and early 1945 Stettin's industrial and residential areas were hit. Despite this, the province was regarded as "safe" compared to other parts of the Third Reich and it became a shelter for evacuees from hard hit Berlin and the industrial areas of western Germany. On 25 September 1944, Schwede was made commander of the Nazi Volkssturm forces in his Gau. Hastily organized and poorly equipped, his units had the third worst casualty figures in the Reich. Pomerania finally turned into a battlefield on 26 January 1945, when Red Army tanks entered the province near Schneidemühl during the East Pomeranian Offensive. Schwede believed in victory up until the very end, so evacuation orders for the civilian population were issued either too late or not at all. He even ordered authorities to repel any flight attempts as "defeatist". However, even as the Soviets advanced, he managed to get himself onto a ship out of Sassnitz on 4 March 1945 in time to escape towards the direction of Schleswig-Holstein. The official post-war West German Schieder commission estimated civilian losses in Schwede's province at 440,000 dead. Imprisonment and death 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 underwent denazification procedures. 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 7 April 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. See also History of Pomerania (1933–1945) References Sources Carl-Christian H. Dressel: Anmerkungen zur Justiz in Coburg von der Errichtung des Landgerichts Coburg bis zur Entnazifizierung. In: Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung 1997, Coburg 1997. Kyra T. Inachin: Der Gau Pommern. Eine preußische Provinz als NS-Gau. In: Jürgen John, Horst Möller, Thomas Schaarschmidt (Hrsg.): Die NS-Gaue. Regionale Mittelinstanzen im zentralistischen "Führerstaat“. München 2007, S. 280–293. Joachim Lilla, Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: Statisten in Uniform Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, . External links 1888 births 1960 deaths Aktion T4 personnel Gauleiters German newspaper editors Holocaust perpetrators in Germany Imperial German