Alfred Franke-Gricksch

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Alfred Franke-Gricksch (born November 30, 1906 in Berlin , † August 18, 1952 in Moscow ) was a party functionary and publicist of the national revolutionary wing of the NSDAP during the Weimar Republic . He left the party in 1930 and emigrated in 1933. Returned in 1934, he became an SS officer with the rank of SS Obersturmbannführer in the German Reich . In the early post-war period he was one of the organizers of the right-wing nationalist group " Brotherhood ". In 1952 he was executed for his SS work in the Soviet Union . In the early 1930s he used the pseudonym Hildebrand .

Life

Political activities until 1934

Alfred Franke-Gricksch came from a Berlin merchant family, was initially active in the youth movement and began studying to become a teacher in Berlin. In 1926 he became a member of the NSDAP. When he married, the Nazi ideologue and Hitler rival Gregor Strasser was one of the witnesses . The assertion that can be found several times in the literature that Franke-Gricksch married a daughter of Gregor Strasser is, however, incorrect. In 1933 his son Ekkehard was born. According to his son, his wife Else, who was apolitical, divorced him in 1936.

Franke-Gricksch was a supporter of Otto Strasser , who left the NSDAP in a dispute with Hitler in 1930 and founded the national Bolshevik splinter group, Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutionär Nazis , from which the Black Front led by Strasser emerged . Franke-Gricksch was one of the signatories of the Strasser appeal for the socialists to leave the NSDAP and became one of the founders and leaders of the “National Socialist Workers and Farmers Youth”, the youth organization of the “Kampfgemeinschaft”. In 1933 he followed Otto Strasser into exile in Austria and Czechoslovakia . There he was a close confidante of Strasser's press officer and editor-in-chief of the Kampfblatt German Revolution . According to his son Ekkehard, he was sentenced to death in absentia during this time in Germany for treason , although this cannot be proven by any contemporary source.

In 1934 he broke with Strasser and returned to Germany via Switzerland . Franke-Gricksch was later accused of having worked as a Gestapo spy during his emigration and buying his own impunity by betraying numerous members of the Strasser organization, which is illegal in Germany. In the early 1950s, the public prosecutor's office in Bielefeld opened an investigation against him because of these allegations, but these were not continued due to Franke-Gricksch's disappearance in autumn 1951.

As an SS leader

In 1935 Franke-Gricksch became a member of the SS, where he made it to the SS disposal force and from October 1939 in the Waffen-SS to SS-Hauptsturmführer until 1941 , most recently as an intelligence officer (Ic) in the division headquarters of the SS division Totenkopf under SS- Brigadefuehrer Theodor Eicke , the former "Concentration Camp Inspector". From March 1941, Franke-Gricksch, who saw himself as Reinhard Heydrich's protégé, was employed by the Security Service (SD) in the Reich Security Main Office . The transfer was not based on any injuries or unsuitability for the front, but was part of Heinrich Himmler's personnel rotation plan ("Exchange of leaders between front and home"), through which senior SS cadre should acquire extensive front, security police and administrative experience.

From August 1942 on, Franke-Gricksch was employed by the SS Police Division in Russia . In January 1943 he developed kidney stones. He was transferred to the SS Personnel Main Office, where he last headed the Personal Office of the Personnel Main Office Chief Maximilian von Herff as SS-Obersturmbannführer and was head of Office I (Central Office). His superiors soon considered him the “second best” man in the main office.

Maximilian von Herff in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 . Behind him on the left Jürgen Stroop .

In May 1943 Franke-Gricksch took part in an inspection tour of his superior Herff in the Generalgouvernement . They visited the concentration camps Auschwitz and Majdanek , the forced labor camps Trawniki , Janowska and Poniatowa and the SS garrison in Lublin . Franke-Gricksch wrote as a report after his return to Berlin:

“From Trawniki we traveled back to Lublin to visit the special company REINHARD . This department had the task of exploiting the entire movable property of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement. It is astonishing what a huge fortune the Jews had amassed in the ghetto. Even ragged, vermin-infested, filthy little Jews who looked like beggars carry with them foreign currency, gold pieces, diamonds and other valuables (if you remove their clothes). We walked through the cellars of this 'specialist company' and were reminded of the fairy tales of 'A Thousand and One Nights'. "

Franke-Gricksch-Report 1943 (excerpts from copies).

