Hermann Fegelein

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Hermann Fegelein, here as SS-Standartenführer (1942)

Otto Hermann Fegelein (born  October 30, 1906 in Ansbach , † April 29, 1945 in Berlin ) was SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS . He married Eva Braun's sister Gretl . After Eva's wedding to Adolf Hitler on April 29, 1945, Fegelein was Hitler's brother-in-law until his own death a few hours later . Fegelein was considered a ruthless opportunist and careerist and is associated with numerous war crimes . During the Battle of Berlin he was executed for alleged desertion .

Life

Early years

Hermann Fegelein was an enthusiastic rider who also appeared several times as a jockey . After his training he joined the 17th (Bavarian) cavalry regiment in 1925 , which he left in 1928. In the same year he was accepted into the Bavarian State Police in Munich. The officer candidate successfully completed his training, but was regarded by his superiors as someone who did not always find it easy to steer his ambitions in a healthy direction. After it became known that he had broken into a supervisor's room to steal exam questions, Fegelein's police career came to an abrupt end in the summer of 1929.

National Socialist

In the following years Fegelein turned completely to National Socialism . He came into contact with this because his father, First Lieutenant Hans Fegelein, of the Munich SA Standard I , made meeting rooms available several times on his parents' estate. The SA-Standarte I received the honorary name SA-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler after January 30, 1933 . Hermann Fegelein was for a time stable boy of the staunch National Socialist and later inspector of the SS riding schools Christian Weber and was strongly influenced ideologically by him.

In 1931, as an SS applicant , Fegelein applied for admission to the SS . He was finally enrolled as a squadron candidate in the mounted SS department that was emerging in Munich at the time .

On August 1, 1932, he also joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.200.158) and the SA, where he was employed by the Reiter-SA ("Münchner Reitersturm 1") until his final takeover in the Reiter-SS . After the six-month probationary period as an SS candidate , Fegelein was permanently accepted into the SS (SS no. 66,680) and promoted directly to SS-Sturmführer on June 12, 1933 . On April 20, 1934, Fegelein was appointed SS-Obersturmführer .

After coming to power

After the seizure of power in April 1933 ten percent of the riding clubs and breeding institutions in Germany joined the SS. Hermann Fegelein took over in the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (since November 9, 1934) their organization in so-called SS-Reiterstandarten - which were popularly only called Reiter-SS - which were also joined by numerous representatives of the German nobility. Fegelein was appointed commander of the Reiter-SS and his parents' estate near Munich became the SS main riding school on July 25, 1937 . In the same year he won the German Jumping Derby in Hamburg on “Schorsch” . Fegelein was officially appointed "Leader of the SS-Hauptreitschule München" by Heinrich Himmler and found himself in the position of "Staff RFSS". This means that Fegelein was solely subordinate to the Reichsführer and was responsible. Fegelein's deputy as the “leader of the main riding school” was his younger brother Waldemar. In the SS seniority register for 1938, Hermann and Waldemar Fegelein were also listed as leaders of the SS main riding school. Fegelein's political mentor Christian Weber became the inspector of all “SS riding schools” .

When the armed SS units began to establish political readiness , Fegelein volunteered on August 8, 1935, to be the " Guard Tower Upper Bavaria " of SS group leader Theodor Eicke . Fegelein knew Eicke from his time as the commander and "Leader of the SS Brigade South" (1933), to which the newly established Dachau concentration camp was subordinate at the time. Fegelein's later equestrian standard (the SS equestrian standard 15), of which he was the commander, took over the external guarding of the camp. Fegelein completed his training as an SS leader in the staff building of the guard station, which was located on the premises of the Dachau training camp, which was opened in November 1935 and which also housed a training room, and was there on January 30, 1936 after successfully completing a course or exam SS-Sturmbannführer appointed. On January 30, 1937, he received the certificate of appointment as SS-Obersturmbannführer and on July 25th, he was promoted to SS-Standartenführer .

