Ernst Klink

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Ernst Klink (born February 5, 1923 in Bebenhausen ( Tübingen ), † 1993 ) was a German historian. After receiving his doctorate in history under Hans Rothfels in 1957 , he worked from 1958 at the Military History Research Office (MGFA) of the Bundeswehr in Freiburg im Breisgau . Here he wrote a study on the German " Enterprise Citadel " and contributed to the fourth volume of the series Das Deutsche Reich and the Second World War a description of the operational planning of " Enterprise Barbarossa " and the conduct of operations until the end of 1941. Klink had participated in the Second World War as a member of the Waffen SS and was a member of the mutual aid community of members of the former Waffen SS (HIAG). He also used his position in the MGFA to take part in the history of the veterans of the Waffen SS. He sifted through and cleaned up personal documents and estates and passed on information.

Life

time of the nationalsocialism

Klink was a son of the Reichsfrauenführer Gertrud Scholtz-Klink . His brother Hans was SS-Untersturmführer in the heavy SS-Panzer-division 102 . His stepfather became SS-Obergruppenführer August Heissmeyer in 1940 . From 1938 to 1940 Ernst Klink attended the school community in Wickersdorf near Saalfeld in the Thuringian Forest .

Ernst Klink joined the SS in the summer of 1941 and was assigned to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . In the war against the Soviet Union he belonged to the 11th company under Joachim Peiper . After lying in the field hospital in Mariupol in June 1942 and later being treated in the Leibstandarte field hospital in La Musse, France, he took part in the 1943 fighting for Kharkov . As an SS-Unterscharführer he was seriously wounded by a broken gunshot in the lower leg at the beginning of the " Operation Citadel " on July 5, 1943, and was flown to the Hohenlychen Department of the SS military hospital in Berlin . During the war he could no longer be used at the front due to his wounding.

In the Federal Republic of Germany

After the war, Klink studied history, German , philosophy and English . He stayed in Finland for a long time , did his doctorate in 1957 with Hans Rothfels at the University of Tübingen with "Investigations on the Finnish-Swedish dispute over the Åland Islands, 1917–1921 " and became a member of the History and Politics series . Klink was also a member of the mutual aid community of the members of the former Waffen-SS (HIAG), the veteran organization of the Waffen-SS , and in 1958 worked as press spokesman for the Tübingen section.

In October 1958, Klink became an employee of the new Military History Research Office (MGFA) in Freiburg im Breisgau . Here he first developed a study on the “Citadel Company”. Although Klink's membership in the Waffen SS was known in the MGFA, hardly anyone knew about his membership in the HIAG and his ongoing friendship with Joachim Peiper.

The HIAG had begun in the 1950s to coordinate their own military history publications in which Nazi ideology set pieces and legends were handed down to the Waffen-SS in the West German public by the participation of the Waffen SS at war of extermination , the Holocaust and war crimes denied has been. Klink kept in touch with the veterans of the Waffen SS, such as Joachim Peiper and Walter Harzer , who coordinated the writing of the division histories of the SS divisions for HIAG. Klink worked with Peiper and Harzer on a depiction of the Battle of Kharkov. Klink also supported HIAG with documents from the Federal Archives in Freiburg , information and lectures. He also cleaned up the personal records of SS veterans by removing incriminating confessions. In 1985 the widow of the lawyer Rudolf Aschenauer , who had largely organized the support for those convicted of the Malmedy trial , relied on Klink to "first sift through" her husband's estate, which was to be left to the Federal Archives in Freiburg.

Klink used his position in the MGFA for the cause of the Waffen-SS, in particular by influencing journalists who trusted in his seriousness as historians. In 1976 he advised the director Jost von Morr on a documentary about the Malmedy massacre , which was produced by Chronos Film for WDR . The finished film was based on the veteran's perspective, according to which the SS had been held responsible for an unresolved incident during the Ardennes offensive . Klink also provided the material for a multi-page report in the Quick magazine . Within the Research Office, Klink clashed with other historians primarily on issues relating to the Waffen SS. According to the historian Jens Westemeier , Klink was one of “the most important lobbyists for the in-house messing of history” at HIAG.

plant

Klink began his academic career with publications on military policy problems in Northern Europe. He also dealt with German-Finnish military cooperation and the role of Finland in World War II .

