Max Bauer (officer)

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Lieutenant Colonel Max Bauer

Max Hermann Bauer (born January 31, 1869 in Quedlinburg ; † May 6, 1929 in Shanghai ) was a German officer , most recently (1918) a colonel . He played an important role in the German general staff during the First World War and was considered to be almost indispensable as an artillery specialist. From 1916 he also gained political influence as an advisor to Erich Ludendorff . In the Weimar Republic , which he militantly fought as a supporter of a counter-revolutionary " white terror ", he was involved in the Kapp Putsch and later worked as an arms dealer and military advisor in Spain , Argentina , the Soviet Union and China . His crude political views, revealed in journalistic writings and political activities, especially at the beginning of the 1920s, reveal parallels to the worldview of National Socialism .

Life

Bauer received his High School on March 14, 1888, began Jura study. Economic loss of his father, the city council Friedrich Carl Bauer, forced him on 12 October 1888 as an officer cadet in the foot artillery regiment "of Hindersin" (1 Pommersches) no. 2 in Swinoujscie enter. From April to December 1889 he attended the war school in Hanover as an ensign . In January 1890 he was appointed second lieutenant and in January 1895 prime lieutenant . Between January 1, 1893 and December 31, 1898, Bauer was with foot artillery regiments in Danzig-Neufahrwasser, Swinoujscie and Metz . Between January 1899 and September 1902 he was with the Artillery Examination Commission (APK).

The Artillery Examination Commission was established in 1809. It was a weekly meeting of the specialist body of the Prussian Army and Imperial Navy and consisted of a presidium and a field and foot artillery department. Their shooting range was the Kummersdorf estate .

From September 1902 to October 1907, Bauer commanded a battery in the Westphalian Foot Artillery Regiment No. 7 in Cologne . In October 1907 he was assigned to the General Staff as an expert on artillery. (Adolf Vogt reports that Bauer was with the VII. Department, one of his witnesses was Waldemar Pabst .) Bauer dealt with the fortresses in the east, especially in Tsarist Russia. He analyzed the trench warfare in Manchuria in the Russo-Japanese War and made a study of Port Arthur , the fortification of which was carried out in the late 1880s in part by the Krupp company on behalf of the Chinese government (see Sino-German cooperation 1911 -1941 ).

Tsar Nicholas II had the western border between Russian Poland and Germany fortified on the Narew . Bauer set up quarters in Warsaw as a timber merchant and examined the timber from the Russian fortifications in Vilnius , Kowno , Grodno and Łomża . In the early summer of 1907, as a newspaper reporter, he found out about the tsarist artillery . Later in 1907 he visited Belgian fortifications for the magazine Die Woche : Fortress ring Liège , Namur and Antwerp .

Outside the official channels , Bauer discussed the possibilities of gun construction with Krupp . In 1886 Krupp had manufactured a coastal cannon with a short barrel and a caliber of 24 cm. Bauer initiated the demand for the highest field gun caliber to be increased over 30 cm. He justified this by stating that the defense of Port Arthur had collapsed after a Japanese 28 cm shell had killed the commander in the bunker.

First World War

From 1914 to 1918 Bauer was a member of the Operations Department of the Supreme Army Command (OHL) and head of Section II for heavy artillery, mine throwers, fortresses and ammunition of the Supreme Army Command.

Max Bauer was involved in the development of the " Dicken Bertha " at Krupp . However, this was unsuitable for destroying modern fortifications. In the First World War , which were in accordance with Schlieffen Plan , the modern fortresses from Verdun to Toul circumvented and violated the neutrality of Belgium. In 1914, Bauer directed the destruction of the Liège fortification ring with Skoda 305 mm mortars borrowed from the Austro-Hungarian artillery . In July 1915 he was appointed to the Supreme Army Command. In the general staff he intrigued against Erich von Falkenhayn with the support of Erich Ludendorff . Falkenhayn was dismissed as Minister of War on January 20, 1915 and was replaced by Paul von Hindenburg on August 29, 1916 . Bauer was responsible for new developments such as the flamethrower .

From September 1914, Bauer's Section II pursued the possibility of compensating for an "explosive gap" that was feared in the event of a prolonged war by using precursors as chemical weapons that were already produced in the production of explosives. In the second half of September 1914, Bauer suggested to the Prussian War Minister and Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn , that chemical weapons be tested in trench warfare. Bauer was thinking of projectiles that were supposed to “damage the enemy or render them incapable of fighting by trapped solid, liquid or gaseous substances”. That was the beginning of the use of chemical warfare agents on the German side .

Max Bauer was the liaison between Gustav Stresemann and Erich Ludendorff. The Ludendorff intimate was also a liaison between the Supreme Army Command and the Pan-German Association . On December 19, 1916, he was awarded the order Pour le Mérite , and on March 28, 1918, he received the oak leaves.

National Association

In August 1919, Bauer organized the National Association for the Coordination of Actions against the Weimar Republic . The managing director was Waldemar Pabst , who had to leave the Reichswehr in December after an attempted coup in June 1919 . Through the National Association , free corpse soldiers from the Baltic States were placed in East Elbe farms as farm workers, which meant that the military structures were retained or reorganized.