Second World War

With the beginning of the Second World War , Fegelein also rose in 1939. On the invasion of Poland also mounted SS units took under the leadership of the brothers Hermann and Waldemar Fegelein part. During the Battle of Warsaw in September 1939, Hermann Fegelein was shot and rescued under heavy fire by a sniper from the 31st Infantry Division. After the defeat of Poland on November 15, 1939, Hermann Fegelein formed an equestrian standard within the skull and crossbones associations in Warsaw . Their relatives came from the Reiter-SS and were supported by mounted police. This cavalry unit was used primarily to “fight gangs and partisans”, which is a Nazi expression that mostly included war crimes against the civilian population, in particular the killing of Jews.

Hermann Fegelein formally returned to Berlin in 1940 , where he took over a position in the SS headquarters . There he was employed as "inspector of the cavalry and transport". But in the spring of 1940 he officially returned to military service. On May 21, 1940, the SS equestrian standard "Totenkopf" set up in Warsaw was divided into two regiments, as it had now grown to 12 squadrons. The SS-Totenkopf-Reiterstandarte 1 was under the command of Hermann Fegelein, the SS-Totenkopf-Reiterstandarte 2 under the command of his brother Waldemar. But already on November 12th of the same year both standards were reunited and led under the designation SS-Kavallerie-Brigade . This was assigned to the command staff RFSS and immediately subordinated to Heinrich Himmler "for special use". The SS cavalry brigade, commanded by Hermann Fegelein, was involved in so-called "cleansing operations" at the beginning of the Eastern campaign (June 1941) in the formerly eastern Polish areas occupied by the Soviet Union and in the Soviet Union itself, and was characterized by a particularly radical approach. Above all, they combed the Pripyat swamps for Jews whose murder was disguised as a "fight against partisans ". Hermann Fegelein, for example, reported a “success rate” of 13,788 people as “partisans” killed; he listed two dead and 15 wounded as losses of his own. More than 90 percent of those murdered were Jews. By the end of 1941, Fegelein's cavalry brigade had killed around 40,000 Jewish men, women and children.

In March 1942 Fegelein received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . In May he moved to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA); In the middle of the year he volunteered for a permanent transfer to the Waffen SS . Fegelein gave up his active service within the Reiter SS .

Hermann Fegelein was officially taken over by the Waffen SS in October 1942. He mainly set up mounted units there, including the 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer" . On 21/22 December 1942, Fegelein was seriously wounded twice by snipers, in the hospital he received the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and the certificate of appointment as SS-Oberführer . On May 1, 1943, he was appointed SS Brigade Leader.

Ascent into the inner circle around Hitler and Death

On January 1, 1944, Hermann Fegelein was formally transferred to the Fuehrer's headquarters as a liaison officer of the Waffen SS and assigned to the 1st squadron of the OKH / HPA; De facto, however, he was in command of the "Fegelein Combat Group" named after him. After the unsuccessful assassination attempt on July 20 , in which he was only slightly injured, Fegelein received the swords for the oak leaves . In general, however, Fegelein hit Hitler uncomfortably several times - among other things through excessive alcohol. At Hitler's behest, Himmler repeatedly warned him and called for more “loyalty to the Führer”. In the leadership circles of the Waffen-SS he was mockingly called "Flegelein".

On June 3, 1944, he married Margarete “Gretl” Braun (1915–1987), Eva Braun's younger sister, and thus finally secured his permanent place in Hitler's immediate environment. At that time he had the rank of SS-Gruppenführer . The wedding took place at Mirabell Palace in Salzburg - with Hitler, Himmler and Bormann as witnesses. Gretl's sister Eva prepared the wedding. The wedding reception at the Berghof and the celebration in the Kehlsteinhaus on Obersalzberg lasted three days. The marriage gave Hitler a plausible reason to invite Eva to public appearances. In particular, Hitler's secretaries Johanna Wolf and Christa Schroeder claimed after the Second World War that Fegelein and Eva Braun had an affair.