On May 15, he and Herff observed the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . Franke-Gricksch wrote a special memorandum about his visit to the extermination facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau during this trip, entitled “Resettlement Campaign of the Jews”, in which he described the selection and gassings:

“The Auschwitz camp has a special task in settling the Jewish question. State-of-the-art measures make it possible to carry out the Fuehrer's order in a very short time and without causing a stir. "

The document, which only exists in extracts from the War Crimes Branch of the 3rd US Army , is called a forgery by history revisionists and Holocaust deniers .

Shortly before the end of the war , Franke-Gricksch was busy developing "methods of underground work after a defeat". He is considered to be the author or initiator of a draft program drawn up on April 3, 1945 within the SS leadership under the title "The German Freedom Movement (Volksgenössische Movement)", which called for a purge of the NSDAP:

“True to her oath, she remains loyal to the Führer and his work and renounces a rotten party bureaucracy and a corrupt boncentage that has been torn down in some places, from a ruling caste in the state, party and the branches that has been different and deceived for years, from a un-German one-sided The leader principle in internal politics and a hollow power conceit in external politics, from an irresponsible frivolous waste of the German people's forces. "

For the domestic "renewal" the harmony of "leadership and allegiance", "the codecision of the people", the realization of a "brotherhood" concept, a state structure based on the elite principle and a foreign policy reorientation towards a Germanic-European empire were called for .

After 1945

From 1945 to 1947 Franke-Gricksch was interned in the British, where, according to an English publication, he was recruited for the British secret service MI6 , with the help of which he also circumvented the mandatory denazification . Instead of using his old SS rank, he preferred to call himself “Colonel a. D. ”and worked as an“ economic consultant ”for a textile company in Gelsenkirchen .

In 1948 Franke-Gricksch dictated to his second wife Liselotte a justification entitled "From the diary of a fallen SS leader", in which he describes the problems and discussions within the SS leadership that arose from the operation of the concentration camps and the destruction of the Jews surrendered. This is how he describes a conversation with Heinrich Himmler in which he justifies the secrecy of the mass killings:

“Today we cannot justify this step historically, even for the SS leadership corps. There are some things you would not understand and only evaluate the facts themselves. Only a long distance from these things, perhaps only after decades, perhaps only after a period of the sharpest defamation of this act, will gain the point of view that is solely correct for the necessity of this task. "

The recordings were made in 1965 by his wife as a witness in the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (“criminal case against Mulka et al.”) And in the 2nd Treblinka trial against Kurt Franz et al. a. misread.

"Brotherhood"

From the late 1940s onwards, Franke-Gricksch's main activity was the development and management of a cadre organization under the name “Brotherhood”, which also appeared as the “European Brotherhood of the German Nation”. This had already formed immediately after the end of the war as a "cell" organization in British captivity around him and Helmut Beck-Broichsitter (1914-2000), a former major in the Greater Germany division . At first, the area of ​​activity of the “brotherhood” hardly extended beyond Hamburg . In 1949 the first reports appeared in the foreign press about the association, which was presented as a "conspiratorial general clique with Greater German, neo-fascist strivings for power". German newspapers took over the reports and made the "brotherhood" known to the public.

To the outside world, the organization, which had no more than about two hundred members and a few thousand supporters at the time of its marriage, presented itself as a purely military-politically oriented officers' association. In the press it was therefore speculated that the purpose of the “brotherhood” was to prepare for the remilitarization of Germany. This impression was reinforced by the fact that the “figurehead” of the “Brotherhood”, ex-tank general Hasso von Manteuffel , had contacts with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer .

In truth, Franke-Gricksch and Beck-Broichsitter were working on an ideologically substantiated concept for the reorganization of Germany and Europe, with which " democracy and parliamentarism " should be overcome. The first task of the "Brotherhood" was to preserve a "leadership elite" in order to "save the tradition of German leadership into a later time and to take control of the fortunes of our people again". In the opinion of Franke-Gricksch, who trades as the “Chancellor” of the organization, the collapse of the “parliamentary system and the takeover of power by the brotherhood” would take place as early as the winter of 1952/53.