Kapp putsch

On March 12, 1920, the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade mutinied when they were to be dissolved according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty and war criminals from the German Reich were to be extradited. The Iron Brigade was under the command of Walther von Lüttwitz . A group around Bauer, Lüttwitz, Waldemar Pabst , Erich Ludendorff and Hermann Ehrhardt wanted to overthrow Friedrich Ebert and the Reich Chancellor Gustav Bauer . Before the Reich government fled Berlin, the press chief of the Reich Chancellery, Ministerialdirigent Ulrich Rauscher , had an appeal printed in which the masses of workers were called to a general strike . Wolfgang Kapp could not withdraw money from the Reichsbank because Undersecretary of State in the Reich Ministry of Finance Franz Schroeder refused to sign the check.

In the “Kapp government”, Bauer was head of the Reich Chancellery. After the failure of the coup, the police wanted him and fled to Munich , where he found protection with Ernst Pöhner , Georg Escherich and his organization Escherich (Orgesch). In August 1920 he went to Vienna , where he tried unsuccessfully to unite the Heimwehr . He also represented Ludendorff's interests in Vienna and Hungary and took part in coup attempts against the government of Karl Renner . After the dissolution of the Bavarian Resident Guard , they were replaced by the clandestine organization Pittinger Otto Pittingers (1878-1926). The Pittinger organization ousted the Kanzler (Orka) organization in Austria, to which Bauer had contacts.

Bauer received an amnesty in 1925 for his significant involvement in the Kapp Putsch .

Military adviser

Bauer wrote a gas war tactic in 1922, which Bruno Miller leaked to the Soviet government. As a result, Bauer published three essays in Voina i mir Viestnik voennoi nauki i tekhniki . In the summer of 1923, through Miller, he received an invitation from Leon Trotsky to Moscow to get a personal impression of the Soviet Union and to hold discussions on economic and industrial matters.

At the end of November 1923, because the police wanted him in the German Reich, Poland and Czechoslovakia , Bauer traveled to Moscow via Venice, Istanbul, Odessa and Kiev.

He stayed until February 1924 and published his book The Land of the Red Tsars in 1925 . From a conversation with Trotsky in June 1924 , the German ambassador Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau learned of close negotiations about the construction of a chemical factory with the help of German companies, which meant an order for the Stoltzenberg Chemical Factory (CFS) and that the Soviets were still in the process would work with Bauer. In addition to CFS, Bauer also acted as a representative of the aircraft factory Junkers Dessau for a fixed salary of 900 Reichsmarks per month . Another representative of Junkers, Wilhelm Schubert , described Bauer's trip to the Soviet Union in a letter of August 16, 1965 to Adolf Vogt as a propaganda trip initiated by Trotsky and paid for by German industry.

Tanks, heavy artillery, airborne companies and the gas war in the Soviet Union were tested as part of the German-Soviet military cooperation. As a dummy operation of the Reichswehr, Friedrich Tschunke founded the Society for the Promotion of Commercial Enterprises (GEFU), through which the Reichswehr channeled its economic and legal external relations for the concession agreements with the Soviet Union.

In the spring of 1924, at the intercession of Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen , Bauer received an invitation to Madrid. From the beginning of July 1924, he ran an acquisition from a Madrid hotel with Luise Engler and Oberbaurat Pliegl from Vienna. For Experiencias Industriales SA he provided construction plans that he had designed himself. He arranged contacts for Walther Nernst from the Reich Association of German Industry and for Manfred von Killinger , who came to Madrid as a representative for Junkers. Junkers, Dornier, Rohrbach Metallflugzeugbau and Heinkel founded the Unión Aérea Española (UAE) in early 1927 .

In Madrid, the Fabrica Nacional de Productos Químicos de Alfonso XIII chemical weapons laboratory was set up from 1921 , where Bauer continued to develop gas and smoke ammunition for a year under Hugo Stoltzenberg for the German-Spanish chemical weapons development . Like Stoltzenberg in 1923, Bauer also received an audience from Alfonso XIII. whose summer residence Aranjuez is near the chemistry laboratory. Alfonso was a driving force behind the Spanish poison gas project. In a photograph of the audience, the Lost specialist Dr. Anton Cmentek, Apelt, Bauer and Alfonso identified. Bauer explained to his son Ernst (Hanover) that at this audience pest control with ultra poisons had been demonstrated.

Allegedly there was a plague of locusts in Spain in the spring of 1925. The Argentine military attaché in Madrid had been informed about the use of the ultra poisons against them, and he had arranged for Bauer to work for six months as an inspector at the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture to control locusts, ants and cotton beetles. The illustration was intended for the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission (IMKK), which monitored compliance with the Versailles Treaty from February 22, 1920, and not for the producers and consumers of sprayed food. Bauer was again on the road as a representative for CFS in Argentina. In the Argentine-German military cooperation, recruiting military advisers was the task of the Argentine military attaché. In the spring of 1926, Bauer returned to his family in Potsdam .

