Hans Hohberg

Hans Hohberg during the Nuremberg Trials . Photo taken in January 1947.

Hans Karl Hohberg , called Hans Hohberg (born April 21, 1906 in Winzenheim , † November 2, 1968 in Leinfelden-Echterdingen ) was a German auditor and convicted war criminal of the Nuremberg trials .

Life

After graduating from high school, Hohberg, the son of a Protestant pastor, began business training, which he finished after a year. At the University of Cologne and the University of Freiburg , Hohberg completed a degree in business administration, which he completed in November 1928 with a degree in business administration. He then worked for Cologne companies and received his doctorate in July 1931 with the dissertation The Reich Finance Policy in the Time of the Dawes and Young Plan . Hohberg then worked as an auditor for various companies in Berlin , Vienna and Königsberg . Hohberg married in October 1938.

Hohberg was not a member of the NSDAP and SS , but belonged to the NSRB and the NSV . Between June 1938 and August 1938 Hohberg did his military service. After Hohberg got to know Oswald Pohl , he became a fee-based employee in the main office for administration and economics on May 10, 1940 . In the function of an auditor, Hohberg was responsible for tax advice and other economic questions of the SS companies in an influential position. At Hohberg's instigation, Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe GmbH was founded in July 1940 .

From the beginning of February 1942, Hohberg continued this activity in the newly established SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) as head of staff W in the W office group until the end of June 1943. He then left the WVHA at his own request and was drafted into the Air Force in August 1943 . As a radio operator he was used in France and Belgium and reached the rank of private. In August 1943, Hohberg received a five-year consultancy contract for Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe GmbH, although he was no longer working for this company. From the end of August 1944, Hohberg was an employee of Kurt Mays , an SS manager, in the Reich Aviation Ministry .

After the end of the war

After his arrest, Hohberg was interned from November 1946 to January 1947 together with Leo Volk and Karl Mummenthey by the British War Criminals Holding Center in Minden . There the internees had to write the “Minden Report”. This 244-page report should present the structure of the WVHA and its economic ventures comprehensibly. According to Naasner, the report was not used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials .

In the process of economic and administrative main office of the SS Hohberg was on November 3, 1947 by the United States Military Tribunal II u. a. for war crimes and crimes against humanity found guilty. In particular , he was accused of being involved in concentration camp crimes as a result of the exploitation of the labor of concentration camp inmates by the SS companies he organized. Hohberg was sentenced to ten years in prison. At the beginning of February 1951 he was released early from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison . He then lived in Leinfelden-Echterdingen and worked as an independent auditor. According to Schulte, Hohberg died in 1968.

literature

• Walter Naasner (Hrsg.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung - The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt and the economic ventures under its supervision , Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, publications of the Federal Archives: 45a, ISBN 3-7700-1603-3 .
• Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950. (Volume 5 of the " Green Series ")

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung , Düsseldorf 1998, p. 335f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 467.
3. ↑ Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung , Düsseldorf 1998, p. 350f.
4. ↑ Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung , Düsseldorf 1998, p. 10f.
5. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. District of Columbia 1950, pp. 1040ff.
6. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 266.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Hohberg in the catalog of the German National Library