Arthur Schumann

Arthur Schumann (born August 30, 1899 in Leipzig , † after 1943) was a German intelligence officer and political functionary ( NSDAP ).

Life and activity

Early Life (1899-1931)

From June 1917, Schumann took part in the First World War, in which he was first used in a pioneer battalion and then as a member of a shock troop of the 8th Uhlan Regiment on the western front. During this time he was promoted to NCO and awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. In August 1918 he was assigned to an officer trainee course in Russia. After the German collapse in November 1918, Schumann fought against the Bolsheviks in 1919 as a member of a free corps in the Baltic States . Jacobsen suggested that Schumann's mission in the Baltic States could have been a reason why Alfred Rosenberg , who came from this region, later made him head of the intelligence service of the NSDAP 's foreign policy office, which he headed .

After his return to his homeland, Schumann took part in the suppression of the Central German uprising as a member of the Leipzig Volunteer Regiment. In 1920 he began to study engineering at the state college in Chemnitz , which he interrupted in the third semester in 1921 to join the Upper Silesian self-protection organization and to take part in the border battles fought between German and Polish irregular troops over the nationality of this area with this organization. During the Upper Silesian Self-Protection, he met Hermann Fischer , who later became known through the assassination attempt on Walther Rathenau , and became close friends with him. After Schumann suffered five gunshot wounds in both hands, right arm, left thigh and chest in an assault on Zembowitz during the Upper Silesia Battles, he had to spend a year and a half in a hospital. During this time he was operated on eleven times. As a result of this long break, he broke off his studies.

In the summer of 1922, Schumann joined the NSDAP for the first time in the Zwickau branch (membership number 3,282). During this time he took on functionary duties in the party and was involved in the newly founded NS student organization. He also took part in the autumn of 1922 in Coburg Day, a mass meeting of the nationalist opponents of the Weimar state. After an arrest warrant was issued against him in Saxony for violating the law for the protection of the republic , he fled to Bavaria, whose government refused to extradite him. In Bavaria he settled in Hof, where he was an adjutant of the Upper Franconian regiment of the NSDAP's northern district leadership.

In November 1923 Schumann took part in the failed Hitler putsch . After an arrest warrant was issued against him, he first fled to Berchtesgaden - where he often met with Dietrich Eckart - and from there to Austria. Here he was briefly detained. Then he made his way as a worker on wooden boards and lime kilns. After his expulsion by the Carinthian provincial government, he went to Italy, where he found work in the port of Livorno . An amnesty enabled him to return to Germany in 1925.

After the re-establishment of the NSDAP in the spring of 1925 - which was temporarily banned after the failed coup of 1923 - Schumann rejoined the party on August 18, 1925 ( membership number 15.292). In the following years he participated in building up the Nazi movement in Saxony at the local level: for example, he worked as an SA leader in Schwarzenburg and took part in the founding of the Rochlitz local NS group. In 1928 Schumann changed to the regional leadership of the NSDAP in Saxony as a functionary. According to Stephan Dehn , he belonged to the inner circle around Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann .

Schumann reached a temporary high point in his career when he was appointed Gaupropagandawart of the NSDAP in Gau Saxony in December 1930 . His main task in this position was to implement the line laid down by Joseph Goebbels as chief propagandist of the NSDAP, to penetrate the entire society with National Socialist propaganda. In doing so, he pursued a strategy of stubborn detail work, which was modeled on the agitation structure of the KPD with its focus on the homes and workplaces of the industrial workers. In practice, this happened in the form that he encouraged his propagandists or the Saxon party members in general to build residential and street cells and to expose the people around them to tireless word of mouth in favor of the NSDAP and its goals. At the same time, at Schumann's instigation, the main target groups of National Socialist propaganda in Saxony were “flooded” with copious amounts of printed material (propaganda brochures, leaflets, etc.) in order to achieve maximum effect. In particular, it was a matter of turning the workers away from the established workers' parties KPD and SPD by “shaking the belief in the Bolshevik heresy”, as Schumann put it in his guidelines, “in order to free the workers from the clutches of the to initiate international Jewish world capitalism ”.

Head of the Political Intelligence Service of the NSDAP (1931 to 1933)

At the end of 1931, on the recommendation of Goebbels, Schumann was commissioned to set up and manage an intelligence service based in the Reich leadership of the NSDAP in Munich . Formally, this intelligence service was part of the Reich Propaganda Headquarters of the NSDAP as Hauptabteilung III ("Political Intelligence Service"), but in fact Schumann's intelligence service (in literature it is often referred to as ND) was the intelligence service of the Political Organization (PO), i. H. of the party apparatus of the NSDAP, in contrast to the two other larger intelligence services that the party maintained at that time as separate intelligence services of its subdivisions SA and SS : the intelligence services of the SA under Karl Leon Du Moulin-Eckart and the so-called Political Information Service affiliated to the SS ( later SD) under Josias von Waldeck-Pyrmont and Reinhard Heydrich .

