Franz Six

Franz Six
in court in Nuremberg in 1948

Franz Alfred Six (born August 12, 1909 in Mannheim , † July 9, 1975 in Bolzano ) was a German Nazi functionary and SS brigade leader . Six was an avid supporter of the Holocaust . After the war he became head of advertising at Porsche-Diesel Motorenbau GmbH in 1957 .

Life

Six was the son of a furniture dealer. He studied newspaper science , was an activist in the Heidelberg National Socialist German Student Union and made a lightning career. After receiving his doctorate in 1934 with Arnold Bergstraesser , he completed his habilitation at the age of 27 and one year later in 1937 he became professor of newspaper studies in Königsberg , which he reorganized for international academic purposes. In 1940 he became dean of the Berlin Faculty of Foreign Studies , which was created in the course of the integration of the German University of Politics into the then Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin , and head of the German Institute for Foreign Studies (DAWI), which is closely linked to this faculty . He dealt scientifically with the opponents of the Nazi regime.

Head of Press in the SD Main Office (1935–1939) and Head of Office at the RSHA (1939–1942)

In addition to his academic career, he quickly made a career within the Nazi hierarchy. Six had already joined the NSDAP in 1930 (membership number 245.670) and in 1932 the SA . In 1935 he came to the SD main office in Berlin as head of the press office , in 1937 he was de facto domestic chief of the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). In 1939 he was promoted to SS-Standartenführer . From 1939 to 1942, Six was head of office in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), initially in Office II ("enemy research"), from 1941 in Office VII (" ideological research "). He was responsible for ideological "research" and evaluation and wanted to develop a "scientific National Socialism", a think tank to which the various Nazi scientists in various institutes worked. He was thus one of the seven highest-ranking leaders in the entire SD main office. Six contributed significantly to the fact that the SD was able to achieve a monopoly in the Jewish and racial policy of the National Socialist state. He was also involved in developing the logistics for the persecution of the Jews. His involvement in the Holocaust was completely underestimated or consciously ignored after the war. In contrast to his subordinate Eichmann , the name Six was missing for a long time in the relevant person reference books about the Nazi era.

Six, together with Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller , was entrusted with carrying out the "state police preparations" for the attack on Poland and, as a member of the "Heydrich staff", was fully informed of Hitler , Himmler and Heydrich 's plans to liquidate the entire Polish leadership. Six was also planned in 1940 as SD-Commander in Great Britain , in the event of a German invasion (" Operation Sea Lion "). On June 22, 1941, Heydrich gave him the management of the Moscow advance command (VK Moscow / SK 7c) in Einsatzgruppe B, led by Arthur Nebe . Its task was to record “ partisans , saboteurs , communist functionaries in the rear of the army ” . However, in addition to the seizure of NKVD material and its dispatch to Berlin in July and August 1941, the Moscow advance command, led by Six, was also involved in shootings in the Smolensk area. According to Lutz Hachmeister, the incident report no. 73 of September 4, 1941 proves that members of the "group staff" of Einsatzgruppe B "and the Moscow advance command" shot 144 people in the period from June 22 to August 20, In addition, the M [oskau] front command had liquidated 48 people, including 38 intellectual Jews who tried to provoke discontent and unrest in the newly established Smolensk ghetto ”.

Head of the "Cultural Policy Department" at the Foreign Office (1942 / 43–1945)

On the recommendation of the Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office , Martin Luther and with the express approval of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , Six moved to the Foreign Office in September 1942 in order to initially hold a "key position at the Diplomat training ”in the sense of the SS, a measure that historians such as Hans-Jürgen Döscher and also Six biographer Lutz Hachmeister see as an important step towards networking the Foreign Office, SS and RSHA. In 1943 he was appointed first class envoy in the Foreign Office and head of the “cultural policy department”, a propaganda department under Joachim Ribbentrop with the rank of ministerial director . In terms of propaganda - especially in covering up and justifying the measures of persecution of the Jews - he worked closely with the press department of the Foreign Office, which was headed by "Paul Karl Schmidt" alias Paul Carell , and Ribbentrop's propaganda officer, Karl Megerle .

