Otto Schniewind (Admiral)

Otto Schniewind (1933)

Hubert Maria Otto Schniewind (born December 14, 1887 in Saarlouis , † March 26, 1964 in Linz am Rhein ) was a German General Admiral in World War II and temporarily chief of the naval command .

Military career

Schniewind joined the Imperial Navy on April 3, 1907 as a midshipman and served in the First World War as a first lieutenant at sea and from June 1917 as a lieutenant captain and commander on various torpedo boats . When the German fleet was transferred to Scapa Flow in 1919, he was the leader of the VII torpedo boat flotilla and was temporarily captured by the British after the deep sea fleet sank. After his return home, Schniewind was initially given leave of absence and was then responsible for the internment association until mid-April 1920. He then served as a company commander in the 2nd Marine Brigade, which was active as a volunteer corps, until mid-July 1920 .

Schniewind was then taken over into the Provisional Imperial Navy and assigned to the ship tribe of the IV Flotilla. From mid-August to mid-December 1920 he served there as flag lieutenant and was also the commander of the minesweeper M 133 . With the formation of the Reichsmarine Schniewind held various staff assignments. From 1925 to 1926 he was naval adjutant to the Reichswehr Minister Otto Geßler . He then moved to the head of the 4th torpedo boat semi-flotilla and in 1932 became commander of the light cruiser Cologne .

In 1934 Schniewind was appointed Chief of Staff of the Fleet Command. He served as such until 1937, when he was promoted to rear admiral and became chief of the naval armed forces. On October 31, 1938, he was finally appointed Chief of Staff of the Naval War Command. In this position he was promoted to Vice Admiral in 1940 and - only eight months later - to Admiral.

After the death of the fleet chief Günther Lütjens , who went down with the Bismarck , Schniewind was appointed his successor in June 1941. From March 1943 he was also Commander in Chief of the Marine Group Command North. Promoted to General Admiral on March 1, 1944 , he was released from his command on July 30 and received no new assignment until the end of the war. He was formally discharged from the Navy on April 30, 1945.

As head of the Marine Group Command North, Schniewind was also the judge of the courts-martial in his area. In this function he overturned the judgment against the sailor Walter Gröger on June 1, 1944 . Because he was not satisfied with his mild sentence of March 14, 1944, which an understanding naval judge had pronounced. Gröger was there because consummate desertion to eight years in prison convicted and loss of army honors. Schniewind overturned the verdict on the grounds "because the death penalty should have been recognized". He justified this with Groeger's previous convictions, a "Führer Directive" on desertion of April 14, 1940 and a decree of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy (ObdM), Karl Dönitz , of April 27, 1943. The Führer Directive required the death penalty for attempts to escape abroad and had a significant criminal record The perpetrator, however, also named mitigating circumstances in which a prison sentence would be sufficient: "youthful imprudence, incorrect official treatment, difficult domestic circumstances or other not dishonorable motives". The Dönitz decree, on the other hand, required the death penalty for every desertion that was a “failure of faithless weaklings”. Schniewind appointed the later Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Hans Filbinger, to be the prosecutor in this new trial . Following the advice of court lord Schniewind, he applied for the death penalty for Gröger. Defense attorney Werner Schön asked for mercy on his behalf: the court had admitted that according to the current military law, there had been no attempted escape abroad. He indirectly accused the prosecutor and judge of perversion of the law , because the act of the actually relevant criminal paragraph "Unauthorized removal from the troops of the War Special Criminal Law Ordinance" was punished with a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. The Chief Naval Staff Judge Adolf Harms , appointed by the judge, sentenced Gröger to death on January 22, 1945. On February 27, 1945, the High Command of the Navy (OKM) in Berlin confirmed the death sentence and rejected the petition for clemency. On March 16, the young marine was executed. This death sentence demanded by Schniewind and its implementation by Filbinger played a central role in the Filbinger affair in 1978, which led to Filbinger's resignation as Prime Minister.

After the surrender , Schniewind was one of the accused in the war crimes trial against the Wehrmacht High Command in 1947 because of his role in the occupation of Norway in 1940 ( Operation Weser Exercise ), but was acquitted in 1948 and released from captivity on October 30, 1948. From April 1949 to 1952 he was head of the Naval Historical Team in Bremerhaven .

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Friedrich-August-Kreuz II. And I. Class on August 14, 1918
• Commander of the Swedish Order of the Swords II Class on June 30, 1936
• Grand Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy on September 23, 1938
• Serbian Order of St. Sava II Class on June 1, 1939
• Spanish Naval Merit Cross in white on August 21, 1939
• Medal commemorating the return of Memelland on October 26, 1939
• Clasp for the Iron Cross II and I Class on September 29, 1939
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on April 21, 1940
• Fleet war badge with diamonds on July 30, 1944
• Order of the Holy Treasure

literature

• Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1990. ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 . Pp. 247-248.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Filbinger - a German career , 2006, p. 57
2. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Filbinger - a German career , 2006, p. 75
3. ↑ Horst Bieber, Joachim Holtz, Joachim Schilde, Hans Schueler, Theo Sommer ( Die Zeit , May 12, 1978, pp. 4–6): Shoot them, Sargen, Abtransportieren
4. ^ Peter Kalmbach: Wehrmacht Justice. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-053-0 . P. 285
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Manfred Dörr: The knight's cross bearers of the surface forces of the navy. Volume 2: LZ. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1996. ISBN 3-7648-2498-0 . Pp. 228-230.