Case of Nöthling

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Grocery card ("Reichsfettkarte") for the Mark Brandenburg from 1941

The case Nöthling was a political scandal involving the illegal delivery of food to prominent members of the Nazi state during the war in 1943. The focus of this smuggling affair was the Berlin Caterer August Nöthling, who was arrested and in prison suicide committed. The party members convicted of violating the War Economy Ordinance were not prosecuted on the instructions of Adolf Hitler .

history

On September 4, 1939, the War Economy Ordinance (KWVO) was introduced in the German Reich . Part of the organization of the economy in the Second World War regulated in the law concerned food management. The introduction of a rationing system meant that a large part of food could only be purchased on presentation of food stamps. The dealers had to collect these brands and hand them over to the supplier when ordering new goods. In April 1942 there was a further reduction in food rations due to increasing bottlenecks in food production. Violations of the purchase of rationed food for private households constituted a criminal offense that was severely punished.

Delicatessen Nöthling

In Schloßstraße in Berlin-Steglitz , August Nöthling ran a well-known delicatessen shop under the name of wine wholesaler, city kitchen, specialty shop for the finest delicacies, game and poultry . The company, founded in 1907 as Stadtküche Bechthold & Nöthling by Fritz Bechthold and Nöthling, passed into the possession of Nöthling in 1938 after Bechthold's emigration (his wife was Jewish) to Great Britain due to anti-Semitic persecution . The business mainly served customers from Steglitz, Dahlem and Zehlendorf , including actors, diplomats and politicians. Deliveries were also made to private and official events. As part of the 1936 Summer Olympics , the dealer ran a fruit and candy shop in the reception building of the Olympic Village . During the war, the company achieved an annual turnover of around 2 million Reichsmarks and existed in Schloßstraße until the end of 1993.

Administrative fine

On July 23, 1942, the company received an administrative penalty notice of 5000 Reichsmarks from the Main Food Office in Berlin because it had sold large quantities of goods without accepting purchase entitlements. This contradicted the regulations on the management of restricted products. In those cases in which there was no public interest in prosecuting, a fine could be imposed instead of ordinary criminal proceedings. However, business owner August Nöthling applied for a judicial review of the decision on August 4th, provided the decision was not withdrawn.

The President of the Berlin District Court, Werner Gardiewski, assisted him in formulating this petition. He was one of Nöthling's customers who had received unbranded goods. The reason for the application was that the affected customers would also be affected. According to Nöthling, this clientele included "important men from the party, state, armed forces and diplomacy". Obviously, he hoped that the involvement of the prominent customers would put an end to the proceedings in court. As requested, the district court decided to start legal proceedings.

The Berlin police chief Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff first investigated the affair

arrest

The public prosecutor commissioned the Berlin criminal police to investigate. Police chief in Berlin was Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff , who himself had been a beneficiary of Nöthling's offenses. This was followed by the arrest of the dealer and his authorized signatory on January 27, 1943. The arrested persons confessed to having regularly sold unbranded food to important officials of the state. The general manager was released from prison on February 26; Nöthling remained in custody.

The support from influential customers that Nöthling hoped for did not materialize. Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick , whose household had also been a buyer of Nöthling's goods, had drafted a letter to Helldorff in which he confirmed to the accused, who had delivered at reasonable and not excessive prices, that he was not a war slide; however, the letter was not sent in order not to intervene in pending proceedings. The increasingly desperate Nöthling tried twice unsuccessfully to take his own life.

Preliminary investigation

The Reich Minister responsible for propaganda , Joseph Goebbels , learned of the incident in March. Since he feared a public scandal, he asked Helldorff to provide him with a detailed report on the allegations and participants, which was presented to him on March 15, 1943 (date of receipt).

As a result of the investigation, it was recorded there that many members of Berlin's “prominent state, party, armed forces, business and more or less well-known public figures” had purchased food from Nöthling without giving a ticket. A list of the names of the unauthorized beneficiaries was attached according to the amount of food and luxury goods purchased. It included:

Helldorff himself had also been a buyer of Nöthling's goods without a trademark; however, the report did not name him. The stated amounts were based on inspection of copy books and interrogations by Nöthling. Helldorff had interrogated Nothling himself; In his report to Goebbels, he advocated that the dealer should not be “viewed as a common pest”. Rather, Nöthling was flattered by the contact with the prominent buyers, and some of them approached him in a demanding manner. For example, Walther Darré and the wives of Konstantin Hierl and Wilhelm Frick put pressure on the dealer. The report showed that the circumvention of the regulations was not based on the intention of personal enrichment by Nöthling.

