Hans Eltze

Hans Eltze (* 1880 ; † unknown) was a German arms contractor .

life and work

Eltze was an engineer for various weapons manufacturers and had gained his professional experience in countries such as England , Canada and Mexico before the First World War . He was employed by Rheinmetall , headed their factory in Sömmerda shortly after the First World War , represented the need for close coordination among the various armaments companies and played a key role in Rheinmetall's secret activity to circumvent the provisions of the Versailles Treaty : more weapons to export, to smuggle machines abroad, to organize hidden branches under the names of foreign companies, to set up joint ventures abroad. That is why he was arrested on short notice by the French occupation authorities on April 19, 1923, during the Ruhr occupation .

In some respects, Eltze's most important work was the founding of the Solothurn arms factory in Switzerland , where he represented Rheinmetall and became a partner of the Austrian “cartridge king” Fritz Mandl , the boss of the Hirtenberger cartridge factory . Eltze was supposed to ensure that the Rheinmetall flaks continued to be exported under the Swiss label. The chairman of the board of directors of the Solothurn weapons factory was the so-called “cannon king” Hermann Obrecht , who at that time was also a candidate for federal councilor. That was very controversial. Parties from the center and from the left said he was unsustainable as a Federal Councilor. Thanks to the Council of States Robert Schöpfer and Federal Councilor Rudolf Minger , Obrecht was finally elected. The Solothurn creator was one of the most influential free-thinking politicians at the time , he was a close friend of Obrecht and his political foster father. Minger, a central figure in the peasant, industrial and civil party , and Obrecht had been friends since their military careers. What his contemporaries did not yet know during this discussion about Obrecht's role in the Solothurn arms factory: His involvement in the war material industry was not limited to a presidential post. Obrecht planned the establishment of the Solothurn arms factory together with Eltze and Mandl. Eltze was a long-term business partner of Mandl; Mandl was director and at the same time the main shareholder of the Hirtenberger cartridge factory, one of the largest European cartridge factories. The Swiss arms factory offered both companies the opportunity to circumvent the peace provisions of Versailles and Saint-Germain, which restricted the production of war material in Germany and Austria. The Solothurn weapons factory began to develop automatic weapons on the basis of Rheinmetall construction plans and prototypes. At the beginning of the 1930s, leading German weapons engineers were active in Solothurn, so the basis for the later MG 34 was developed in Solothurn , the standard machine gun of the German Wehrmacht. During Obrecht's tenure as chairman of the board of directors, two major contracts for Austria and Hungary were carried out in secret until 1935. Both orders massively violated the peace provisions of Saint-Germain , because on the one hand the export of arms to these two countries was fundamentally prohibited, and on the other hand their arming with automatic weapons was strictly limited anyway. The Swiss Federal Council knew about this violation of the peace treaty and willfully tolerated it.

Eltze was a member of the "Main Commission" of the Stega , camouflaged as the "Statistical Society", a secret armaments organization consisting of the Heereswaffenamt and the Reich Association of German Industry , founded with the aim of German rearmament , which also undermined the arms control provisions of the Versailles Treaty.

When the National Socialists ruled the Reich and openly declared that from now on they would disregard the Versailles regulations, Eltze was able to continue exporting from Germany. He recruited the technicians he had previously brought to Switzerland himself, managed to win them over to the now merged and renamed Rheinmetall- Borsig AG and settled in Berlin. In May 1933 he joined the NSDAP . He began working closely with the arms dealer Waldemar Pabst . In 1934 Eltze seems to have terminated his connection with Rheinmetall. He then went to Austria as General Director of the arms manufacturer Steyr and left the Solo GmbH he founded in the hands of his partner Pabst.

Later, Pabst also became head of the Solothurn Arms Factory (WfS), because Mandl, called a Jew by the Nazis, had to leave Austria on the occasion of the Anschluss, and Eltze had gone to the Iberian Peninsula in 1936. Pabst became the representative of both founding fathers of the WfS in Switzerland. There are indications that all three remained connected in business in the following years, although Eltze became the official representative of the Reichsgruppe Industrie and the export group of war equipment in Spain and then in Portugal, while Mandl was a refugee and Pabst a businessman who was politically suspicious to the Nazi authorities was.

Months before the coup of July 17, 1936 , Eltze was involved in a case of bribery of Spanish officials. This seems to relativize the popular explanation that Hitler was surprised by the coup. Eltze visited Portugal during the Spanish Civil War. The small country was the camouflage country for the arms exports destined for Spain and suddenly became the third most important customer for German arms worldwide.

When the Second World War broke out , Eltze moved to Portugal and very quickly became the gray eminence of the German embassy and a personal friend of Salazar , the all-powerful Portuguese dictator. In particular from June 1941, during the German attack on the Soviet Union , with the interruption of Chinese tungsten deliveries via the trans-Siberian railway , Portugal became Germany's most important and Spain second most important tungsten supplier. The most important German consideration was armaments and Eltze was the most skilful negotiator in the branch. This explains his influence in Portugal, Salazar's trust, which he betrayed in the RSHA spy Erich Schroeder, and his award by the Portuguese dictator in 1943.

After the war, Eltze remained unmolested by the Allies . He went to Switzerland and is said to have died there.

Memberships

• Shipbuilding company , as general director of Rheinische Metallwaaren- und Maschinenfabrik Aktiengesellschaft, Düsseldorf (later: Rheinmetall)

Fonts

• The conversion of the joint stock company. Inaugural -Diss. University of Greifswald , printed by J. Abel, Greifswald 1900

literature

• Ramón Bill: Solothurn Arms Factory. Swiss precision in the service of the German arms industry. In: Series of publications by the Cantonal Museum Altes Zeughaus Solothurn. Issue 14, Solothurn 2002.
• Peter Hug: Swiss armaments industry and war material trade during the time of National Socialism. Corporate strategies - market development - political surveillance. Chronos, Zurich 2002. (Volume 11 of the publications of the Independent Expert Commission.)
• António Louçã: Conspiradores e traficantes. Portugal no tráfico de armas e de divisas nos anos do nazismo 1933–1945. Oficina do Livro, Lisbon 2006
• António Louçã: Nazi gold for Portugal. Hitler and Salazar. Holzhausen, Vienna 2002
• Christian Leitz: Nazi Germany and neutral Europe during the second world war. Manchester University Press 2001 ISBN 0719050693S pp. 158f. and more often

Individual evidence

1. ↑ After the review of Cannon King and resistance Symbol: Hermann Obrecht , from: Arms Factory Solothurn , in: Yearbook of Canton Solothurn History, 75, 2002, p 353ff. Online at [1]
2. ↑ On the role of Eltze in the armaments negotiations between Portugal and the German Reich in 1941. Available in online bookshops