Hans Sommer (SS member)

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Hans Sommer (born June 26, 1914 in Nortorf ; † after 1968) was an SS-Obersturmführer , member of the security service of the SS (SD) , employee of the Gehlen Organization (OG) and agent of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (MfS).

Nazi career

At the age of sixteen he joined the Hitler Youth in order to become a member of the SS in 1932 and a member of the NSDAP in 1933 . He was a member of the Reich Labor Service from autumn 1934 to spring 1935. From April 1935 to 1936 he was employed in a sideline at the SD section in Kiel . The following two years he served in the Wehrmacht as a conscript .

He then became a consultant to the later SS Oberführer Otto Somann in the SD subsection Liegnitz . When he was transferred to the SD Upper Section Southeast in Breslau , he was followed by Sommer. While Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland were occupied by the Wehrmacht in October 1938, he took part in them with the rank of SS-Oberscharführer. He later received the medal in memory of October 1, 1938 . In the spring of 1939 he again had to do his service in the Wehrmacht in order to be transferred to the SD main office . At the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) he was transferred to Office VI (SD-Auslands) of Group B (German-Italian area of ​​influence in Europe, Africa and the Middle East) in Department 2, which was responsible for France.

Use in Paris

When the war against France became apparent in the spring of 1940 , he belonged to the Einsatzkommando z. b. V. indicated which tasks the Gestapo and the SS were to take on in Paris at 72 avenue Foch . Reinhard Heydrich had appointed SS-Sturmbannführer Helmut Bone as the commanding officer in Paris. The command itself was subordinate to the representative of the chief of the security police and the SD in France and Belgium, SS-Brigadführer Max Thomas . Thomas was subordinate to General Otto von Stülpnagel , the military commander for occupied northern France.

In August 1940, the RSHA decided to rename the Einsatzkommando as the office of the representative of the chief of the security police. Two years later, in May 1942, the agency was renamed as Commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) . In this department summer u. a. deployed together with the later SS-Hauptsturmführer Herbert Hagen , the SS-Oberscharführer Ernst Heinrichsohn , the later SS-Obersturmbannführer Kurt Lischka and the later SS-Obersturmführer August Moritz .

Activities underground

In the autumn of 1940, Sommer, who had meanwhile been promoted to SS-Obersturmführer, sought contact with Breton , Basque and Corsican groups. The German leadership hoped that these separatists would work with them. Furthermore, Sommer worked with French right-wing extremists. Eugène Deloncle stood out, who also acted as political advisor to Thomas. Deloncle, who made a pact with the murderer Fillol, founded the organization Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire (CSAR), also known as Cagoule (German: hood). In the organization CSAR, which had more than five hundred members, Sommer recruited several informants who had contacts with Arab nationalists in North Africa. Sommer wanted to use these contacts to set up a network of agents in North Africa. He received support from SS Brigade Leader Walter Schellenberg , who sent him two members of Office VI in the RSHA to set up the network of agents.

In his later writing Own Intentions and Possibilities of August 14, 1954, he described 93 people, including these two informants sent by Schellenberg, the former Freemason Kurt R. and Father Dr. Hermann Keller, who had also served as prior of the Beuron monastery . Helmuth Groscurth wrote in his diaries that Keller worked for both the defense of the Wehrmacht and the SD. Sommer reported that Keller was the most skilled agent . Sommer claimed that the good relations with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem , Mohammed Amin al-Husseini , were due to his contacts. He also claims to have had good relations with the head of counter-espionage at the Spanish embassy in Paris, so that agents could be transferred via Spain to North Africa with his support.

Attacks on synagogues in Paris

In September 1941, Deloncle Bones had made a proposal to stir up public opinion and to carry out attacks on Paris synagogues for this purpose . Based on the "spontaneous" unrest following the Reichspogromnacht of 1938, he agreed to such a plan and informed his superior Thomas, as he stated in his testimony before the French military court on December 15, 1947. In a testimony before the Military Court on June 18, 1948, Sommer stated that Bone had informed the RSHA or Thomas.

