Otto Somann

Otto Somann (* 24. October 1899 in Toddin in Hagenow ( Mecklenburg-Schwerin ); † 7. December 1956 in Hamburg ) was in the Third Reich , a high official of the SS - Security Service . In 1947 he was convicted as a war criminal. From 1951 he was an agent of the " Organization Gehlen ".

Life

Somann was the son of a farmer. At first he also worked as a farmer and blacksmith. Somann got involved early on in the right-wing camp. From 1920 to 1922 he belonged to the " Sturmabteilung Roßbach ". From 1922 he was a member of the right-wing extremist " Frontbann ". Until 1925 he was a member of the German National Freedom Party .

Nazi career

In 1926 Somann joined the SA . In March 1927 he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 58.502). Until 1931 he acted as NSDAP local group leader in Hagenow.

On November 1, 1931 Somann joined the General SS (SS No. 25,638) and led the SS troop in Hagenow until 1934. In 1934 Somann became a full-time SS member. From August 1934 on, he was an SS-Hauptscharführer in the SS disposal force and a member of the "staff guard" of the SS Upper Section North. From 1935 Somann worked in the Security Service (SD) of the NSDAP, initially as a staff leader in the SD Upper Section North in Stettin (1935-37). According to his post-war CIA files, Somann worked in 1936 at the collection point of the SD Main Office in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). In 1937 he was SS-Hauptsturmführer in the SS-Hauptamt, in January 1938 he was SS-Sturmbannführer . Later he led the SD sub-section Liegnitz and then the SD master sections Breslau and Hamburg .

In January 1943 Somann was appointed to the rank of SS-Standartenführer as an inspector of the security police and the SD (IdS) in Wiesbaden . Among other things, the establishment of so-called " labor education camps " was one of his tasks. In this role Somann was jointly responsible for the murder of 23 prisoners in Luxembourg Hinzert concentration camp on February 25, 1944. The next day, he was appointed as Colonel of the police into the civil service adopted. On June 21, 1944 Somann was promoted to SS-Oberführer . From July 1944 he was in command of the Security Police and the SD (BdS) in Metz . On August 29, 1944, he was appointed inspector of the customs border guard for the entire Reich territory and the occupied countries under the deputy chief of Office IV ( Gestapo ) and general border inspector Wilhelm Krichbaum . At the beginning of April 1945 he was an assessor in the proceedings of the SS and police tribunal against Hans von Dohnanyi u. a. in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In April 1945 he was in the newly established "North Staff" of the Reich Security Main Office. On May 5, 1945, he disappeared from Flensburg , allegedly to set up a border guard corps on the German-Danish border.

Somann was the holder of the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP , the War Merit Cross with Swords , the NSDAP's service award in bronze and silver, the SS skull ring , the Mecklenburg Gau Ehrenzeichen and other awards.

After 1945

As part of the Dachau trials , Somann had to face the US vs. Jürgen Stroop et al and twenty other defendants were responsible for involvement in air murders and were sentenced to four years in prison. During his internment, Somann was questioned by the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC) in early 1948 as part of the Nuremberg Trials . After his release from prison he went to live with his family in Hamburg. He stuck to his National Socialist sentiments.

In 1951 Somann was recruited by his former subordinate SS-Obersturmführer Hans Sommer for the "Organization Gehlen". He himself recruited his former SS employee Ernst Schwarzwäller (1905–1977). Somann was listed under the number V-2950 and used the code names Otmar Lange and Otmar Seidemann . In 1953 Somann was a senior employee of the “general agency” of the “Organization Gehlen” in Bremen .

In mid-December 1953, Somann was exposed as a Gehlen agent in an ADN report. An SED functionary then drew the attention of the State Security to his past. In the GDR magazine Neue Justiz . an article appeared afterwards accusing Somann of leading a sabotage organization directed against the GDR ("Technische Nothilfe").

According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution , Somann had already been suspected of working for the Ministry for State Security (MfS) or the Russian secret service in 1952 . His attempt to infiltrate the neo-Nazi cadre organization " European Brotherhood of the German Nation " also failed because of this suspicion . 1954–56 there were actually several attempts by the MfS to “win” Somann, although in the summer of 1955 he was investigated because of his involvement in the court martial against Hans von Dohnanyi. The State Security put several unofficial employees on Somann, including friends, relatives and former SS colleagues. In the summer of 1954, the MfS counter-espionage department HA II recruited Sommer and Schwarzwäller as employees who reported on Somann under the cover name "Bremen". Finally, there were recruitment meetings with Somann, who, according to the MfS, was “in a tight spot financially”. Somann was offered a fixed monthly salary and, in the event of a transfer, further payments, a fully furnished apartment and a spa stay. To prove the seriousness of the offer, Somann even received a "certificate" signed by the GDR Interior Minister Karl Maron , which granted him "an unhindered stay in the German Democratic Republic". In an MfS instruction on how to deal with Somann from June 2, 1955, it said: “Point out that we are not people who blame people for possible offenses. Everyone who uses their energies to maintain peace has a place in our society. We don't judge people based on their past, but how they are today and what they do for society. ”The contacts were ended by Somann's unexpected death. Somann probably reported the connection to the MfS to his office or even acted on their behalf.

literature

• Henry Leide: "We do not judge people according to their past" - examples of unconcerning past politics in the MfS recruiting practice in the West. In: Listen and Look . 74 (4/2011), p. 20 ff.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . , P. 586.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Henry Leide: "We do not judge people according to their past" - examples of past political unhesitating in the recruitment practice of the MfS in the West. In: Listen and Look . 74 (4/2011), pp. 20ff .; approved CIA files, Document 1 (PDF) ; Document 5 ( PDF ; both accessed on August 30, 2013).
2. ↑ released CIA -Akte, Document 5 ( PDF , accessed on August 30, 2013).
3. ↑ ^{a b} released CIA files, Document 1 (PDF) ; Document 5 ( PDF ; both accessed on August 30, 2013).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Henry Leide: “We do not judge a person according to their past” - examples of unconcerning past politics in the recruitment practice of the MfS in the West. In: Listen and Look . 74 (4/2011), pp. 20ff.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Erich Schmidt-Eenboom: Secret Service, Politics and Media: Opinion making undercover. Berlin 2004, p. 57.
6. ^ Uwe Bader, Beate Welter: The SS special camp / Hinzert concentration camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , pp. 17–43, here: p. 30.
7. ↑ Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburg 2002, p. 710 f .; Elisabeth Chowaniec: The "Dohnanyi Case" 1943–1945. Resistance, military justice, SS arbitrariness. Munich 1991, passim .
8. ↑ Dachau Trials File Number: US173 ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed August 31, 2013); Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945–1948. Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 115-117.
9. ↑ Publication Number: M-1019, Publication Title: Records of the United States Nuernberg War Crimes trials Interrogations, 1946–1949, Date Published: 1977 (PDF; 186 kB)
10. ↑ on Blackwäller s. Jefferson Adams: Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Lanham MD 2009, p. 411.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Shared CIA -Akte, Document 1 ( PDF , accessed on August 30, 2013).
12. ↑ Research Aid: Cryptonyms and Terms in Declassified CIA Files Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Disclosure Acts ( IWG , June 2007), p. 51f .: There also as Hans Somann ( PDF 412 kB; accessed on September 2, 2013) .
13. ↑ Among other things published in Neues Deutschland on December 18, 1953, p. 3, under the title New sensational revelations about the Gehlen agent and espionage organization
14. ^ New Justice No. 22 v. November 20, 1954, p. 652.