Curt Wittje

Curt Wittje

Curt Wittje , more rarely Kurt Wittje , (born October 2, 1894 in Wandsbek ; † March 16, 1947 in custody in Czechoslovakia or executed March 6, 1947 in Moscow ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ) and SS group leader . At the time of National Socialism he was, among other things, a member of the Reichstag and from 1934 to 1935 head of the SS main office . Wittje was released from the SS in 1938 on suspicion of homosexuality .

Life

Origin and military career

Wittje's father Robert was a privy councilor and from 1903 to 1919 Lord Mayor of Detmold . Curt Wittje passed his Abitur in February 1913 in the Leopoldinum there . He joined a Magdeburg artillery regiment as a flag junior and received his officer license as a lieutenant in June 1914. He took part in the First World War as a battery officer, was trained as a general staff officer and was promoted to first lieutenant in September 1917. Seriously wounded shortly before the end of the war, he was taken prisoner in Belgium in November 1918, from which he was able to flee to Germany in March 1919. Wittje was taken over into the greatly reduced Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic . From October 1920 he served as a regimental adjutant in Allenstein ; in June 1925 he was promoted to captain. In 1922 he married the 22-year-old daughter of a judiciary Irene Skowronski. The marriage resulted in two daughters (* 1927 and * 1933).

On November 23, 1928, investigations were initiated against Wittje, because he should have sexually molested male subordinates . The Senior Public Prosecutor in Allenstein closed the investigation, stated that there was a “lack of any abnormal disposition” and attributed the incidents to “senseless drunkenness”. Wittje's superiors in the Reichswehr were less lenient: Wittje had to submit his departure on May 1, 1929. His pension entitlements were granted, and in March 1931 he was also given the right to wear his uniform on public holidays. From 1929 to April 1933, Wittje found work as head of personnel at the IREKS AG malt house in Kulmbach , where Franz Breithaupt , who later became the head of the main SS court office, was also employed.

Member of the Reichstag and head of the SS main office

On June 1, 1930 Wittje joined the NSDAP ( membership number 256.189) and on March 1, 1931, he became a member of the SS (SS number 5,870). As a speaker he promoted the NSDAP in the Upper Franconian district. On April 24, 1932 Wittje entered the Bavarian State Parliament for the NSDAP . He resigned the state parliament mandate when he was elected to the Reichstag on March 5, 1933 for the constituency of Baden . He was a member of the Reichstag, which had no parliamentary function during the National Socialist era, until April 1938.

Wittje was promoted to the SS in quick succession and on September 15, 1933, achieved the rank of SS group leader . As leader of SS Section IX for Franconia and Thuringia , he tried in January 1933 together with Richard Hildebrandt to prevent the Nuremberg Gauleiter Julius Streicher from influencing the SS. In April 1933, Wittje, now more a full-time SS leader, took over the SS Upper Section North in Hamburg before he was promoted to Head of the SS Main Office on February 12, 1934 . In this function, Wittje acted as a liaison between Himmler and Theodor Eicke when Eicke took control of the Lichtenburg concentration camp at the end of May 1934 when the inspection of the concentration camps was established . In the conflict with the Wehrmacht over the establishment of constantly armed SS units , Wittje pointed out on May 29, 1934 that the SS was militarily structured and that parts of the SS would “be made available for national defense purposes” if necessary. He refused to make members of the SS who had previously belonged to the Reichswehr available to the Wehrmacht.

According to Himmler's later information, Reichswehr Minister General Werner von Blomberg informed Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler about the circumstances that had led to Wittje's dismissal from the Reichswehr in 1929. Hitler passed Blomberg's "information " on to Himmler in June 1934 before the so-called " Röhm Putsch ". After Röhm's murder , which was also justified with his homosexuality, Himmler informed Wittje about the allegations, but refused Wittje's offer of resignation. In relation to Hitler, Himmler claims to have justified his adherence to Wittje with the fact that he did not want the Wehrmacht to influence his personnel decisions in the SS.

Wittje ignored Himmler's warnings to abstain from alcohol consumption; Relevant contacts with subordinates were repeated. On May 14, 1935, Wittje was replaced as head of the SS main office by August Heissmeyer , "because of illness," as it was called in the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps . From April 1937 Wittje was on the board of the Hamburg Waaren-Commissions-AG (WACO), which wanted to build an explosives factory near Dannenberg.

Wittje was arrested in February 1938 after further "comradeship evenings" had taken place under the observation of the Hamburg Gestapo . Himmler suspended Wittje from the SS service and set up a so-called “small court of arbitration” to clarify the allegations of “homosexual disposition and homosexual misconduct”. The arbitration court was chaired by Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger and included the assessors Udo von Woyrsch and Theodor Eicke. The Hamburg Gestapo chief Bruno Linienbach and Josef Meisinger , the head of the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion , were charged with the investigation. The "small arbitration court" apparently pleaded for Wittje to remain in the SS. Himmler contradicted this in June 1938:

“I was astonished that the whole drunkenness affairs of the group leader Wittje were not noticed at all by the court. [...] From my personal and my office unfortunately very rich experience, I naturally consider it possible that a man may be wrongly suspected of being homosexual once or twice, [...] that a man may experience howling misery once while drunk gets and hugs other people. [...] But I think it is impossible that departments of the most varied types, which are locally far from each other, [...] people, always the same fact of being drunk and then falling out of role and the already so often mentioned male hugging , Kissing and hugging and put on record. "

On November 12, 1938, Wittje was finally expelled from the SS.