In a letter dated November 6, 1941 to Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner , Heydrich confirmed that he was aware of and approved the attacks. The 30 kg explosive was brought to Paris by an RSHA employee from Department VI F for technical aids towards the end of September 1941. Sommer was commissioned with the practical execution of the attacks. On the night of October 3, 1941, the attacks were carried out:

whereby an explosive charge failed. Von Stülpnagel immediately demanded a comprehensive report, since two Wehrmacht soldiers and several French civilians were injured in the explosions. SS-Obersturmführer Theodor Dannecker compiled the report, signed the bone and sent it to the military administration on the same day. Radical French opponents of the Jews were accused in the report. The investigation into the attacks is a matter for the French police. Sommer got drunk over the next few days, bragging about the attacks. As early as October 6th, the Wehrmacht's Abwehr control center learned of Sommer's statements.

An immediately put together court under the direction of Lischka interrogated Sommer. This relied on an order from Bones. But Lischka withheld this statement from Sommer in order not to strain bones. Bone informed von Stülpnagel in a letter on October 4, 1941 that the attacks were a purely French matter (in Document PS 1629 from the Nuremberg Military Court (IMG)). However, von Stülpnagel was informed of the actual connections on October 5, 1941 and, in a letter of October 6, 1941, demanded the immediate resignation of Bones to the Army High Command (OKH).

On October 21, 1941, the OKH sent a letter to Heydrich, in which Bones was accused of making false statements and Sommer was named as the perpetrator of the attacks. On October 7, 1941, Sommer was arrested after an interrogation and taken to the RSHA in Berlin. There he received a sharp reprimand for behavior unworthy of the SS . In December 1941 he was put in room arrest for four weeks and was not allowed to be promoted for three years. After that he was able to continue his service in the SS in Amt VI in the RSHA. Schellenberg transferred him to Nice in 1943 to head the SD. Subsequently, until August 1944, Sommer worked as Vice Consul and Police Attaché in Marseille in order to reactivate a network of agents there. With the Germans resident there, he recruited employees who u. a. to watch the British Ambassador Samuel Hoare in Madrid.

In Marseille he also met the Minister a. D. Know Henry B. (or Henry G.) and the General Council (Conseiller Gènèral) of the Département Var Claude D., who also worked as a lawyer. Sommer was asked to help one of these friends get his son out of the concentration camp. For Sommer, this act was to prove very useful after the war before the French military tribunal. After the occupation of southern France by the Allies, Sommer and his agents moved to San Remo to work from there in a front reconnaissance command. From there he probably smuggled agents and saboteurs into France.

In US custody

After the collapse of the Nazi regime, Sommer fled to Madrid with his agents. In March 1946 he met Charles Lesca (1871–1948, also: Charles Lescat) by chance in a restaurant he knew from his Paris service. Lesca reported to him that he would organize a line of escape for wanted Nazis to Argentina. After his arrest in Madrid, Sommer was a prisoner in US custody. These now commissioned Sommer to smuggle agents into the group around Lesca. In doing so, Sommer relied on the Frenchman Robert Voineau, who had good relations with Lesca. Lescat showed great interest in the whereabouts of the Air Force attaché in Madrid, General Eckart Krahmer . In October 1944, he was still in command of a convoy of trucks that had transported more than 200 works of art from France to Spain, including works of art intended for Hermann Göring . Sommer tried to convince the members of the US service that it was not possible to smuggle in agents because of the isolation of the group around Lesca.

While in custody in Madrid, he met the German military attaché Colonel Kurt von Rohrscheidt , who had headed the war organization (KO) at the German embassy. They were flown with him and other Germans to a camp near Hohenasperg . Then he was transferred to Camp King near Oberursel . He was then extradited to the Military Court for transfer to France. The case against Sommer was dropped on December 18, 1948, but later resumed. When the two acquaintances from Marseille testified for him, that had a favorable effect on the judgment. According to Sommers, he was sentenced to two years in prison and transferred to Germany in 1950.

Organization Gehlen (OG)

Von Rohrscheidt had meanwhile taken over the management of the sub-agency (UV) of the organization Gehlen von Württemberg in Stuttgart. When Sommer visited him, he was hired as the head of UV Baden on the OG in Konstanz . Then he went to Hamburg, where he took over the district representation (BV) of the OG. Here he brought his old friend from his service in Wroclaw, Otto Somann, to the upper floor. This in turn recruited the former SD head Ernst Schwarzwäller . In August 1953, Sommer was laid off and was unemployed after a brief period in a watch shop.

