Oskar-Hubert Dennhardt

Oskar-Hubert Dennhardt (born June 30, 1915 in Markranstädt ; † June 19, 2014 ) was a major in the Wehrmacht , a member of the CDU in the Kiel state parliament and a brigadier general in the Bundeswehr .

Life

On May 28, 1934 Dennhardt joined the Reichswehr and later the Wehrmacht as a professional soldier . During the Second World War he was wounded several times and spent a total of about a year and nine months in the hospital during several stays, where he also saw the end of the war. On February 12, 1943, he received the German Cross in Gold and on March 17, 1944, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . There is no evidence of an award of the oak leaves to the Knight's Cross, which is often claimed in the literature, or any reasons for the award. The award number “870. EL "and the alleged award date May 9, 1945 were awarded by the" Ordensgemeinschaft der Ritterkreuzträger "(OdR), of which Dennhardt was a member.

After the surrender, Dennhardt served briefly in the staff of the XXVII. Army corps in Flensburg. At the time of his discharge from the Wehrmacht on January 12, 1946 by the commander of the British 8th Infantry Division, Dennhardt held the rank of major. He was involved in various soldiers' associations and in the CDU. In 1948 he was a founding member of the Stormarn CDU district association and, for a short time, its district manager. From 1950 to 1954 he was a member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament and between 1951 and 1955 managing director of the regional association of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein . Together with Lieutenant General a. D. Rudolf Melzer and Colonel General ret. D. Hans-Jürgen Stumpff , he formed the management of the Association of Wehrmacht Members of the Federal Armed Forces (BvW), which was closely linked with the state CDU and which later became part of the Association of German Soldiers (VdS).

Dennhardt participated in the Labor Committee, the Constitutional Committee and the Rules of Procedure, the Youth Affairs Committee, the Health Care Committee and the Transport Committee and was a member of the 2nd Federal Assembly , which re-elected Theodor Heuss as Federal President on July 17, 1954 .

In September 1950, the former NSDAP member Dennhardt was appointed by the Bartram cabinet to the office of "Special Commissioner for Denazification " of the state of Schleswig-Holstein , from which he resigned in 1952 in connection with the affair surrounding Hinrich Lohse's pension . Under his aegis, Franz Schlegelberger , who was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg legal process in 1947 , but was released as incapable of imprisonment in January 1951, was classified in Category V (exonerated), as was Hinrich Lohse and Wilhelm Hamkens . Dennhardt tried to help Reinhard Heydrich's widow , Lina Heydrich , get a villa in Burg Tief on Fehmarn, which belonged to her husband's inheritance and was therefore subject to the freezing of assets.

As early as November 24, 1950, the coalition of the CDU, FDP and DP , which had come together for the election of the “German electoral bloc”, and the BHE suspended denazification. On March 17, 1951, they passed a law to end denazification , which was unique in the Federal Republic of Germany , by which all persons previously assigned to categories III (burdened) and IV (fellow travelers) were equated with those in category V (exonerated). Since none of the total of 406,317 people checked were assigned to categories I (main culprits) and II (culprits), Schleswig-Holstein was de jure denazified. This regulation gave almost everyone who had been removed from the public service due to their previous classification the right to reinstatement and the elimination of all salary and pension cuts. In addition, Section 15 of the Act stipulated that neither authorities nor private individuals should be allowed to inspect the denazification procedural files or provide information therefrom and that permitted files were to be kept in custody or even destroyed according to the instructions of the Minister of the Interior, which permanently impeded research and criminal prosecution .

The “Special Representative for Denazification”, Dennhardt, welcomed this bill, which critics called “renazification”, because it “ finally ended the saddest chapter in post-war history ”. It is “necessary to remove everything that has been washed up in the course of denazification”. It is regrettable that “repayment of the costs to the individual convicts or reparation for the disadvantages of denazification is of course not financially possible, although We are of the opinion that this conclusion is not an act of grace, but the repeal of a measure that was imposed on us by the occupying powers and which, if we as Germans had had to deal with it, regulated completely differently would have been. "

After leaving the state parliament, Dennhardt initially worked as a consultant for defense issues in the Kiel State Chancellery . On December 15, 1955, Dennhardt was accepted into the newly established Bundeswehr while being promoted to lieutenant colonel , where he was used as a liaison officer and in various staffs. In this role, his links to politics and veterans' associations have proven to be extremely valuable to all concerned. In 1961 he was promoted to colonel . In the autumn of 1963 Dennhardt was promoted to military attaché at the German embassy in Ankara . From November 1965 to March 1968 he was in command of the 16 Panzer Grenadier Brigade ; in April 1968 he was promoted to brigadier general and deputy commander of the 6th Panzer Grenadier Division .

On May 10, 1971 Dennhardt was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class . He retired on June 30, 1971. From July 2, 1971, he worked for Daimler-Benz AG , where he worked in foreign sales for military vehicles until 1981 and then as a freelancer until 1988 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 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 , pp. 101, 247.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Cf. Dermot Bradley (ed.): The military career paths of the generals and admirals of the Bundeswehr 1955–1997 , volume 1. ISBN 3-7648-2492-1 , p. 372ff.
3. ^ Reinhard Schreiner: Names and dates from six decades of party work. The chairmen and managing directors of the CDU state, district and district associations since 1945 (PDF file; 1007 kB), Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , Sankt Augustin 2011
4. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein Verlag, 2004, ISBN 978-3-89244-658-3 ; P. 94 footnote 19 and p. 438f. Footnote 122
5. ↑ ^{a b} Oskar-Hubert Dennhardt in the state parliament information system Schleswig-Holstein
6. ↑ Uwe Danker : We subsidize the murderers of democracy. The tug-of-war over the retirement pension of Gauleiter and Oberpräsident Hinrich Lohse in the years 1951 to 1958 . In: Journal of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History , 120 (1995), 173–199.
7. ^ The brown Schleswig-Holstein . Die Zeit , January 26, 1990
8. ↑ See also Eckardt Opitz , Lauenburg Academy for Science and Culture (ed.): Selected aspects of post-war history in the Duchy of Lauenburg district and in the neighboring territories . Winkler, 2004, ISBN 978-3-89911-022-7 , pp. 18f.
9. ↑ Note. The term "renazification" was coined by the then interior and culture minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Paul Pagel , the only member of the Bartram government without a Nazi past. In March 1951 he wrote in his diary: “Until almost two o'clock, people talked about the denazification law. [...] The arguments of the opposition seem to me to be far more valid than those of the ruling parties. One can rightly speak of renazification gradually. It is strange how naturally the old Nazis appear and how cowardly they are basically if you meet them hard ”. Pagel diary, quoted from Heinz Josef Varain: political parties and associations. A study of their structure, their interdependence and their work in Schleswig-Holstein 1945–1958 . Westdeutscher Verlag, 1964; P. 223, fn. 902
10. ^ Quotation from Dennhardt: Verbatim Minutes 4th Landtag, 7th session (29–31 January 1951), p. 272. Quoted from Ulf B. Christen: The denazification in the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag 1946 to 1951 ; P. 206f. (pdf; 4.58 MB)
11. ↑ See also: Eliminate everything . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1969, p. 58-60 ( Online - May 19, 1969 ).
12. ↑ Figures on denazification from Eckhard Huebner: Schleswig-Holstein's path to the Federal Republic. From world war chaos to democratic awakening ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) ; P. 41
13. ↑ Still inside . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1970, pp. 32 f . ( online - July 13, 1970 ).