Hartmut Plaas

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hartmut Plaas (born October 11, 1899 in Arnsberg , † July 19, 1944 in Ravensbrück ) was one of the terrorist fighters against the new republic in the Weimar Republic. He was a member of the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade , took part in the Kapp Putsch and in murders by the successor group of the Marine Brigade, the Consul Organization , under the leadership of Hermann Ehrhardt . Afterwards he was the editor of various national revolutionary newspapers and publications in the right-wing extremist milieu between the völkisch- radical Freikorps, military and secret societies as well as the NSDAP . During the Nazi era he was a department head in Göring's research office , but was still one of Hitler's opponents with ties to the resistance against National Socialism. That is why the National Socialists shot Plaas on July 19, 1944 without a trial in the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

Life

Youth and World War I

Hartmut Plaas was the son of the royal Prussian chief forester Karl Arnold Plaas († 1914). In Kiel he attended the upper secondary school to underprima and volunteered in 1916 as a war volunteer. At the end of the war he was an ensign at sea on the cruiser Cöln . In December 1918 he returned to Germany as a lieutenant at sea after brief internment in Scapa Flow .

Radical opponent of the Weimar Republic

“After a brief guest performance as an agricultural student”, he joined the “Officer Assault Company” of the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade in September 1919, which since its formation in Wilhelmshaven at the beginning of 1919 has had the dubious reputation of being the most powerful and most counter-revolutionary unit the brutal suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic and soon embodied the prototype of the Freikorps par excellence. In Berlin, where the troops were quartered in the nearby Döberitz camp , the members of the “officers storm company” in particular attracted negative attention because of their provocative demeanor when they beat up Jewish citizens and those they believed to be and blew up meetings of democratic parties. In March 1920, Plaas took part with the naval brigade in the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch , after which the brigade was transferred to Munsterlager on orders from Noske and disbanded there. Among the disappointed, there was a key experience: anti-bourgeois resentment and the generational conflict made the young Freikorps members feel that radical action was no longer possible with the old elites in the administration, the parties and the military. This attitude found expression in the evocation of action, action for action's sake. You, often as mercenary shaufen of the Thirty Years' War had occurred stood in front of the professional Nothing. “The situation was precarious for those who, like Salomon, Plaas, Liedig or Heinz, had quasi gone to war from school and found themselves in a crisis-ridden state without any professional training.” Plaas worked as an emergency worker in Upper Bavaria in 1920/21 laboriously over water.

The cohesion was not lost. A few months after the brigade was disbanded, the Organization Consul (OC) was founded, the most dangerous right-wing secret organization in the Weimar Republic, which was also responsible for the murders of Matthias Erzberger (August 26, 1921) and Walther Rathenau and to which Plaas was a member. Since January 1922 he was adjutant to the captain lieutenant a. D. Karl Tillessen , who acted as head of the OC in West Germany. Like most of the OC's inner circle, Hartmut Plaas had joined the NSDAP since the alliance between Ehrhardt and Hitler (summer 1921) and had excelled in founding local National Socialist groups in Upper Bavaria. According to his own statements, Plaas joined the NSDAP in 1921 (membership no. 3,021).

On the instructions of the OC headquarters, he and Karl Tillessen founded the first local group of the NSDAP in Frankfurt a. M. He took over the editing of the anti-Semitic newspaper Völkische Rundschau , which was supported by the local functionaries of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund .

Plaas was involved in the crime as adjutant to Karl Tillessen , who had raised the funds to carry out the assassination attempt on Rathenau on June 24, 1922 and to escape the assassins. He was arrested on the same day in Frankfurt and, like Tillessen, charged with “failing to report a crime” to the new State Court for the Protection of the Republic in Leipzig in October 1922, along with twelve other accomplices. Plaas was sentenced to two years in prison only for "complicity". Some newspapers concluded that the penalties for Tillessen and Plaas were not in proportion to their actual guilt.

