Günther Altenburg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Günther Altenburg as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials (1947)

Günther Altenburg (born June 5, 1894 in Königsberg , † October 23, 1984 in Bonn ) was a German diplomat. During the Second World War , Altenburg was from May 1941 to October 1943 as envoy 1st class and “Plenipotentiary of the Reich” for occupied Greece, the highest civilian representative of the German Reich in the country. The extermination of the Greek Jews of Thessaloniki and the Great Famine in Greece in the winter of 1941/1942 fell during his service . Altenburg's role in the deportation of the approximately 50,000 Sephardic Jews to Auschwitz for gassing is controversial.

Life

Günther Altenburg studied law and received his doctorate in 1920 from the University of Königsberg on a civil law topic . Since 1913 he was a member of the Corps Bremensia Göttingen. Altenburg joined the Foreign Office in 1920 . He spent time abroad as a diplomat in Rome , Sofia and Vienna . During the failed July coup in Vienna in 1934, in which the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was murdered, Altenburg was a legation counselor at the German embassy in Vienna and, as the only member of the embassy, ​​was inaugurated on the coup plans, and probably also actively involved in the preparation of the coup. Altenburg was in the 1930 German People's Party occurred and was achieved despite members' special tab of the Nazi party in December 1935 in the NSDAP occur, but did not rise up in the party hierarchy. Altenburg was called back to Berlin , where he worked in the Austria and Czechoslovakia department from 1934, and then in the secretariat of Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop from 1938 .

Together with Konrad Henlein, Altenburg was involved in the staging of the crisis in the Sudetenland , which led to the subsequent destruction of Czechoslovakia via the Munich Agreement . From autumn 1938 onwards, the German leadership tried to dissolve the rump Czechoslovakia by stirring up conflict between Czechs and Slovaks and by instrumentalizing Hungary's territorial claims. Alarmed by anti-German rallies in Bohemia and Moravia staged by the SD , the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister František Chvalkovský sent his cabinet chief Hubert Masařik to Berlin. Masařik, who had been the Czechoslovak envoy in Berlin from 1927 to 1932, was supposed to offer the practical submission of Czechoslovakia, but with the retention of its state sovereignty . Masařik only penetrated as far as the "Lecturing Legation Councilor" Altenburg, who acted as "Advisor to the Foreign Office for Czecho-Slovakia" and promised to forward his request. The meeting with a state secretary desired by the Czechoslovak leadership did not take place. The annexation of the Czech Republic in March 1939 and the installation of a puppet state in Slovakia were no longer negotiable.

In April 1939 Altenburg was promoted to ministerial director and envoy first class, in April 1941 he was appointed "representative of the Foreign Office at the military commander in Serbia", but did not take up the service. In his place, on April 29, 1941, Felix Benzler was appointed General Manager in Serbia . After the occupation of Greece had been completed , Altenburg was appointed by the Fuehrer's decree of April 28, 1941, as the “Plenipotentiary of the Reich for Greece” with headquarters in Athens :

Altenburg's behavior during his service in Greece is judged differently. In 1963, Conrad Frederick Roediger , who was a consultant for international law at the Foreign Office from 1940 to 1945, wrote that Altenburg had requested that food be sent in view of the catastrophic deterioration in the food supply of the Greek population that had resulted from the British naval blockade. The Independent Commission of Historians - Foreign Office points out that, shortly after arriving in Greece in May 1941, Altenburg insisted that prominent Greeks should only be arrested after consulting him. His clear stance led to the dismissal of the head of the task force of the Security Police and the SD in Greece, SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt Geissler . Altenburg himself refused to join the SS. Also - in contrast to the consul general in Thessaloniki Fritz Schönberg - he did not send any detailed reports on "Jewish affairs" to Berlin. The deportation of Greek Jews to the extermination camps , especially in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in the spring of 1943, Altenburg held thus "recognized back".

After presentation of the historian Saul Friedlander and Goetz Aly Altenburg but was involved in these deportations at a central location and worked closely with Eichmann 'employees Rolf Günther , Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner along which planned the deportation and executed. After Eichmann's deputy Günther arrived in Thessaloniki on January 3, 1943, with whom Altenburg was supposed to work, he informed the Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Logothetopoulos of the imminent deportation by letter of January 26 . A day later, Altenburg telegraphed to the Foreign Office in Berlin that, according to Logothetopoulos' assessment, "difficulties are probably not to be expected". The Swiss representative of the Red Cross in Saloniki, Rene Burckhardt, tried to prevent the deportation of the Jews and instead initiated their departure to Palestine with the help of the International Red Cross . Altenburg, who described Burckhardt as anti-German, made sure that the deportations were not disrupted and that Burckhardt was withdrawn from his post in Saloniki. From March 15, 1943 on, 45,000 of the 50,000 Jews of Thessaloniki were evacuated within a few weeks. Most of them were gassed as soon as they arrived . At the beginning of the action Logothetopoulos protested, but Altenburg and SS-Hauptsturmführer Wisliceny were able to persuade him to give up.

