Ernst Achenbach

Ernst Achenbach (9 April 1909, Siegen, Westphalia – 2 December 1991, Essen) was a German lawyer, diplomat and politician of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as a member of the Bundestag (1957–1976), as a Member of the European Parliament (1964–1977), as Vice Chairman of FDP (1971–1972) and as Vice President of the Liberal group in the European Parliament.

Achenbach was a member of the Nazi Party prior to 1945 and served in the German Embassy in Paris during World War II, where he was responsible for rounding up 2,000 Jews as hostages.

Achenbach, a Protestant by faith, attended High School in Gelsenkirchen. Subsequently, he studied law in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg and Bonn. After the first state examination in 1931, he pursued further studies and graduated in 1936, and began working as Managing Director of the Adolf Hitler Fund, involved with the collection of donations. He became a formal member of the Nazi party in 1937.

Achenbach joined the German foreign service in 1939 and served at the German Embassy in Paris. During the German occupation of France (1940–1944), he was from June 1940 to May 1943, head of the embassy's Political Department, and a close collaborator of German ambassador Otto Abetz. In that framework, Achenbach was also responsible for implementing the deportation of the Jews. In 1944/45 he was a soldier and after the war he led American investigators to believe that the German embassy in France had been a stronghold of the conspiracy against Hitler.

From 1946, Achenbach worked as a lawyer in Essen, and successfully defended both Alexander von Falkenhausen and Eggert Reeder at their trial for war crimes in Belgium in 1951.

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