Paul Kanstein

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Ernst Kanstein (born May 31, 1899 in Schwarzenau (district of Wittgenstein) ; † September 7, 1981 in St. Wolfgang) was a German lawyer, Gestapo officer and SS leader, most recently an SS brigade leader in World War II .

Early years

Kanstein, son of evangelical pastor Heinrich Kanstein, studied after the First World War jurisprudence . After completing his studies, he entered the administrative service and from 1925 he was a government trainee in Schneidemühl and from 1927 municipal department head with the government in Königsberg . Since December 1929 he was married to Karin, née Jordan. The marriage resulted in four sons: Klaus (* 1933), Peter (* 1935), Dieter (* 1941) and Bernhard (* 1944).

After the handover of power to the National Socialists, Kanstein joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 ( membership number 2.306.733) and in July 1933 also the SS (SS number 189.786). He worked in the state police station in Königsberg and from December 1934 at the state police station in Osnabrück . From June 1935 Kanstein took over the management of the state police station in Hanover . From October 1937 he headed the state police headquarters in Berlin and was appointed acting police chief there in August 1939 .

Second World War

After the German occupation of Denmark , he was from April 12, 1940 to August 28, 1943 “Commissioner of the Foreign Office for internal administration issues in Denmark” and headed the Danish civil administration in occupied Denmark under the Reich Plenipotentiary . According to Joachim von Ribbentrop, from his office in Copenhagen Kanstein had the task of “supervising the activities of the internal administration authorities in Denmark, including the police and the municipal administrations, and paying special attention to the security of all measures taken by the Danish authorities The occupation forces are guaranteed. ”With Kanstein, several Gestapo employees came to Denmark, who were responsible for activities in the German consulates in Odense , Aarhus and Aalborg . In addition, 25 members of a "special group of the security police " initially came to Denmark. In September 1943, Kanstein and the new chief of the security police in Denmark attempted SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Mildner , previously head of the state police headquarters in Katowice and chairman of the Gestapo “Police and District Court” in Block 11 of the main camp of Auschwitz , the ongoing deportation of Danish Jews to prevent. They were not fundamentally against the deportation of Jews, but saw the fight against the Danish resistance movement as being impaired. Like their superior, the Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark Werner Best , they were of the opinion that the "action" was practically impracticable because the Jewish population was already alerted and the Danish police were indispensable helpers due to a lack of willingness to cooperate.

Kanstein, who had been promoted to SS-Brigadführer in June 1942, was appointed regional president in Hanover after the end of his assignment in Denmark .

In November 1943 Kanstein was appointed head of the military administration in Italy ; and held this post from January 1944 in a deputy function, initially under Friedrich Landfried and finally under Otto Wächter until the end of the war.

Opposition to the Nazi regime

From autumn 1938 Kanstein was part of the opposition circle around Franz Halder , Erwin von Witzleben , Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff and Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg . Kanstein made contact with the German opposition in 1942 through his friend Schulenburg for Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, who was well known to him, and succeeded in replacing Cecil von Renthe-Fink , the Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark , who was eventually replaced by Werner Best . Kanstein also had contact with the conspirators of July 20, 1944 , who wanted him to lead a new security police in the event of a successful coup. After the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler , Kanstein was arrested because of his acquaintance with Schulenburg and interrogated for hours at the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) - also by Ernst Kaltenbrunner personally. As the only SS leader suspected of involvement, Kanstein was not executed. Since Wilhelm Stuckart campaigned successfully for Kanstein's release, he was able to return to his post in Italy.

post war period

After the war, Kanstein was several years in Allied internment and was for a denazification process denazified . Then he lived again in his hometown of Schwarzenau.
Kanstein was the author of a report on Werner Best in 1947, in which he characterized him.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 299 gives the year 1980 as the year of death , whereas in the Biographical Manual of the German Foreign Service . Volume 2., G - K. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 471 is given as the year of death 1981
  2. a b Klaus Mlynek : Gestapo Hanover reports ... Police and government reports for central and southern Lower Saxony between 1933 and 1937 , Volume 39, Part 1, p. 28.
  3. ^ A b c Karl Schellhass, German Historical Institute in Rome: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries, Volume 86, M. Niemeyer, 2006, p. 519.
  4. Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service . Volume 2., G - K. Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, p. 471
  5. a b Paul Ernst Kanstein on http://www.dws-xip.pl
  6. Gerd Steinwascher: Gestapo Osnabrück reports ...: Police and government reports from the Osnabrück administrative district from 1933 to 1936 , self-published by the Association for History and Regional Studies of Osnabrück, 1995, p. 28.
  7. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 298f.
  8. ^ Irmtrud Wojak: Fritz Bauer 1903-1968. A biography. CH Beck, Munich 2009. ISBN 978-3-406-58154-0 , p. 143 (on this review by H-Soz-u-Kult ; review overview in the press by Perlentaucher ).
  9. Quoted in: Fritz Petrick: "Denmark, the 'model protectorate'?", In: Robert Bohn: The German rule in the "Germanic countries" 1940-1945 , Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07099-0 , p. 124 .
  10. ^ Fritz Petrick: "Denmark, the 'model protectorate'?", In: Robert Bohn: Die deutsche Herrschaft in den "Germanischen" 1940-1945 , Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07099-0 , p. 124.
  11. Hans Kirchhoff, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz: The time in Denmark , in: Foreign Office (ed.): In memory of Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz 1904–1973 , Berlin 2004, pp. 13–37, here: p. 26.
  12. Bo Liedegaard: The exception: October 1943. How the Danish Jews escaped extermination with the help of their fellow citizens , Munich 2013.
  13. ^ German administrative history of Prussia: Prussian Province of Hanover .
  14. ^ Maximiliane Rieder: German-Italian Economic Relations: Continuities and Breaks 1936-1957 , Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37136-7 , p. 277.
  15. ^ Gerhard Paul , Klaus-Michael Mallmann (ed.): The Gestapo. Myth and Reality. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 1996, ISBN 3-89678-000-X , p. 254.
  16. ^ Federal Foreign Office : In memory of Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz 1904-1973 (PDF; 555 kB), Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-93757015-2 , p. 17.
  17. Heinz Höhne, The Order under the Skull. The history of the SS, in: Der Spiegel, February 13, 1967, no. 7, p. 70.
  18. Heinz Höhne : The Order under the Skull - The History of the SS , Augsburg 1998, p. 497.
  19. ^ Ulrich Herbert : Best - Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903-1989 , Dietz, Bonn 2011 (5th edition), ISBN 978-3-8012-5036-2 , pp. 225ff.