After his release from prison he became district manager of Thuringia for the Wiking Federation , a successor organization to the banned OC. The Bund Wiking was banned in Prussia and other countries of the German Empire in 1926 . In the spring of 1928, however, after protests by Stahlhelm members , Ehrhardt had to completely dissolve the Bund Wiking, after a cooperation with the Red Front Fighters Union had become known, which went back to the influence of the national Bolshevik course of Plaas, after he had become Ehrhardt's political advisor at the end of 1927 .

After the dissolution, Wiking local groups joined the NSDAP as one. In order to inform the troops of the former “Vikings” scattered in the NSDAP, in the “Stahlhelm” and other right-wing radical groups and to maintain a certain organizational cohesion, the bulletin of the Thuringian “Wiking”, the “advance”, was selected. Ernst Jünger and Werner Lass took over the editing. Freelance workers were the graphic artist A. Paul Weber and Plaas, whose sharply national-revolutionary articles determined the profile of the new association body. Here Plaas (as editor) also published a collection of essays about the imprisonment of opponents of the Republic convicted and with contributions from sympathizers under the sensational title “We indict. Nationalists in the dungeons of the bourgeoisie ”(with contributions from Plaas, Bormann , Ehrhardt, Goebbels , Hauenstein , von Killinger , von Salomon , who edited the book, Stein-Saaleck , Stucken , Techow and Zoeller ).

When, with the agricultural crisis deepening since 1927, the rural people's movement , first in Schleswig-Holstein, radicalized, it quickly came under the influence of right-wing organizations. For its part, the rural people's movement established ties with members of the former OC and began bombing attacks in 1928. Because of the so-called legality course of the NSDAP, which Hitler had meanwhile implemented, those National Socialists who sympathized with the radical rural people movement felt betrayed by the party leadership. Plaas openly sympathized with the rural people's movement and in 1930 edited “The Black Flag. Newspaper of the Silesian Country People ”. His strict rejection of the Weimar Republic and its political elites can be seen in the following newspaper quote from this period:

“You pardon robberies and murderers. You turn prostitutes and pimps into heroes of your plays. For mass fraudsters like the Barmat and Sklarek you have a probation period, for girl and child molesters mitigating circumstances. [...] Only the farmer is nothing to you. "

In the power struggle between the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser and Hitler, Plaas sympathized with Otto Strasser or with the “left” wing of the NSDAP and worked as an editor for newspapers that took this position: “Workers, farmers, soldiers. National Socialist Kampfblatt ”(April 9 - May 28, 1931),“ The National Socialist Monday Gazette ”(June 1, 1931) (follow-up sheet), and“ The Monday Gazette. Independent newspaper for national and social politics ”(December 28, 1932) (follow-up sheet).

After the party-internal defeat of the left, national-revolutionary Strasser wing in the summer of 1931, Ehrhardt's supporters founded the “Gefolgschaft eV” in December 1931. V. ". The name, which went back to a suggestion by Plaas, was intended to symbolize the personal loyalty to the Führer Ehrhardt instead of a clear political profile. The statutes of the allegiance turned out to be a conglomeration of the most contradicting program items: rejection of class struggle and international capitalism , parliamentarism and party rule. They were state-affirming and non-partisan, but hardly got beyond the old concept of extra-parliamentary opposition of a small elite.

Secret resistance in the Research Office, 1934–1944

Plaas saw the election successes and the " seizure of power " by the NSDAP with mixed, rather envious feelings. In April 1932 he noted in his diary: “What an ascent in ten years. But typically mass. ”Ideologically, he felt himself to be part of the intellectual elite and supporter of the conservative revolution , who despised the vulgar populism of the Nazis.

After the reorganization of the "Ehrhardt Brigade in the Association of the SS" in the summer of 1933, which was advocated by Himmler , Plaas automatically became an SS member, although Ehrhardt and he had campaigned for Hindenburg and vehemently against Hitler in the last presidential election in 1932 . Göring protested against the admission of Ehrhardt, Plaas and others to the SS. In a telex to Himmler, "[...] it was out of the question to accept one of the sharpest and most devious enemies of our movement. Stop his goal was never an open fight against us but an internal attempt." decomposition and dissolution stop suspect that this method will be continued with greater [sic] success after admission. ”Friends like Salomon and Hielscher reported after 1945 that under the direction of Plaas, oppositional opponents of the NSDAP from right and left into the new SS brigade had been taken in to put a coup against the regime in March 1934. Himmler, at least worried, visited a brigade camp incognito shortly before Christmas, where he was horrified to find that “the knives that were being sharpened” were not his knives, “but the heads that were being wanted at their necks, those were his heads, from the beloved leader to himself ”. On February 1, 1934, the brigade was finally dissolved by Himmler with immediate effect and without giving any reason. This is probably an indication of the existence of overturning plans. Interested brigade men were offered individual admission to the SS. Plaas remained in the SS at Ehrhardt's behest.