As head of the “cultural policy department” of the Foreign Office, among other things, in April 1943 he had materials disguised as seemingly neutral writings for “a broad-based anti-Bolshevik propaganda campaign” distributed abroad, which led the ambassador to Spain, Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff, to a euphoric letter caused; Six's writings meant “one of our greatest propaganda successes”, the 50,000 copies had been sold out in a flash, and he urgently needed new ones. Six, who was asked "obviously as a liaison to the RSHA", developed plans to propagate the day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 in 1943 as the "anniversary of the European struggle for freedom against the inundation of Europe by Bolshevism".

In April 1944, Six gave a lecture at a meeting of the so-called “ Jewish consultants and Aryanization consultants ” at the German embassies in Krummhübel , who discussed the status of anti-Jewish propaganda and the extermination of Jews. He stated that Judaism in Europe had "played out its biological and at the same time its political role". Since Judaism currently ruled the three great powers of the Soviet Union (through connection with Bolshevism), England (through penetration into the ruling class) and the USA (through key positions in major finance), the "Jewish question" had to be "brought to a solution" internationally.

"The physical elimination of Eastern Judaism deprives Judaism of its biological reserves."

- Six propagates the final solution in Krummhübel, April 1944

How closely Six 'earlier full-time work as head of office in the RSHA (1939–1942) was closely interwoven with his new position as a propagandist in the AA (1942–1945) is shown by the procedure of his promotion to SS Brigadführer in January 1945. The promotion to SS General went smoothly after the head of the SS Personnel Office, Maximilian von Herff, initially mistakenly mistook Six for the still incumbent head of Office VII of the RSHA and Heydrich's successor Ernst Kaltenbrunner as head of the RSHA after clarifying the error Six ' Appointment "in view of his political merits and his current position in the Foreign Office" agreed.

Internment and sentencing in the Einsatzgruppen process

Towards the end of the Second World War , Six went underground from Salzburg , together with his assistant and later “Spiegel” department head Horst Mahnke . The US researcher Christopher Simpson assumes in his book Blowback ("The American Boomerang") that Six was able to enter the service of the Gehlen organization as early as 1946 , which had to convey its knowledge about the Soviet Union to the US military and itself how to ensure survival in the post-war order. This is unlikely in terms of time, since Six was arrested by the Americans as early as January 1946, after a State Department team had meticulously searched for clues. He was hiding on a farm in Hesse, where he worked as an “agricultural assistant” under the name “Georg Becker”. Six was discovered and betrayed by a former SS colleague who worked for the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), so that in 1948 he had to answer for his crimes in the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial . Six asserted that although he was a staunch National Socialist and SS leader, he had nothing to do with the shooting of Jews and partisans. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but was pardoned and released in October 1952 by the US High Commissioner for Germany, John Jay McCloy . According to Lutz Hachmeister's research in his biography about Six, there is no evidence that Six was ever a full-time employee at the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). However, Six had "good contacts to Gehlen and BND circles" and some of Six 'employees from the SD and RSHA were informants and employees of its forerunner, the Gehlen organization.

Professional new beginning and last years

After his release from the Landsberger War Criminal Prison in 1952, Six stayed for a while in Essen and Hamburg . In 1953, through the mediation of Werner Best and his former subordinate Ernst Achenbach ( FDP ), he became co-owner and managing director of the CW Leske publishing house in Darmstadt. Six also became a member of the FDP. One of the first publications of the publishing house under Six was Rudolf Augstein's book Germany - a Rhine Confederation? , a collection of comments that Augstein had directed against the Adenauer administration in his news magazine Der Spiegel . The cooperation between Spiegel and Leske-Verlag in the Six era was continued with a few other books, such as Wilhelm Bittorf's Automation. The second industrial revolution (1956) or 1954 - Peace has a chance , published by the ex-SD cadres and Spiegel department heads Horst Mahnke and Georg Wolff . As early as 1949, in a sensational and detailed report (remember the name Hirschfeld!), Der Spiegel introduced its readers to the former SS-Untersturmführer Walter Hirschfeld , who at the time had betrayed Six to the CIC as the " Lockspitzel ".