After being released from the SS

Wittje was not mentioned again until January 1942 on a list of SS members who tried to acquire former Jewish companies in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the course of the so-called " Aryanization ": he was "acquiring" a mechanical weaving and flax spinning mill in Eipel in the then Náchod district . This happened with Himmler's approval, as can be seen from a letter to the deputy Reich Protector Kurt Daluege : "With this letter I would like to inform you that the former SS-Gruppenführer Wittje got an economic existence with my approval in the Protectorate." He, Himmler , had supported Wittje's "economic activity above all with consideration for his wife and children." Himmler instructed Daluege to keep a "careful eye" on Wittje and "to make it clear to all departments that he is not group leader of the SS."

In the final phase of the Second World War , Wittje was deployed as a battalion leader in the Volkssturm . At the end of the war he was arrested in Czechoslovakia in May 1945. Different information is available about the place and exact time of his death: on the one hand, he is said to have died in Czech captivity on March 16, 1947, and on the other, on March 6, 1947 in Moscow. According to other sources, he was last seen in a Moscow prison and shot dead on March 6, 1947 in the Soviet Union after a trial in a Soviet military tribunal for war crimes.

A homosexual in the SS?

Against the background of the persecution of homosexuals during the time of National Socialism , the hesitant persecution of his probable homosexuality by Himmler is striking in Wittje's life. Himmler, who was considered downright homophobic , usually acted strictly against SS members who were suspected of being homosexual. Wittje, on the other hand, was only released from the SS in 1938 and without a penalty, four years after Himmler had received the first "clues" and Wittje had become suspicious of further attacks on subordinates, mostly under the influence of alcohol. Even then, Himmler gave him a new existence. Others who were only suspected of being homosexual could not count on such indulgence: Wittjes' driver was released from the SS in 1936 and transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . According to statements about Wittje's advances, Himmler assumed that he was “a man himself with a not very clear conscience” because he “endured such a position for a long time”.

Wittje remained a staunch National Socialist even after his exclusion from the SS. In a letter to Richard Hildebrandt a few days after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, he wrote :

“For it was a miracle that the leader was saved. […] Of course we are of the same opinion and will also agree that in the end, in our opinion, everything was once again done too generously and gently. If we don't exterminate these pigs with stump and style, we'll have the theater again in a few years. "

See also

• List of SS group leaders

literature

• Jens-W. Kleist: And dismiss him from the SS as unsuitable. Rumors about the head of the SS main office. 1935. In: Andreas Pretzel , Gabriele Roßbach: Because of the high punishment to be expected ... Persecution of homosexuals in Berlin 1933–1945. Verlag rosa Winkel, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86149-095-1 , pp. 194-200.
• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , pp. 733–734.

Web links

• Curt Wittje in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Curt Wittje in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History

Remarks

1. ↑ The curriculum vitae, unless otherwise stated, according to the information provided by Jens-W. Kleist. For information there that Wittje's father was Lord Mayor of Wandsbek, see: Mayor of Wandsbeck and City of Detmold: Mayor ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ On the date of the state election
3. ↑ Information in the handbook of the Reichstag  ( 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.  
4. ↑ On the promotions SS seniority list October 1934
5. ↑ John Peter H. Grill: Richard Hildebrandt. In: Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring : The SS: Elite under the skull. Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-78562-1 , p. 222f.
6. ^ Johannes Tuchel : Concentration Camp. Organizational history and function of the “Inspection of the Concentration Camps” 1934–1938. (= Writings of the Federal Archives. Volume 39). Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 , p. 162.
7. ^ In a meeting with representatives of the Military District Command VII in Munich. see Bernd Wegner: Hitler's Political Soldiers: The Waffen-SS 1933–1945. 3rd expanded edition. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1988, ISBN 3-506-77480-8 , p. 85.
8. ^ Himmler's statements in the arbitration court proceedings against Wittje in 1938.
9. ^ Letter from Himmler of June 17, 1938, quoted by Jens-W. Kleist, pp. 198f.
10. ^ Letter from Himmler from September 1942, quoted in Jens-W. Kleist, p. 199.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus-Dieter Muller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947): A historical-biographical study. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , pp. 762f.
12. ↑ Jens-W. Kleist, p. 200.
13. ↑ Joachim Lilla, p. 734.
14. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller : Man for Man - A biographical lexicon. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4 .
15. ↑ on Himmler's relationship to homosexuality see: Burkhard Jellonnek : Homosexuals under the swastika. The persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich. Paderborn, 1990, ISBN 3-506-77482-4 , p. 23ff.
16. ^ Letter from Wittjes dated August 13, 1944, quoted by Jens-W. Kleist, p. 200. On the friendship between Wittje and Hildebrandt see also Johnpeter H. Grill, p. 223 and 225.