Max Lehmann (SA member)

Friedrich Wilhelm Max Lehmann (born September 7, 1892 in Cottbus ) was a German SA leader, most recently with the rank of SA group leader .

Live and act

Lehmann was the son of a distiller. After attending primary school , he completed a commercial apprenticeship. In addition, he attended the commercial school and later a special school for the textile industry .

As a participant in the First World War , Lehmann lost an eye. He also received the Iron Cross 2nd class .

During the Weimar Republic , Lehmann worked as a cloth manufacturer. Between 1918 and 1930, Lehmann, unusually for a man in his later career, did not belong to any political or military organization. In September 1930 he finally joined the NSDAP . In this he initially took on local administrative tasks as a coordinator in the NS factory cell organization .

In October 1930 Lehmann also joined the SA . In this he officiated initially as paymaster with the rank of SA-Sturmbannführer. He then rose continuously, taking on functions as an adjutant and then as a staff leader of a subgroup. In July 1932 he was finally promoted to SA standard leader and entrusted with the command of an SA standard.

In 1933 Lehmann took over the leadership of an SA brigade, which he maintained until 1937. From 1933 to 1937 he was also a member of the Cottbus city ​​council . In 1937 he became a full-time SA leader in the Supreme SA leadership , where he was in charge of the organization and deployment department. In this position he was promoted to SA brigade leader on April 10, 1938 and to SA group leader on January 30, 1940. Campbell sees Lehmann's services within the SA primarily in the administrative area.

On the occasion of the Reichstag election of April 1938 , Lehmann ran unsuccessfully on the "List of the Führer for the Greater German Reichstag" as a member of the National Socialist Reichstag .

In 1944 Lehmann was put on the list of inactive SA leaders, presumably because he was returning to his business activities at that time.

Bruce Campbell evaluates Lehmann in his study of the leadership corps of the SA as an example of a type of leading SA functionaries whom he describes as "passive activists". By this he understands people who should eventually rise to the highest SA rank, but who had not been active in any political or paramilitary organizations until they joined the NSDAP and the SA, which was a biographical development that was then from a collective biographical point of view was rather unusual: Campbell comes to the conclusion that only 11% of the later highest SA leaders who joined the SA between 1927 and 1930 can be assigned to this type.

literature

• Bruce Campbell: The SA Generals and The Rise of Nazism , Lexington 2004, pp. 64f.