Paul Carell

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Paul Carell (actually Paul (Karl) Schmidt , since January 14, 1984 Paul Schmidt-Carell ; born November 2, 1911 in Kelbra , † June 20, 1997 in Rottach-Egern ) was a German diplomat , journalist and non-fiction author. In the Second World War , Carell was press officer for Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and SS-Obersturmbannführer . In the 1950s, Carell worked as a journalist for Die Zeit and the magazine Der Spiegel and, from the 1960s, for various publications by Axel Springer Verlag . Carell acted as his personal advisor and head of security until Springer's death in 1985. In the 1960s he became a bestselling author with books about the Second World War, especially the attack on the Soviet Union, for which he adopted the code name " Operation Barbarossa " of the National Socialist regime .

Career as a National Socialist

In simple but secure circumstances, the only child of his single mother Henriette Schmidt in the house of his grandfather, the master shoemaker Karl Schmidt, in the small town Kelbra on the northern slope grew the Kyffhäuser Hills, Schmidt 1931 resigned as Oberprimaner the NSDAP ( membership number 420853) and the SA at. As a psychology student at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , he was head of the local "Combat Committee Against the Un-German Spirit". These "combat committees" agitated as the spearhead of the German student body against "Jewish intellectualism". The "Action Against the Un-German Spirit" prepared the book burnings a month later. As a result, he appeared on May 10, 1933 as a student speaker at the book burning in Kiel. He held various positions in the National Socialist German Student Union and in 1935/36 took over the office of the student leader of Schleswig-Holstein. During his studies in 1931 he joined the Kiel fraternity Arminia in the ADB . In 1934 and again in 1950 he became a member of the Hamburg fraternity Hansea .

1936 Schmidt was in Kiel with his thesis Contributions to the theory of meaning images in the Indo-European languages to Dr. phil. PhD . He then worked as an assistant at the Psychological Institute at Kiel University. Here he also met Karlfried Graf Dürckheim , who brought him to the Ribbentrop office in 1936 . Schmidt initially worked in the so-called "material office", which compiled information for Ribbentrop. In 1938 Schmidt became a member of the SS (SS-No. 308.263) and joined the press and news department of the Foreign Office as Legation Councilor II . He temporarily replaced Rudolf Likus as Ribbentrop's press officer, through whom Ribbentrop did not feel sufficiently informed about the foreign press during the Munich conference . Schmidt was also commissioned to set up a "news agency" for the minister. In fact, he significantly expanded the press department of the Foreign Office in 1939/40 at home and abroad. In 1940, Schmidt was promoted to Obersturmbannführer in the SS . In the same year he became press spokesman for Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and envoy 1st class, head of the news and press department at the Foreign Office. On October 10, 1940 Schmidt was promoted to ministerial director, on June 26, 1941 he was promoted to ministerial director, the third highest rank after the state secretary and undersecretary of state.

Schmidt's most important task was to lead the daily press conferences of his ministry. Therefore, he is considered one of the most important representatives of Nazi propaganda in World War II. He also had a decisive influence on Signal , the Nazi propaganda magazine with the highest circulation with 2.5 million copies . Despite all the conflicts with Otto Dietrich , Adolf Hitler's press chief, and Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, with the local press chief Hans Fritzsche , Schmidt's influence in the field of foreign propaganda was on a par with his competitors.

Schmidt combined personal anti-Semitism with the pursuit of advantage and a career. In a letter to Undersecretary Martin Luther at the end of December 1941 , he asked the General Building Inspector to “get a Jewish apartment allocated” and specifically asked “to be allocated a 9 to 10 room apartment”. It is considered certain that Schmidt justified the Holocaust with propaganda means. This was done in collaboration with the "Cultural Political Department," the Franz Six board, and the Unit Group "Inland II" with its director Horst Wagner - the liaison between Ribbentrop and Himmler - and the deputy director and Jewish Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, the doctoral lawyers Eberhard from Thadden .

When the deportations of Slovak Jews were stopped by the local government at the end of June 1942, the German side increased the pressure on Prime Minister Tuka : “Paul Karl Schmidt, the spokesman for the Foreign Office, explained to the press in Bratislava that the problem of the Jews was a problem political hygiene, which must be combated everywhere in order to prevent the disintegration of the national organism. "

In May 1944, Schmidt gave advice on how to justify the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews in order to avoid accusations of mass murder :

“The extent of the planned action [against the Budapest Jews] will attract great attention abroad and will certainly give rise to a violent reaction. The opponents will scream and speak of manhunt etc. and try to stir up their own mood and also the mood of the neutrals using horror reports. I would therefore like to suggest that these things should not be prevented by creating external reasons and reasons for the action, e.g. B. explosives in Jewish club houses and synagogues, sabotage organizations, overturning plans, raids on police officers, large-scale foreign exchange shifts with the aim of undermining the Hungarian currency structure. The keystone under such an action would have to be a particularly blatant case on which the major raid is then hung. "

