Foreign policy office of the NSDAP

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The Hotel Adlon in Berlin: From 1933, Alfred Rosenberg's Foreign Policy Office (APA) was located in a side wing of the building. The APA was later set up at Margarethenstrasse 18; also the seat of the Rosenberg Office and the Central Office of the Operations Staff Reichsleiter Rosenberg .

The Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (APA or APA) was set up in the Berlin Hotel Adlon immediately after the National Socialists " seized power " in April 1933 . The APA was under the direction of the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg . In addition to the Foreign Office (AA) under the direction of Neurath , the foreign organization (NSDAP / AO) of Ernst Wilhelm Bohle , the "Foreign Policy Office for Special Issues" ( also called " Ribbentrop Office " after its boss Joachim von Ribbentrop ) and partly the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP) by Joseph Goebbels , the APA was a central authority for foreign policy in the time of National Socialism .

In October 1935, the trade policy areas of the APA were handed over to the Nordic Society , which had been founded in 1921 . Rosenberg put Hinrich Lohse at the head of the Nordic Society and gave the APA a stronger cultural-political orientation . Officially from 1940 onwards, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), which was organized by the APA, carried out art theft actions across Europe.

At the latest when Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) in July 1941 , the APA lost its political significance and function. Numerous employees of the APA from then on worked in the RMfdbO. In February 1943, the APA was shut down as part of the “ total war effort ”.

Rosenberg's role in foreign policy

Ideology and meaning

Before Alfred Rosenberg became head of the Foreign Policy Office (APA) in 1933, he had already had a long career in the field of National Socialist foreign policy. Rosenberg has been one of the leading foreign policy ideologues since the German Workers' Party (DAP) was founded in 1919. His early writings during the Weimar Republic , in particular his belief in a dovetailing of Judaism and Bolshevism , made him " very quickly one of, if not the Eastern expert of the 'movement' ". Rosenberg's first publications in the Völkischer Beobachter were already on the topics of Zionism and “ Jewish Bolshevism ”. The " equation of Bolshevism and Judaism " made in his work Pest in Russia , published in 1922, as well as the unconditional demand for opposition to Soviet Russia, not least, in the opinion of historians Bollmus and Zellhuber, " significantly " left an impression on Adolf Hitler . The historian Klaus Hildebrandt described the role of the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg in National Socialist foreign policy as Hitler's "idea generator". Nevertheless, there was a pluralism of conceptions in Nazi foreign policy from the start . In addition to Rosenberg's role, Hildebrandt described a total of four major foreign policy positions within the NSDAP : 1. The concept of a “great solution to the East”, which was represented by the “ Wilhelmine imperialists ” around Franz von Epp , Hjalmar Schacht and Hermann Göring ; 2. Another concept of the “ revolutionary socialists ” of the “left” wing of the party around Joseph Goebbels , Gregor Strasser and Otto Strasser ; 3. Then the concept of the " radical - agrarian Artamans " around Heinrich Himmler and Walter Darré and 4. the "program" of Adolf Hitler. Rosenberg's claim to be the most important foreign politician alongside Hitler was underscored in his political practice in the late 1920s.

Foreign policy practice

In 1927, in a speech on National Socialist foreign policy at the Nuremberg party congress of the NSDAP , Rosenberg announced the intention to "carry National Socialist ideas into circles which mass meetings in general cannot grasp". In the same year he published a treatise entitled Future Path of a German Foreign Policy from its Racial Policy Perspective, which was received even beyond the borders of Germany and made party ideologues known abroad, especially in Great Britain . In this paper he pleaded for a division of Russia into several states, in particular for an independent Ukraine , a geopolitical "gain of space" to the east and the colonial settlement of Germans in Eastern Europe ; all topics that had preoccupied him again in the early 1940s as head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO). On September 14, 1930 Rosenberg was elected to the Reichstag as a member of the NSDAP for the constituency of Hesse-Darmstadt , where he was active in the foreign affairs committee alongside the future Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick . His policies as a member of parliament were directed in particular towards the German minority in Poland and the Bolshevik regime in Russia, calling for a strictly anti-Polish and anti-Soviet course.