Through Canaris , Ehrhardt succeeded in getting Plaas a managerial position in the new Research Office (FA), which was not too difficult as the need for qualified employees, a total of 6,000, was great during the development phase. The former general staff officer Hans Oster also found a new career. The Research Office, a cover authority in the Aviation Ministry, was under Göring's control and, among other things, tapped the telephone lines of “suspicious” citizens if the Gestapo had requested this. Plaas remained SS-Sturmhauptführer z. b. V., although SS members were not welcome in Goering's research office for reasons of competition. In 1936/37 Plaas was promoted to the government council , in 1939/40 to the higher government council, and in 1941 he became head of the extremely important department 13 “Internal Political Analysis (State Security)”. His friendship with Canaris secured him a strong position in the research office. Many threads came together with him: He was the contact person for the SS leadership, in the FA he was considered a close confidante of the chief of the Abwehr , and Canaris had a close confidante in the Reich eavesdropping center.

As a department head, he thus had access to many FA secrets, which benefited the resistance : Plaas warned those affected if the Gestapo had requested that they be monitored by telephone, even though the betrayal of official secrets of the FA was threatened with the death penalty. He sent important information to his former FA colleague Hans Oster and his friend Wilhelm Canaris, who were always well informed about what the FA and the Gestapo were up to against the resistance. The military resistance groups could plan the overthrow; they knew: "Plaas watch out."

When the officers around Canaris and Oster finally saw a real chance for a successful overthrow after the fall of Stalingrad in 1943 and did not notice how the Gestapo was tightening the conspirators, who were acting more and more recklessly, warnings came from Plaas via Ludwig from the eavesdropping center Belong , who belonged to Colonel Oster's resistance group, about tapped conversations between the conspirators. He repeatedly warned individual conspirators such as Beck , von Moltke , Goerdeler , von Hassell , Halder , von Dohnanyi , von der Schulenburg and members of the Solf Circle in particular against observations and overly frank long-distance calls.

The end

When the resistance group around the ambassador's widow Hanna Solf was proudly but carelessly told who the man was who was destroying the Gestapo's surveillance attempts, the informer Paul Reckzeh , whom the Gestapo had assigned to the group , made a note of the name. In the research office, too, it was suspected that there had been a leak since the end of 1943. Plaas, who was increasingly suspected, was summoned to Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller several times . In March 1944, Gehre and Plaas were finally arrested in connection with their access to the Solf district. The statements by Otto Kiep and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke had led the Gestapo on the trail of Gehre and Plaas.

Plaas was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and, after long and "intensified" interrogations, to which even Müller is said to have appeared, he was shot on July 19, 1944 without a prior trial. The circumstances of the whole case are mysterious. Neither Goering nor the FA administration were informed of the arrest. Circumstances and timing gave rise to rumors after the war that Himmler knew about the Stauffenberg assassination attempt on July 20 and, with Plaas, had liquidated a witness who was dangerous for him for his complicity in the overturning plans. Until shortly before Plaas' death, no relatives or friends were given the whereabouts of the arrested person; after his murder the brother Witram Plaas was refused to hand over the body. The FA initially paid the widow the full salary, which was not the norm for other FA employees executed for betraying official secrets.

Appreciation

Gerhard Schulz counts Plaas in the direction of the young conservatives with nationalist-revolutionary traits. Although they had been opponents of the Weimar Republic from the very beginning, they also remained opponents of the National Socialist system and, alongside persecuted clergy, communists and social democrats, formed the fourth significant element of permanent resistance.

