Richard Schulze-Kossens

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Richard Schulze-Kossens (born October 2, 1914 in Spandau , † July 3, 1988 in Düsseldorf ) was a German SS officer. He was best known as a temporary SS adjutant to Adolf Hitler , as adjutant Joachim von Ribbentrops and as head of the SS Junk School in Bad Tölz .

Live and act

Schulze-Kossens (back row, far left) as a witness when the " German-Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty " was signed on September 28, 1939 in Moscow.

Schulze-Kossens was born Richard Schulze in Spandau in 1914. After attending elementary school and grammar school, which he graduated from high school in 1933 , he joined the SS in November 1934 (SS no. 264.059) after he had already become a member of the Hitler Youth in 1931 . There he first came to the 6th SS Standard in Berlin, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , before he was assigned to the SS disposal force. This was followed by participation in a leader candidate course in Jüterbog (November 1934 to March 1935) and, from April 1935 to February 1936, attending the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz. After attending a platoon leader course in Dachau , Schulze took over the command of the II. Sturmbann of the SS-Totenkopfstandarte Elbe in Lichtenburg as platoon leader , before he switched to the staff of SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Eicke in March 1937 , where he stayed until July. During this time he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937, probably under the influence of Eicke .

From July 1937 to November 1938 Schulze-Kossens held the post of adjutant of the 3rd SS-Totenkopfstandard "Thuringia", in order to then act in the same unit until April as a Hundred Leader.

In April 1939 Schulze came to the SS main office in Berlin, where he became August Heissmeyer's adjutant . On June 8, 1939, he was appointed adjutant to the then Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , whom he accompanied to Moscow in August of the same year on the occasion of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact .

In February 1940 Schulze was transferred to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and in April was entrusted with the command of the 2nd company of the troops. After being wounded in June 1940 during the western campaign , he was again employed in the von Ribbentrop staff until August, after which he was again in charge of his SS command from August 1940 to August 1941. In 1941 he took part in the Balkan campaign and in the German attack on the Soviet Union , after being wounded (bullet in the left upper arm, shrapnel in the right forearm) in October 1941 as an orderly officer (SS adjutant) on Adolf Hitler's staff he remained under various rankings (including from October 1941 to October 1942 as Ordonnanzoffizier, October 1942 to October 1943 as "personal adjutant") until December 1944. His main residence during these years was Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, the so-called Wolfsschanze . In this context, as a representative of the SS, he took part in almost all briefings at the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze from August 1942 and took Hitler's orders concerning the Waffen-SS in order to forward them to Himmler.

In the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Schulze-Kossens was one of the 14 people who were present during the bomb attack by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg on Hitler in the briefing barrack at the Wolfsschanze headquarters where Stauffenberg detonated his bomb. In the late summer of 1944 Schulze-Kossens was promoted to Obersturmbannführer and appointed commander of the SS Junkerschule in Bad Tölz in Bavaria, a training center for the future "Führer elite" of the SS, which he led from January to March 1945. After he had already led the 2nd Battalion of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 25 of the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" in the Ardennes offensive from December 1944 to January 1945 , Schulze was appointed commander of the 38th SS in March 1945 -Genadier Division "Nibelungen" , which he led until March and which was the last SS unit set up before the end of the war .

After the war , Schulze-Kossens spent three years in 13 American internment camps. In 1948 he appeared as a witness in the context of the American military trial against Ribbentrop's State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker . In 1951 Schulze-Kossens was - alongside Otto Kumm , Felix Steiner and Paul Hausser  - one of the four founders of the mutual aid community of soldiers of the former Waffen SS (HIAG). In 1985 Schulze-Kossens was on the advisory board of the HIAG federal board.