Schmidt propagated National Socialist European plans in the Handbuch Europa , for which Foreign Minister Ribbentrop had written a foreword. Schmidt wrote about the axis there in 1943 :

“We National Socialists have to reorganize the European area [...]. In the future [Europe can] only live in the fascist and national socialist way of life. [...] After the Western liberalist principles have lost their suitability for overcoming the European hardships [the two countries] are facing a great revolutionary task in shaping the European state system. "

Legal processing

Schmidt was arrested on May 6, 1945 and interned for almost two and a half years. For a long time it remained open whether he should appear in court as a defendant or as an incriminating witness. In August 1947, the prosecution submitted a list of 16 names against whom charges were to be brought, including Paul Karl Schmidt. But in the end he appeared as a witness for the prosecution in the Wilhelmstrasse trial , particularly incriminated Reich Press Chief Otto Dietrich and presented himself as an advocate of democratic freedom of the press .

From 1965 to 1971 the public prosecutor's office investigated Verden for the murder of Schmidt. But the investigation that was supposed to clarify his involvement in the murder of Hungarian Jews was discontinued without result. Schmidt never had to answer to a court for his activities in the Nazi state.

Career as a historical writer and political publicist

After the Second World War, Schmidt lived in Scheeßel , where from 1958 to 1974 he was second chairman of the school association Eichenschule eG of the private Eichenschule Scheeßel high school .

Since the 1950s he wrote articles for the magazine Kristall , which appeared in large numbers. His publications on the history of World War II in crystal caused a scandal. In 1959, Carola Heldt , the responsible editor, explained to the editor-in-chief Joachim Pierre Pabst that a sentence from an article about the landing in Normandy, in which Carell had “digged deep into the old office's propaganda box” ( Otto Köhler ), was only over her body would appear. Pabst then stated that Carell would control all political and current publications at Kristall in the future . The editor Fritz Langour read quotations from Carell and resigned . The editors Carola Heldt, Inge Esterer and Anton Geldner agreed with the resignation that it was "a question of self-respect, not to submit to Schmidt's control and his language regulations". The domestic and foreign press reported on the incident. Schmidt was then, according to an official announcement by Springer Verlag, “released from further collaboration with Kristall at his own request ”, but his series actually continued there.

Schmidt used the pseudonyms Paul Karell , later Paul Carell and elsewhere P. C. Holm . At the end of 1952, Lutz Hachmeister identified him as one of the initiators of a "Hundertmann Group", another name for the neo-Nazi Naumann group , which was primarily aiming for a general amnesty for war criminals. Here he met the former SS leader Six, his former colleague in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Carell's second successful journalistic career began parallel to the above-mentioned investigation. He worked as a freelancer under various pseudonyms for newspapers such as Die Welt and Die Zeit (as P. C. Holm). In the 1970s he wrote political columns under the pseudonym Vocator in the Norddeutsche Rundschau under its editor-in-chief Heinz Longerich, Peter Longerich's father , and in the Spiegel . In an article in this news magazine on January 16, 1957, he launched the thesis of Marinus van der Lubbe, the sole perpetrator who exonerated the National Socialists in the 1933 Reichstag fire .

While Schmidt's work for the news magazine Der Spiegel remained more subject-related, he was considered an influential advisor to both Axel Springer Verlag and Axel Springer personally, whom he advised on security issues, for whom he worked as a speechwriter and whose head of security he was until the death of the Publisher was. As Springer's author he wrote from 1958 to 1979 in the world and even until 1991 in Bild , in the latter z. B. on December 13, 1981 on the "Russian Campaign", "as it really was" and on February 5, 1991 on the "Gulf War". An article in Die Welt am Sonntag of October 21, 1979, is programmatic for the security policy line. In the run-up to the so-called NATO retrofitting with medium-range nuclear weapons, he called for a change in the Bundeswehr's operational doctrine towards an allegedly desirable preventive "front defense". The same demand, supplemented with a plea for the neutron bomb , was made by Schmidt-Carell a year earlier in a lecture to the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation : “The solution to the problem is the neutron weapon. […] The necessary military effect increases the enemy’s risk of using these weapons and thus increases deterrence and military effectiveness. In view of the indispensable forward defense, the neutron weapon is the urgently needed modernization of the tactical nuclear weapon. ”Schmidt also had“ good contacts with the BND ”and was used“ in 1970 by the foreign secret service under the code name 'Schaper' ”. According to an announcement by the news magazine Der Spiegel in June 2013, the BND confirmed that Schmidt was working as an informant for the secret service. The historian Jost Dülffer attested in 2015 as part of his investigation for the Independent Commission of Historians to research the history of the Federal Intelligence Service , its long-time President and former Major General of the Bundeswehr Gerhard Wessel “a close relationship” with Schmidt-Carell. He used it both “as an informant and as a political advisor”.

