Eugen Ott (Major General)

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Eugene Ott (1933)

Eugen Ott (born April 8, 1889 in Rottenburg am Neckar , † January 23, 1977 in Tutzing , Upper Bavaria ) was a German major general and diplomat .

Life

His parents were the senior government councilor Christian Jacob Ott and his wife Stefanie Baur .

Early years (1889-1921)

After graduating from high school in Stuttgart , Ott joined the 4th Württemberg Field Artillery Regiment No. 65 as a flag junior in 1907 . As a young man, Ott took part in the First World War. In 1917 he was taken over as a captain from the troop service in the general staff , in whose successor organizations he remained with brief interruptions until May 31, 1933. In the 1920s, Ott rose as a subordinate of Kurt von Schleicher , as his close collaborator and confidante in the Reichswehr Ministry, from October 1, 1923 . In 1921 he married Helma Bodewig, the marriage resulted in a son († 1944) and a daughter.

Career in the Reichswehr Ministry (1921–1933)

Ott's career remained closely linked to that of Schleicher. In 1931, he was promoted to head of the Wehrmacht Department in the Reichswehr Ministry , now with the rank of lieutenant colonel . In this context he was responsible for the national military associations such as the Stahlhelm and the SA . He shared with Schleicher the idea of ​​the necessity to bind the “valuable national elements” to the state within the framework of a cross-front . As Schleicher's deputy, he often took part in Reichstag sessions as an observer. Ott was indirectly involved in the overthrow of Reich Defense Minister Groener . On December 1, 1932, Ott went to Weimar as a negotiator on behalf of Schleicher and made Hitler, who was staying there on the occasion of a "Führer Conference", an offer to join any Schleicher cabinet, in which Schleicher would remain Minister for Defense, but the NSDAP according to its strength would receive a few more ministries. Hitler brusquely rejected this proposal and even warned Schleicher against assuming government responsibility.

On January 28, 1933, Ott, together with Ferdinand von Bredow (Head of the Ministerial Office in the Reichswehr Ministry), Erwin Planck (State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery) and General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord , pleaded that the Reich President should not make Hitler Chancellor appointed and, in the event of refusal, to have the chief of army command imposed a military state of emergency , d. that is, he was considering coup plans to keep Schleicher in office. The latter refused.

The business game Ott

The so-called simulation game Ott developed by Eugen Ott was written on the occasion of the Berlin transport workers' strike in November 1932. It dealt with the chances of the Reichswehr in a violent confrontation with the rising National Socialist movement, the communists and the democratic forces in the course of a restorative coup d'état initiated by the government in favor of a traditional monarchical or military dictatorial reform.

In his simulation game, Ott came to the conclusion that the Reichswehr was probably unable to cope with such an undertaking and referred to the potentially disastrous consequences (Polish intervention, collapse of the food supply, conditions of civil war, etc.). In summary, the Reichswehr Minister had to “prevent the Reich government from resorting to a military state of emergency”. Ott's presentation of his simulation game at a meeting of the still acting, officially resigned cabinet Papen on December 2, 1932 prompted the ministers of the Papen government to abandon the idea of ​​a coup "based on the bayonets of the Reichswehr", to which they lacked Support from the population had initially attracted. The “Ott business game” sealed the end of the “Cabinet of the Barons”: On December 3, Hindenburg dismissed the von Papen government, which had also been deprived of its last perspective.

Schleicher, who was subsequently appointed Chancellor, has therefore sometimes been accused of staging the setting up of the simulation game in the ministry and Ott's lecture in the cabinet in order to undermine Papen's position and thus force him to resign worked towards the fall of Papen.

Military attaché and ambassador to Japan (1933–1942)

Following the resignation of the government of General von Schleicher, to which he still held personal contact, Ott was left under Adolf Hitler initially at the head of the Armed Forces Department.

The u. a representation by Curt Riess , received by Julius Mader , J. Gorew and Ronald Seth, that Eugen Ott was an employee of the military intelligence service of the German General Staff in the section and later Department III B under Lieutenant Colonel Walter Nicolai during the First World War , according to research Jürgen W. Schmidts “belong in the realm of legend.” This applies both to a special course for intelligence officers that Ott attended and to the analysis of the structure and methods of Japanese army intelligence that was allegedly made in 1933 for the Reichswehr command. In fact, according to an article written by Schmidt for the Tagesspiegel, Curt Riess' information should be treated with caution. To what extent the depiction of Ellis Mark Zacharias, as received by Mader and Prange, that Ott was Hitler's agent in the Schleicher circle and provided him with information, is correct or not remains open. Such agent activity explains - according to Mader - Ott's promotion to colonel in 1934, while von Schleicher was shot by SS men in the same year. Zacharias, who among other things was deputy director of US Naval Intelligence after the Second World War, does not provide any concrete evidence for his claim.