Rosenberg sits in a suit and tie (center) next to Joseph Goebbels (left) at a table in the Berlin Sports Palace (1932).

His childhood friend, Arno Schickedanz , was particularly committed to Rosenberg's foreign policy interests in those days. At the end of 1931, Schickedanz had established a connection for Rosenberg to the Baltic-British journalist and Baron Wilhelm de Ropp and his former war friend Major Frederick William Winterbotham . Wilhelm de Ropp, who was expropriated by the Soviets and worked for the daily newspaper The Times as well as a foreign representative for the Bristol Airplane Company , later became an important confidante of Rosenberg in London . Another trip to Great Britain followed in 1932, which was kept secret because of its failure, and in May 1933 the so-called “second trip”. During his stays in Great Britain, Rosenberg also held talks at the ministerial level under the critical eyes of the English press and the public, whereby " his wooing for the potential ally and his attempts to dispel the concerns of English policy towards the Nazi regime and its anti-Jewish policy, unsuccessful ”remained. In May 1932, Rosenberg repeated his political objectives in the National Socialist monthly issues he published , where he called for “ land ” for the “ German people ” in “ Europe, first and foremost in the East ”. In November 1932 he was invited by the "Royal Italian Academy" to a European conference in Rome for the so-called "Volta Congress", where he explained in a lecture entitled " Crisis and New Birth of Europe " that England, France , Germany and Italy should unite to form a " whole Europe " and expand together in all directions; a political idea that was widely rejected.

History of the Foreign Policy Office

Institutionalization phase

On April 1, 1933, five days after the Reichstag fire , Alfred Rosenberg was appointed Reichsleiter and “Head of the Foreign Policy Office” (APA) by Adolf Hitler . In the development phase of the APA, Rosenberg's childhood friend Arno Schickedanz was the most important man even before Thilo von Trotha . As head of the personnel office and the main department V "Ostproblem", two of the six main offices of the APA, Schickedanz was responsible, among other things, for Ostpolitik , which, according to Piper, offered the APA " the decisive perspective for racist expansionism in the long term ". Head of the England department of the APA was a lieutenant captain a. D. Obermüller.

The main tasks of the APA in the immediate aftermath - in deliberate delimitation from the Foreign Office - were initially to inform foreign visitors about the National Socialist movement and its ideas, to monitor the foreign policy stance of the movement and to counteract foreign criticism of the movement. Furthermore, the tasks were to pass on suggestions to official bodies if necessary and to act as a central contact point of the NSDAP for foreign policy questions. The particular ideological interest of Rosenberg and the APA was in the so-called "Nordic states" ( Great Britain , the Baltic States , Scandinavia ) , which he and his colleagues called . From the "Organization Book of the NSDAP" (published by Reich Organizational Leader Robert Ley ) it emerges that with the APA the political discourse in these states should be directed towards the fact that the population should gain the impression of peaceful intentions of the political decision-makers in Germany. Associated with this policy were not only general wishes for acceptance of the Nazi movement abroad, but also ideas of the eastern expansion of a “German living space ” and Germanization , in accordance with Rosenberg's racial ideology .

The areas of activity of the APA were described in the "Organization Book of the NSDAP" as follows: "1. The APA is divided into three departments: A. Office for country units with the main offices: a) England and Far East, b) Middle East, c) Southeast, d) North, e) Old Orient, f) Control, personnel issues, etc. B Office for the German Academic Exchange Service ... C. Office for Foreign Trade. 2. The APA also has a main press department and a training center. ”You can also read there:“ The APA's press department includes personalities who collectively speak all the languages ​​in question, check around 300 newspapers every day and summarize the most important statements of the the entire world press to the Führer, the deputy of the Führer and to all relevant bodies. ”In addition, the APA had its own foreign trade department, which was very active, especially in the Near, Middle and Far East. The number of employees at that time was around 80.

