Führer Headquarters

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Location of the Führer headquarters

Führer Headquarters ( FHQ ) was the general name for a command post of Adolf Hitler as Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War .

In addition to the well-known Führer headquarters Wolfsschanze , there were 20 other Führer headquarters in the German Reich and the occupied territories, but not all of them were completed by the end of the war in 1945. A prerequisite for a place that could be used as the Führer’s headquarters was good transport connections (motorway, railroad, airport), good protection and camouflage options and proximity to the front .

Two commissions (one chaired by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ) examined whether certain locations were suitable for the Führer headquarters. The “ Führer-Companion Battalion ” (FBB) was responsible for the military protection of the Führer headquarters, and the “ Führerbegleitkommando ” (FBK) of the SS Reich Security Service (RSD) was responsible for personal protection of Hitler .

Overview of the fixed Führer headquarters

Surname other names place start of building finished Use as FHQ
Eagle's Nest Mill (OT)
building project Z
warehouse K
building project C 		Langenhain-Ziegenberg (district of Ober-Mörlen in the Wetterau ) September 1, 1939 Yes December 10, 1944-15. January 1945 (as part of the Battle of the Bulge )
Plant center Askania center Tomaszów in the General Government of Poland December 1, 1940 Yes no, only industry (golden amsel)
Plant south Askania south Strzyżów in the General Government of Poland October 1, 1940 Yes 27.-28. August 1941
Bear cave no Smolensk October 1, 1941 Yes no, only alternate headquarters for Army Group Center
Rock nest W-0 Rodert , near Bad Münstereifel February / March 1940 Yes May 10–6. June 1940, September 1944 ( 7th Army Command ) and in the winter of 1944/1945 ( Army Group B under Field Marshal Walter Model )
Olga no Orsha , Distr. Vitebsk (200 km NE Minsk ) July 1, 1943 No No
giant no Wüstewaltersdorf in Lower Silesia (Owl Mountains) October 1943 No No
S III Olga Ohrdruf Autumn 1944 (?) No No
Siegfried Hagen Pullach in the Isar Valley (today's BND site)
bordering on the imperial settlement of Rudolf Hess 		1943 Yes No
Tannenberg no Freudenstadt / Kniebis October 1, 1939 Yes June 27–6. July 1940
Forest meadow no Glan-Münchweiler October 1, 1939 Yes No
Moated castle no Pleskau November 1, 1942 Yes no, handover to Army Group North
werewolf Oak grove near Vinnitsa November 1, 1941 Yes July 16–30. October 1942, February 19–13. March 1943, August 27, 1943
Wolfsschanze Askania North Rastenburg December 1, 1940 Yes 1941-20. November 1944, then 4th Army until January 24, 1945
Wolfsschlucht 1 W-1 Brûly-de-Pesche (Belgium) May 25, 1940 Yes 6-27 June 1940
Wolfsschlucht 2 W-2 Margival September 1, 1942 Yes 16.-17. June 1944
Wolfsschlucht III W-3 Saint-Rimay , ( Montoire-sur-le-Loir ) May 1, 1942 No No
Gypsies Brunhilde Diedenhofen near Arsweiler in Lorraine April 1, 1944 No No

The Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden and the Reich Chancellery ( Führerbunker ) in Berlin were not designated as Führer headquarters.

Commanders of the Führer Headquarters

  • September 1, 1939 to February 15, 1940: Erwin Rommel (1891–1944)
  • February 15, 1940 to August 1, 1942: Kurt Thomas (1896–1943) (since January 22, 1940 commander of the Führer-Escort Battalion )
  • August 1, 1942 to September 1, 1944: Gustav Streve (1893–?)
  • September 1, 1944 to May 8, 1945: Otto Ernst Remer (1912–1997), combat commander of the Führer Headquarters; as commander of the Führerbegleitdivision (later the Führerbegleitdivision), participation in the Ardennes offensive and battles on the Eastern Front

Propagandist staging

The "Führer Headquarters" were not just facilities for military use, but were at the center of Nazi propaganda right from the start, which made the word "Führer Headquarters" an exclusive trademark of Hitler as commander in chief of the Wehrmacht. In order to give the headquarters the aura of a mythical place of historical importance, Hitler kept the Army High Command at a spatial distance from his headquarters. Combined headquarters, such as existed in Great Britain, where political and military leadership operated under one roof, did not exist in Germany between 1939 and 1945.

While Hitler still used a special train as the "Führer Headquarters" in the campaign against Poland (and later in the Balkans), since the beginning of the campaign against France he moved into fixed installations near the front, later in the campaign against the Soviet Union with the "Wolfsschanze" and the "Fuehrer's Headquarters" in Vinnitsa (Ukraine) two facilities, both of which were well behind the front. The Nazi propaganda reported in great detail about the mobile "Führer Headquarters" and its trips to the front in Poland and later in France. Hitler himself commissioned the commissioned work "On the Streets of Victory" from Reich Press Chief Otto Dietrich , which appeared shortly before Christmas 1939 and became a bestseller.

