He was the leader of Einsatzkommando 5, part of Einsatzgruppe C, which was attached to the Army Group South during the planned invasion of Soviet Union in 1941, and operated in the occupied territories of south-eastern Poland and Ukrainian SSR committing mass killings of civilian population, mostly men of Jewish ethnicity, under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Otto Rasch.

Around this time, many German youths who were not old enough to have served in the war enlisted in the Freikorps, hoping to prove themselves as patriots and as men by crushing the revolution.

[5] Schulz participated in the suppression of the Spartacist uprising as a member of the 3rd Guards Regiment,[6] and was discharged later that year.

In June 1933, the intelligence division was changed into the Gestapo, and in November, Schulz was appointed the deputy chief.

[10] Numerous colleagues testified that Schulz kept his ties with Nazism separate from his professional job, to the extent that they were unaware of his connections.

As late as November 1938, he spoke out against antisemitic excesses and prosecuted Nazis and police officers for illegal persecutions and looting.

Even as he served in the proto-Einsatzgruppen while establishing Gestapo posts in the Sudetenland, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Schulz attempted to maintain moral limits.

For example, in early 1941, some of the students at his SiPo school were detailed to Einsatzgruppen units in Russia, returning after a few months.

The Senior SS and police leader for occupied Eastern Russia, Friedrich Jeckeln, ordered that all Jews not engaged in forced labor, including women and children, were to be killed.

"After about two weeks' stay in Berdichev the commando leaders were ordered to report to Zhitomir, where the staff of Dr. Rasch was quartered.

"[13] Shortly thereafter, Schulz questioned both Bruno Streckenbach and Reinhard Heydrich on this point; it was confirmed that this order had come from Hitler.

He was promoted to SS-Oberführer, and appointed deputy to Erwin Rösener, SS and Police Leader and commander of SS-Oberabschnitt Alpenland from 1 to 28 May 1944.

"[15] Arrested by the Allies, Schulz wrote a letter to Lucius D. Clay, deputy to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, requesting clemency.

Lastly, Schulz said he'd freed 2000 detainees held in a stadium in Lviv after witnessing them being abused by Wehrmacht troops.

There were hundreds of Jews walking along the street with blood pouring from their faces, holes in their heads, their hands broken and their eyes hanging out of their sockets.

"While the court accepted Schulz's release of the detainees, it cast doubt on his defense for the executions, saying the documents listed the shootings as reprisals.

The court also pointed out that while Schulz was on duty in Russia on 9 August 1941, his men had shot 400 Jews, described as mostly "saboteurs and political functionaries".

[1] Another document stated that between 31 August and 6 September 1941, Schulz's men reported the "liquidation of 90 political officials, 72 saboteurs and looters, and 161 Jews."

My so-called 'Anti-Semitic' attitude only went to that extent as the immoral influence of the Jews which I saw in my native country, in policy, economics, and culture, which had great power here and which limited the development of our own forces.

He claimed that following Kristallnacht, as the chief of the Gestapo in Bremen, he had returned all of the stolen property to a certain Jewish jewelry shop owner named "Fischbein".

Schulz's lawyer claimed that he had a more modest opinion of Jews, but then added that, "It goes without saying that he wanted to reduce again the tremendous influence of Jewry in his Fatherland to normal proportions."

The judges responded that this logic is what led to the Holocaust:"It was just this spirit of reduction to what the Nazis called 'normal proportions' which brought about the excesses in Germany leading to disfranchisement, appropriation of property, concentration camp confinement, and worse.

However, he was spared execution since he had made an effort to oppose the "intolerable situation", then resigned when he could not stop what was happening.

[4] In testimony at the trial of Bruno Streckenbach in the 1970s, Schulz said serving in the Einsatzgruppen was entirely voluntary:"I never knew of any cases where members or heads of the Einsatzkommandos acted in the same way as I did.

"[3]While in prison, numerous German Social Democrats, including press spokesman for the Senate of Bremen Alfred Faust, lobbied on Schulz's behalf.

Faust was expelled to Berlin with his Jewish wife, and housed under "Gestapo supervision" with the coffee entrepreneur Ludwig Roselius.

During his time, Faust repeatedly traveled across Germany in a company car to contact other well-known Social Democrats.