A year later, the attempt to deport the Athenian Jews also met with considerable resistance. According to Saul Friedländer, the difference to the deportations from Thessaloniki, which went smoothly, can be explained by the tension between the Greek and Jewish population in Thessaloniki, the lack of a strong resistance movement there, the willingness of the Governor General of Macedonia Vasilis Simonides to collaborate and Altenburg's “determination” . In autumn 1943 Altenburg was replaced as Reich Commissioner in Greece by the diplomat Kurt-Fritz von Graevenitz . In the background, however, he continued to have a great influence on German politics in Greece.

In the autumn of 1944 Altenburg moved to Vienna as head of the “Deputy Envoy Altenburg”, and from December 1944 until the end of the war he was head of the “Department of the Foreign Office for Bulgaria and Romania” in Altaussee , where he was in charge of the German government in exile in Bulgaria and Romania.

After the end of the war, Altenburg was interned by the Allies and was heard as a witness several times during the Nuremberg trials in 1947 . During his testimony in Nuremberg, Altenberg claimed that he had twice expressed his concerns about the deportation of Jews to Ribbentrop - according to the historian Andrew Apostolou, this claim was a "fairy tale". Altenburg, on the other hand, promoted the murder of the Jews through his behavior on site.

Altenburg later worked as Secretary General of the German Group of the International Chamber of Commerce based in Cologne . With reference to Altenburg's NSDAP membership and his activities in occupied Greece, Altenburg was listed together with 1,800 business leaders, politicians and leading officials of the Federal Republic in the Brown Book first published in the GDR in 1965 .

literature

  • Andrew Apostolou: "The Exception of Salonika": Bystanders and collaborators in Northern Greece . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies , year 2000, No. 14 (2), pp. 165–196. doi : 10.1093 / hgs / 14.2.165 . (Also in: David Cesarani : Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies , Volume 3 ( The "final solution" ). Routledge, London 2004, ISBN 0-415-27512-1 , pp. 557-589 .)
  • Kurt Bauer: Hitler and the July coup 1934 in Austria . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 59 (2011) Issue 2, pp. 193–227 ( PDF ).
  • Christopher Browning : The “Final Solution” and the Foreign Office: Section D III of the Germany Department 1940–1943 . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-22870-6 .
  • Daniel Carpi: A New Approach to Some Episodes in the History of the Jews in Salonika during the Holocaust: Memory, Myth, Documentation . In: Minna Rozen (Ed.): The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond: The Jews in Turkey and the Balkans 1808 - 1945 , II. Tel Aviv 2002–2005, ISBN 965-338-045-1 , pp. 259 ff.
  • Daniel Carpi: Italian Documents on the History of the Holocaust in Greece (1941-1943) , Tel Aviv 1999, ISBN 965-338-037-0
  • Hans-Jürgen Döscher : The Foreign Office in the Third Reich / Diplomacy in the Shadow of the Final Solution . Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88680-256-6
  • Mary Heimann: Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed. Yale University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-300-14147-4 .
  • Irith Dublon-Knebel: German Foreign Office Documents On the Holocaust in Greece (1937-1944) , compiled, annotated and with an introduction at The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 2007.
  • Jean-Claude Favez: The Red Cross and the Holocaust . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-41587-X , pp. 169f . (Expanded and revised edition of The International Red Cross and the Third Reich , Zurich 1989.)
  • Hagen Fleischer : In the cross shadow of the powers. Greece 1941-1944. (Occupation - Resistance - Collaboration). 2 volumes. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1986, ISBN 3-8204-8581-3 . ( Studies on the history of Southeast Europe 2), (At the same time: Diss. Freie Univ. Berlin 1978: Greece 1941–1944. ).
  • Walther Hubatsch (Ed.): Hitler's instructions for warfare 1939-1945 . Koblenz 1983
  • Johannes Hürter : The Foreign Office, the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust. Critical comments on a Commission report . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 59, Issue 2, April 2011, pp. 167–192 ( PDF ).
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 1: Johannes Hürter : A – F. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2000, ISBN 3-506-71840-1 , p. 26 f.
  • Robert MW Kempner : Eichmann and accomplices. 2nd Edition. Europa Verlag, Zurich 1961, p. 305 ff.
  • George F. Kennan: From Prague after Munich / Diplomatic Papers 1938-1940. Princeton University Press, 1968.
  • Hubert Masařík: Le dernier témoin de Munich. Lausanne 2006, ISBN 2-88250-176-5 .
  • Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece: the experience of occupation, 1941-44 . Yale University Press, New Haven 2001, ISBN 0-300-08923-6 .
  • Michael Mayer: Actors, Crimes and Continuities / The Foreign Office in the Third Reich - An Internal Differentiation. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Volume 59 Issue 4, October 2011.
  • Mark Mazower: Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 . Harper Collins, London 2004, ISBN 0-00-712023-0 , p. 421 ff.
  • Martin Moll (Ed.): Leader Decrees 1939-1945. Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-06873-2 .
  • Conrad Roediger : The international relief operation for the population of Greece in World War II . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 1963), pp. 49-71. (online) (PDF; 1.1 MB)