Little is known about the domestic political activities of the Political Intelligence Service. It was found, however, that Schumann's intelligence service built up an extensive network of informants abroad, which had representatives in more than 60 countries. Most of these informants were members of local groups of the NSDAP (or their foreign organization) in the countries concerned. One of the main tasks of these suppliers to Schumann's intelligence service was to collect information about the members of the German diplomatic missions in the respective countries in order to be able to make decisions on large parts of the staff of the Foreign Office after the National Socialists took over government on the basis of the knowledge gained in this way which employees of the Foreign Service should remain on duty in a National Socialist state, and who should be removed from the Foreign Service as politically unreliable, unsuitable for their current position and transferred to another post or even completely removed from the Foreign Service .

Schumann and the intelligence service he headed became publicly known to a limited extent as early as the end of 1931 after revelations by the social democratic newspaper Münchener Post , which published a report on the NSDAP's intelligence services based on inside information. run one of the three secret intelligence services of the NSDAP. This man is directly subordinate to Hitler himself and is "personally an absolutely harmless little man" who fits in with an intelligence service as much "as a hysterical maiden to the robber captain". However, the authors of the article in the Munich Post were unable to determine Schumann's exact identity . He was also unknown in scientific research for a long time: For example, the Israeli historian Shlomo Aronson wrote in his study of the early history of the SS security service in 1967 that, thanks to the article in the Munich Post, his surname (Schumann) was known that “the Chief of this intelligence service ”remains“ unknown ”.

As far as one can believe the report of the Munich Post , Schumann's intelligence service was characterized by an excess of "bureaucratic order and cleanliness" and provided the party leadership with all knowledge and materials - allegedly at the end of each month Schumann submitted Hitler personally and the head of the party organization Gregor Strasser extensive reports including system material - the content of which was already completely outdated and of little value. In the polemics typical of the time, the Social Democratic press representatives put it this way: “Schumann's reports are relatively indifferent, even if here and there during the uncritical study by his high boss, one or the other copy that is sent to him or fake reports generate enthusiasm or indignation. "

Within the competition between the National Socialist intelligence services, the SD headed by Heydrich began to assert itself from 1932 onwards: However, while the SA intelligence service soon became insignificant after DuMoulin-Eckart had left in spring 1932, the SD succeeded in this year With regard to Schumann's organization only to paralyze it temporarily, but not to eliminate it completely. According to Aronson's judgment, it continued to represent an obstacle even after 1933, which “could endanger the success of the SD on the way to exclusivity [as the NSDAP's intelligence service]”.

Schumann's intelligence service after 1933

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Schumann's intelligence service was incorporated into the newly established Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (APA) as Main Department I ("Organization and Intelligence Service"; also known as "Amt Schumann"). One consequence of the so-called resurrection of the intelligence service of the Reich Propagandaleitung (or the party) was that there was renewed fierce competition between the ND and the SD Heydrichs. Schumann's formal entry into the SS in November 1933 (SS No. 36.222), in which he was promoted to SS Standartenführer with effect from December 1, 1933 , and his formal admission to the SS security service, did not change anything.

In the course of a process of compromising or defamation of the Schumann service in the eyes of the party leadership, which has not yet been clearly worked out, Heydrich and the SD finally succeeded, according to the SD researcher George C. Browder Schumann and his organization, in the perception of the NS- Surround leadership with an "aura of suspicion" (cloud of suspicion). In addition, according to Seppo Kussito's research, the ND of the APA, since its main task - spying on the Foreign Office and its employees - is due to the increasingly obvious willingness of most diplomats to cooperate with the Nazi state and because of Hitler's gradually emerging tendency to Maintaining diplomatic continuity became less and less important, so that the benefit of the organization in this regard became less and less. Finally, Schumann attracted attention because of unauthorized foreign contacts. In the summer of 1934, this mixed-up situation led the Nazi leadership to allow Heydrich to eliminate and absorb Schumann's organization: In the summer of 1934, Rudolf Hess, as Hitler's head of the NSDAP party apparatus, issued a decree dated June 9, 1934, who declared the SD to be the party's sole intelligence service and declared all other intelligence services (this was in fact only the ND headed by Schumann) to be dissolved. Schumann was instructed to transfer his organization to the SD Heydrichs. The department previously headed by him in the Rosenberg office was largely dissolved. Schumann's dismissal from the APA (and thus also from the employment relationship with the party that had existed since 1931) officially took place on July 31, 1934. Heydrich's allegation at around the same time that Schumann thwarted Hess's order from June and his own domestic intelligence service in disguise Form within the SD led to his being temporarily detained and locked in the house prison of the Secret State Police Office. In addition, he was given leave of absence from the SD service on July 28 by an order from Heydrich. On December 19, 1934, Schumann was demoted to an SS man and officially expelled from the SS. An examination of this measure by the SS court in 1935, which he tried hard, led to its confirmation.