Susanne Meinl , who did her doctorate in 1997 with the dissertation “National Socialists against Hitler - The Development of the National Revolutionaries Using the Example of the Political Career of Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz” under Hans Mommsen , rather focuses on the individual experiences of the former Ehrhardt followers, including Plaas Years of the Weimar Republic and attests to it that during the Nazi era it relentlessly urged the hesitant majority of the national-conservative resistance to take action, without itself forming a closed resistance group with homogeneous objectives.

At the moment it is not possible to determine when Plaas went from being a competitor to the National Socialists to a conspiratorial resistance against the National Socialist regime.

Works

  • Hartmut Plaas (Ed.): We are indicting. Nationalists in the dungeons of the bourgeoisie . (With contributions by Ernst von Salomon, Hartmut Plaas, Martin Bormann, Roderich Zoeller, Gerhard Warneck, Otto Stucken, Heinz Hauenstein, Captain Ehrhardt, HW Stein-Saaleck, Manfred von Killinger, Hans-Gerd Techow, Joseph Goebbels). Vormarsch Verlag, Berlin 1928. Reprinted by Uwe Berg Verlag, Toppenstedt 2004, ISBN 3922119239 .
  • Hartmut Plaas: National Revolutionary Consequences . In: We indict. Nationalists in the dungeons of the bourgeoisie. (so)
  • Hartmut Plaas: The Kapp company. In: Ernst Jünger (Ed.): The fight for the realm. Berlin 1929.

literature

  • Günther W. Gellermann: - and listened to Hitler. Secret Reich business. The eavesdropping centers of the Third Reich. Bernard & Graefe, 1991, ISBN 3-7637-5899-2 .
  • Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. The national revolutionary opposition around Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88680-613-8 .
  • Armin Mohler: The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918–1932. A manual. 4th edition, WB, Darmstadt 1994, ISBN 3-534-12490-1 .
  • Ernst von Salomon: The questionnaire . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1951.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 31 and p. 375, note 32.
  2. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 32.
  3. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 30 f.
  4. ^ Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 40.
  5. ^ A b Cf. Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 52.
  6. ↑ See Bernhard Sauer: Freikorps and anti-Semitism in the early days of the Weimar Republic . In: ZfG , 56/2008, issue 1. (Freikorps und Antisemitismus, p. 23, note 112) (PDF; 138 kB).
  7. ↑ See Ernst von Salomon - Freikorpskäufer, Writer, Prussia. (last accessed on January 29, 2009).
  8. ↑ See early NSDAP structures in Frankfurt. (last accessed on January 29, 2009).
  9. ↑ See Ernst von Salomon - Freikorpskäufer, Writer, Prussia. (last accessed on January 29, 2009).
  10. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 64.
  11. ^ Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 145.
  12. ↑ Armin Mohler: The Conservative Revolution . P. 307.
  13. ↑ In: Richard Schapke: uprising of the peasants . Leipzig 1933, p. 66. Quoted from Armin Mohler: The conservative revolution . S. 164.
    For Barmat see: Barmat scandal , for Sklarek see: Sklarek scandal .
  14. ↑ Cf. Armin Mohler : The Conservative Revolution . P. 297. (Data in brackets = data of the editions, the content of which has survived.)
  15. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 218.
  16. ^ Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 13.
  17. ↑ Quotation from Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 229.
  18. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 229, p. 417, note 53.
  19. ↑ Friedrich Hielscher: Fifty Years Among Germans . Hamburg 1954, p. 254. Quoted from Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 230.
  20. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. Pp. 234-236.
  21. ↑ a b See TIME HISTORY: These rags . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1979, pp. 66 ( online - 30 July 1979 ).
  22. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 323 and P. 327.
  23. ^ A b Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 328
  24. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 329.
  25. ↑ Cf. Gerhard Schulz: National Patriotism in Resistance. A problem of the European crisis and the Second World War - after four decades of resistance. In: VfZ , 1984, 3, p. 337 f. ( PDF; 7.3 MB ).
  26. ↑ See Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. P. 286 f.
personal data
SURNAME Plaas, Hartmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer, resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnsberg
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1944
Place of death Ravensbrück