Fritz Fehling

Friedrich 'Fritz' Fehling (* unknown; † 1945 in East Berlin) was a German police officer. He became known primarily because of his involvement in the Fritsch affair in spring 1938, in which he was involved as a clerk in the Secret State Police Office in overthrowing the then Chief of the Army Command, Werner von Fritsch, through the constructed allegation of homosexuality.

career

From 1934 to 1945, Fehling held a leading position in the gay department of the Secret State Police Office and the Reich Security Main Office - with interruptions . In this position, Andreas Pretzel identifies him as one of the “main people responsible for the nationwide persecution of homosexuals” during the Nazi era. In the business distribution plans of the Secret State Police Office, he can initially be identified as a criminal inspector in the “Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality” headed by Josef Meisinger . According to the business distribution plan of July 1, 1939, he was even promoted to deputy to Eberhard Schiele as head of Section II S 1 (combating homosexuality) at the Gestapo headquarters. During the Second World War, Fehling was responsible for investigating internal party homosexual cases within Department IV C 4 (“Matters of the Party and its Organizations, Special Cases”) headed by Kurt Stage .

Involvement in the Fritsch affair

In the spring of 1938, Fehling played a significant role in major politics in connection with the intrigue initiated by Hermann Göring and the SS leadership around Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich against General Werner von Fritsch , the then head of the Reichswehr Army Command : a pretext In order to get Fritsch, who was skeptical of the military plans of the Nazi leadership, he was accused of being guilty of homosexual misconduct against Hitler. In terms of content, this accusation was based on incriminating documents that the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality had in previous years about a retired officer with a Fritsch name - a Rittmeister retired. D. named Joachim von Frisch [sic!] - had collected. The freshly incriminating actions were simply attributed to Fritsch. After a false witness - a concentration camp inmate who was promised release from custody in return for his false statement - who stated that he had observed homosexual contact with Fritsch in a train station toilet, it was possible to find Fritsch from the beginning of February 1938 To oust the post of Chief of Army Command. His powers as the de facto commander of the army were taken over by Hitler himself. Fehling was involved in these processes as the person responsible for the Fritsch / Frisch case - the relevant file was kept in his safe - in the Gesapo headquarters directly and in a leading role.

After the generals of the Wehrmacht, with whom Fritsch enjoyed great popularity, refused to abandon the defamatory accusations raised against him, the Fritsch case was brought to a court of honor in March 1938, which examined the validity of the accusations made against him. In the course of the proceedings it could be proven that the witness against Fritsch made false statements and that the evidence presented did not relate to Fritsch, but to the aforementioned Frisch. Fehling had to take part in this trial as a witness. On March 18, 1938, the verdict was therefore passed that the main hearing “the innocence of Colonel General a. D. Freiherr von Fritsch in all points “. Despite the restoration of his honor, Fritsch was not allowed to return to his office, whose powers Hitler continued to reserve to himself in the sense of his aggressive foreign policy plans.

For Fehling, the refutation of the incriminating material he had compiled and the associated burden on the SS / Gestapo leadership had an aftermath: the head of the army intelligence service Wilhelm Canaris and Hitler's Wehrmacht adjutant Friedrich Hoßbach accepted the rehabilitation of Fritsch and the proof of the falseness of the evidence presented against it as an occasion to demand in a catalog addressed to Hitler with consequences that he was to draw from the Fritsch affair, on behalf of the army, for a “substantial change in the occupation of the leadership positions of the Secret State Police”. They named "Himmler, Heydrich, Joost [recte: Jost] (SD), Best , Meisinger, Fehling and others" as personalities to be removed from the Gestapo leadership . The task of these men should instead be given to "decent and honest National Socialists". Himmler, Heydrich, Jost and Best stayed at their posts: On the other hand, Göring initiated disciplinary proceedings against Fehling, which ended with reprimand for "negligent file processing". According to a Spiegel article from 1984, Himmler temporarily removed him from Gestapo headquarters because he reappears there in the business distribution plans from 1939 and 1941, but this measure could only have been short-lived.

Later career

According to Burkhard Jellonnek, Fehling fell out of favor with Himmler in later years, although he remained at his post. During the Second World War, the SS chief complained that Fehling had become “very old and pastoral”, so that he had changed from “an accuser against homosexuality to her lawyer”.

After the end of the war, Fehling continued to work as a detective in Berlin-Charlottenburg. As a criminal director, he even briefly became head of the criminal police in Charlottenburg. According to Jörg Petzel's research (see below), however, Fehling was lured to East Berlin as early as July 1945 and murdered there by German communists.

In 2012, Fehling's life was the subject of a lecture by museum curator Jörg Petzel organized by Museum Charlottenburg ("Between petty crime and global politics. The criminal and Gestapo officer Fritz Fehling in Berlin-Charlottenburg").

literature

• Harold C. Deutsch: Hitler and his Generals. The Hidden Crisis, January-June 1938. , Minneapolis 1974.
• Burkhard Jellonnek: homosexuals under the swastika. The persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich , 1990.
• Fritz Tobias / Karlheinz Janßen: The fall of the generals: Hitler and the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis 1938 , 1994.

Movie

The intrigues surrounding the overthrow of Blomberg and Fritsch were filmed in 1988 by BR and ORF in the two-part TV series Geheime Reichssache , directed by Michael Kehlmann .

Web links

• "Lecture on Gestapo officer Fritz Fehling" (article on Berlin-Online)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andreas Pretzel: Victims of National Socialism with reservations. Homosexual men in Berlin after 1945 , Münster 2002, p. 87.
2. ↑ Rüdiger Lautmann: Lexicon on the persecution of homosexuals 1933-1945 , p. 106.
3. ↑ Burkhard Jellonnek: Homosexuals under the swastika: The persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich , p. 128.
4. ↑ Harold C. Deutsch: Hitler and His Generals: The Hidden Crisis, January-June 1938 , p. 146.
5. ↑ Klaus-Jürgen Müller: Army and 3rd Reich, 1933-1939 1987, p. 257.
6. ↑ Heinz Höhne: “Dishonoring for the whole army”: in: Der Spiegel from February 13, 1984 .
7. ↑ Jellonnek: Homosexuals under the swastika , p. 129.