State Security of the GDR

On July 29, 1954, Sommer first had contact with the Stasi in east Berlin through Black Whales, who meanwhile worked for the Stasi. The approval for the recruitment went through the head of the MfS of Greater Berlin , Hans Fruck , and the head of the main department II, Colonel Josef Kiefel . With the code name "Rumland", his activity began by systematically reporting his knowledge of the Gehlen organization. For his first report he received DM 700 from Major Helmut Träger. In this connection he also mentioned the former SS-Hauptsturmführer Johannes Clemens , who allegedly had recruited agents in Dresden . At that time, however, Sommer had no knowledge that Clemens had already been recruited by the Soviet secret service KGB .

In the course of time, Sommer, who appeared under the cover names "Paul Gautier", "Hans Herbert Paul Sehner" and "Hans Stephen", brought a total of around 2200 pages of documents from the OG to the MfS. He also managed to win a source "Olaf", who supplied internal reports from the editorial staff of Der Spiegel magazine to the OG. In late 1954 / early 1955, Sommer returned to Paris to meet former SD agents. Some of the organization "Cagoul" had exonerated Sommer in lawsuits, so that they were still friendly to him. Sommer also managed to reestablish contacts with Rolf Richter, a member of the SD special commission that had conducted the investigation into the Red Orchestra in Paris . This in turn had contact with the former head of the SD commission, SS-Sturmbannführer Heinrich Josef Reiser . This belonged to the staff of the general agency L in the OG.

In this way, Sommer found out that Reiser wanted to use Rolf Richter on Northwest German Broadcasting . There he was supposed to find out whether General Director Adolf Grimme still had relationships with people from the “Organization Rote Kapelle”. In the meantime, the MfS has suspected that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution's counterintelligence may have noticed summer . Direct contacts were first interrupted in January 1955 with Sommer. Now he only communicated with the Stasi via a courier. He went to Brescia towards the end of 1956 in order to set up a mock activity there with a company. From there, he maintained contacts with his former agents in Paris to spread disinformation. In Italy he went to see the former SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Hass , who was living undetected and who was now working there as an agent for the secret services.

His information was so useful for the MfS because it knew the names of the most important agents of the OG, which concerned about 800 people. In 1957, Sommer received DM 1,500 a month for his services. In total, the MfS paid Sommer DM 178,825 for the period from 1954 to 1960. From August 1960, contact with Sommer ceased, which was only resumed in 1963. When, on November 11, 1961, the newspaper Neues Deutschland printed information on the former head of the Kiel police headquarters, SS-Sturmbannführer Fritz Schmidt , Sommer suspected that he had provided the information. When Sommer reported to the MfS for the last time in June 1965, he announced that the police were investigating him. However, these only concerned his former work at the RSHA. The connection to the MfS was finally broken after a last meeting with his instructor in 1968.

literature

  • Jaques Delarue: History of the Gestapo. Düsseldorf 1964 (translation of Histoire de la Gestapo , Paris 1962).
  • Helmut Krausnick Hg. & Helmuth Groscurth: Diaries of an Abwehr Officer 1938 - 1940. Stuttgart 1970.
  • Claudia Steur: Theodor Dannecker. A functionary of the "Final Solution". Essen 1997.
  • Uki Goni: Odessa. The true story. Escape aid for Nazi war criminals. Berlin 2006.
  • Henry Leide: Nazi Criminal and State Security. The secret past politics of the GDR. Göttingen 2006, pp. 301-318.
  • CIA report CI-FIR-130: interrogation of Obersturmführer SS and agent RSHA Amt VI (SD-Auslands) Hans Sommer, 10 Dec. 1946, pp. 1–27 [1]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the attacks on the Paris synagogues, cf. Michael Mayer : “Charter for Arbitrariness” The attacks on the Paris synagogues on October 3, 1941 and the German occupation authorities in France. In: Politics of Hate. Studies on anti-Semitism and the radical right. Ed. Gideon Botsch , Christoph Kopke , Lars Rensmann and Julius H. Schoeps . Row: Haskala. Scientific papers at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies , 44. Olms, Hildesheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-487-14438-2 , pp. 177–191.
  2. ^ Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security. The secret past politics of the GDR. Göttingen 2006, p. 317.
personal data
SURNAME Summer, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Obersturmführer, member of the security service of the Reichsführer SS, the Gehlen organization and employee of the Ministry for State Security
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Nortorf
DATE OF DEATH after 1968