Hermann Reinecke

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Hermann Reinecke (left) as an assessor at the trial against the Kreisau District in the People's Court, 1944

Hermann Reinecke (born February 14, 1888 in Wittenberg , † October 10, 1973 in Hamburg ) was a German officer , most recently General of the Infantry of the Wehrmacht . From 1942 he was head of the General Wehrmacht Office in the OKW , from 1943 at the same time head of the Nazi leadership staff of the OKW. From 1939 to 1945 he was responsible for the prisoner-of-war system under Wilhelm Keitel . In the High Command of the Wehrmacht trial in 1948, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity, along with Walter Warlimont, as the only accused . In 1954 he was pardoned. He is the father of the musicologist Hans-Peter Reinecke .

Military career

Reinecke, son of a lieutenant colonel , joined the Prussian army in 1905 after being educated at the Prussian main cadet institute . In the infantry regiment “von Voigts-Rhetz” (3rd Hannoversches) No. 79 he was promoted to lieutenant on August 18, 1906 . At the beginning of the First World War he was first lieutenant and regimental adjutant . After being wounded in 1915, he was temporarily employed in the Prussian War Ministry and promoted to captain in March 1916 . As such, he also led a battalion and was awarded the Iron Cross II and I Classes as well as the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords. In the war ministry he saw the end of the war.

Accepted into the Reichswehr , he served, among other things, in the Army Administration Office (VA) of the Reichswehr Ministry (RWM) and as chief of the 3rd Company in the 2nd (Prussian) Infantry Regiment . At the age of 41 he was promoted to major on February 1, 1929 .

The " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, combined with their plans to arm the Wehrmacht , led to a significant acceleration in Reinecke's career , as with almost the entire officer corps . Promoted to lieutenant colonel in June 1933 , at the beginning of 1934 he became head of the "Department for Army Technical Schools and Utilities", one of the two departments of the Armed Forces Office in the Reichswehr Ministry .

In 1935 he moved to the Wehrmacht Office headed by Walter von Reichenau and was promoted to colonel in June of that year . From 1937 he was responsible for the organization of the so-called “national political courses”, which were supposed to indoctrinate Wehrmacht officers with the Nazi ideology (see below).

After Blomberg-Fritsch crisis beginning in 1938 and the formation of the High Command of the Armed Forces took over from the Wehrmacht office in June 1938 as successor to Wilhelm Canaris , the existing herein "Amtsgruppe General Wehrmacht Affairs" from the in October 1939, the "General Wehrmacht Office" (OKW / AWA), whose boss he remained until the end of the war.

Since the beginning of the war, Reinecke's area of ​​responsibility also included the Wehrmacht's prisoner-of-war system, for which a separate department was established. This was characterized by high death rates, especially among Soviet prisoners of war from 1941 onwards. In the later trial against Reinecke, his involvement in these crimes played a special role.

On January 1, 1944, Hermann Reinecke was appointed head of the Nazi leadership of the Wehrmacht and in this role he implemented ideological party interests within the Wehrmacht.

Service to National Socialism

“As early as July 1934, Hermann Reinecke was considered a reliable National Socialist,” writes the historian Christian Streit. Following a proposal by Reichswehr Minister Blomberg , Reinecke became an honorary judge at the newly created “ People's Court ” in this early phase of the Third Reich . The quoted thesis is based on the fact that several proposed persons (e.g. the Geschwaderkommodore Felmy and Stumpff proposed by Göring ) were rejected for this post by the deputy of the Fuehrer, Rudolf Hess , because they were previously "not known as National Socialists" be. Apparently, Reinecke did not have such concerns.

From 1937 on, Reinecke organized the “National Political Courses”, the task of which was to bring high NSDAP functionaries together with Wehrmacht officers in order to orient the latter towards National Socialism. In a lecture published by Reinecke in 1938, it is said that the officers of the Wehrmacht by oathing the pledge , which had to be taken on the person of Hitler and not for national defense, “not only to the person [Hitler], but also to [.. .] the National Socialist Weltanschauung “are bound. In this context, Reinecke demanded an "unconditional inner 'yes' to all [!] Demands and teachings of National Socialism ".