By order of the SS court of January 11, 1936 (became final on July 5, 1937), Schumann's exclusion from the SS of 1934 due to his long membership of the party and his services to the party was softened to the extent that it was subsequently converted into a Dismissal was converted, so that his departure from the SS was no longer considered defiant. In response to a complaint that he subsequently filed against his dismissal, the SS court decided in 1937 to revoke the reasons for the exclusion order of December 1934, and to allow the dismissal, which had taken the place of the exclusion in 1936, to continue: the background was that one was in the SD During a re-examination of the events of 1934, the leadership came to the conclusion that Schumann had actually not sabotaged the integration of his intelligence service into the SD at that time - unlike in 1934 - but that he had "had the honest will to transfer the domestic intelligence service headed by him to the security service of the RFSS without restriction ”, but that his employees at the time, Wilhelm Zelger and Felix Aumüller, had thwarted the transfer by failing to carry out appropriate orders from Schumann. He was therefore credited with having been deceived by his employees. Therefore, the accusation that Schumann had betrayed his superior (Heydrich) and knowingly sabotaged Hess's order of June 1934 - and thereby grossly violated the duty of loyalty and obedience as an SS leader - was withdrawn. On the other hand, he was reprimanded for not having fulfilled his duties as head of the ND of the APA or as the leader of the SD section that emerged from this due to a lack of supervision and monitoring of his subordinates and was judged that he had too great confidence that he had in his employees and through the consequences caused by this, I proved his unsuitability as an SS leader in the SD. And since his admission into the SS in 1933 was only made with regard to his intended use in the SD, the SS leadership drew the conclusion from Schumann's alleged unsuitability for the SD (and the associated release from it) that he was also to be released from the SS. Accordingly, his removal from the SS was still considered to be justified and maintained, but the reasons on which it was justified were changed and its outward form changed from an exclusion (regarded as dishonorable) to a dismissal (regarded as honorable).

Further career in the Nazi state

While Jacobsen, who relies on Schumann's SS personal files, stated in his study from 1968 that “nothing was known” about Schumanns after 1937, later researchers have unearthed other files about Schumann that allow us to trace his career to To be reconstructed at least in outline in 1944.

After 1934, Schumann was, according to his papers, in the holdings of party correspondence of the NSDAP in the main office of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), where he rose to the rank of department head. Since August 1939 at the latest, he was in charge of the NSV's special service at the High Command of Army Group II in Opole. After the German attack on Poland in September, an NSV task force delegated from this special service, led by Schumann, followed the German troops on their advance into the occupied country in order to carry out tasks such as rescuing civilians from destroyed buildings in the following weeks and food technology supplies as well as their other care, in the hinterland near the front. In particular, the task force built a network of NSV deployment sites that organized the removal of several hundred thousand refugees from the army area.

On July 1, 1943, he was assigned to the Eastern division of the party organization of the NSDAP, where he was assigned to the main division of Propaganda.

In addition to his work for the NSV, Schumann was again a member of the SA from 1935 - as before 1933 - in which he achieved at least the rank of Obersturmbannführer .

reviews

Dehn classifies Schumann as an exponent of a type of National Socialist leadership functionaries for whom Ulrich Herbert coined the term “New Right”: Members of the cohort of those born around 1900 who were affected by the Free Corps period after the First World War and the fight against internal and external enemies (communists on the one hand and French occupation army in the Rhineland and Ruhr area or Polish “insurgents” in the eastern provinces of the empire) were politically shaped, had a solid scientific education and finally got into the NSDAP.

Fonts

• “Establishing contact with the masses”, in: Our will and path. Monthly sheets of the Reich Propaganda Office of the NSDAP , 2nd year (1932), issue 1, pp. 11-16.

literature

• Dehn: "Gaupropagandaleiter - Arthur Schumann", in: Günther Heydemann u. a. [ed.]: Saxony and National Socialism, 2014, pp. 84–90.
• Hans Adolf Jacobsen : National Socialist Foreign Policy, 1933–1938 , 1968, p. 58.
• Seppo Kuusisto: Alfred Rosenberg in National Socialist Foreign Policy 1933–1939 , 1984.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dehn, p. 86.
2. ^ Andreas Dornheim : Röhm's husband for abroad. Politics and the murder of SA agent Georg Bell , p. 58.
3. ^ Aronson: Heydrich, 1967, p. 67.
4. ^ Aronson: Heydrich, 1967, p. 65.
5. ↑ Aronson: Heydrich and the beginnings of the SD and the Gestapo, 1967, p. 186.