Web links

Commons : Günther Altenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Günter Altenburg: The legal treatment of the inventory when leasing agricultural land according to the German Civil Code . Königsberg in Prussia 1920.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 39 , 1124
  3. ↑ a b Igor-Philip Matic: Edmund Veesenmayer - agent and diplomat of the National Socialist expansion policy . Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56677-6 , pp. 91-92, footnote 6.
    Matic states in the footnote: “In January 1942 (sic!) Altenburg moved back to the Foreign Office, where he was on personal staff of the Reich Foreign Minister was active. ”This is chronologically incorrect, Altenburg was on the personal staff from 1938 to 1939. In 1943 he was still a general representative in Greece.
  4. ↑ Hellmuth Auerbach: A National Socialist Voice on the Vienna Putsch of July 25, 1934 (PDF; 6.1 MB) . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Volume 12 (1964), Issue 2, ISSN  0042-5702 , p. 205.
  5. ^ Gerhard L. Weinberg: The foreign policy of Hitler's Germany: diplomatic revolution in Europe 1933-36 . UP of Chicago, Chicago 1970, ISBN 0-226-88509-7 , pp. 102f.
  6. ↑ a b Andrew Apostolou: "The Exception of Salonika". Bystanders and collaborators in Northern Greece . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Year 2000, No. 14 (2), pp. 165–196. doi : 10.1093 / hgs / 14.2.165 .
  7. ^ Marian Wojciechowski : The Polish-German Relations 1933-1938. from the Polish by Norbert Damerau. Brill, Leiden 1971, p. 565.
  8. ↑ Documentary evidence from Walther Hofer (ed.): National Socialism. Documents 1933 - 1945. Fischer, Frankfurt 1957 and others , most recently in 1994 ISBN 3596260841 , pp. 200f. Nuremberg Trial, February 8, 1946, Vol. VII, p. 233; Ronald M. Smelser : The Sudeten Problem and the Third Reich , from the American by Dierk Hildebrand. Oldenbourg, Munich 1980, p. 144 f. ISBN 3-486-48581-4
  9. ↑ Hermann Graml : Europe's Way to War: Hitler and the Powers 1939 . Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55151-5 , pp. 147-148.
  10. ^ Igor-Philip Matic: Edmund Veesenmayer . Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56677-6 , p. 158.
  11. ↑ Martin Moll (Hrsg.): "Führer-Erasse" 1939 - 1945: Edition of all handed down, not printed in the Reichsgesetzblatt, issued in writing by Hitler during the Second World War in the areas of state, party, economy, occupation policy and military administration . Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-06873-2 , pp. 170-171.
  12. ^ Conrad Roediger: The international relief operation for the population of Greece in the Second World War . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 1963), p. 56 ( online ).
  13. ↑ Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, p. 255 (here the quote) ff.
  14. ↑ Götz Aly : Hitler's People's State . Robbery, Race War and National Socialism . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, p. 282 f.
  15. ↑ Andrew Apostolou; “The Exception of Salonika”: Bystanders and collaborators in Northern Greece . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies , Volume 14, Issue 2, October 1, 2000, pp. 165–196, here page 183.
  16. ↑ See VEJ 17/239.
  17. ↑ Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews , Volume 2 The Years of Destruction: 1939–1945 . Beck, Munich 2006, p. 516 f. ISBN 3-406-54966-7 .
  18. ↑ Saul Friedländer: The Third Reich and the Jews , Volume 2 The Years of Destruction: 1939–1945 . Beck, Munich 2006, pp. 515-516. ISBN 3-406-54966-7 .
  19. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State. Robbery, Race War and National Socialism . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, p. 276.
  20. ↑ Helmut Heiber: The death of Tsar Boris . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 9 (1961), Issue 4, p. 411. ISSN  0042-5702
  21. ↑ Records of the United States Nuernberg War Crimes trials Interrogations 1946-1949 , published 1977.
  22. ↑ Andrew Apostolou; “The Exception of Salonika”: Bystanders and collaborators in Northern Greece . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies , Volume 14, Issue 2, October 1, 2000, pp. 165–196, here page 184.
  23. ↑ Andrew Apostolou; “The Exception of Salonika”: Bystanders and collaborators in Northern Greece . In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies , Volume 14, Issue 2, October 1, 2000, pp. 165–196, here page 186.
  24. ^ Albert Oeckl and Rudolf Vogel (editors): Pocket book of public life 1958 . Festland-Verlag, Bonn 1958, p. 167.
  25. ↑ Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Brown Book". War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science . Edition Ost, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-360-01033-7 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1968). List entry on Günther Altenburg ( memento of the original from October 6, 2010 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.braunbuch.de
personal data
SURNAME Altenburg, Günther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Altenburg, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat in World War II, plenipotentiary in occupied Greece
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 1984
Place of death Bonn