Colonial and Armaments Policy

On May 15, 1934, Rosenberg wrote in his diary about a conversation with Hitler. The topic was Nazi foreign policy: “ On the question of colonial policy, he agreed with my point of view: worthy commemorations, but not to the extent that they could be understood as the 'beginning of a new colonial policy' . In the end the guide thanked me for my work with multiple handshakes. “At this point in time, Hitler not only appreciated the work of the APA, but in a certain sense even placed it above the work of the Foreign Office . Because Rosenberg wrote: “ He still believed in Neurath's goodwill , but the AA itself is 'a conspiratorial society' to him, but he regrets that he is still bound by the commitments made in the formation of the cabinet, according to which the Reich President decided on the army and the AA . The first is okay thanks to Blomberg , the other is not. “In addition, Hitler would have said that after the death of Paul von Hindenburg a“ few dozen of these 'conspirators' would have to be put under lock and key ”.

In May 1934, both Hitler and the APA were concerned about the attitude of France , which expressed its displeasure with Great Britain that the National Socialists had already broken the Versailles peace treaty and that the pending negotiations would not be taken into account France referred to the military budget in Germany published on April 7, 1934. Nevertheless, the APA sat still continue on his armor efforts so mainly due to the "new nor secret engine" for the aircraft, which the liaison officer of the APA in London, Major Frederick William Winterbotham, the design chief of the Army, Navy and the Air Ministry to introduce should. In this context, Rosenberg wrote about the work of the APA: " A success of 1.5 years of work has come to light, because the British General Air Force has officially given its approval for the expansion of German air defense ."

Cultural policy orientation

In October 1935, Rosenberg wrote an activity report for his APA, from which it can be seen that - as in his Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK) - he set the APA's institutional focus on cultural-political goals in order to implement his ideas about racial ideology. At the same time, with the Nordic Society , which he had placed under the leadership of Hinrich Lohse , he was pursuing commercial policy goals in the direction of his former Baltic homeland. The report shows:

“In terms of trade policy, in my opinion, far more sins of omission have been committed and so the APA has deliberately limited itself to its cultural-political tasks. For this purpose, the Nordic Society expanded, what used to be a small society has become a crucial intermediary for all German-Scandinavian relations in these 2 years of support from the APA . Its director (Lohse) is determined by the APA, the counting houses in all districts are led by the respective Gauleiter. Corresponding agreements have been made with economic groups and other organizations and branches of the party that have relations with Scandinavia , so that almost all traffic between Germany and Scandinavia is now handled by Nordic society. "

Under “cultural policy” in this sense, the APA understood in particular the training of future elites in Germany, agitation against so-called “ World Bolshevism ” or “ World Jewry ” as well as the propagation of Rosenberg's racial ideology, especially in Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries . Correspondingly, Rosenberg had various contacts made to fascist parties in European states through the APA in order to build up a kind of "fascist network" in Europe .

A test run for this was the 1936 Winter Olympics , with which the regime's cultural isolation was broken for the first time. With the press reports Foreign Political Press - Rundschau of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP , the mood abroad could be sounded out relatively quickly and in good time before the 1936 Summer Olympics . The March number ( No. 13: The Olympic Winter Games in the criticism of foreign countries, 1936 ) referred to the mixed representation, in which the deployment of helpers in uniform (including the Reich Labor Service was considered to be the military) was criticized and the request for it more work abroad was required of Germans abroad. Hardly anyone competed in uniform at the summer games in Berlin.

War policy towards the east

Rosenberg speaks at a reception of the diplomacy and foreign press in Berlin on February 8, 1939 about the " solution of the Jewish question ", v. l. No. the Chinese ambassador Chen-Chih, Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Hans Frank in conversation with the Italian professor Manacorda, Konstantin Hierl , the Czechoslovakian envoy Vojtech Mastny and (in the foreground) the Danish envoy Herluf Zahle.