When Ott's position in Berlin became untenable, he was sent to the Japanese army as an observer on June 1, 1933 . After returning from Japan, Ott attended a month-long attaché course and gave a lecture to Adolf Hitler on the effects of the Soviet-Japanese tensions in the Far East on the situation in Europe. On February 1, 1934, he was appointed military attaché to the German embassy in Tokyo under Herbert von Dirksen . Otto's appearance in Weimar in 1932 did not lead to resentment among Hitler. He seems to have made a positive impression at the joint meetings. General Keitel noted on March 17, 1938: “Major General Ott is due to the fact that he is the next employee of General v. Schleicher had a close relationship of trust with him, without his fault he got into a politically lopsided position. During this lecture, the Fuehrer raised the question of whether Major General Ott might not be eligible for employment in an independent position because of his work. ”However, Göring is said to have had a negative impression after the Weimar meeting with Ott. On April 21, 1934, Ott took over the business of military and air attaché in Tokyo.

In February 1934 Ott Schleicher invited him to visit him for a longer period in Japan, because he had the impression that the general was putting himself in serious danger with his blatant criticism of the conditions and leading figures of the National Socialist regime, and he put him in this way Wanted to bring security. Schleicher, who rejected this proposal on the grounds that he did not want to be “evacuated”, was finally with on June 30 of the same year, during the so-called “ Night of the Long Knives ”, at which Ott was allegedly also on the murder list his wife, Elisabeth von Schleicher , murdered. Since the Japanese army, through its Berlin attaché, Ōshima Hiroshi ( 大 島 浩 ; 1886–1975), pressed for an alliance with the regaining empire, Ott was largely ignored in the negotiations that ended in the Anti-Comintern Pact (November 25, 1936). Thanks to his good contacts with the Japanese military, he was informed confidentially about the negotiations for the German-Japanese agreement as early as October 1935. Ambassador v. Dirksen only found out about this in December of that year. He never really came into contact with the leading men in Japan.

After Ambassador Dirksen left for health reasons, Ott was promoted to German Ambassador to Japan on March 18, 1938 as part of Joachim von Ribbentrop's active policy on Japan, but only with the aim of achieving a similar upgrading of his interlocutor Ōshima in Berlin. which happened eight months later.

On August 25, 1938, Ott joined the NSDAP . However, he is said not to have properly internalized the National Socialist ideology. Thus characterized Richard Sorge - according Eta Harich-Schneider - Ott as follows: "As a clandestine anti-Nazi, he is always anxious to prove otherwise. In doing so, he goes to extremes and is worse than a real Nazi. ”This is how von Ott's rejection of a German-Japanese marriage is handed down. Although the Reich Minister of the Interior took the view in the case of the planned marriage that there was “an interest because the child, who as a mixed race would mean an undesirable increase in population, would lose German citizenship through marriage”, Ott prevented together with the regional group leader NSDAP, Rudolf Hillmann, and the Consul General of Yokohama, Heinrich Seelheim , the Germans concerned emigrated to Japan. Even the local branch of the NSDAP in Tokyo-Yokohama, after initially rejecting and advocating the confiscation of passports to prevent emigration, changed its mind and stated: “As long as there is no law according to which such marriages are simply forbidden, we will intervene to prevent them from leaving her personal life ”. Heinrich Stahmer, ambassador to Tokyo from 1943, is said to have been exposed to verbal anti-Semitic attacks by Eugen Otts because of his wife. Early evidence of a possible anti-Semitic attitude Otts can be found as early as 1932. For example, the wife of the lawyer Carl Schmitt , who is known as Ott, said to her husband after a visit with Otts: “Since he [Ott] was there in uniform, the air has been purified in this Jewish apartment ”. Bernd Martin points out that Stahmer's “phrases” such as “German-Japanese relationship is also often disturbed by Jewish emigrants through denunciation and the spreading of lies” were not included in any of Ott's telegrams.