This call to ideologize the Wehrmacht was combined with a demand on society as a whole: Education must aim at “the goals of the Führer, folk culture - living space”, by producing not only “trained fighters” but also “political believers”. This left no doubt as to their own political orientation towards National Socialism. Hermann Reinecke's relatively late entry into the NSDAP was a formality. On January 30, 1943 , he received two awards: honorary membership and the golden party badge of the NSDAP , before becoming a full member of the NSDAP on October 25, 1943.

A strong involvement of Reinecke in the National Socialist ideology became evident on March 26, 1941, when he was an honorary participant in the founding of Rosenberg's " Institute for Research on the Jewish Question " (the so-called " High School of the NSDAP ") in Frankfurt am Main .

As the superior of the head of the prisoner-of-war department, in March 1941 he summoned the commanders of the prisoners-of-war in the military districts in Berlin to brief them on the imminent Russian campaign. In mid-1941, Reinecke issued an order to set up new camps in the Reich, in which Soviet prisoners of war should be "treated severely" and, if not otherwise possible, housed in the open air, without observing the Hague Land Warfare Regulations . Refugees should be shot against the regulations. When the AWA chiefs met in Warsaw on September 4, 1941, the principles for the poor treatment and care of Soviet prisoners of war were proclaimed there.

In an order from Reinecke dated September 8, 1941, it was stated that the Soviet prisoners had "lost all entitlement to treatment as an honorable soldier [...]". A report from the Einsatzgruppen stated that this would facilitate the “solution of the Jewish question”. Hermann Reinecke passed all relevant orders on to the party office , which they distributed to the district leader level. In this way the party was able to strictly monitor the execution and those carrying out the work within the Wehrmacht.

On November 22, 1941, the order of September 8 was expanded:

"[...] Soviet prisoners who have been captured again are to be handed over to the nearest Gestapo office for liquidation ! [...] The use of weapons against Soviet prisoners of war is generally considered lawful. "

On July 17, 1941, Heydrich issued deployment order No. 8 in agreement with Hermann Reinecke, the head of the General Wehrmacht Office, and the head of the Wehrmacht prisoner-of-war camps, Colonel Breyer, to implement the commissar's order . This was followed on July 27 by an order No. 9, which included the Reich territory. In every prisoner of war camp and transit camp, the "politically, criminal or other intolerable elements" should be filtered out by a command of SS and SD employees. The aim was to find functionaries of the Comintern , leading party officials, people's commissars , all former political commissars of the Red Army , intelligentsia , Jews and fanatical communists as well as “terminally ill” people. These were to be temporarily housed in a separate block and later transported away for execution.

In October 1943, Reinecke took part in the first meeting with 180 generals in the Ordensburg Sonthofen with other leading National Socialists. He was Hitler assumed on 22 December 1943 as head of the National Socialist Operations Staff in OKW directly. The task of this Nazi leadership staff was to influence the ideological orientation of the Wehrmacht leadership in the National Socialist sense. On January 7, 1944, Reinecke presented his concept to Hitler for the National Socialist Commanding Officer (NSFO): The war could be won with 51% certainty through the ideological attitude and orientation of all officers. Since a possible defeat was looming, the ideological consolidation of the Wehrmacht was an urgent goal of the NSDAP. Thereupon he organized continuously and - as Keitel attested on March 31, 1944 - "enthusiastically" NSFO courses and general conferences, at which Hitler, like the leading National Socialists Himmler , Goebbels , Bormann and others spoke. On March 8, 1944, the first course was opened in the NS-Ordensburg Krössinsee . The task of the NSFO is to "make the soldier into a fanatical bearer of faith". On September 2, 1944, Wilhelm Burgdorf , the head of the Army Personnel Office , protested because Reinecke's system was becoming more and more similar to that of the political officers of the Soviets.

