Hans-Hendrik Neumann

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Hans-Hendrik Neumann (born August 4, 1910 in Barmen ; † June 20, 1994 ) was a German SS leader and manager. Neumann was temporarily adjutant to the chief of the security police and the SD, Reinhard Heydrich , and chief of the NSDAP task force in Norway. In the post-war period he was one of the leading figures in Philips GmbH.

Live and act

Youth and education

After attending school, Neumann studied electrical engineering for three semesters, had to give up his studies and his original career aspiration to become an engineer, but - according to his own statements - during the global economic crisis.

In June 1930 Neumann joined the SA and the NSDAP in Chemnitz ( membership number 266.400). He later switched to the SS (SS No. 9.925).

Career in the SS

In December 1933 Neumann was transferred to the SS Security Service (SD). After graduating from the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz in 1934 , Neumann was selected as personal adjutant by Reinhard Heydrich , head of the Secret State Police Office in Berlin, and took up this post on April 20, 1935. Until January 22, 1940, he was involved in this capacity as one of Heydrich's three leadership assistants in the leadership of the Security Police and the SD.

In his capacity as Heydrich's adjutant, Neumann was often entrusted with special tasks that also extended to other countries: In the context of the occupation of Austria by the Wehrmacht , he was in Vienna on a special assignment in April 1938 . In the late summer of 1939 he was involved in the preparation of the Tannenberg company and during the subsequent German attack on Poland in September 1939 he was liaison officer Heydrich at the Wehrmacht headquarters.

From January to June 1941 Neumann was sent to Norway as an SS leader , where he was active in the operational staff of Area Commissioner Paul Wegener . His main task there was to advise Norwegian collaborators in setting up the Hird organization , the Norwegian equivalent of the SA.

In autumn 1941 Neumann was appointed police attaché at the German legation in Stockholm on orders from Heydrich . In this capacity he was entrusted with maintaining the cooperation between the German authorities and the Swedish security police and with scouting out the various groups of emigrants and agents who operated in Sweden as the last remaining neutral state in Scandinavia. In December 1941, for example, he also observed the Soviet agent Alexandra Kollontai .

From May 1942 to autumn 1944 Neumann headed the NSDAP's task force in Norway as Weger's successor. In October 1942 he was appointed regional group leader of the Foreign Organization (AO) of the NSDAP in Norway. Until the end of 1944 he also held the duties of a liaison officer between the Reich Commissioner for Norway and the government of Vidkun Quisling . He then worked on the staff of the 1st SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" , whose command he received in April 1945 shortly before the end of the war and promoted to SS-Standartenführer.

At the end of the war, Neumann was taken prisoner by the Allies, from which he was released around 1949.

post war period

In the young Federal Republic of Germany, Neumann had a steep career in the electrical industry: in 1949 Neumann joined Deutsche Philips GmbH in Hamburg, where he was soon very successful. For five years he was director of the Philips branch in Hanover. From 1957 he was managing director of Valvo GmbH - the components division of Philips GmbH - in Hamburg for almost two decades before he retired in 1975. According to a report on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1980 in the trade journal Nachrichten Elektronik , the company owed its top position among the German manufacturers of components for the entire electrical engineering sector to its "organizational and commercial skills, his drive and his gift for motivating employees".

Neumann was largely able to conceal his SS past in the Federal Republic of Germany: In Who's Who entries it was usually said that he had been a “professional soldier” until 1945 (allegedly a lieutenant colonel and regimental commander at the end of the war).

Neumann was married to Helga Daitz, a daughter of the Nazi ideologist Werner Daitz . The marriage had three children.

literature

  • Robert Bohn : The instruments of German rule in the realm commissioner of Norway. In: Robert Bohn (Ed.): The German rule in the "Germanic" countries 1940–1945. Stuttgart 1997.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  • Alfred Spiess, Heiner Lichtenstein : Tannenberg company. Frankfurt am Main 1989.
  • Kurt Mehner: The Waffen SS and Police 1939–1945. Leadership and troops. Norderstedt 1995.
  • Who is who? The German Who's Who , vol. 33, p. 963.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ News electronics. 1980, vol. 34-35, p. 222.
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Hans-Hendrik
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS standard leader, adjutant to Reinhard Heydrich
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1994