Editing Martinez Alberto Fritz

{{Short description|Argentine Allgemeine SS officer and internal defector}}
{{Infobox military person
| name          = Martinez Alberto Fritz
| image         = Fritz.jpg
| caption       = Fritz
| birth_date    = {{Birth date|1983|7|8|df=yes}}
| birth_place   = [[Comodoro Rivadavia]], [[Argentina]]
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|2023|1|12|1983|7|8|df=yes}}
| death_place   = [[Georgetown]], [[Tanoa]]
| death_cause   = Gunshot wounds; executed by [[Jose Leandro Olave]]
| nickname      = Hund
| allegiance    = [[Tanoa Einsatzgruppen]]
| branch        = [[Allgemeine SS]]
| serviceyears  = 2001-2023
| rank          = [[Untersturmführer]]
| unit          = [[4th SS-Especiales-Sturm-Division "Heil Richard"]]
| commands      = Anti-resistance security squad in [[Georgetown]]
| relations     = [[Alejandro Mateo Fritz]] (father)<br>[[Elena Valeria Fritz]] (mother)
}}

'''Martinez Alberto Fritz''' (8 July 1983 - 12 January 2023), also known as '''Hund''', was an Argentine officer of the [[Allgemeine SS]] within the [[Tanoa Einsatzgruppen]]. He served in the [[4th SS-Especiales-Sturm-Division "Heil Richard"]] and held the rank of [[Untersturmführer]] at the time of his death.

Fritz was raised inside the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen system after his father, [[Alejandro Mateo Fritz]], was killed during [[Aktion Zentralafrika]] in 1983. He joined the regime's youth and military structures as a child and later became an Allgemeine SS officer. In January 2023, after the death of his partner [[Lucia Marisol Duarte]] and his transfer to [[Tanoa]], Fritz helped a native family escape Georgetown. He was killed by [[Jose Leandro Olave]] after refusing arrest and opening fire on Olave's soldiers.<ref name="fish-conflict">''[[Fish Conflict]]'', Vrienden Universe. Used for the January 2023 account of Fritz's death, Olave's pursuit, and the escape of the family from Georgetown.</ref>

== Early life and education ==
Fritz was born on 8 July 1983 in [[Comodoro Rivadavia]], Argentina, to [[Alejandro Mateo Fritz]] and [[Elena Valeria Fritz|Elena Valeria Fritz (nee Suarez)]]. His father was a Waffen SS officer assigned to African operations of the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen.

On 8 June 1983, when Elena Fritz was eight months pregnant, Alejandro Fritz was killed on the final day of [[Aktion Zentralafrika]]. His unit was ambushed during a heavy rainstorm at 7:00 a.m. on a forested hill near Ekona, southwest of Buea, Cameroon. The entire squad was killed. Alejandro Fritz was wounded during the ambush and attempted to crawl away from the fighting, but bled out while holding a photograph of his wife.

After his father's death, Elena Fritz received survivor subsidies from the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen government. The payments allowed her to support Fritz as her only child, but they also tied the family to the state institutions that had sent Alejandro Fritz to Cameroon. She never remarried.

Fritz entered the [[Paapjugend]] on 8 July 1993, his tenth birthday. His early training was handled through the Comodoro Rivadavia district school before he was sent for preparatory instruction connected to the Paapjugend head office in [[Georgetown]]. The program combined political indoctrination, physical training, and preparation for later military service.<ref name="paapjugend">''[[Paapjugend]]'', Vrienden Universe. Used for the organization of youth indoctrination and preparatory training under the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen.</ref>

By the late 1990s, Fritz was being prepared for service inside the SS structure. He completed initial Waffen SS induction at the Rada Tilly training depot near Comodoro Rivadavia before being selected for Allgemeine SS officer instruction. His officer education was completed at the Allgemeine SS Officerschule Georgetown, where he received administrative, security, and urban enforcement training.<ref name="allgemeine-ss">''[[Allgemeine SS]]'', Vrienden Universe. Used for the branch's role in internal security, administration, ideological supervision, recruitment, and training.</ref>

== Military career ==
Fritz enlisted in the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen on 7 July 2001, one day before his eighteenth birthday. He was assigned to security and enforcement duties before joining the [[4th SS-Especiales-Sturm-Division "Heil Richard"]]. His early career was built around discipline, loyalty to command, and competence in small-unit enforcement work.

In 2018, Fritz held the rank of Hauptscharführer. His promotion record during this period was steady but not exceptional. He was viewed as reliable by superiors and was often used for security assignments where ideological obedience was expected.

Fritz's private life began to affect his service after 2016. On 14 September 2016, he met [[Lucia Marisol Duarte]], an Argentine civilian from the Comodoro Rivadavia area. They began living together on 3 February 2018. Fritz remained an officer inside the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen system, but Duarte became the center of his life outside the organization.

Elena Fritz died from cancer on 19 April 2013. Internal medical assistance that could have prolonged her treatment was withheld. Later accounts connected the decision to hostility from officials who resented that she had accepted state subsidies after Alejandro Fritz's death while refusing to remarry or attach herself to another officer's household.

On 18 November 2022, [[Juan Jose Grenillon]] killed Lucia Marisol Duarte in front of Fritz. Duarte was pregnant at the time. The killing was connected to Grenillon's work around the [[Féminas-abteilung Nacional de Eef Paap]] and to demands made through Eef Paap's inner system. Grenillon was reportedly unaware of Duarte's pregnancy when he killed her.

