Hans Kroll

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Hans Kroll (1962)

Hans Kroll (born May 18, 1898 in German Piekar (today: Piekary Śląskie), Upper Silesia ; † August 8, 1967 in Starnberg , Bavaria ) was a German diplomat and ambassador to Belgrade , Tokyo and Moscow .

Life

Hans Kroll joined the diplomatic service in 1920 after completing his studies and obtaining his doctorate . He was employed at the embassy in Lisbon , the embassy in Madrid and in the consulates general in Odessa , Chicago and San Francisco . From 1929 to 1936 he worked in the Foreign Office in the special department for economics under the direction of Karl Ritter . In 1934/35 he traveled through South America for several months with a German business delegation . Kroll worked in Turkey from 1936 to 1943 , most recently as First Counselor, from 1939 under Ambassador Franz von Papen . He then headed the Consulate General in Barcelona until the end of the war .

After 1945 Kroll worked for the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Karl Arnold , for the foreign policy committee of the CDU of the British occupation zone and for the press. In 1950 he joined the Federal Ministry of Economics, became the first German ambassador to the COCOM committees in Paris and then headed the West-East group.

From 1953 to 1955 Kroll was German ambassador in Belgrade , Yugoslavia , and had the opportunity there to observe the political effects caused by the death of Stalin . From 1955 to 1958, Kroll was the first German ambassador to Tokyo , Japan .

From 1958 to 1962, at the time of the so-called Second Berlin Crisis and the building of the GDR Wall in 1961, Kroll was ambassador to Moscow . His goal has always been to improve bilateral relations. To this end, for example, on November 9, 1961, he invited himself to a conversation with party and government leader Nikita Khrushchev , which caused great excitement in the international press.

In February 1962 an affair arose around Hans Kroll, who divulged Konrad Adenauer's new ideas about Eastern politics , based on the so-called Globke Plan , to representatives of the press. In September 1962 he was dismissed from his post and worked for the few months until his retirement in May 1963 as an advisor to the federal government on Eastern issues in the Foreign Office.

Kroll was a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Winfridia (Breslau) Münster in the CV and a member of the CDU .

Kroll affair

As ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, Hans Kroll was a mediator and valued confidante of Adenauer and Khrushchev.

Kroll was accused of having developed his own ideas for solving the German problem in a conversation with Khrushchev on November 9, 1961 without Adenauer's commission - ideas that ran counter to the official policy of the Federal Republic. Nevertheless, the Chancellor sent him back to Moscow after he had summoned him to Bonn to report. Adenauer probably appreciated having a representative in the Soviet capital who enjoyed good contact with Khrushchev.

On February 17, 1962, there was a new bang. The Bonn correspondent Der Welt , Georg Schröder, wrote in an editorial: "The number of those in Bonn is not small who know that there is a much-named official who propagates the German-Soviet compromise, no matter what the cost." was able to refer to a conversation Kroll had with journalists on February 13th, in which the ambassador had shared new ideas on Eastern politics by the Chancellor and his two confidants Hans Globke and Heinrich Krone .

In the days that followed, there were intense discussions between the Chancellery and the Foreign Office, in which it was finally agreed to recall Kroll from Moscow after a few months - finally in September 1962. Despite rumors to the contrary, the American government had no influence on this decision. However, the affair was pushed by the Springer newspapers Welt and Bild. The latter headlined on March 1, 1962: "Send Kroll to the desert immediately!"

Quotes

The German ambassador in Moscow, Hans Kroll, describes the political mood in Moscow in 1961 in his diary:

“The Soviet press and radio are continuing their war of nerves over the Berlin question. Apparently, the enormous increase in the number of refugees made not only Pankow but also the Kremlin nervous. Ambassador Thompson (the American ambassador in Moscow, ed.) Fears that something will soon be done about this mass exodus. But what can you do about it? Any attempt to obstruct air transport is sure to lead to an acute and extremely serious crisis. I rarely found Ambassador Thompson, but also my friends Roberts and Dejean (the British and French ambassadors in Moscow, respectively) as concerned as they are now. "

- Kroll 1967, p. 498

Khrushchev later explained to the then German ambassador in Moscow, Hans Kroll:

“It's easy to work out when the East German economy would have collapsed if we hadn't done something about the mass exodus as soon as possible. But there were only two types of countermeasures: the air transport barrier or the wall. The former would have brought us into serious conflict with the United States, which could have led to war. I couldn't and didn't want to risk that. So only the wall remained. Nor do I want to hide the fact that it was me who ultimately gave the order. Ulbricht has been pushing me harder and harder for a long time and in the last few months, but I don't want to hide behind his back, he is much too narrow for me. "

- Hans Kroll: Memoirs of an Ambassador. Cologne / Berlin 1967

Fonts

  • Hans Kroll. Memoirs of an Ambassador Kiepenheuer & Witsch; Cologne, Berlin, 1967.
  • Mémoires d'un ambassadeur. Fayard, Paris 1968
  • Ambassador to Belgrade, Tokyo and Moscow: 1953–1962 Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1969.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Kroll: Memoirs of an Ambassador. Kiepenheuer and Witsch Verlag, Cologne / Berlin 1967, book cover .
predecessor Office successor
Heinrich von Hardenberg German ambassador in Belgrade
1953–1954 		Karl Georg Pfleiderer
Heinrich Northe German ambassador to Tokyo
1955–1958 		Wilhelm Haas
Wilhelm Haas German ambassador in Moscow
1958–1962 		Horst Groepper
personal data
SURNAME Kroll, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and ambassador in Belgrade, Tokyo and Moscow
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH German Piekar (today: Piekary Śląskie), Upper Silesia
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1967
Place of death Starnberg , Bavaria