As a result of the investigation, Helldorff found that Nöthling's violations of wartime economic regulations should be punished, but the dealer's customers would have to face an even more severe penalty. The police chief added to his report that it was contradictory to require the investigating officers to act with severity against "ordinary people" if the applicable provisions for persons in exposed positions were apparently not applicable.

Reich Justice Minister Otto Georg Thierack was commissioned by Hitler to find a solution

Goebbels' intervention

The submitted report outraged Goebbels. He had recognized the danger of an emerging Boncentre early on and warned party leaders in peacetime not to attract negative attention through a lavish lifestyle. Later Goebbels had repeatedly asked those responsible in the party and the state to fulfill their duties in an exemplary manner.

The party leaders' lavish consumption habits nonetheless increased during the war and had become a serious credibility problem for the regime. Positions of power were exploited in the illegal procurement of managed goods and luxury goods. Goebbels was particularly concerned about the Nöthling case that the violations took place in the capital of the Reich and that they had probably already become known. The fear of indignation among the Berlin workers was so great that Goebbels was forced to intervene.

“The material is very serious and will probably have to be presented to the Führer by me. It is scandalous that the celebrities in the state, party and armed forces behave in such a way that sabotages the war. You can now also explain why the people keep whispering about 'diplomatic rations'. "

- Joseph Goebbels : Diaries 1924-1945

On March 19, 1943, Goebbels first informed Martin Bormann of the case, who was also affected by what had happened, and confirmed that Hitler had to be informed. When Hitler came to Berlin on March 21, 1943 for a celebration of Heroes' Remembrance Day , Goebbels had the opportunity to tell the Chancellor about the affair in private. Hitler was also angry about what had happened, but decided not to turn the incident into a "state action". He instructed Goebbels to involve Reich Justice Minister Otto Georg Thierack so that he could find a pragmatic solution to uphold law and reason of state .

Goebbels, who had wished for the beneficiaries to be clearly punished, regretted Hitler's attitude. In the meeting between Goebbels and Thierack that took place the following day, Goebbels recommended that Hitler be fully informed of the matter and that a proposal be submitted to him to deal with it.

Thierack's investigation

On March 27th, Bormann received the requested proposal from Thierack to be presented to Hitler. The author stated that the case had become a topic of general discussion among the Berlin population, and that the names of the ministers involved were also known. Nöthling had to expect a heavy sentence. He considers the initiation of criminal proceedings against the prominent buyers of Nöthling to be politically unacceptable, even in the event that hearings (if Hitler wished to do so) reveal evidence of violations. At most, the buyers would have to be fined, albeit a high one. In addition, Thierack asked von Bormann to make an appointment with Hitler for a personal lecture on the difficult matter.

As part of his investigations, Thierack had asked the head of the Reich Security Main Office, SS Brigade Leader Otto Ohlendorf , who was responsible for assessing the mood of the population in the Reich , to conduct research on the case. The chief of the security police and the SD , Ernst Kaltenbrunner , reported to Thierack about the sensation that the incident had caused in Berlin. Because the official vehicles parked in front of the Nöthling store were regularly loaded with bags, the dealer was popularly known by the nickname "Tütenaugust". In the Ohlendorf report, statements from various strata of the population were cited as examples, according to which the morality of the population and the belief in a just order in the Nazi state suffered considerably. The arrest of Nöthling was approved by the Berlin population, but great importance was attached to punishing the leading figures of the regime, who were seen as the main culprits, although the majority assumed that such punishments would not occur.

Hitler's decision

Bormann submitted the Thierack report to Hitler with his proposal on April 2, 1943. Again Hitler decided that criminal proceedings against the beneficiaries were out of the question. He was of the opinion that the prominent husbands mostly had no knowledge of their wives' procurements and that Nöthling had incorrectly confirmed that the deliveries were correct. In a later conversation Frick had with Hitler, he had confirmed that "every woman at this time would take what she was offered, that shouldn't be pursued straight away." Thierack, according to Hitler, should, however, consult with the husbands to ensure that such violations would no longer occur in the future. The conversations held by Thierack showed that the beneficiaries were not aware of any guilt - allegedly, Nöthling had usually allocated these goods to them without a corresponding request, and essentially they were also used for catering at business-related events. After Goebbels was informed of this result of the conversations on May 18, 1943, he recorded in his diary that the interviewees had mostly given "sloppy answers" to the allegations.