On June 7, 1939, he reported to State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Foreign Office that Japan was ready to enter the war on the German side as soon as the Soviet Union, as Germany's opponent, entered a continental war. He was not involved in the preliminary negotiations for a military alliance ( Tripartite Pact , September 27, 1940). During the war he tried to present the events correctly, which, as the war progressed, contradicted Ribbentrop's expectations.

Richard Sorge

Richard Sorge gained a strong position of trust with Eugen Ott during his time as a military attaché at the German Embassy in Tokyo . He was one of Ott's most important informants and brought him extensive material, which he obtained in particular from Ozaki Hotsumi , a journalist for the daily Asahi Shinbun, and Miyagi Yotoku, an Okinawa-Japanese who grew up in the United States. In the course of time, Sorge was given access to documents from the embassy and to reports sent by the embassy to Berlin . With the outbreak of the Second World War, he wrote the embassy’s periodic war reports for a long time on behalf of the ambassador. He was able to move freely in the embassy building, had an office there for a while and was able to take photos of important documents without hindrance. He then sent the footage to Moscow . Eugen Ott and Naval Attaché Wenneker presented concern also material of the Japanese army and navy available. From Ott, Sorge also received a lot of information on the negotiations of the Anti-Comintern Pact . A GRU document from 1938 states that Richard Sorge said his relations with military attaché Ott, Ambassador von Dirksen, the secretary of the German embassy and other "representatives of German fascism in Japan" were so close that they were too close to him Granted access. As proof, Sorge sent "three pages of a German text that was encrypted with the" Enigma "encryption machine". In another of his reports, Sorge reported that Ott had brought him to Berlin to write the cipher telegrams. Sorge's arrest for espionage for the Soviet Union in 1941 was a serious personal disappointment for Ott. At first he suspected the cause was a Japanese intrigue. When this did not come true, Ott became much more suspicious and did not shy away from working with Josef Meisinger . Both of them denounced the head of the War Organization (KO) China, Theodor Siefken, as homosexuals at the Reich Security Main Office . This was then replaced under the pretext of illness.

Dismissed as ambassador

On November 23, 1942, Eugen Ott was informed by Joachim von Ribbentrop of his recall as ambassador by a personal telegram that he himself had to decipher. The reason given in the telegram is the case of Sorge , which “left an impression on Japanese authorities” that “had an unfavorable effect” on the “personal position” of the ambassador vis-à-vis the Japanese. On November 18, 1942, Adolf Hitler agreed to Ribbentrop's proposal, but at the same time “regretted” that no other “practical use” could be found for Ott in East Asia. The personal relationship between Otts and Hitler was good , despite his earlier membership of Schleicher's circle . For example, Hitler approached Ott at a lecture in January 1934 "with an extremely benevolent gesture" and "put a line under the past". In contrast to Hitler, however, Joseph Goebbels was pleased about the recall, as Ott was "apparently not up to his task".

From the “closer environment” of Otts it was said that the real cause was that Ott “nobly protested against the shackling of American prisoners of war” and thereby aroused “the displeasure of German and Japanese agitators”. However, according to Eta Harich-Schneider , this is not the case on record. Ott worked “skillfully on building his image”. Lily Abegg, for example, wrote a "sorry, virtuous and anti-communist report about the noble friend Ott" in the Zurich Weltwoche, who "fell victim to the" irresistible "Richard Sorge."

Bernd Martin is of the opinion that Ott was not recalled because of the concern affair . He states: "The reason given by Ribbentrop, the worry affair, could not have brought about this decision." However, he does not provide any concrete evidence for this thesis. As arguments, he cites, among other things, the Japanese had "never given the German government a bad mark on the worry incident " and the telegrams he looked through contained no "criticism of Ambassador Otts' conduct of office" or "allegations about the Sorge affair". According to Josef Albert Meisinger , the Japanese government's communication on the Sorge case was bypassed the German embassy in Tokyo , since intercepted messages pointed Sorges directly to Ott or the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka as the source. When Berlin had enough material against Ott, he was recalled.

