Otto Dietrich

Otto Dietrich during the Nuremberg Trials

Jacob Otto Dietrich (born August 31, 1897 in Essen , † November 22, 1952 in Düsseldorf ) was a German National Socialist, Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP, SS-Obergruppenführer and State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP).

Life

Otto Dietrich, son of a merchant, visited to 1914, the grammar school in Essen and made 1917 the Belgian Ghent the war High School . As a war volunteer he took part in the First World War and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class.

He studied in Munich , Frankfurt and Freiburg political science and philosophy and a doctorate in 1921 for Dr. rer. pole. From 1922 he was a research assistant at the Essen Chamber of Commerce and from 1926 editor at the Essener Allgemeine Zeitung . Dietrich, son-in-law of Theodor Reismann-Grone , moved to Munich from the Essener Allgemeine Zeitung in 1928 . He headed the commercial section of the Munich-Augsburger Abendzeitung and was Munich correspondent for the Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten (LNN). In April 1929 Dietrich joined the NSDAP ( membership number 126.727). In the same year he returned to Essen and became editor of the newly founded NSDAP newspaper Nationalzeitung . On August 1, 1931, Dietrich became Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP and founded the NS press conference. In 1932 he took the position of Reich Leader in the leadership corps of the NSDAP. In the same year he joined the SS (SS No. 101,349).

On April 30, 1933, Dietrich was unanimously elected chairman of the Reich Association of the German Press (RDP). Since the beginning of 1934 he was also Vice President of the Reich Press Chamber , to which the Reich Association of the German Press belonged. From 1937 to 1945 he held the position of State Secretary in the RMVP. In this function, he and Walter Funk supervised Department IV (press). Before Hitler came to power, Dietrich was appointed Reich Press Chief of the NSDAP and subsequently - from January 27, 1934 in the rank of SS Group Leader - and therefore also held the official title of Press Chief of the Reich Government . From 1936 Dietrich was a member of the Reichstag for constituency 29 (Leipzig).

Otto Dietrich (far right) in Bad Godesberg with Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain , a week before the Munich Agreement in 1938.

Dietrich was together with Max Amann , the Reichsleiter for the press of the NSDAP (responsibility: publishing), the most important competitor of Joseph Goebbels in the area of ​​the press policy. Dietrich's appointment to the RMVP therefore also pursued the goal of forcing him into a position in which he was bound by Goebbels' authority to issue instructions. The daily slogan of the Reich Press Chief, which he enforced in the autumn of 1940, gave him a strong influence in the first years of the war , as he could influence the reporting of the press by telephone from the Fuehrer's headquarters and put him on a par with Goebbels within the party hierarchy. On April 20, 1941, Dietrich was appointed SS-Obergruppenführer .

Dietrich committed several major propagandistic mistakes. For example, on October 9, 1941, in front of the assembled correspondents of the world press at a press conference in Berlin, he declared the war against the Soviet Union had been won, while Germany actually suffered a decisive defeat in the battle for Moscow a short time later . However, Hitler had given him this message. The incorrect report was reproduced all over the world and also in the Völkischer Beobachter . If it had been up to Goebbels, “Hitler would have had to part with Dietrich immediately”.

By the end of the war , the three-way battle for power in the press was not finally resolved, but only brought constant squabbles over competence and increasingly intrigues in the RMVP, before Goebbels was able to get rid of his old adversary at the end of March 1945 when Hitler dismissed Dietrich.

On April 11, 1949, Dietrich was sentenced to seven years in prison as a war criminal in the Wilhelmstrasse trial . As a prosecution witness entered Ribbentrop's press officer Paul Karl Schmidt on that later under the name Paul Carell wrote several war books. Schmidt, who with his statements wanted to minimize his own influential role in the press system of the Nazi state and Dietrich "[assigned] the key role in Nazi press policy", made a decisive contribution to his conviction. Dietrich was after being sentenced to seven years in prison in August 1950 by the Allied High Commission (High Commissioner) General John J. McCloy pardoned and out of prison for war criminals Landsberg dismissed. Dietrich later took up a job at the Deutsche Kraftverkehrgesellschaft .

Publications

• In power with Hitler . 1933.
• The philosophical foundations of National Socialism. A call to arms of the German spirit . With an afterword by Alfred-Ingemar Berndt. Ferdinand Hirt, Breslau 1935.
• The Führer and the German people . 1936 (English edition online )
• World press without a mask . 1937.
• Economic thinking in the Third Reich . 1937.
• On the roads of victory. With the guide in Poland . 1939.
• Twelve years with Hitler . 1955.

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .
• Stefan Krings: Hitler's press chief. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0633-2 ( review ).
• Jana Richter: Otto Dietrich. In: Hermann Weiss (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1998, pp. 87-88, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .
• Jeffrey Herf : The Jewish Enemy. Nazi propaganda during WW II and the Holocaust. Harvard UP , Cambridge MA 2006, ISBN 0-674-02175-4 ; Tb. 2008 ISBN 0-674-02738-8 , passim
• Martin Herzer:  Foreign Correspondents and Foreign Press Policy in the Third Reich . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 2012, ISBN 978-3-412-20859-2 .

Web links

Commons : Otto Dietrich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Otto Dietrich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Otto Dietrich in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Otto Dietrich in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Hermann Weiss (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main, 1998, p. 272 ​​f.
2. ^ Otto Dietrich in the database of members of the Reichstag
3. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's chief press officer. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, p. 484.
4. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's chief press officer. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, p. 486.
5. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's chief press officer. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, p. 413 ff.
6. ^ Rainer Blasius : The devil's trombonist. Reich press chief Dietrich (= review of the dissertation by Stefan Krings: Hitler's press chief. Otto Dietrich. A biography. Göttingen 2010). In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 170 of July 26, 2010, page 8.
7. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's chief press officer. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0633-2 , p. 438. The exact date is not known.
8. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's chief press officer. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, p. 16 and P. 452f. (Quote there).
9. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's chief press officer. Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). A biography. Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, p. 461 (verdict) and P. 467f. (Pardon).
10. ↑ Excerpts can be read at an Internet bookseller, book search largely works.