Since 1925 he enjoyed amnesty for his participation in the Kapp Putsch. In 1926, the Ministry of Transport and the Reichswehr pressed the Junkers factories to stop working with Bauer. Bauer continued to work for Junkers in the Swedish subsidiary Limhamn . In addition, he made acquisitions for Oerlikon-Bührle and the Dutch industrial and trading company HAIHA in The Hague.

Bauer helped develop the Becker cannon and acquired key orders in China through the Chief of Staff, Colonel Divisionaire Emil Sonderegger, who resigned in 1923 and worked for SIG from 1924 to 1934 .

Bauer was offered a position as military advisor to the Chekiang and Kiangsi provincial government by a Chinese study commission in Europe in 1923 . In a preliminary contract, through the mediation of Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln , Bauer promised to become military advisor to a warlord, Super- Tuchun ( 督軍 , Dū jūn , military governor of a province) in the spring of 1924 . This Super-Tuchun was overthrown in the spring of 1923.

In the early summer of 1927, German industrial circles probably mediated Bauer to Prof. Matschoss in Berlin. He had been asked by Chu Chia-hua, the only Kuomintang leader trained in Germany in Guangzhou (Canton), for his advice on German experts for China. General Ludendorff was probably not actively involved in this mediation. Bauer then immediately invited the commission in Germany to take part in acquisition talks at German armaments companies. After a five-week voyage by ship, Bauer arrived in Guangzhou on November 15, 1927. He became a consultant to Chiang Kai-shek as part of the Sino-German cooperation . He received 1,400 Shanghai dollars a month as payment, which was about 4,000 Reichsmarks.

Bauer died in British military hospital in Shanghai to typhus .

Fonts

  • March 13, 1920. Riehn. Munich 1920.
  • The great war in the field and at home. Memories and reflections. Osiander bookstore. Tübingen 1921.
  • The land of the red tsars. Impressions and experiences. Dragon Publishing House. Hamburg 1925.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruno Thoss : Art. White Terror, 1919 . In: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns , online publication, version from September 11, 2012, accessed on November 4, 2016.
  2. ↑ Holger Afflerbach : Art. Bauer, Max. In: Gerd Krumeich , Gerhard Hirschfeld , Irina Renz a. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia First World War. 2nd Edition. (UTB study edition), Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, p. 373 f.
  3. ^ A b Adolf Vogt: Colonel Max Bauer, General Staff Officer in Twilight, 1869–1929 . Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1974
  4. ^ Hew Strachan: The First World War . Oxford University Press, 2001
  5. ↑ Ronald Pawly, Patrice Courcelle: The Emperor's warlords: German Commanders of World War I . Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2003
  6. ^ Karl Heinz Roth : The history of IG Farbenindustrie AG from its foundation to the end of the Weimar Republic . (PDF; 333 kB) In: Norbert Wollheim Memorial at the JW Goethe University, 2009.
  7. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze : Fritz Haber, 1868–1934: A biography . Verlag CH Beck, 1998, ISBN 3-406-43548-3 .
  8. ^ Max Weber, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Wolfgang Schwentker : On the new order of Germany . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1984
  9. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt : Ideology and obedience to orders in the war of extermination. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG) 49 (2001), pp. 905–926, here p. 912.
  10. ↑ Heinz Reif: Nobility and bourgeoisie in Germany . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001
  11. ↑ Max Hirschberg, Reinhard Weber: Jew and Democrat: Memories of a Munich lawyer 1883 to 1939 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1998
  12. ^ Christoph Huebner: Organization Chancellor (Orka), 1920/21 . Historical Lexicon of Bavaria, February 28, 2011
  13. ↑ David Clay Large: The politics of law and order: a history of the Bavarian Bürgerwehr, 1918-1921, Volume 70 . American Philosophical Society, 1980
  14. ↑ Bruno Miller: born in 1881 in the German colony Warenburg, meadow side of the Volga, Saratow governorate, died 1964 in Reinfeld bei Oldesloe, former state councilor, landowner, son of grain traders, came to Germany around the beginning of 1919 through the Ukraine with the retreat of the German army . Biography of the Saratov Miller family: “The Germans of Russia, Encyclopaedia”, Volume 2 (K – O), pages 516–517, ERD, Moscow 2004, ISBN 5-93227-002-0
  15. ^ Adolf Vogt: 1974, p. 392.
  16. ↑ Adolf Vogt: 1974, p. 395 f.
  17. ↑ Rudibert Kunz / Rolf-Dieter Müller: Poison gas against Abd el Krim : Germany, Spain and the gas war in Spanish-Morocco, 1922–1927 . Rombach, 1990, p. 92
  18. ↑ Independent Expert Commission Switzerland – Second World War: Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War, final report . (PDF; 1.8 MB) Pendo Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-85842-601-6
  19. ↑ Bernd Martin: The German consultancy prehistory - development - structure - fields of activity , p. 26. In: Bernd Martin (Hrsg.): The German consultancy in China 1927–1938 . Droste, 1981
  20. ^ Siegfried Kogelfranz: The barbarians - insignificant and disgusting . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1989 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Bauer, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bauer, Max Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and arms dealer
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Quedlinburg
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1929
Place of death Shanghai