Eduard Wagner (General)

Eduard Wagner, 1939

Eduard Wagner (born April 1, 1894 Kirchenlamitz ; † July 23, 1944 Zossen ) was a German officer and in the Second World War from October 1, 1940, Quartermaster General in the Army High Command , most recently with the rank of General of the Artillery . Wagner was a member of the resistance from July 20, 1944 .

Life

Wagner joined the Bavarian Army in 1912 , took part in the First World War as an artillery officer and was first lieutenant at the end of the war . In the spring of 1919 he joined the Bavarian Rifle Brigade 21 , which, under Epp, was involved in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . From 1919 an officer in the Reichswehr , Wagner was major when the Nazis came to power . In the Wehrmacht he quickly rose to major general by 1940 . Wagner created in 1941 along with the music functionary Ernst-Lothar von Knorr a list of various musical creator, which was signed by Adolf Hitler and a uk position meant by 360 musicians. (See also at Gottbegnadeten list of cultural policy in the final phase of the Third Reich.)

Assassination attempt on July 20, 1944

On the one hand, Wagner clearly belongs to the group of military opposition within the German Wehrmacht and supported the preparations for the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. So he provided a Heinkel He 111 aircraft for Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , which he, his adjutant Oberleutnant Werner von Haeften and Major General Hellmuth Stieff on July 20, 1944 from Berlin to the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze in East Prussia and then (without Stieff) back to Berlin. After the failed coup attempt in 1944 Wagner celebrated at noon of July 23 suicide to the threat of arrest by the Gestapo forestall.

At the first briefing after the attempted assassination, Wagner spoke: “The Fiihrer took up a report in which one of the armies fighting in Normandy complained about a lack of ammunition. He found that the armies were supplied differently and asked who was responsible for distributing ammunition. After a pause, Wilhelm Keitel replied: 'The Quartermaster General.' Thereupon Hitler started up as if stung by a tarantula: 'Aha, Wagner! The pig, the traitor! He did well to shoot himself. Otherwise I would have hung it up! '"

War crimes

On the other hand, Wagner was deeply involved in the German mass crimes in the war against the Soviet Union . In particular, he made a significant contribution to the planning and implementation of the starvation policy against Soviet civilians and captured Red Army soldiers. As Quartermaster General of the Army, Major General Hans von Greiffenberg asked him about the need for a reasonably adequate diet for Soviet prisoners of war; He replied succinctly on November 13, 1941 that this was not possible due to the general food situation, and stated: "Non-working prisoners of war in the prison camps have to starve." He wrote to his on September 9, 1941 regarding the blockade of Leningrad Woman: “First of all, you have to let Petersburg stew, what should we do with a 3 1/2 million city that just lays on our food wallet. There is no sentimentality. ”Wagner was responsible for the military administration in the occupied eastern territories as well as for supplying the troops. He also acted as a representative of the army in negotiations with the SS about the deployment of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD in the occupied Soviet Union.

Wagner was also informed in detail about future war crimes planned. At the end of February 1943, the ministerial conductor in the East Ministry, Otto Bräutigam, inspected the minutes of the conversation that Wagner had personally made about a conversation with Heinrich Himmler . In this conversation, Himmler stated that he intended to have 80% of the French population murdered by SD commands after the end of the war and that he would proceed in a similar manner in England. Hitler had previously described the lower classes of England as racially inferior.

literature

Christian Gerlach : "Military supply constraints", occupation policy and mass crimes. The role of the Army Quartermaster General and his departments in the war against the Soviet Union. In: Norbert Frei et al. (Ed.): Exploitation, destruction, public. New Studies on National Socialist Camp Policy. KG Saur, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-24033-3 , pp. 175-208 ( representations and sources on the history of Auschwitz 4).
Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (Ed.) "Mirror image of a conspiracy". The opposition to Hitler and the coup d'état of July 20, 1944 in the SD reporting. Secret documents from the former Reich Security Main Office. 2 volumes. Seewald, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-512-00657-4 .
Roland Peter : General of the Artillery Eduard Wagner. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. Volume 2: From the beginning of the war to the end of the war. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-089-1 , pp. 263-269.
Elisabeth Wagner: My experiences after July 20, 1944. The period from July 1944 to September 1945, in memory of Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner. Hanuschik, Munich 1977.
Eduard Wagner , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 06/1964 from January 27, 1964, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Eduard Wagner - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center

Individual evidence

↑ footnote 13
↑ Historical Lexicon Bavaria
↑ Marianne Feuersenger: In the antechamber of power. Notes from the Wehrmacht leadership and headquarters 1940-1945. Herbig, Munich 1999. ISBN 3-7766-2119-2 .
^ Rüdiger Overmans : The prisoner-of-war policy of the German Reich 1939 to 1945. P. 809.
^ Christian Gerlach: Military "supply constraints", occupation policy and mass crimes. The role of the Army Quartermaster General and his departments in the war against the Soviet Union. In Norbert Frei u. a. (Ed.), Exploitation, Destruction, Public. New studies on National Socialist camp policy (Munich: KG Saur, 2000), pp. 175–208, here pp. 196–197.
↑ Otto Bräutigam : "This is how it happened ..." (Holzner Verlag 1968, page 590)
↑ Adolf Hitler: Table Talk of November 5, 1941 ( Werner Jochmann (Ed.): “Monologues in the Führer Headquarters 1941–1944” , Orbis-Verlag, 2000, pp. 129–130)

personal data
SURNAME	Wagner, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German General and Quartermaster General
DATE OF BIRTH	April 1, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kirchenlamitz
DATE OF DEATH	July 23, 1944
Place of death	Zossen

[1] tnote 13

[2] Historical Lexicon Bavaria

[3] Marianne Feuersenger: In the antechamber of power. Notes from the Wehrmacht leadership and headquarters 1940-1945. Herbig, Munich 1999. ISBN 3-7766-2119-2 .

[4] Rüdiger Overmans : The prisoner-of-war policy of the German Reich 1939 to 1945. P. 809.

[5] Christian Gerlach: Military "supply constraints", occupation policy and mass crimes. The role of the Army Quartermaster General and his departments in the war against the Soviet Union. In Norbert Frei u. a. (Ed.), Exploitation, Destruction, Public. New studies on National Socialist camp policy (Munich: KG Saur, 2000), pp. 175–208, here pp. 196–197.

[6] Otto Bräutigam : "This is how it happened ..." (Holzner Verlag 1968, page 590)

[7] Adolf Hitler: Table Talk of November 5, 1941 ( Werner Jochmann (Ed.): “Monologues in the Führer Headquarters 1941–1944” , Orbis-Verlag, 2000, pp. 129–130)