Ernst Bloch (officer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ernst Ferdinand Benjamin Bloch (* 1898 in Berlin ; † April 1945 ) was a German officer , most recently a colonel in the Wehrmacht , and a spy in the service of the National Socialist German Reich .

Life

Ernst Bloch was born in Berlin as the child of the Jewish Dr. Oskar Bloch was born in Berlin. Judaism was not practiced in the family and Ernst Bloch converted to Christianity . Nevertheless, he was considered a Jewish half-race all his life .

At the age of 16, rejected by several regiments because of his age, he joined the Infantry Regiment 132 ( Strasbourg ) in the German army and fought on the Western Front in the First World War . There he was seriously wounded in the Battle of Ypres in 1915 and retained disfiguring facial features, but miraculously survived, so that he fought in the Battle of Verdun and Somme , the Autumn Battle of Champagne and in 1918 in Flanders .

At the end of the war he was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross . He completed a degree in political science with a doctorate .

After the war he stayed in the army. With the support of Wilhelm Canaris , Hitler gave him permission to join the Abwehr at the end of 1935 . His assignment was with the economic intelligence service in the OKW (Abw I wi) under Hans Piekenbrock . He later became head of the industrial espionage department . He was subordinate to B. Arthur Ehrhardt .

As part of the defense against factory espionage, there had been a separate defense department at IG Farben since 1921 . It was through this department that Bloch came into contact with employees of IG Farben. From 1936, Canaris, Piepenbrock and Bloch agreed on extensive collaborations with representatives of IG Farben, including Max Ilgner , Christian Schneider and Erich von der Heyde , the defense officer in Berlin. This included support for IG Farben, requested by Bloch, in camouflaging agents abroad. Ernst Bloch was friends with Max Hahn and had already been in contact with Max Illgner since 1933, who in 1947 stated in the IG Farben trial via Bloch that he had said “that you only need one group of general to keep Hitler as a whole and to eliminate consorts. ”Just like Illgner, Tilo von Wilmowsky was also covered by Bloch in his role in the defense. Through his work at IG Farben, he was also in contact with the quarter Jew Wilhelm von Flügge , who was interesting for the defense due to his stays abroad and his knowledge of foreign countries.

In mid-1938 he received the Knight's Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of Merit . Bloch took part in the attack on Poland and, because of his loyalty and the support of Canaris, received the declaration of German blood from Hitler in the same year .

In the course of a policy of détente with the USA based on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees , the Abwehr decided at the end of 1939 to help Joseph Isaac Schneersohn escape to America. Schneersohn and his relatives were locked in the Warsaw ghetto after the attack on Poland . The head of the Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris, appointed Major Bloch to be responsible for the escape operation. Bloch appoints two other soldiers of Jewish origin from the Abwehr and they immediately drove to Warsaw . Bloch initially had considerable difficulties in locating the suspicious Schneersohn in the Warsaw Ghetto, also due to the chaotic conditions after the German invasion of Poland, but was then able to contact him via telegrams and information from the USA in mid-December 1939. The group led by Bloch was able to bring over 20 people on the train from Warsaw to Berlin. During this trip Bloch had to muster some acting skills while displaying his war decorations in order to overcome the controls and roadblocks unscathed. In Berlin he handed the group over to the Lithuanian embassy. A short time later, Bloch accompanied the group to the Latvian border.

In April 1943, promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1940 and rejected several times because of his age, he volunteered for the Russian Eastern Front , driven by the increasing difficulties due to his Jewish origin and the investigations into the defense by the Gestapo . There he was first used as the commander of a battalion operating in the rear area near Kiev . From November 1943 he was in command of the 177th Security Regiment of the 213rd Security Division , and since August 1944 he was promoted to colonel on the basis of the RDA .

In October 1944 his name appeared on a list of active officers who, or their wives, had been declared by Hitler to be of German blood before the attempt on him . Although he had received a declaration of German bloodshed (as a so-called honorary Aryan ) despite his partial Jewish origin , Himmler's command was followed by his recall from his command "so that he can be put to work". This was followed by his transfer to the Führer Reserve . At the end of January 1945 he was completely discharged from the Wehrmacht and immediately drafted into the Volkssturm . He died in the battle for Berlin in April 1945.

