Hans-Joachim von Kruedener

Hans-Joachim Karl Armin Freiherr von Kruedener (born June 2, ^jul. / 15. June  1906 ^greg. Gut Sitinka , Pskov Governorate ( Russian Empire ); † 16th August 1989 ) was aircraft mechanic and stunt pilot, pilots in World War II , also SS-Hauptsturmführer . Kruedener was significantly involved in the Desert Company , part of Edmund Geilenberg's mineral oil security plan, which, among other measures, was supposed to eliminate the fuel shortage that occurred after the bombing of the Allied forces.

Life

Kruedener came from a German-Baltic noble family and was born on his father's forest and hunting estate. In 1921 he went to Germany, where he obtained the diploma from the German Colonial School in Witzenhausen .

According to his laudation on his 65th birthday, he was an aircraft fitter and aerobatic pilot in the USA, from 1928 an employee of the Benzol Association and during the Second World War a pilot. This does not mention Kruedener's activities as a captain of the Luftwaffe and orderly officer with Field Marshal Erhard Milch , as well as SS-Hauptsturmführer and as a member of the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD). In the latter functions, Kruedener was responsible for the planning of oil extraction from shale and the construction of concentration camps for the head of the armaments delivery office , State Councilor Dr. Walther Schieber , and involved in the SS. The conversation in Braunschweig on May 30, 1944 about the establishment of the Schandelah satellite camp with the Minister-President of the Free State of Braunschweig Dietrich Klagges and Prof. Solms Wilhelm Wittig , a later convicted war criminal, went back to his initiative and to Schieber's initiative . Furthermore, Kruedener took the initiative for the seven concentration camps for oil shale extraction as part of the company Desert near Balingen in Baden-Württemberg.

Kruedener made himself indispensable in the "Desert" oil shale project; On March 29, 1945, he was released from Oswald Pohl , the head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, because he was a representative of the SS at Operation Desert.

After the end of the Second World War , he built a logging company. In 1948 he joined the Wolman company in Sinzheim and after the death of the managing director E. Wolman took over the company that produces wood preservatives . After the war he was regarded as a specialist in impregnating wood impregnation processes against mold, algae and insects and gave a lecture in 1970 on the impregnation of Eucalpytus masts.

literature

• Heike Petry: "Re .: Use of concentration camp prisoners in Schandelah" - Forced labor for the oil shale project of Steinöl GmbH, in: Gudrun Fiedler, Hans-Ulrich Ludewig: Forced Labor and War Economy in the State of Braunschweig 1939–1945 . Edited by the Braunschweig History Association. Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2003, ISBN 3-930292-78-5 , p. 237ff.

Web links

• Laudation on Kruedener's 65th birthday with portrait (PDF file; 186 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Genealogical Handbook of the Baltic Knighthoods Part 1.1, Livonia, Görlitz 1929, p. 463. ( Digitalisät )
2. ^ Christine Glauning: Delimitation and the concentration camp system: the "Desert" company and the concentration camp in Bisingen 1944/45 . Metropol, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938690-30-5 . (Series: History of the Concentration Camps 1933–1945, Vol. 7) (Simultaneously Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2004), p. 49.
3. ^ W. Liese (1989): Hans – Joachim Freiherr von Kruedener died. In: Holz – Zentralblatt Volume 115 (111), p. 1686.
4. ^ Petry: Deployment of concentration camp prisoners, p. 240
5. ^ Petry: Deployment of concentration camp prisoners, p. 240.
6. ↑ Kruedener's lecture on the occasion of the 11th International Wood Conservation Conference of the German Society for Wood Research , Munich on June 11, 1970