Together with the forestry professor Franz Losimfeldt Heske , Franke-Gricksch also developed an ideological model of the “tiered order”. After that there should be no democratic representation of the people more, but a corporately structured Parliament. The state should be led by an elite order divided into ranks according to talent and performance. The group rejected the western democratic order with the principle of equality for all people. Furthermore, one called for the overcoming of nation-state thinking and the creation of a “Nation Europe” as an independent political force. Franke-Gricksch also made contact with Otto Skorzeny , the English fascist leader Oswald Mosley and the American cultural philosopher Francis Parker Yockey .

Ideological disputes

The “Brotherhood” was opposed to neutralizing Germany or remilitarizing under the trustees of the occupying powers. Beck-Broichsitter announced that they would “not make themselves available for mercenary or student assistant service for East or West”. However, different ideas prevailed in the group about how rearmament could take place instead: The bulk of the ex-military favored an Atlantic-oriented European military alliance, since the "threatening stance of Bolshevism [...] forced Germany to the side of the West". Franke-Gricksch, on the other hand, stated: “Our German opportunity is the mediator role between East and West. However, our interlocutors cannot be communists or SED satellites. If so, then only authorized Russians. "

With his conception, Franke-Gricksch had revived some of the ideological cornerstones of the “Black Front” and other national revolutionary groups of the Weimar period, such as the “Nation Europe” idea and the eastward orientation already propagated by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , and this with the elite concept of SS, which he outlined in 1941 for Heinrich Himmler in a “memorandum on ideological leadership in the SS” and in his lectures at the SS Junk School in Tölz . But although Franke-Gricksch cleverly tried to combine his conception within the “Brotherhood” with the Tauroggen myth and the Reichswehr policy of the Seeckt era , his plans , which were decried as “ Rapallo tendencies” , met with resistance from the ex-officers of the association, its political The main concern was "to fight Bolshevik tendencies with all means, no matter how nationally they are camouflaged".

Nevertheless, Franke-Gricksch accepted an invitation to East Berlin from the former Wehrmacht general and then vice-chairman of the East German NDPD, Vincenz Müller , which was followed by further discussions on overcoming the division of Germany . This also resulted in his first contacts with the Soviet occupying power . Officially, Franke-Gricksch and the “Brotherhood” remained “an agent center of the Western Allies” for the GDR leadership. Unofficially, however, the eastern side tried to instrumentalize him as an "opinion maker" for their own neutralist reunification initiative, which was started by GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl in autumn 1950 ("Germans at a table!") And which culminated in 1952 with the Stalin Notes reached.

At the beginning of 1951 the different ideological approaches between Beck-Broichsitter and Franke-Gricksch broke out openly and the “brotherhood” broke up into two groups. While Franke-Gricksch accused his brother Beck-Broichsitter of having too close contacts with the Americans and connections to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution , in return he was held up against “a pro-Soviet policy” and his connections to “ Karlshorst ”, the Soviet military administration.

Beck-Broichsitter tried his luck with the German Union, which was already affiliated with the “Brotherhood”, and then with the right-wing Socialist Reich Party . Franke-Gricksch, suspected of being a “red missionary”, tried to continue the concept of eastward orientation with his melted fan base. At the beginning of 1951 he declared that the race struggle “yellow” against “white” would soon replace the opposing groups “East” and “West” and lead the Soviet Union to “take the white side”.

The End

In the autumn of 1951 rumors arose that Franke-Gricksch had fled to the East, later he was considered "lost". In reality, his value for the Soviet Union had fallen so far that he and his wife were arrested by the Soviet secret service in East Berlin in September 1951 .

On May 17, 1952, the Soviet Military Tribunal No. 48240 sentenced Franke-Gricksch to death for his involvement in Russia with the Waffen SS in 1942 . The procedure was based on the Control Council Act No. 10 , which regulated the prosecution of war crimes , crimes against peace and humanity. He was convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the USSR for supporting the international bourgeoisie (para. 4), espionage (para. 6), propaganda against the Soviet Union (para. 10), and preparing and committing counterrevolutionary crimes (para. 11). A pardon was rejected on August 15, 1952. Franke-Gricksch was executed in Moscow three days later. His wife was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor. She returned to West Germany from the Vorkuta labor camp in October 1955 . In 1995 Franke-Gricksch was rehabilitated by the Russian authorities and the judgment reversed.

His son Ekkehard Franke-Gricksch (* 1933) was one of two managing directors of Kurbetrieb Menzenschwand GmbH until 1972 , from 1972 to 1973 the first editor-in-chief of the Burda-Verlag magazine Mein Schöne Garten and is now the author and owner of the right-wing conspiracy theories specializing in right-wing conspiracy theories Publishing house "Diagnosen".