In 1957 Six became head of advertising at Porsche Diesel Motorenbau GmbH in Friedrichshafen, after the then Porsche managing director, his “duo friend Albert Prinzing ”, had already “offered” him a “well-paid consultancy contract ” with this company in 1956 . Otherwise, his contacts made of his SD time, z. B. to Reinhard Höhn , paid. Six also acted as a lecturer at the “ Academy for Business Executives ”, one of the largest European management schools, which was also attended by trade unionists, SPD functionaries and officers of the Bundeswehr , and propagated the principle of leadership here . After Six had been able to work undisturbed for a few years while maintaining his professorial title in the Federal Republic, it became public in British publications on " Operation Sea Lion " in 1958 that Six was planned as SD commander in the event of an occupation of Great Britain . In addition, his name now came into the public eye because the publicist and film director Thomas Harlan had tracked him down and accused him of war crimes in Poland .

In 1961, Six was a witness in the Eichmann trial , but not in Israel . His questioning took place in Germany because he feared he would be arrested in Israel. When asked by the Tettnang District Court about his collaboration with Eichmann, he testified that “Eichmann was subordinate to me in the Department of Foreign Worldviews from mid-1937 until the outbreak of war in 1939 [...] in 1938 he was transferred to Vienna, and that he was transferred to me from that point onwards no longer subject to ". From 1963 to 1968 the Berlin public prosecutor's office investigated Six and other senior members of the RSHA for the killings of the Einsatzgruppen , participation in the “ Final Solution ” and crimes against prisoners of war . Six was particularly charged with his participation in the RSHA office chief meetings in 1939/40. Represented by Erich Schmidt-Leichner 's lawyer , Six cited "recruitment gaps and his poor general health". In the end, he generally refused to testify. On September 12, 1968 the proceedings were discontinued.

After Porsche-Diesel stopped producing tractors in 1963, Six worked in Essen as a self-employed management consultant. At the end of his life he retired to Kaltern / South Tyrol, where the former Nazi architect Hermann Giesler had built a house for him. In Giesler's apologetic memory book Another Hitler , which appeared in 1977 in the predominantly revisionist and right-wing extremist literature, Druffel-Verlag , there is a foreword by Six, which Six wrote shortly before his death. In it Six writes that the years together in the Landsberg war crimes prison were "years of steadfastness, the confirmation of knowledge once gained and the correctness of the revolutionary goals".

In recent historical research on the functional elite of the Nazi state and the Reich Security Main Office, Six, like Werner Best, Reinhard Höhn , Walter Schellenberg or Otto Ohlendorf, are considered to be the influential cadre of the "genuinely National Socialist elite" who were able to exert considerable influence on the concrete politics of National Socialism. In his highly active role as a Nazi perpetrator and also because of his successful camouflage in the network of the old National Socialists after 1945, Six is ​​featured in the novels Die Wohlgesinnten ( Les Bienveillantes ) by Jonathan Littell (2006) and The Janus Project (2006) by Philip Kerr used as a figure of fiction.

Publications (selection)

• The political propaganda of National Socialism. Phil. Diss. Heidelberg 1934, excerpts printed as The Political Propaganda of the NSDAP in the Struggle for Power (1936).
• The press of the national minorities in the German Reich. Habilitation thesis Heidelberg 1936.
• Freedom of the press and international cooperation (1938).
• Freemasonry and Christianity. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1940
• The civil wars of Europe and the present war of unification. Lecturer before d. europ. Foreigners course “Questions d. new order " (Nov. 1942)
• The Empire and Europe. A political sketch (1943).
• Yearbook of world politics 1944. Junker & Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1944. With many authors. a. Hans Joachim von Merkatz , Franz Ronneberger , Gerhard von Mende , Fritz Valjavec . 1248 pp.
• Europe. Tradition and Future (1944).
• Marketing in the capital goods industry. Illumination, Planning, Development (1968).
• A New Marketing in a New World (1974).

A large number of Six 'publications were placed on the list of literature to be segregated after the end of the war in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic .

