Paul Wegener (politician)

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Paul Wegener

Paul Wegener (born October 1, 1908 in Varel , † May 5, 1993 in Wächtersbach ) was a German politician (NSDAP) , Gauleiter in the time of National Socialism and SS-Obergruppenführer .

biography

education and profession

Wegener was the second born son of a doctor. His older brother is the pathologist Friedrich Wegener . He attended grammar school in Ballenstedt (Harz) up to the upper secondary level . After an agricultural internship, he completed an apprenticeship as a colonial farmer at the German Colonial School for Agriculture, Trade and Commerce in Witzenhausen . Here he married the daughter of a lecturer. He then worked from 1929 to 1930 as an import and export merchant at a Bremen trading company.

Career in the NSDAP and in the NS state

In 1930 Wegener joined the NSDAP , for which he was an active speaker. In 1931 he also became a member of the SA , in which he rose quickly: in 1932 he took over the leadership of SA Standard 75 in Bremen .

Shortly after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Wegener was appointed district leader of the NSDAP district of Bremen in March 1933. In this capacity he played a key role in the assumption of power by the NSDAP in the Hanseatic city. At the same time he became a member of the Bremen citizenship . In the autumn of 1933, Wegener also received a mandate for the Reichstag for the Weser-Ems area, which has largely become politically insignificant .

In July 1934 Wegner was appointed to the so-called Staff of the Deputy Leader in Munich by the Nazi politician Rudolf Hess , whom Hitler had commissioned to lead the party apparatus of the NSDAP as his deputy . This organization, newly created in 1933, served as the central steering body for the supervision and control of the entire NSDAP and was later called the Party Chancellery of the NSDAP . From 1935 on, Wegener acted in this organization as adjutant of Hess' chief of staff, Martin Bormann .

In August 1936 Wegener advanced to the position of deputy head of the Gaues Mark Brandenburg and Kurmark. Since 1939, Wegener was envisaged as the future head of a NSDAP district on the staff of the Fuehrer's deputy - in which, in Bormann's opinion, he had proven himself particularly. The assessments of the following years were almost entirely positive: In 1944, it was still said that Wegener was one of the few "chosen by fate who have what it takes to become a real leader of the people". And in another review, the HR officer called him the "sunny Wegener who got the voices and hearts".

During the Second World War, Wegener was only a short member of the Air Force in 1940, with which he was deployed in Norway. In the same year he changed to the staff of the Reich Commissioner for Norway, which was occupied by Germany in April 1940, Josef Terboven . As an advisor to Terboven, Wegener acted as area commissioner for the occupied territories of Northern Norway and as head of a Wegener team . His main task in Norway during the following years was to align the local National Samling party - the party of the Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling , who was entrusted by the German occupation administration with the government of the occupied country - in line with German occupation policy and to guide them in depth on which course to take should take. Also in 1940 Wegener switched from the SA to the SS , in which he achieved the rank of SS-Gruppenführer in 1942 and that of SS-Obergruppenführer in 1944.

In 1941, Wegener was given leave of absence from Norway for a few months in order to take part in the Greece campaign with the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler .

After the death of Carl Röver in May 1942, Wegener was his successor as Gauleiter of the NSDAP Gaues Weser-Ems and in personal union Reich Governor for Oldenburg and Bremen as well as Reich Defense Commissioner for the North German area. In November 1944, Bormann suggested to Adolf Hitler that the Gauleiter in Vienna, Baldur von Schirach , who was considered too lax, be replaced by Wegener or Grohé .

He planned to move the official seat from Oldenburg to Bremen. At the end of April 1945 he was against a surrender of the city of Bremen without a fight.

Karl Dönitz helped him on May 2, 1945 to the post of Supreme Civil Defense Commissioner and head of cabinet of the Dönitz government with the rank of State Secretary.

After the end of the war

On May 23, 1945, Wegener and the executive government of Dönitz were arrested by soldiers of the British 11th Armored Division in the special area Mürwik near Flensburg . In the summer of 1945 he was interned with several members of the NSDAP hierarchy and the Wehrmacht in POW camp No. 32 ( Camp Ashcan ) in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg .

In 1949 he was sentenced to a total prison sentence of 6 years and 6 months by the Bielefeld Court of Justice , taking into account his internment . He was charged with the death of several hundred soldiers and civilians when the Hanseatic City of Bremen was defended “down to the last man and down to the last cartridge” on his orders. The relatively low prison sentence is probably due to the fact that he emerged from his denazification process as "exonerated" (Category V). In May 1951 he was released early from Esterwegen prison. In the proceedings against Georg Schnibben and other defendants for a homicide on April 14, 1945 in Dötlingen , he was acquitted in 1953 by the jury court in Oldenburg .

He then worked as a commercial clerk in Sinzheim near Baden-Baden and lived with his family in Wächtersbach in Hesse from 1959 . He became a representative and authorized signatory in a timber trading company. According to the British secret service, he had contacts with the former State Secretary Werner Naumann , who wanted to infiltrate the FDP with the Naumann Circle at the beginning of the 1950s .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Longerich: Party Chancellery, p. 120.
  2. ^ Longerich: Party Chancellery, p. 103.
  3. ↑ Herbert Schwarzwälder : History of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen , Volume IV P. 621ff. Edition Temmen, Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-86108-283-7 .
  4. ↑ Cordt Schnibben : My father, a werewolf . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 2014, p. 62–73 (mentioned on p. 71) ( online ).
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2nd updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 659, source BA N 1080/273.

literature

More extensive entries in reference works

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personal data
SURNAME Wegener, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German NSDAP Gauleiter, MdBB, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Varel
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1993
Place of death Waechtersbach