[2] He participated in the Kapp Putsch in 1920 and, in 1922, he joined the Nazi Party Ortsgruppe (local group) in Erfurt (membership number 43,870) and the Viking League.
[4] Following the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Schöngarth fled to Coburg to avoid a charge of treason but eventually returned to Erfurt and was granted amnesty.
[1] By 1924, Schöngarth's involvement with the Nazi Party waned, he briefly served in the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 1/15 in Gießen, and then enrolled at Leipzig University, majoring in economics and law.
[5] He passed his second state legal examination in June 1932 and worked as an Assessor and assistant magistrate in Magdeburg, Erfurt and Torgau.
[7] Advanced to senior government councilor (Oberregierungsrat) in April 1939, his next assignment, from December 1939 to January 1941, was as the Inspector for the Security Police (SiPo) and SD in Wehrkreis (military district) IV, headquartered in Dresden.
On 20 November 1940, he was named to succeed Bruno Streckenbach as the Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD [de] (Commander of SiPo and SD) in the General Government, and he transferred to Kraków in January 1941 to work under Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger.
Schöngarth was responsible for the murders of approximately 10,000 Polish Jews between July and September 1941 and the massacre of Lwów professors and their families behind the frontlines during Operation Barbarossa in the Soviet Union.
[6] The Wannsee Conference, called to formulate the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, took place during a fraught political atmosphere in the General Government.
They had major disagreements over control of the police forces, over Jewish policy and over the issue of the protection of German ethnicity and culture.
Heydrich, the conference organizer, wanted to ensure that the meeting ran smoothly and came to an agreement with regard to the planned actions.
He opted, instead, to invite Schöngarth who was less likely to clash with the representative of the General Government, Frank's deputy, State Secretary Josef Buhler.
[10] Schöngarth attended the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, along with SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Lange, representing the Reichskommissariat Ostland, who also had participated in the Holocaust with Einsatzgruppe A.
The official minutes of the meeting (Wannsee Protocol) do not record any comments from Schöngarth who, given his recent Einsatzgruppe experience, certainly knew exactly what was being proposed and raised no objections.
Despite the euphemisms used in the minutes, its author, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, testified at his trial in 1961 that the participants: "were discussing the subject quite bluntly, quite differently from the language which I had to use later in the record.
[3] After a short training period, he was sent as a company commander with the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division to Lamia in occupied Greece, where he remained until July 1944 conducting anti-partisan operations.
[14] From early July 1944 until the German surrender, Schöngarth was again made the Commander of SiPo and SD forces, this time at The Hague in the occupied Netherlands under HSSPF SS-Obergruppenführer Hanns Albin Rauter.
[15] After Rauter was seriously wounded in an ambush by members of the Dutch resistance on the night of 6-7 March 1945, Schongarth immediately ordered mass executions in reprisal.
After an investigation, British occupation authorities charged Schöngarth with the murder of Americo S. Galle, an American pilot.
Obersturmführer Friederich Beeck (born 5 August 1886), the head of the Enschede villa, supervised the execution, choosing a burial site and ordering a grave to be dug.
[16] Schöngarth, Beeck, Knop, Gernoth, Hadler, Lebing, and Boehm were tried by a British military court in Burgsteinfurt in February 1946.