwede-Coburg". During World War II he ordered secret executions of the infirm and mass deportations of Jews. He also played a key role in abandoning the Pomeranian civilian population to the advancing Red Army, while escaping their fate himself. On 13 May 1945, Schwede was captured by the British Army and once again ended up in custody as a prisoner of war. Interned until 1947, he was tried for war crimes in a Bielefeld court and on 25 November 1948 sentenced to nine years in prison for membership in the SA-Führerkorps. On April 7, 1951 a court in Coburg sentenced him to another ten years' imprisonment on 52 counts of abuse of power and grievous bodily harm that he participated in during the terrors of March, 1933. His sentence was commuted to probation on 24 January 1956 on grounds of ill health and he died four years later at the age of 72 in Coburg.[