Fonts

  • And now especially the Black Front! . In: Schwarze Front , February 5, 1933, p. 2. (under the pseudonym Hildebrand)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Arsenij Roginskij u. a. (Ed.): "Shot in Moscow ..." The German victims of Stalinism in the Moscow Donskoye cemetery 1950–1953. Berlin 2006, p. 158f.
  2. ↑ a b Ekkehard Franke-Gricksch: Corrections…  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on memopress .ch; accessed on June 27, 2012. Ekkehard Franke-Gricksch's statements about his father are, however, strongly tendentious and can only be used with reservations, particularly when describing political events.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.memopress.ch  
  3. ↑ Who's who in Germany. Munich 1972, p. 300.
  4. ↑ As Grieksch-Franke, s. Call v. 4th July 1930 .
  5. ↑ See Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf: Nationalbolshevism in Germany 1918–1933. Frankfurt / M. u. a. 1972, p. 329 and 516 note 25.
  6. ↑ Otto Strasser: My struggle. A political biography. Frankfurt / M. 1969, p. 89f.
  7. ↑ a b "Traitor Hildebrand" trains the "Brotherhood". (PDF) In: Social Democratic Press Service , March 27, 1950, p. 1 f.
  8. ↑ See also Lieselotte Maas: Handbook of the German Exile Press 1933–1945. Munich 1976, p. 176.
  9. ↑ Compare Friedrich Beer-Grunov: About the reasons for my separation from Dr. Otto Strasser, the previous leader of the Black Front. [Paris 1938].
  10. ↑ a b c A “Chancellor” prophesies coming to power in 1953. (PDF) In: Sozialdemokratischer Pressedienst , October 11, 1950, p. 6.
  11. ^ A b Karl Otto Paetel: Temptation or Chance? On the history of German national Bolshevism. Göttingen 1965, p. 223.
  12. ↑ The unveiled “Brotherhood” . (PDF) In: Social Democratic Press Service , February 26, 1951, p. 6 f.
  13. ^ A b Charles W. Sydnor: Soldiers of Destruction. The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945. Princeton NJ 1990, p. 81 note 28.
  14. ^ A b c Charles W. Sydnor: Soldiers of Destruction. The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945. Princeton NJ 1990, pp. 337 f.
  15. ↑ s. Finding aids info ( memento of the original from February 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the Federal Archives . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesarchiv.de
  16. ^ Alfred Franke-Gricksch: A Report on the Duty Journey through Poland from the 4th – 16th May 1943. Original in: National Archives Kew - WO 309/2241 .
  17. ↑ Quoted in the article Georg Wippern on deathcamps.org.
  18. ^ Resettlement campaign of the Jews . Facsimile page 1 and Page 2 ; First printing in: Jean-Claude Pressac: Auschwitz. Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. New York 1989, pp. 236–239 / completely printed in: * Gerald Fleming : Hitler and the Final Solution: "It is the Fuehrer's wish ..." Ullstein TB 33083, Frankfurt / M., Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-548 -33083-5 ; Pp. 155-158.
  19. ↑ See for example Brian A. Renk: The Franke-Gricksch 'Resettlement Action Report': Anatomy of a Fabrication . In: The Journal of Historical Review 11 (3) 1991, pp. 261-279.
  20. ^ Philipp E. Nassauer: German Imperialism 1864-2006 . [Berlin 2006], p. 190, fdj.de (PDF)
    Margret Chatwin: Falsche Fuffzger. Conspiracy theses, number mysticism and aliens. In: Information Service Against Right-Wing Extremism (IDGR) , 2000, note 2.
  21. ↑ Quoted from Gerhard Förster, Richard Lakowski: 1945: The year of the final defeat of the fascist Wehrmacht. Documents. 2nd edition, Berlin (Ost) 1985, p. 239.
  22. ↑ See also Marlis G. Steinert: The 23 days of the Dönitz government. Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967, p. 19. Claus Wolfschlag: Hitler's right-wing opponents: Thoughts on the National Socialist resistance. Engerda 1995 p. 14.
  23. ↑ Stephen Dorril : MI6. Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service. London 2002, p. 103.