Late years (1942–1977)

He stayed in Beijing as a private citizen until the end of the war ; his requests for military reactivation were refused. Nevertheless, Ott still took in 1945, as the historian Hans-Jürgen Döscher quotes the professional diplomat Wilhelm Haas , who had to leave office in 1937 because of his wife's Jewish origins, because of the “loyalty to the officers' corps in the vast majority, not to say cadaver obedience , in front of any government [...] in his general uniform, took part in the celebrations of January 30th, the seizure of power. ”On November 1st, 1951 he was given permanent retirement and lived in Tutzing . In 1960 Ott became a lecturer in civic education in schools in the West Berlin district of Wilmersdorf. On behalf of the Berlin Senator for Education, he gave a lecture on the topics of “Asia on the move” and “My experiences in the Weimar Republic”. In 1961 he was entrusted with the management of the "Development Aid" department by the Working Group on Democratic Circles .

On the stand

After the Second World War, Ott testified as a witness in several trials. He was questioned extensively in connection with the IMTFE and a large number of his telegrams and other documents from the Foreign Office were secured as evidence. He was also summoned as a witness in the Nuremberg “ Wilhelmstrasse Trial ”. In a process of reparation for the Shanghai ghetto , Ott claimed that he could only say with regard to Franz Huber, his successor Josef Meisinger and the Nazi party offices in Japan that he “considered it highly improbable, almost impossible” that one of these persons “was involved Japanese authorities on anti-Jewish matters ”. In fact, during Ott's tenure, Meisinger had intensive talks with Japanese authorities in this area and handed over a list of “anti-Nazis”, including the names of all Jews with German passports in Japan. Previously, he had repeatedly impressed on his Japanese interlocutors that “anti-Nazis” basically correspond to “anti-Japanese”. Meisinger's former interpreter, Karl Hamel, recorded this in detail during American interviews in Japan. He also stated that this had started a real hunt for "anti-Nazis" which led to the internment of quite a few people. These documents, classified as "secret", were not included in the trial, and Hamel was not even heard as a witness. The court therefore came to the conclusion that "although there is a likelihood" that Meisinger had tried to encourage the Japanese to take action against Jews, the establishment of the ghetto in Shanghai was based "solely on Japanese initiative". Ott himself had confirmed the existence of a list of Meisinger with the names of persons of "unreliable political views" in the trial of the "Jewish savior" and industrialist in Tokyo, Willy Rudolf Foerster , but claimed that it was "immediately torn and strictly rejected Meisinger's suggestion" to have. Nevertheless, Meisinger was able to hand over this list to Japanese authorities, including the Kempeitai , towards the end of the same year (1942) . A little later that ghetto in Shanghai was proclaimed and Meisinger despite the affair concern transported.

After the Second World War , Ott appeared - in lectures and texts - as an emphatic defender of Kurt von Schleicher in the population and in the historical specialist public. In 2002, Ott was portrayed in the film adaptation of Richard Sorge's life by Ulrich Mühe .

Fonts

  • A picture of General Kurt von Schleicher . In Politische Studien , Vol. 10 (1959), Issue 110, pp. 360–371.
  • From the history of the Nazi seizure of power , lecture on May 19, 1965, text at Bavaria Atelier GmbH, Schleicher files.
  • Partial estate and survey protocols: Institute for Contemporary History , Munich.