See also

• List of SS leaders in the general rank # SS-Brigadführer

Web links

Commons : Franz Six  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Gideon Botsch : "Political Science" in World War II. The “German Foreign Studies” in action 1940–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71358-2 .
• Tuviah Friedman : SS Brigade Leader Prof. Franz Six, Adolf Eichmann's superior, who was actively involved in the final solution of the Jewish question from 1933 to 1945. Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa 2002.
• Lutz Hachmeister : The enemy researcher: the career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43507-6 .
  • Lutz Hachmeister: A German news magazine. The early “Spiegel” and its Nazi staff. In: Lutz Hachmeister, Friedemann Siering: The gentlemen journalists. The elite of the German press after 1945. Munich 2002.
• Christian Ingrao : Hitler's Elite. The pioneers of the National Socialist mass murder. Translated by Enrico Heinemann, Ursel Schäfer. Propylaeen, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-549-07420-6 ; again: Federal Agency for Civic Education , Bonn 2012, ISBN 978-3-8389-0257-9 (first Paris 2010).
• Martin Kröger :  Six, Franz Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 479 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Carsten Schreiber: General Staff of the Holocaust or an academic ivory tower? The "research on opponents" of the SS security service. In: Yearbook of the Simon Dubnow Institute . 5, Leipzig 2006, pp. 327-352.
• Carsten Schreiber: From the Philosophical Faculty to the Reich Security Main Office. Leipzig doctoral students in the dual system of university and opponent research. In: Ulrich von Hehl (Ed.): Saxony's State University in Monarchy, Republic and Dictatorship. Contributions to the history of the University of Leipzig from the Empire to the dissolution of the state of Saxony in 1952. Evangelische, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-374-02282-0 .
• Christopher Simpson: The American Boomerang. Nazi war criminals paid by the USA. Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-8000-3277-5 .
• Gerhard Wenzl: Six, Franz 1909-1975 . In: Fred Ludwig Sepaintner (Ed. On behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg): Baden-Württembergische Biographien . Volume VI, ISBN 978-3-17-031384-2 , pp. 469-473.
• Heinrich Zankl : Steep career - Hitler's foreign scholar . in: Heinrich Zankl: Science in cross-examination . Scientific Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2012, pp. 17-21, ISBN 9783534237715 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Six in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gideon Botsch : "Political Science" in World War II: the "German Foreign Studies" in action 1940–1945 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 13 and 74; German Institute for International Studies (Berlin) from provenienz.gbv.de, accessed on October 14, 2015
2. ↑ Seniority list of the NSDAP Schutzstaffel z dnia 01.12.1936 r. część I. Retrieved July 21, 2019 (Polish). 
3. ^ 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. 585.
4. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister : The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 199-238; Hans-Jürgen Döscher : The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler, Berlin 1987, p. 193.
5. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 236 ff.
6. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: The Foreign Office in the Third Reich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler, Berlin 1987, p. 192 f; Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 242 f.
7. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 244 f.
8. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 250.
9. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 252.
10. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 254.
11. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 266 f .; Conference minutes at ns-archiv.de . Six opened the conference with greetings. To search the document, note that "S ix" must be searched for, like all names here (Six = 3 mentions).
12. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 268 (Hachmeister erroneously writes Christian instead of Maximilian von Herff).
13. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 269 f.
14. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 277 f .; for Simpsons also otherwise unrealistic representation of Six see also Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 23.
15. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 291-294.
16. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 305.
17. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 305 f.
18. ↑ Six appears in 1957 with his contribution The Advertising Manager in the Company Organization himself as an author in the book The Advertising Manager in the Management of his publishing house, now called Leske; see also Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 305 u. P. 313 (on the work as managing director at Leske), p. 401 (listing of the publications Six ').
19. ↑ Remember the name Hirschfeld! In: Der Spiegel . No. 53 , 1949, pp. 6 ( online ). A detailed description of the Spiegel - Mahnke - Six complex by Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 316–342 (chapter on the early history of the “Spiegel” ).
20. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 338 f.
21. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 305 and p. 313 ff.
22. ↑ Willi Winkler : What nobody wanted to know. On the death of Thomas Harlan. In: Süddeutsche.de . October 18, 2010.
23. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 341.
24. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 341 f.
25. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 342.
26. ↑ Hermann Giesler: Another Hitler. Druffel-Verlag, Leoni am Starnberger See 1977, ISBN 3-8061-0822-6 , p. 18.
27. ↑ Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 7.
28. ^ Reprint in the publishing house of Ludendorffer : The betrayal of the people of Freemasonry and * Christianity . Institute for Holistic Research, Viöl 2007. Ed .: Roland Bohlinger.
29. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. Letter S. Zentralverlag, Berlin 1946.
30. ^ Ministry of National Education of the German Democratic Republic, list of the literature to be sorted out. Letter W. VEB Deutscher Zentralverlag, Berlin 1953.