Reinecke contributed to a more radicalized form of ideological indoctrination of the Wehrmacht by the NSDAP, which was exacerbated by the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 : Hermann Reinecke received the order from Hitler via Goebbels to command the troops around 9:15 p.m. of the city commandant and the guard battalion in Berlin and to take action against the "conspirators" located in Bendlerstrasse . General Paul von Hase was informed accordingly by Reinecke and sent to Goebbels' office after 9:30 p.m., where he was initially detained and then arrested the following morning.

At Roland Freisler's side, Reinecke was involved in the trials against the most important “conspirators” ( Wilhelm Leuschner , Friedrich Goerdeler , Ulrich von Hassell , Johannes Popitz , Generals Erwin von Witzleben , Erich Hoepner , Paul von Hase and Hellmuth Stieff ) in a total of 112 proceedings , in which 185 defendants received 50 death sentences . On October 25, 1944, Freisler reported to Reich Justice Minister Otto Georg Thierack that Reinecke's further participation in the People's Court was “completely impossible”, especially against his former superior, Colonel General Friedrich Fromm . In the summer of 1945, Reinecke was interned with other high Wehrmacht officers and NSDAP functionaries in POW camp No. 32 ( Camp Ashcan ) in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg .

Indictment and conviction

  • In particular because of war crimes and crimes against humanity , the focus here was on the commissioner order of 1941 with the resulting murder of the political commissioners of the Red Army
  • Responsibility for the violation of international law through the mistreatment and murder, in particular of Soviet soldiers, of whom around 3 million perished in German captivity, especially since he had taken over most of the decisions in the prisoner-of-war system.

Before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal , Reinecke was sentenced to life imprisonment on October 27, 1948 in the trial against the OKW leadership (case 12) from December 30, 1947 to October 28, 1948, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Reinecke belonged to the group of convicted war criminals whose pardon the American High Commissioner John J. McCloy decided in early 1951 against the backdrop of the Cold War and the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the West . McCloy's legal advisor Robert Bowie stated to Reinecke that he was "directly involved in the operations that included the murder of entire commandos, commissioners and captured Allied pilots as well as the brutal mistreatment of prisoners of war." Bowie referred to the rank of Reinecke as general of the infantry and rejected the pardon Reinecke previously recommended by a committee. McCloy followed Bowie's recommendation and maintained life imprisonment in the Reineckes case. In October 1954, Reinecke was the last of the defendants in the OKW trial to be released from the Landsberg war crimes prison .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This and the following data from: Christian Streit: General der Infanterie Hermann Reinecke. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. Volume 1. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-083-2 . P. 203.
  2. ↑ Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1924, p. 148.
  3. ↑ Files of the party chancellery, Microfiches 101 27255-272.
  4. ^ Christian Streit: General of the Infantry Hermann Reinecke. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the regime to the beginning of the war. Volume 1, Darmstadt 1998, p. 203.
  5. ^ Klaus D. Patzwall : The golden party badge and its honorary awards 1934-1944, studies of the history of awards. Volume 4. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 31.
  6. ^ Christian Streit: General of the Infantry Hermann Reinecke. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the regime to the beginning of the war. Volume 1, Darmstadt 1998, p. 204.
  7. ^ Raul Hilberg : The Destruction of European Jews , Fischer Taschenbuch 1982, Volume 2, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 351 ff.
  8. ↑ See the ideological appropriation of the Teutonic Order and its symbolism by the National Socialists.
  9. ↑ Jürgen Förster: The Wehrmacht in the Nazi state. A structural-historical analysis. Munich 2007, p. 179.
  10. ^ Christian Streit: General of the Infantry Hermann Reinecke. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the regime to the beginning of the war. Volume 1, Darmstadt 1998, p. 207.
  11. ↑ Thomas Alan Schwarz: The pardon of German war criminals. John J. McCloy and the Landsberg inmates. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . 38 (1990), p. 375 ff. (PDF; 164.12 kB), quotation p. 396.
  12. ^ Table in Schwarz: The pardon for German war criminals . 1990, p. 414.
personal data
SURNAME Reinecke, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently general of the infantry and convicted war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittenberg
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1973
Place of death Hamburg