In 1939 the APA, in particular Rosenberg and Erich Raeder , made preparations for a military attack on Norway . The associated warlike invasion of the German Wehrmacht in Norway and Denmark took place on April 9, 1940 under the catchphrase " Enterprise Weser Exercise ".

On September 24, 1939, Rosenberg noted in his diary that Hans Frank's future civil servants were to be trained in the school affiliated with the APA. He wrote: “ Frank, the coming civilian commissioner for Poland, has asked me to prepare all his officers in 4-weekly courses in the Foreign Pole [Italian] training house. I have promised him that, perhaps this will give some of them another perspective on the problems of the East. "

Historical reception

Very few authors have dealt with the APA in the post-war period. Around 60 years after the end of the war, research in this regard was still at the level of 1970. With the exception of the preparation of the APA for the occupation of Norway in 1939 and 1940 and the authorship of Rosenberg and Raeder for the plan to attack Norway , Bollmus estimated considers the importance of this NS authority to be rather minor after reviewing its source material. The group of authors Benz, Graml and Weiß emphasized the outstanding position of the Foreign Office vis-à-vis all other Nazi authorities that were active in the field of foreign policy with an attitude of weighing up and emphasizing diplomacy . No competing authority within the NSDAP could have “replaced the professionalism of traditional diplomacy ”.

literature

swell

  • The Reich Organization Leader of the NSDAP (ed.): Organization book of the NSDAP , Munich 1936, DNB . (6th edition 1940, DNB .)
  • Hans-Günther Seraphim : Alfred Rosenberg's political diary . 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956. DNB
  • Thomas Marschner: Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP . Holdings NS 43 in the Federal Archives . Koblenz 1999, ISBN 3-89192-087-3 .

research

  • Hans-Adolf Jacobsen: National Socialist Foreign Policy 1933–1938 . Frankfurt a. M. / Berlin 1968, DNB
  • Reinhard Bollmus: The Rosenberg Office and its opponents . Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, DNB (2nd edition, Munich / Oldenbourg 2006, ISBN 3-486-54501-9 .)