literature

  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 3: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: L – R. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-71842-6 . P. 416f.
  • Bernd Martin :  Ott, Eugen. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 649 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Jürgen W. Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. In: Heiner Timmermann et al. (Ed.): Espionage, ideology, myth - the Richard Sorge case. LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547-4 , pp. 88-104 ( documents and writings of the European Academy Otzenhausen 113).
  • Hans Schwalbe, Heinrich Seemann (ed.): German ambassadors in Japan. 1860-1973. German Society for Nature u. Ethnology of East Asia, Tokyo 1973 ( communications of the German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia 57, ISSN  1436-0128 ).
  • Bernd Martin: Germany and Japan in the Second World War 1940-1945: From the attack on Pearl Harbor to the German surrender , Nikol, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933203-50-3 .
  • Clemens Jochem: The Foerster case: The German-Japanese machine factory in Tokyo and the Jewish auxiliary committee Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95565-225-8 .
  • Sergej A. Kondraschow: Richard Sorge and his group In: Heiner Timmermann, Sergej A. Kondraschow, Hisaya Shirai (ed.): Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Richard Sorge LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547- 4 , pp. 125-149.
  • Julius Mader: Dr.-Sorge-Report, military publisher of the German Democratic Republic, 3rd revised and expanded edition, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-327-00204-5 .
  • Ellis M. Zacharias: Secret missions: the story of an intelligence officer Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 2003, ISBN 978-1-59114-999-6 .
  • Georg Bewersdorf: Eugen Ott - Major General and German Ambassador to Japan . In: Orders and Medals. Das Magazin für Freunde der Phaleristik , Ed .: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ordenskunde , Issue 106, Volume 18, Gäufelden 2016, ISSN 1438-3772, pp. 343–346.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Julius Mader: Dr.-Sorge-Report Military Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic, 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Berlin 1986, p. 213, footnote 27, ISBN 3-327-00204-5 .
  2. ↑ J. Schmidt: Mata Hari's unsuccessful boss - Why Moscow thought Walter Nicolai for the "gray eminence" of the Nazi secret services In: Der Tagesspiegel of October 7, 2001 ( Link ).
  3. ↑ Mader: Dr.-Sorge-Report , Berlin 1986, p. 213, footnote 30.
  4. ^ Gordon William Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon: Target Tokyo: the story of the Sorge spy ring McGraw-Hill, New York 1984, ISBN 0-07-050677-9 .
  5. ^ Ellis M. Zacharias: Secret missions: the story of an intelligence officer Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 2003, ISBN 978-1-59114-999-6 .
  6. ↑ Jürgen W. Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. In: Heiner Timmermann, Sergej A. Kondraschow, Hisaya Shirai (eds.): Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Richard Sorge LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547-4 , pp. 88-104, pp. 89.
  7. ^ Zacharias: Secret missions: the story of an intelligence officer , Annapolis, Md. 2003, p. 159.
  8. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 94.
  9. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 92.
  10. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 94.
  11. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 95.
  12. ↑ Gerald Mund: East Asia in the Mirror of German Diplomacy: The private service correspondence of the diplomat Herbert v. Dirksen from 1933 to 1938 Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, p. 102, ISBN 978-3-515-08732-2 .
  13. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 96.
  14. ↑ Clemens Jochem: The Foerster case: The German-Japanese machine factory in Tokyo and the Jewish auxiliary committee Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2017, p. 37 f., ISBN 978-3-95565-225-8 .
  15. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 48.
  16. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 46 f.
  17. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 178.
  18. ↑ Volker Neumann: Carl Schmitt as Jurist Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2015, p. 376, ISBN 978-3-16-153772-1 .
  19. ↑ Bernd Martin: Germany and Japan in the Second World War 1940-1945: From the attack on Pearl Harbor to the German surrender , Nikol, Hamburg 2001, p. 128, ISBN 3-933203-50-3 .
  20. ^ Gerhard Krebs: Germany and the February putsch in Japan 1936 , In: Küppers, Andreas N .; Krebs, Gerhard (Ed.) Japan Studies 3. Conflict. Japanese Studies 3.00. Munich, iudicium Verlag, pp. 47–72., P. 62. ( PDF )
  21. ↑ Sergej A. Kondraschow: Richard Sorge and his group In: Heiner Timmermann, Sergej A. Kondraschow, Hisaya Shirai (ed.): Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547 -4 , pp. 125-149, pp. 131 f.
  22. ↑ Kondraschow: Richard Sorge und seine Gruppe , Münster 2005, p. 139.
  23. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 102 f.
  24. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 54 ff.
  25. ^ Eta Harich-Schneider: Characters and catastrophes: eyewitness reports of a traveling musician Ullstein, Berlin Frankfurt / M. Vienna 1978, p. 236, ISBN 3-550-07481-6 .
  26. ^ Martin: Germany and Japan in the Second World War 1940–1945 , Hamburg 2001, p. 123.
  27. ↑ Martin: Germany and Japan in the Second World War 1940–1945 , Hamburg 2001, p. 124.
  28. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 53 f.
  29. ^ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: rope teams. The Foreign Office's suppressed past . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 2005. ISBN 3-549-07267-8 , p. 63
  30. ↑ Der Spiegel, No. 45, 1960, p. 94.
  31. ↑ Der Spiegel, No. 33, 1961, p. 62.
  32. ↑ See documents from the Digital Collection of the University of Virginia Law Library on Eugen Ott, available online at http://imtfe.law.virginia.edu/search/site/eugen%20ott , accessed on October 29, 2017.
  33. ^ Schmidt: Eugen Ott - friend and source of Richard Sorge. , Münster 2005, p. 103.
  34. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 89.
  35. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, pp. 84–90.
  36. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 232, note 164.
  37. ↑ Jochem: Der Fall Foerster , Berlin 2017, p. 87 f.
personal data
SURNAME Ott, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and officer
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Rottenburg am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1977
Place of death Tutzing