Ernst Woermann

Ernst Woermann (born March 30, 1888 in Dresden ; † July 5, 1979 in Heidelberg ) was a German diplomat , member of the NSDAP, ambassador in Nanjing and was a defendant in the Wilhelmstrasse trial , where he was sentenced to five years in prison.

Life

Woermann, son of the art historian Karl Woermann , studied law at the universities of Heidelberg , Munich , Freiburg and Leipzig after attending a humanistic grammar school . After completing his studies and his doctorate , he took part in the First World War as a soldier , most recently as a first lieutenant . He then worked in the Hamburg judicial service and from 1919 in the Foreign Office . In 1920 he was part of the German peace delegation in Paris and the German embassy in Paris, and in 1925 he moved to Vienna as envoy . From February 1929 he worked again in the Foreign Office. After being appointed envoy, first class in August 1936, he moved to the embassy in London in autumn 1936 , where he repeatedly represented the then ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop . On December 1st, 1937 Woermann joined the NSDAP (membership number 4,789,453). On April 1, 1938, Woermann was promoted to succeed Ernst von Weizsäcker as ministerial director and in the position of undersecretary to head of the political department in the Foreign Office. At the same time he received the SS rank of SS standard leader .

After the November pogroms in 1938 he took together with the Jewish expert Emil Schumburg as a representative of the Foreign Office to that of Goering led the conference in part, was discussed in the above anti-Jewish measures. At the end of the conference, Goering dismissed the participants with the note: “If the German Reich comes into foreign policy conflict in any foreseeable future, it goes without saying that we in Germany, too, will primarily think of giving a big reckoning to the Jews Execute. "Woermann himself hurried to the conference as the first to speak after Göring's anti-Jewish tirades to register" the right of the AA to participate "in measures against the Jews and was very relieved at the end of the conference about the" promise of general participation by the AA ".

Woermann wrote on March 1, 1941 in a communication to the Dept. Germany , "that there are no political objections to action against Hungarian Jews and Jews from the Balkan countries". From April 1943 to May 1945 he was ambassador of the German Reich to the national Chinese government in Nanjing . After the war he was interned. In Asia he was still charged in the iron girder trial for continuing the war activities together after May 8, 1945, but was one of the few acquitted.

process

In November 1947 Woermann was indicted in the Wilhelmstrasse trial as part of the Nuremberg trials . Woermann was found guilty of crimes against peace and against humanity and was sentenced to seven years in prison in April 1949. The prosecution tried to prove Woermann, in his function as Undersecretary of State and Head of the Political Department of the Foreign Office, an essential function in the foreign policy support of the wars of aggression against Czecho-Slovakia, against Poland, against Denmark and Norway, against the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium, against Greece and against Yugoslavia. In the opinion of the court, Woermann was "not in the dark about the criminal plans" (p. 42), but this was not enough for the court to convict. Independent action could only be proven in the case of Poland when Woermann had the Slovak government, through the embassy in Bratislava, make territorial commitments in the event of war with Poland. In his dissenting opinion, which was published with the judgment, Judge Leon W. Powers presented the role of the Foreign Office as just a "conveyor belt" that would have passed on the information about the military operations in the event of an attack (p. 292), and Woermann's role as that of a "letter writer" (p. 293), but not as someone whose activity was aimed at preparing or bringing about a war of aggression. The conviction on this point was actually overturned in the rectifying resolution of December 12, 1949, even if it was confirmed again by another of the three judges in a further minority vote, and the sentence was reduced to five years. His defense lawyers included Victor Freiherr von der Lippe and Günther Lummert , who were both involved in war crimes issues, also for the German Red Cross of the Western Zones and later for the Federal Republic.

Woermann was released from Landsberg War Crimes Prison on January 18, 1950 . Little is known about the years after the war. On January 11, 1970, the constitutional lawyer and former National Socialist Ernst Forsthoff wrote in a very familiar tone to Carl Schmitt "in old admiration" about W., he was doing well.

literature

• Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes , Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past . German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
• Hans-Jürgen Döscher : SS and Foreign Office in the “Third Reich”. Diplomacy in the shadow of the “final solution” . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1991, ISBN 3-548-33149-1 ( Ullstein book - contemporary history 33149), (At the same time: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 1985: SS and Foreign Office in the Nazi system of rule ).
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Updated 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .
• The verdict in the Wilhelmstrassen trial The official wording of the decision in case no.11 of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal against von Weizsäcker and others, with differing reasons for the verdict, rectification decisions, the basic legal provisions, a list of the judges and witnesses and introductions by Robert MW Kempner and Carl Haensel . Published with the assistance of CH Tuerck. (officially recognized translation from English). Bürger Verlag, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1950, DNB .

Web links

• Ernst Woermann in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Biographical data in the Federal Archives
• Hitler's (and thus Woermann's) instructions to "take advantage of the Arab freedom movement", as an aid to Erwin Rommel's campaign
• Notes on the Arabic question (PDF; 2.0 MB) by W., same aim. W. passim in the entire document, but against the religious Islam-Nazi stance of other AA protagonists
• Newspaper article about Ernst Woermann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ in the judgment text "Wörmann"
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographisches Lexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main, 1998, p. 493.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Hartmut Jäckel : "Telephone Book 1941: Names, Numbers, Fates". Die Welt , January 30, 1999, accessed April 27, 2010 . 
4. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 172.
5. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 173
6. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 172 f.
7. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 684.
8. ↑ TRIAL OF LOTHAR EISENTRAGER AND OTHERS BEFORE A UNITED STATES MILITARY COMMISSION, ~ SHANGHAI, CHINA 3rd OCTOBER, 1946-14TH JANUARY, 1947 (PDF; 9.0 MB)
9. ↑ all the following page references after The Judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse Trial
10. ^ Judgment, p. XXI
11. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 684.
12. ^ Ernst Forsthoff - Carl Schmitt. Correspondence 1926 - 1974. Academy, Berlin 2007 ISBN 3050035358 , Letter No. 302