bibliography

  • Christian Gahlbeck u. a .: Archive guide on the history of the Memel region and German-Lithuanian relations . Oldenburg 2006, ISBN 3486579029 . Google Books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, pp. 19 and 42.
  2. ^ Ernst Piper : Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 489. (Unlike Bollmus, Piper wrote the street name with h = "Margaret h enstrasse".).
  3. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, p. 241.
  4. ↑ a b Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ...". The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, p. 62, ISBN 3-8965-0213-1 . (Sources: Hans-Adolf Jacobson: War in Weltanschauung und Praxis . In: Karl-Dietrich Bracher et al .: National Socialist dictatorship 1933–1945. Bonn 1986, pp. 427–439; Hermann Graml: The National Socialist War . In: Norbert Frei et al .: The National Socialist War. Frankfurt a. M. 1990, pp. 11–31; Jörg Stange: On the legitimation of violence within the National Socialist ideology . Frankfurt a. M. 1987.)
  5. ^ Walter Laqueur: Germany and Russia . Frankfurt a. M. / Berlin 1965, p. 93.
  6. ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is heading for a catastrophe ..." The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, p. 32. (Reference to Bollmus: Amt Rosenberg . P. 224 f; O'Sullivan: Furcht und Faszination . P. 282; Kuusisto: Rosenberg . P. 29 and Fest: Hitler . Pp. 169, 202 and 308.)
  7. ↑ a b Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ...". The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, p. 48. (Source: Wolfgang Michalka: National Socialist Foreign Policy under the Sign of “Conceptional Pluralism” . In: Manfred Funke (ed.): Hitler, Deutschland und die Mächte . Pp. 46–62.)
  8. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents . Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, p. 27. (Source: VB of August 21 and 22, 1927.)
  9. ^ A b c Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ...". The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, p. 63 f.
  10. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg . 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 4 f.
  11. ^ A b Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 290; Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ...". The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, p. 63.
  12. ^ A b Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 300.
  13. ↑ The Trial of the Major War Criminals at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 . Vol. V, Munich / Zurich 1984, p. 56.
  14. ^ Franz Theodor Hart: Alfred Rosenberg. The man and his work. 2nd edition, Munich 1935, p. 84 ff .; IMG, Vol. XVIII, p. 128; Rosenberg 1943: Writings 1917–1919. Introduction, S. CI; Rosenberg 1955: Last Notes, p. 222 and 270.
  15. ^ Franz Theodor Hart: Alfred Rosenberg. The man and his work. 2nd edition, Munich 1935, p. 46, DNB ; Reinhard Bollmus: The Rosenberg Office and its opponents . Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, p. 19 f.
  16. ^ A b Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 291.
  17. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg . 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 29. (Note: Horst Obermüller?)
  18. ^ Franz Theodor Hart: Alfred Rosenberg. The man and his work. 2nd edition, Munich 1935, p. 46.
  19. ^ The trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Court of Nuremberg November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 , Vol. XVIII, Munich / Zurich 1984. P. 118 f. (Edition 1947-1949, ISBN 3-89836-121-7 .); Manfred Weißbecker : Alfred Rosenberg . "The anti-Semitic movement was only a protective measure ...". In: Kurt Pätzold / Manfred Weißbecker (ed.): Steps to the gallows . Paths of life before the Nuremberg judgments, Leipzig 1999, p. 164 f., ISBN 3-86189-163-8 .
  20. ↑ a b c The trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Court of Nuremberg November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 , Vol. V, Munich / Zurich 1984. P. 63 f.
  21. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: Alfred Rosenberg's political diary from the years 1834/35 and 1939/40 , Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, pp. 30, 436 (reference to Rosenberg's memorandum of May 12, 1934, document PS-049; Rosenberg wanted, among other things, "to create a block ruled by the strongest Germanic peoples."); Peter M. Manasse: Deported Archives and Libraries . The activity of the task force Rosenberg during the Second World War. St. Ingbert 1997, p. 23, ISBN 3-86110-131-9 .
  22. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: Alfred Rosenberg's political diary from 1834/35 and 1939/40 , Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 26. (Source: Document PS-003, reproduced in: IMT, Vol. XXV , P. 22 f ..)
  23. ^ Manfred Weißbecker: Alfred Rosenberg . "The anti-Semitic movement was only a protective measure ...". In: Kurt Pätzold / Manfred Weißbecker (ed.): Steps to the gallows . Life paths before the Nuremberg judgments, Leipzig 1999, p. 163.
  24. ↑ a b c d e f Hans-Günther Seraphim: Alfred Rosenberg's political diary from 1834/35 and 1939/40 , Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 28. (Reference to another source: Akten der Deutschen Politik , Series D, Vol. 1, p. 46 ff .; the quotation was adapted to the ref. German law.)
  25. ↑ Quoted in: Hans-Günther Seraphim: Alfred Rosenberg's political diary from 1834/35 and 1939/40 , Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 32. (Cited source: Document PS-003, reproduced in: IMT , Vol. XXV, p. 15 ff.)
  26. ↑ a b Wolfgang Benz u. a .: Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 3rd, corrected edition, Munich 1998, p. 384, ISBN 3-608-91805-1 .
  27. ^ Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games 1936 and the world opinion. Its importance in foreign policy, with particular reference to the USA. Sports science work, Volume 7 Berlin: Bartels & Wernitz 1972, pp. 176f.
  28. ↑ a b Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, p. 19 f.
  29. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg. 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 98.
  30. ↑ Wolfgang Benz u. a .: Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 3rd, corrected edition, Munich 1998, p. 386.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 57 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 50 ″  E