A letter from Ms. Nöthling to the previous customer Frick, in which she asked for her husband to be dismissed, was passed on to Thierack for the sake of responsibility. In doing so, he noticed that he did not consider Nöthling to be a war criminal and, in his view, did not speak against a release from prison due to the lack of risk of obscuration . With a view to the mood in the population, Thierack did not follow the request. On May 9, 1943, Nöthling hanged himself in his cell in the remand prison. The widow rejected the proposal that she was later made to posthumously award her husband with the War Merit Cross. The investigations into the prominent members of the leadership of the party and state of the Nazi regime were discontinued for reasons of state; In Thierack's final report to Bormann of May 24, 1943, it was stated that neither the opening of administrative penal proceedings nor the imposition of fines would take place against the celebrities.

consequences

Since the case had received a lot of public attention, the impression among the population increased that a boncentre had formed under the regime. The luxurious lifestyles of the beneficiaries who were exempt from punishment did not go unnoticed by the less privileged classes and so they increasingly became the target of criticism.

Some historians suspect that Frick's replacement as Reich Interior Minister on August 22, 1943 by Himmler was also due to Frick's involvement in the Nöthling scandal.

At a conference on October 6, 1943 in Poznan , to which the party chancellery had invited all Reich and Gauleiter and at which Heinrich Himmler spoke about the systematic genocide of European Jews, Albert Speer also gave a lecture on arms production. In this speech he addressed the Nöthling case in order to get the party leaders in the mood for the harsh consequences of the total war - also in terms of supplies.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bernhard R. Kroener , Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans Umbreit, The German Reich and the Second World War: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power (Volume 5), Part 2, ISBN 3-421-06232-3 , Deutsche Verlag- Establishment, Munich 1999, p. 496f; Available English edition: Germany and the Second World War (Volume 5), Part 2, Derry Cook-Radmore (translation), Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 978-0-1982-0873-0 , p. 534
  2. ↑ a b The Schlosstrasse in the mirror of the times , in: Kulturführer Berlin, Kulturring in Berlin eV (Ed.)
  3. ↑ January 10, 1982: 25 years ago the Steglitz delicatessen store Nöthling celebrated its anniversary , January 10, 2007, Der Tagesspiegel
  4. ↑ Karin Stöckel, Berlin Im Olympischen Rausch: The Organization of the Olympic Games 1936 , ISBN 978-3-8366-6938-2 , Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 109
  5. ↑ a b Willi A. Boelcke , Der Schwarzmarkt 1945-1948: Survival after the war , ISBN 978-3-07-508814-2 , Westermann, 1986, p. 23ff (snippet)
  6. ^ Friedemann Bedürftig , When Hitler built the atomic bomb: Lies and errors about the "Third Reich" , Piper, Munich / Zurich 2003, ISBN 978-3-492-04443-1 , p. 156
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Köpp , Martin Bormann: Hitler's brown shadow or the landscape of desire , ISBN 978-3-9812309-7-0 , Mecklenburger Buchverlag, Neubrandenburg 2010, p. 18
  8. ↑ Joseph Goebbels Diaries 1924-1945: 1943-1945, Appendix , Ralf Georg Reuth (Ed.), Joseph Goebbels Diaries 1924-1945 (Volume 5), ISSN 0179-5147, Piper, 1992
  9. ↑ Günter Neliba , Wilhelm Frick: the legalist of the injustice state: a political biography , dissertation, Schöningh Collection on the past and present, ISBN 978-3-506-77486-6 , Schöningh, Frankfurt (Main) 1992, p. 352 (Snippet)
  10. ^ Andreas Dutz and Elisabeth Dutz, Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg (1851–1918): travel writer, scientist, bon vivant , ISBN 978-3-205-20438-1 , Böhlau, Vienna 2017, p. 180
  11. ↑ Christoph Buchheim , The Myth of “Well-being”. The standard of living of the German civilian population in World War II , Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 3/2010, De Gruyter, p. 323
  12. ↑ Hans-Christian Jasch, State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart and Jewish Policy: The Myth of Clean Administration , Studies on Contemporary History (Volume 48), Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-79387-1 , p. 156

Remarks

  1. ↑ According to other information, the takeover took place in 1936: Christoph Kreutzmüller, Jüdische Gewerbebetriebe in Berlin 1930-1945 , research project at the Chair for German History in the 20th Century at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Chair for Contemporary History)
  2. ↑ Here in alphabetical order
  3. ↑ This conversation was held by Hitler and Frick on May 9, 1943