Lange entered Poland with '' Einsatzgruppe '' Naumann ( EG VI ) during the September campaign . On 9 November 1939 , following a Nazi German victory , Lange was promoted to the rank of SS - '' Untersturmführer '' ( 2nd lieutenant ) in occupied Poland and posted in charge of the Gestapo in occupied Poznań . In the beginning of 1940 he assumed command of an SS-Sonderkommando Lange '' named after him and tasked with the murder of mentally ill in Wartheland area ( Wielkopolska ) under the direction of notorious Holocaust perpetrators Ernst Damzog and Wilhelm Koppe . Lange served with '' Einsatzgruppe '' VI during Operation Tannenberg . Already by mid-1940 , he and his men were responsible for the murder of about 1,100 patients in Owińska , 2,750 patients at Kościan , 1,558 patients and 300 Poles at Działdowo , and hundreds of Poles at Fort VII where the mobile gas-chamber ( '' Einsatzwagen '' ) was invented . Their earlier hospital victims were usually shot in the back of the neck . The unit , equipped with a gas van , shuttled between hospitals , picking up patients and killing them with carbon monoxide
Operation Tannenberg
Operation Tannenberg
Herbert Lange