The killing changed Fritz's conduct. On 24 November 2022, he was transferred to Tanoa. On 3 January 2023, he was promoted to Untersturmführer and placed in command of a small Allgemeine SS security squad in Georgetown. The assignment was connected to the expansion of anti-native operations as resistance activity increased across Tanoa in early 2023.<ref name="history-2020s">''[[History of the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen]]'', section "The 2020s", Vrienden Universe. Used for the early-2020s context of increasing internal strain, expanding resistance activity, and Fish Collective operations against the regime.</ref>

== Defection and death ==
On 9 January 2023, Fritz's squad searched a house in the Georgetown district during an operation against suspected resistance sympathizers. Inside, Fritz found a family of four: [[Jone Naivalu]], [[Mere Naivalu]], their twelve-year-old daughter [[Ana Naivalu]], and their eight-year-old son [[Tui Naivalu]]. Instead of reporting the parents and children, Fritz left the building and told the squad that the house was empty.

One soldier in the squad noticed signs that the house had been occupied but did not challenge Fritz at the scene. On 10 January 2023 at 4:55 p.m., the soldier reported the incident to a higher-ranking officer. The report eventually reached [[Jose Leandro Olave]].

By 11 January 2023, Fritz had decided to move all four Naivalus out of Georgetown. That evening, [[Mark Hugerinus Paap]] encountered the Naivalu family near a resort property close to [[Lifou]]. They told him that both parents and both children were already being helped by an SS officer named Fritz.

Later that evening, Mark found Fritz by chance at a small roadside shrine outside the village, where Fritz had stopped alone during his day off and left a match burning beside a photograph of Lucia Marisol Duarte. Mark recognized him from the family's description and approached without drawing his weapon. He named the Naivalus, warned Fritz not to betray them, and offered the harbor extraction as the only route that could get all four family members out of Georgetown. At 9:46 p.m., the two men agreed that Fritz would move the family through the city, while Mark would wait with a boat at the harbor.

At 8:14 p.m. the same evening, Olave reported the suspicion against Fritz to [[Chiche Alem]] on [[Ravi-Ta]]. Alem authorized Fritz's arrest at 8:31 p.m. Olave departed Ravi-Ta for Georgetown with an arrest detachment.<ref name="chiche-alem">''[[Chiche Alem]]'', Vrienden Universe. Used for Alem's position as Reichsführer-SS during the period and his authority within the Allgemeine SS command structure.</ref><ref name="ravi-ta">''[[Ravi-Ta]]'', Vrienden Universe. Used for Ravi-Ta's role as a restricted leadership island and secure command location under the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen.</ref>

On 12 January 2023 at 12:18 a.m., Fritz began escorting Jone, Mere, Ana, and Tui Naivalu through Georgetown toward the harbor. At 12:43 a.m., he heard vehicles approaching and realized Olave's detachment had reached the city. Fritz told the family to run to the harbor without him and stayed behind to delay the soldiers.

At 12:47 a.m., Olave ordered Fritz to turn around and surrender. Fritz turned and opened fire. He did not take cover and instead stood in the street, shouting while firing into the advancing detachment. Several of Olave's soldiers were killed or wounded during the first exchange.

By 12:52 a.m., Fritz had exhausted his rifle ammunition. He drew his pistol and fired several more shots. Olave remained behind cover for most of the fight and was not injured. At 12:53 a.m., Fritz was hit multiple times and fell to the ground. At 12:54 a.m., Olave approached and shot him in the head, killing him.

At 1:07 a.m., Jone, Mere, Ana, and Tui Naivalu reached the harbor and boarded Mark Hugerinus Paap's boat. All four escaped and were never captured. The Tanoa Einsatzgruppen later opened a manhunt for them, but they remained missing from regime custody.<ref name="fish-conflict" />

Olave was later rewarded by [[Eef Paap]] for killing Fritz. The killing was presented internally as the punishment of treason, while resistance accounts treated Fritz's final act as an example of a regime officer breaking from command at the moment of decision.<ref name="fish-conflict" />

== Legacy ==
Fritz's legacy became part of later resistance tradition among members of the [[Tanoa Resistance]] and the [[Fish Collective]]. He was not treated as a full resistance member, because he had served the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen for most of his life and had participated in its institutions. Instead, later accounts described him as an internal defector whose final action saved two parents and their two children and exposed the fragility of loyalty inside the Allgemeine SS.

Within Fish Collective retellings of the [[Fish Conflict]], Fritz was remembered alongside the Naivalu family's escape from Georgetown. His story was used as a warning that the Tanoa Einsatzgruppen's indoctrination system could produce loyalty for decades while still failing at the point where personal grief, conscience, and direct contact with victims came together.<ref name="fish-conflict" />

== See also ==
* [[Tanoa Einsatzgruppen]]
* [[Allgemeine SS]]
* [[Waffen SS]]
* [[Paapjugend]]
* [[Aktion Zentralafrika]]
* [[Juan Jose Grenillon]]
* [[Lucia Marisol Duarte]]
* [[Jose Leandro Olave]]
* [[Chiche Alem]]
* [[Mark Hugerinus Paap]]
* [[Fish Conflict]]
* [[Fish Collective]]
* [[Tanoa Resistance]]

== References ==
<references />

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fritz, Martinez Alberto}}
[[Category:1983 births]]
[[Category:2023 deaths]]
[[Category:Argentine military personnel]]
[[Category:Tanoa Einsatzgruppen]]
[[Category:Allgemeine SS]]
[[Category:People]]