Association of German Frontline Fighters Associations

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Italy trip of the German front fighter associations. On March 19, 1938, the Duke of Coburg, Hanns Oberlindober, and the President of the Permanent International Frontline Fighters Commission, Carlo Delcroix , visit the grave of the Unknown Soldier in Rome

The Association of German Front Fighter Associations was an association of German veterans' associations founded in October 1936 . The German Reichskriegerbund ( Kyffhäuserbund ), the National Socialist War Victims 'Association , the NS-Soldiers' Association , the NS-German Navy Association including the Navy Officers Association and the Colonial Warriors Association , the Bund der Waffenringe , the Reich Association of German Officers and the Reich Scatter Association of former professional soldiers were organized in it . The president was Duke Carl Eduard von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha until it was dissolved in 1945 .

The official task of the association was to coordinate and organize the foreign contacts of the German front-line combatants' associations. Behind the merger stood Joachim von Ribbentrop , who, as the "Commissioner for Foreign Policy Issues on the Staff of the Deputy Leader ", carried out special foreign policy assignments for Adolf Hitler and was in the process of becoming one of the defining figures of National Socialist foreign policy . Through the party office assigned to him, better known as the Ribbentrop office, Ribbentrop had already taken on the maintenance of contacts with foreign veterans' associations. There were close personal ties between the Association of German Front Fighter Associations and the Ribbentrop Office. Heinrich Stahmer acted as secretary , who also headed the front-line combatant department of the Ribbentrop office, and three other employees of the office sat on the board of the association. The Duke of Coburg was considered a confidante of Ribbentrop. Due to the foreign contacts of the front-line combatant associations, especially in France and England , Ribbentrop operated a so-called "front line combatant diplomacy". Visits by representatives of foreign veterans' associations in Germany and also to Hitler personally were arranged in order to convince the foreign country of Hitler's alleged will for peace and to build up domestic political pressure there through the moral authority of the fighters at the front.

literature

  • Roland Ray: Approaching France in the Service of Hitler? Otto Abetz and the German policy on France 1930–1942. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 3486564951 .
  • GT Waddington: 'An idyllic and unruffled atmosphere of complete Anglo-German misunderstanding'. Aspects of the Operations of the Ribbentrop Service in Great Britain, 1934–1938 . In: History 82 (1997): pp. 44-72. ISSN  0018-2648 .