Within the MGFA, Klink belonged to the faction of those who clung to the legend of the " clean Wehrmacht " and who opposed the reassessment that prevailed at the MGFA under the direction of Manfred Messerschmidt . The conflicts culminated in the dispute over Volume 4 of the series Das Deutsche Reich und die Second World War , published in 1983, which dealt with the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Some of the authors, namely Joachim Hoffmann , pursued the preventive war thesis , others denied it. Klink's most important contribution to this volume was his study of the planning of the " Operation Barbarossa ". In it, Klink referred to the first military considerations and preparations of the High Command of the Army (OKH) for the war against the Soviet Union from June 1940, which had been employed without any instructions from Hitler ; Rolf-Dieter Müller rates this as an "important discovery" of Klinks.

Gerd R. Ueberschär criticizes the fact that Klink characterized the operational plans of Hitler and the Wehrmacht as apolitical. Klink's account that Hitler demonstrated excellent military leadership while Chief of Staff Franz Halder made bad decisions is hardly supported by the available sources. His narrow military perspective also led Klink to support the preventive war legend. The historian David Stahel considers Klink's study of the planning of the Barbarossa company to be an important work on the subject. Klink had detailed the different strategic goals of the campaign pursued by Hitler on the one hand and the OKH on the other.

Fonts

  • Finland's freedom 1917–1957. Steiner, Laupheim / Württ. 1956.
  • Investigations into the Finnish-Swedish dispute over the Åland Islands 1917–1921. 1957.
  • German-Finnish Brotherhood of Arms. 1941-1944. In: Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau . Vol. 8, 1958, pp. 389-412.
  • with Richard von Donat: To discuss the importance and the right relationship between formal and combat training in the period from 1889 to 1914/15. 1960.
  • with Ursula von Gersdorff: Operation area Eastern Baltic Sea and the Finnish-Baltic region 1944. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1961.
  • The law of action. Operation "Citadel" 1943. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1966.
  • The military conception of the war against the Soviet Union. In: Horst Boog et al. (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War. Vol. 4: The attack on the Soviet Union. DVA, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 190-326.
  • The war against the Soviet Union up to the turn of 1941/42. In: Horst Boog et al. (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War. Vol. 4: The attack on the Soviet Union. DVA, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 541-736.

literature

  • Danny S. Parker: Hitler's Warrior. The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper. The Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA 2016, ISBN 0-306-82455-8 .
  • Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Danny S. Parker: Hitler's Warrior. The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper. The Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA 2016, ISBN 0-306-82455-8 , p. 387.
  2. ^ Danny S. Parker: Hitler's Warrior. The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper. The Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA 2016, ISBN 0-306-82455-8 , p. 405.
  3. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 537.
  4. ↑ Peter Dudek : “Everything is a good average”? Impressions of the student body of the FSG Wickersdorf 1906–1945 . In: Yearbook for Historical Educational Research 2017 . Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2018, ISBN 978-3-7815-2237-4 , pp. 234-279 (citation: p. 273).
  5. ↑ Student directory of the Free School Community Wickersdorf. In: Archives of the German Youth Movement, Ludwigstein Castle, Witzenhausen, Hesse.
  6. ^ A b Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 790.
  7. ^ A b c Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau: Journal for European Security. Volume 8, 1958, p. 356.
  8. ^ Jörg Echternkamp : Order: Research. The Bundeswehr, the Ministry of Defense and dealing with the Nazi past in the system conflict. In: Zeitgeschichte-online , June 2015 (accessed: April 6, 2017).
  9. ↑ a b c d e Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 569.
  10. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 402.
  11. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 567.
  12. ^ Danny S. Parker: Hitler's Warrior. The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper. The Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA 2016, ISBN 0-306-82455-8 , p. 233.
  13. ^ Danny S. Parker: Hitler's Warrior. The Life and Wars of SS Colonel Jochen Peiper. The Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA 2016, ISBN 0-306-82455-8 , p. 215.
  14. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 629.
  15. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period. Partly zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2009. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 622 f.
  16. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: The enemy is in the east. Hitler's secret plans for a war against the Soviet Union in 1939. Ch. Links, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3-86153-617-X , p. 9; meant is Ernst Klink's contribution The military conception of the war against the Soviet Union. In: Horst Boog et al. (Ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War. Vol. 4: The attack on the Soviet Union. DVA, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 190-326.
  17. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär: The military warfare. In: Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär: Hitler's War in the East, 1941–1945. A research report. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2000, ISBN 3-534-14768-5 , pp. 73–224, here p. 84; Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R. Ueberschär: Hitler's War in the East, 1941-1945. A critical assessment. 2nd Edition. Berghahn Books, New York 2002, ISBN 1-57181-293-8 , p. 85.
  18. ^ David Stahel: Operation Barbarossa and Germany's defeat in the East. 4th edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-76847-4 , p. 7.
personal data
SURNAME Klink, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Bebenhausen
DATE OF DEATH 1993