Hitler also influenced the choice of location and, in particular, the design of his headquarters. These had to be particularly simple in their layout, since Hitler used the image of an ascetic leader for propaganda. For these reasons, for example, he rejected the Ziegenberg complex, which was already ready for occupancy, as he did not want to reside in a formerly noble mansion. The architects Friedrich Classen and Siegfried Schmelcher , who were involved in the construction of the facility , later stated Hitler's rejection as follows:

"But after this headquarters had devoured [...] millions of Reichsmarks [...], Hitler declared that the headquarters was far too luxurious for him. [...] The people who would later make pilgrimages to the former Führer headquarters [...] would never understand such luxury. "

From the beginning, the facilities were intended as monuments for posterity and for Hitler's fame as a general. The first permanent headquarters called "Felsennest", from which Hitler had followed the decisive first stage of the French campaign until June 3, 1940, should therefore remain completely unchanged by order of Hitler. Hitler also commissioned the famous war painter Ernst Vollbehr to paint his headquarters in France.

In this context, the historian Christoph Raichle put forward the thesis that the enormous expansion of the "Wolfschanze" in East Prussia in the autumn of 1944 served less military purposes than that of Hitler, who had already seen the war defeat, as a "bulwark of doom "has been designed. In this way, Hitler wanted to leave a document of his struggle against communism for posterity through the ruins, which even withstood large-scale attempts at demolition.

See also

literature

  • Christel Focken: FHQ "Führer Headquarters" Riese (Silesia) , Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-938208-63-2 .
  • Christel Focken: FHQ “Führer Headquarters” Wolfsschanze (Masuria) , Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-938208-84-7 .
  • Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven / François d'Alançon: With Hitler in the bunker. Records from the Führer Headquarters July 1944 - April 1945 . Translated from the French by Michael Erbe. Berlin 2005, wjs-Verlag, ISBN 3-937989-14-5 .
  • Hans-Josef Hansen: Felsennest - The forgotten leader's headquarters in the Eifel. Construction, use, destruction . Helios-Verlag, Aachen, 2nd extended new edition 2008, ISBN 3-938208-21-X .
  • Ed .: Helmut Heiber : Briefings in the Führer Headquarters. Minutes from Hitler's military conferences 1942–1945 , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv 120/21), Munich 1963.
  • Ralf Bernd Herden : The court of the Führer Headquarters (on the knee). In: Die Ortenau, 93rd annual volume 2013, pp. 443–452.
  • Ralf Bernd Herden : The “Führer Headquarters Tannenberg” on the Kniebis. In: Martin Ruch (Ed.): The Ortenau. Publications of the Historical Association for Central Baden. 82nd annual volume 2002, Bühl 2002, pp. 681–684.
  • Hoffmann, Peter: The security of the dictator. Hitler's bodyguards, protective measures, residences, headquarters, Munich 1975.
  • Alexander Kuffner: Time Travel Guide Eifel 1933–1945 . Paperback (short articles about the rock nest and Wolfsschlucht) Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2007, ISBN 978-3-938208-42-7 .
  • Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014. (Chapter "Führer Headquarters", pp. 213–243 and Chapter 6 "Wolfsschanze", pp. 425–435).
  • Pierre Rhode / Werner Sünkel: Wolfsschlucht 2 - Autopsy of a leader's headquarters , Werner Sünkel Verlag History + Technology, Leinburg 1993, ISBN 3-930060-81-7 .
  • Werner Sünkel / Rudolf Rack / Pierre Rhode: Adlerhorst - Autopsy of a leader's headquarters , Werner Sünkel Verlag Geschichte + Technik, Offenhausen 1998, ISBN 3-930060-97-3 .
  • Alfons Schulz: Three years in the news center of the Fuehrer's headquarters . Christiana publishing house, Stein am Rhein. 2nd edition 1997. ISBN 3-7171-1028-4 .
  • Franz W. Seidler / Dieter Zeigert: The Führer Headquarters. Facilities and planning in World War II . Munich: Herbig 2000. ISBN 3-7766-2154-0 .
  • Autumn 1941 in the "Führer Headquarters" . Werner Koeppens reports to his minister Alfred Rosenberg , ed. and commented by Martin Vogt, Koblenz 2002. DNB
  • Uwe Neumärker, Robert Conrad, Cord Woywodt: Wolfsschanze, Hitler's power center in World War II . Weltbild 2008, ISBN 3-8289-0849-7 .
  • Christel Focken: Wolfsschanze - (East Prussia) A picture and text documentation , Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2018, ISBN 978-3-86933-211-6 .
  • Christel Focken: FHQ “Führer Headquarters” - Askania 2 , Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2020, ISBN 978-3-86933-249-9 .

Web links

Commons : Führer's headquarters  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Führer Headquarters  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Richard Raiber: Guide to Hitler's Headquarters, After The Battle, No. 19 , p. 48.
  2. ↑ The allocation to the FHQ is controversial, according to statements and documents from Organization Todt engineers of the Schmelcher planning staff who were previously involved in the construction, the original objective was a FHQ, which could no longer be used due to the effects of the war.
  3. ↑ The allocation to the FHQ is controversial, reference is made to: Dieter Zeigert: Hitler's last refuge? The project of a Führer headquarters in Thuringia 1944/45 , Munich 2003
  4. ↑ Federal Archives ( Memento of the original dated February 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesarchiv.de
  5. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2014, p. 221 ff .
  6. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2014, p. 173 f .
  7. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2015, p. 237 f .
  8. ↑ Peter Hoffmann: The security of the dictator. Hitler's bodyguards, protective measures, residences, headquarters . Munich 1975, p. 207 .
  9. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2014, p. 240 f .
  10. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2014, p. 431-35 .