In 2009 Chabad applied for Bloch and Canaris to be accepted as Righteous Among the Nations . Admission is still open (as of 2019).

literature

  • Bryan Mark Rigg : Rabbi Schneersohn and Major Bloch . Carl Hanser Verlag , Munich , 2006.
  • Winfried Meyer: Company Seven: A rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht . Hain, 1993.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Winfried Meyer: Company Seven .: A rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Hain, 1993, ISBN 978-3-445-08571-9 , pp. 110 ( google.de [accessed on February 5, 2020]).
  2. ^ Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler . Siedler, 2000, p. 251 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  3. ^ A b Carl Freytag: Germany's "Drang nach Südost": the Central European Business Day and the "Supplementary Area Southeast Europe" 1931–1945 . V&R unipress GmbH, 2012, ISBN 978-3-89971-992-5 , p. 210 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  4. ↑ a b c Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich . Königshausen & Neumann, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8260-1690-5 , p. 378 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  5. ^ A b c d Günter Schubert: The stain on Uncle Sam's white vest: America and the Jewish refugees 1938-1945 . Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37275-4 , pp. 135 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  6. ^ Karl Hubert Reichel: How do you make wars? Weltkreisverlag, 1968, p. 92 ( google.de [accessed on February 1, 2020]).
  7. ^ Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949: Case 6: US v. Krauch (IG Farben case) . US Government Printing Office, 1949, pp. 683 ( google.de [accessed February 1, 2020]).
  8. ^ A b Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949: Case 6: US v. Krauch (IG Farben case) . US Government Printing Office, 1949, pp. 688 ( google.de [accessed February 1, 2020]).
  9. ↑ Hans Radandt: Case 6 [six] Selected documents and judgment of the IG Farben process . Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1970, p. 28 + 307 ( google.de [accessed on February 1, 2020]).
  10. ^ Günter Schubert: The stain on Uncle Sam's white vest: America and the Jewish refugees 1938-1945 . Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37275-4 , pp. 134 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  11. ↑ Jochen Böhler, Norddeutscher Rundfunk: The attack: Germany's war against Poland . Eichborn, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8218-5706-0 , pp. 236 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  12. ^ Norman Lebrecht: Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 . Simon and Schuster, 2019, ISBN 978-1-982134-22-8 , pp. 368 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  13. ^ Günter Schubert: The stain on Uncle Sam's white vest: America and the Jewish refugees 1938-1945 . Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37275-4 , pp. 134 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  14. ^ Günter Schubert: The stain on Uncle Sam's white vest: America and the Jewish refugees 1938-1945 . Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37275-4 , pp. 142 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  15. ^ Norman Lebrecht: Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 . Simon and Schuster, 2019, ISBN 978-1-982134-22-8 , pp. 369 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  16. ↑ Chaim Miller: Turning Judaism Outward: A Biography of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe . Kol Menachem, 2014, ISBN 978-1-934152-36-2 , p. 123 ( google.de [accessed on February 5, 2020]).
  17. ↑ Bryan Mark Rigg: Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-11531-4 , pp. 189 ( google.de [accessed on February 5, 2020]).
  18. ↑ Bryan Mark Rigg: Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-11531-4 , pp. 83 ( google.de [accessed on February 5, 2020]).
  19. ↑ a b Sara Grosvald: Antisemitism . Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-094710-6 , p. 81 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
  20. ↑ Winfried Meyer: Company Seven: A rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Hain, 1993, ISBN 978-3-445-08571-9 , pp. 115 ( google.de [accessed on February 5, 2020]).
  21. ^ Norman Lebrecht: Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 . Simon and Schuster, 2019, ISBN 978-1-982134-22-8 , pp. 359 ff . ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Bloch, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bloch, Ernst Ferdinand Benjamin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer
DATE OF BIRTH 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 1945