Fegelein was instrumental in the fact that Himmler, in the last weeks of the Second World War, completely misunderstood his position and the politico-military situation, thought of being able to conclude a separate peace with the Western powers . With Himmler's dismissal at the end of April 1945, Fegelein lost his most important advocate. On April 27, drunk, he left the Reich Chancellery, accompanied by two members of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . In the early morning hours of April 29th, he was arrested in his Berlin apartment on charges of desertion . At the time, Fegelein was in civilian clothes, had considerable amounts of foreign currency with him, and was seriously drunk.

According to Ian Kershaw , after he was found drunk on the evening of April 27, 1945, with a large amount of cash in bags and accompanied by a lover in his apartment in Charlottenburg, Fegelein still telephoned Eva Braun from the apartment so that she might use herself for him. In this context, contemporary witnesses repeatedly mention that the bond between Fegelein and Eva Braun extended beyond what is customary between brothers-in-law. During this phone call, Fegelein also tried to get Eva Braun to leave the bunker. Returned to the Reich Chancellery, he was demoted and held in an improvised cell. While Hitler may not have decided what to do with Fegelein, it became known that Himmler had tried, through Walter Schellenberg and Folke Bernadotte , to offer surrender to the Western Allies over Hitler. After Hitler got into a rage about this and described Himmler and the SS as an unfaithful traitor, he then conferred with Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann . Immediately thereafter, Hitler had Fegelein brought to him, insulted him, further suspected him of attempting to hand him over to the Red Army alive , and had him tried before a hastily set up military tribunal. Fegelein was sentenced to death and shot in a fast-track trial, also as a replacement for Himmler, who was advertised for imprisonment but not arrested . According to Rochus Misch , however, Fegelein was merely demoted by Hitler without further orders; the order to shoot had been given by SS leader Peter Högl .

His daughter Eva Barbara Fegelein (1945–1971), named after Eva Braun, was born on May 5th.

Awards

Representation in the film

The fate of Fegelein is thematized in several feature films : In The Last Act (1955, director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst ) he was portrayed by Julius Jonak , in Der Bunker (1981, director: George Schaefer ) by Terrence Hardiman , in Der Untergang (2004, Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel ) by Thomas Kretschmann .

Through his portrayal in the film Der Untergang , Fegelein is shown on the Internet and on video platforms such as YouTube outside of Germany. It is often used in parodies that have English subtitles, but which are fictitious and tell a completely different, unreal story. He is usually portrayed as the Antic Master , a master at performing pranks that infuriate Hitler. Is shown u. a. the scene from The Downfall , in which Hitler angrily hits his desk and calls for Fegelein.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Fegelein  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Cüppers : Trailblazer of the Shoah. The Waffen-SS, the Reichsführer SS command staff and the extermination of the Jews 1939–1945 (= publications by the Ludwigsburg Research Center of the University of Stuttgart. Volume 4). 2nd, unchanged edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-89678-758-3 , p. 28.
  2. ^ Bastian Hein: Elite for people and leaders. P. 67.
  3. ^ Berno Bahro: Sports heroes of the SS - Reinhard Heydrich and Hermann Fegelein. In: Arnd Krüger , Swantje Scharenberg (Hrsg.): Times for heroes - times for celebrities in sport. LIT, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12498-2 , pp. 65-91.
  4. ^ The Nuremberg Trial. zeno.org
  5. ↑ Cf. Martin Cüppers: Wegbereiter der Shoah. 2011, p. 203. The information relates exclusively to killed Jews; it does not include murdered Russian prisoners of war or non-Jewish civilians.
  6. ↑ Michael Miller: Leaders of the SS and German Police. Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing 2006, ISBN 978-93-297-0037-2 , p. 316.
  7. ↑ Heike B. Görtemaker: (2011). Eva Braun: Life with Hitler. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-307-59582-9 , p. 216.
  8. ^ Alan Bullock : Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Konecky & Konecky, New York 1999, ISBN 1-56852-036-0 , p. 395.
  9. ↑ Spiegel online: The devil's bodyguard. The secrets of the last living confidante of Hitler. Retrieved February 14, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Hitler. DVA, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-421-05132-1 , pp. 1049, 1053, with further references.
  11. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 128.
personal data
SURNAME Fegelein, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fegelein, Otto Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer of the Waffen SS
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Ansbach
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1945
Place of death Berlin