Schmidt was a founding member of both the right-wing conservative study center Weikersheim (SWZ) in 1979 and the Hans Filbinger Foundation , which was created in 1993 and provided significant financial support to the SWZ.

The success of his books Enterprise Barbarossa and Scorched Earth , which had previously appeared as series in the magazine Kristall , made Carell the leading post-war writer of World War II in the USSR . In doing so, Carell had paid attention to a representation of war that corresponded to the point of view of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein , who had influenced him in this regard. Schmidt-Carell worked in the preparation of his bestseller Enterprise Barbarossa , which the military historian Jens Westemeier describes as the “most important journalistic contribution”, “through which the image of the 'clean' Wehrmacht was anchored in the imagination of the general public for decades”, alongside generals the Wehrmacht also worked closely with SS leaders. Among other things, SS General Otto Kumm had delivered war reports, which were condensed into a heroic war depiction in "Operation Barbarossa", which presented the "Song of Songs of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS". In 1980, Ullstein Verlag published his book The Prisoners on the fate of German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. These books received an overwhelmingly positive response from the press in the Federal Republic of Germany. For example, Die Welt wrote : “Helps to reduce resentment between Germans and Russians (...) qualified as a historian.” In contrast, the historian Bodo Scheurig judged in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Carell's account of the Russian campaign “dumbs down those who forget are inclined and bitter (those who are hard to forget and insist on the whole truth ”). Jonathan Littell , in his fact-based novel The Well- Minded, lets the first-person narrator state that Carell wrote a two-volume work on the war against the Soviet Union without even mentioning the word "Jew", an "excellent" historiographical achievement in light of the Nazi mass crimes in this country; Hardly anything points more clearly to the later mental repression of these crimes by the Germans than this fact.

In 1992, Carell expressed the often questioned claim that the outcome of the Second World War after the Battle of Stalingrad was still open. Ultimately, it was the failure of Adolf Hitler alone that led to Germany's defeat in the war. The leadership of the Wehrmacht and outstanding strategists like Erich von Manstein could have forced a draw peace without this interference.

Until the end of his life, Carell denied the German crimes against the Soviet people. The attack on the Soviet Union was a preemptive strike to forestall an imminent attack by the Red Army . According to his widow Ilse (Ille) Schmidt, his last book, which was about to be completed, was about the history of the Bundeswehr . The military historian Detlef Bald has found out that the "Aids for Combat Service" published by the Army Office of the Bundeswehr until 2009 for the training of combat troops was based on case studies from the Second World War, in that they also contained sources from Paul Carell's bestseller Scorched Earth . In May 2009, the inspectors of the Army and the Armed Forces Base prohibited the further use of Paul Carell's texts by training institutions and units.

Fonts (selection)