  24. ↑ Quoted from Alfred de Zayas : The Wehrmacht and the Nuremberg Trials. ( RTF ; 172 kB) In: Hans Poeppel, Wilhelm-Karl Prince of Prussia, Karl-Günther v. Hase (Ed.): The soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Munich 1998, pp. 461-499.
  25. ↑ See The 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. (PDF) Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt / M. July 2002, p. 15, no. 88. They called him the "Angel of Death" . In: Die Zeit , No. 26/1965.
  26. ↑ a b c d e f g Georg Meyer: On the situation of the German military leadership in the run-up to the West German defense contribution 1945–1950 / 51. In: Military History Research Office (Ed.): Beginnings of West German Security Policy 1945–1956. Volume 1. Munich / Vienna 1982, p. 714 ff.
  27. ↑ a b cf. Cabinet meeting of the federal government v. July 29, 1952.
  28. ↑ a b Krafft Freiherr Schenck zu Schweinsberg: The soldiers' associations in the Federal Republic. In: Georg Picht (Ed.): Studies on the political and social situation of the Bundeswehr. Vol. 1. Witten / Berlin 1965, pp. 149ff .; s. a. Profile: Brotherhood; Naumann Circle on apabiz.de.
  29. ↑ a b c d e Most devoted v. Manteuffel . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1950, pp. 5-8 ( online ).
  30. ↑ Jens Daniel [d. i. Rudolf Augstein ]: Weapons for the Butzemann . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1950, pp. 6 ( online ).
  31. ^ A b Wilma Ruth Albrecht: Liberalism and denazification. Munich / Ravensburg 2008, p. 30ff.
  32. ↑ a b c Overcoming democracy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1950, pp. 10 ( online ).
  33. ↑ "Brotherhood", "Odessa" a. a. (PDF) In: Social Democratic Press Service , February 24, 1950, p. 1 f.
  34. ^ Graham Macklin: Very Deeply Dyed in Black. London 2007, p. 91 ff. Martin A. Lee: The Beast Reawakens. New York 1997, p. 76 and 98
  35. ^ Fritz Stern: Cultural pessimism as a political danger. Munich 1986, p. 293ff .; Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf: National Bolshevism in Germany 1918–1933. Frankfurt / M. u. a. 1972.
  36. ↑ Compare Federal Archives NS 34/15 u. NS 34/42.
  37. ↑ a b Infiltration of the soldiers' associations. In: Die Zeit , No. 48/1953
    Compare Hans W. Gatzke: Russo-German Military Collaboration during the Weimar Republic. In: American Historical Review 63 (1958), pp. 565-597.
  38. ↑ Martin A. Lee: The Beast Reawakens. New York 1997, p. 76.
  39. ↑ National Front of Democratic Germany (Ed.): White book on the American-English intervention policy in West Germany and the resurgence of German imperialism. Leipzig, 2nd edition [1951], p. 112.
  40. ↑ Ernst Deuerlein (Ed.): GDR 1945–1970. History and inventory . 4th edition. Munich 1972, p. 88 f.
  41. ↑ See Attack on the Brotherhood. (PDF) In: Hamburger Abendblatt , January 5, 1951, p. 1. War in the Brotherhood. (PDF) In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 13, 1951, p. 1. Brothers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1951, pp. 4 ( online ). Social Democratic press . February 22, 1951 (PDF), February 26, 1951 (PDF) and August 4, 1951 (PDF).
  42. ↑ Brief profile of the German Union .
  43. ↑ error . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1951, pp. 3 ( online ).
  44. ^ Andreas Hilger : Criminal justice in paranoia. Death sentences from Soviet courts in Germany. In the S. (Ed.): “Death to the Spies!” Death sentences by Soviet courts in the Soviet Zone / GDR and in the Soviet Union until 1953. Göttingen 2006, p. 137, note 178; see also Friedrich-Christian Schroeder: Legal bases of the persecution of German civilians by Soviet military tribunals . (PDF) In: Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner, Ute Schmidt (eds.): Soviet military tribunals. Volume 2: The conviction of German civilians 1945–1955. Cologne / Weimar 2003, pp. 37–58.
  45. ↑ Gerald Fleming: Hitler and the Final Solution. "It is the Fuhrer's wish ..." . Wiesbaden 1982, p. 157.
personal data
SURNAME Franke-Gricksch, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hildebrand (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1952
Place of death Moscow