  • The desert foxes. With Rommel in Africa . 1964, most recent edition 2003.
  • They are coming! The American and British invasion of Normandy in 1944 . 1960, most recent edition 2004.
  • Stalingrad. Victory and fall of the 6th Army . 1992, most recent edition 2003.
  • Operation Barbarossa. The march to Russia . 1963, most recent edition 2002.
  • The prisoners. Life and survival of German soldiers behind barbed wire . 1980, most recent edition 2002.
  • Burned earth. Battle between Volga and Vistula . 1964, most recent edition 2002.
  • The Russian War. Photographed by soldiers . The illustrated book on Operation Barbarossa and Scorched Earth , 1983.
  • as publisher: Berlin Rome Tokyo . Monthly for the deepening of the cultural relations of the peoples of the world-political triangle . Ernst Steiniger publishing house, 1st year, 1939.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 . Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2012, p. 117.
  2. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 29 ff .; see. also the review by Wigbert Benz: Der Propagandist. Christian Plöger describes the astonishing career of the Nazi and bestselling author Paul Carell . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 29, 2010
  3. ↑ a b c d e Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 93.
  4. ^ Wigbert Benz : Paul Carell. Ribbentrop's press officer Paul Karl Schmidt before and after 1945 . wvb, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86573-068-X , p. 13.
  5. ↑ a b Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft . Volume I: Politicians . Subband 5: R-S . Winter, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8253-1256-9 , pp. 280-281.
  6. ↑ Burschenschafter Stammrolle 1991. P. 131.
  7. ^ A b Peter Longerich: Propagandists in War . Munich 1987, p. 154 f
  8. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 137.
  9. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, pp. 150-154.
  10. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 144.
  11. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, pp. 163-170.
  12. ↑ Conze, Frei, Hayes and Zimmermann: The office and the past . Munich 2010, p. 275; for literary processing and processing dated 1943 see Jonathan Littell: Les bienveillantes . Gallimard, Paris 2006 (German Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2008).
  13. ^ State Archives Nuremberg, KV indictment, document NG-2424, sheet 1, quoted in According to Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 165.
  14. ^ Paul Schmidt: The axis as the basis of the new Europe . In: Europe. Handbook of the political, economic and cultural development of the new Europe . Edited by the German Institute for Foreign Policy Research. With a foreword by Joachim von Ribbentrop. Leipzig 1943, pp. 13–15, here p. 13.
  15. ↑ Conze, Frei, Hayes and Zimmermann: The office and the past. Munich 2010, p. 389.
  16. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, pp. 275-278; Benz: Paul Carell . Berlin 2005, pp. 50-53.
  17. ↑ See preliminary proceedings of the Verden public prosecutor's office against Dr. Paul Karl Schmidt u. a. for murder. File 412 AR no. 1082/1965; Federal Archives, Ludwigsburg branch, new signature (since November 2003): B 162 AR 650 1082; occupied at Benz: Paul Carell . Berlin 2005, p. 88 ff
  18. ^ Otto Köhler: Weird Publicists. The repressed past of the media makers . Droemer-Knauer, Munich 1995, pp. 189-192; Benz: Paul Carell . Berlin 2005, pp. 81-83; Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, pp. 357-361.
  19. ↑ In fact, the protagonists had spoken of the “200” men they needed to take over the NRW-FDP . Sources in the lemma there
  20. ^ A b Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six . Beck, Munich 1998, p. 294 ff
  21. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 167.
  22. ^ Benz: Paul Carell . Berlin 2005, pp. 72-75; Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, pp. 322-326.
  23. ^ Benz: Paul Carell . Berlin 2005, pp. 91-106; Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, pp. 378-385.
  24. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 467.
  25. ^ A b Paul Carell: The Red Blackmail . In: Welt am Sonntag , No. 17/1979 of October 21, 1979
  26. ^ Carell: The taboo serious case of war . In: The emergency. Writings of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation . Eds. Anton Peisl & Armin Mohler , Vol. 2, Frankfurt 1979, pp. 74-97.
  27. ↑ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom : Undercover. The BND and the German journalists . Cologne 1998, p. 78; see also Willi Winkler: Rubble heap of history. Axel Springer: New database . ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 17, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sueddeutsche.de
  28. ^ Klaus Wiegrefe: Hidden research. The Federal Intelligence Service recruited journalists as informants in the 1950s and 1960s. Now he had to name his informers for the first time . In: Der Spiegel , No. 23 of June 3, 2013, p. 42f .; see also the more succinct online report BND reveals journalists as informants , in: Spiegel Online , June 2, 2013
  29. ^ Jost Dülffer: Pullach intern. Internal political upheaval, historical policy of the BND and "Der Spiegel", 1969–1972 . Independent commission of historians to research the history of the Federal Intelligence Service 1945–1968 . Marburg 2015, p. 21f
  30. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 389.
  31. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History . Schöningh, Paderborn 2006 (also dissertation, University of Hamburg 2005), ISBN 3-506-72977-2 , p. 306 f
  32. ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors. Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in the war and the post-war period (= War in History. Vol. 71). Edited with the support of the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr . Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-77241-1 , p. 566.
  33. ↑ Quotations from Benz: Paul Carell . Berlin 2005, p. 96.
  34. ↑ Jonathan Littell: The well-meaning . Novel. BvT Berliner Taschenbuch Verlags GmbH, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-8333-0628-0 , p. 23.
  35. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 369.
  36. ↑ Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer . Marburg 2009, p. 370.
  37. ↑ Detlef Bald : Conditionally ready for action. "Realistic training" for the Bundeswehr or with the Wehrmacht in the Hindu Kush . In: Detlef Bald / Hans-Günter Fröhling / Jürgen Groß (eds.): Bundeswehr in war - how can the inner leadership survive? Hamburg Contributions to Peace Research and Security Policy, No. 153, December 2009, pp. 7–16, especially p. 13; Wigbert Benz: "Training close to the action" with Paul Karl Schmidt alias Paul Carell, press officer at the Nazi Foreign Ministry . In: Forum Pacifism. No. 26 (2010), pp. 13-15.
  38. ↑ Wigbert Benz: "Training close to the action" with Paul Karl Schmidt alias Paul Carell, press officer at the Nazi Foreign Ministry . In: Forum Pacifism. No. 26 (2010), p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Carell, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Paul Karl (real name); Carell-Schmidt, Paul (from 1993); Karell, Paul (temporarily); Holm, PC
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Nazi functionary, author
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Kelbra (Kyffhauser)
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1997
Place of death Rottach-Egern