After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, Schulze-Kossens worked as a businessman and writer. In the 1970s he became known to a wider public through his participation in some documentaries about the time of National Socialism, such as the British production Inside the Third Reich . His literary work - which essentially revolved around the history of the Waffen-SS and especially the Junk School in Bad Tölz, which he directed - was seen by the majority of critics as "classic apologetic distortions of history". During the Bitburg controversy in 1985, Schulze-Kossens complained to Heinz Höhne about Höhne's publication in Spiegel . The historian Karsten Wilke sees Schulze-Kossens' concern in "countering the interpretation of the past based on personal experience with an apology by the Waffen-SS and National Socialism with a reading of the Nazi era that focused on the crimes." In the 1980s Schulze stepped up -Kossens also emerged through his publicly expressed doubts about the authenticity of the so-called " Hitler diaries ".

Looking at the Waffen SS, Schulze-Kossens insisted that it had nothing to do with atrocities. However, he refused to take part in interviews on the subject, believing that trying to distance himself from the charge that the SS had committed atrocities would give the erroneous impression that he was trying to cover something up. He also said that he could not allow "our troops [...] to be portrayed as [a] Soldateska" who had "committed a series of war crimes".

Pomorin, Junge and Biemann also insinuated in their book Secret Channels - On the Trail of the Nazi Mafia that Schulze-Kossens was a "main figure in the international relations of former SS members". In the vicinity of his old place of work in Bad Tölz, for example, he led conferences of former SS people: "In October 1976, for example, such a meeting with 600 former SS people took place there." In addition, Schulze-Kossens had "decisive" after the war Leveraging sat in the underground movement ”. Incidentally, the HIAG surrounds him with “a lot of secrecy”, which “has a reason”, because: “Schulze-Kossens is considered one of the agents of ODESSA .”

In 1988 Schulze-Kossens died of lung cancer. His funeral was attended by more than 100 former SS members, according to the New York Times in an article dated July 11, 1988, which cited a report from the world, including Hitler's adjutant Otto Günsch and Himmler's helper Werner Grothmann , the one by two former officers who gave eulogies.

Schulze-Kossens as a witness in Holocaust research

In Holocaust research , Schulze-Kossens has been tried on various occasions as a source of the thesis that the Holocaust was actually a "Himmler's project" that Hitler knew nothing about. David Irving , the most prominent proponent of this claim, points out in several of his books that Schulze-Kossens attended all of Hitler's meetings with Himmler from 1942 to 1944 and testified to him that they never discussed or even discussed a murder of the Jews had only been mentioned. On June 9, 1977, he even brought Schulze-Kossens with him to David Frost's talk show, which was very popular on English television at the time , in order to let him "bear witness" in this sense.

The historian Richard Evans counters Irving's reference to Schulze-Kossens against a more detailed questioning Schulze-Kossens himself carried out later: In an expert report on David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial Evans writes: “Richard Schulze-Kossens said to me that he was unaware that Irving had claimed in his book that Hitler knew nothing [of the extermination of the Jews]. [To correct this, he testified to Evans] 'I thought that it [Irving's book] would only establish that Hitler had not given the order to be exterminated. Of course you have to come to the conclusion that he knew about it - I can't believe, after all, I knew Himmler that he would have carried out [a measure of this magnitude] on his own. ”According to Schulze-Kossens - unlike von Irving - only the (in itself rather improbable) assertion that Hitler and Himmler never discussed the extermination of the Jews, but expressly admits that Hitler, regardless of whether he talked to Himmler about it or not, of the large-scale Knew of murders against the Jews.

family

Schulze-Kossens had a younger brother, Hans-Georg Schulze (born September 11, 1917 in Berlin; † July 27, 1941 near Wlashin), who served as SS-Obersturmführer (SS No. 270.844) in the 1st Company of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler fell in Russia.

After the war , Schulze-Kossens married.

Promotion levels and war awards

Promotion levels: SS candidate (November 9, 1934), SS Junker (April 1, 1935), SS-Standartenjunker (November 9, 1935), SS-Standartenoberjunker (February 10, 1936), SS-Untersturmführer (April 20, 1936 ), SS-Obersturmführer (November 9, 1938), SS-Hauptsturmführer of the Waffen-SS (August 1, 1940), SS-Sturmbannführer of the Waffen-SS (February 24, 1943).

War awards: Iron Cross 2nd Class (1939), Iron Cross 1st Class (1940); German Cross in Gold as SS-Hauptsturmführer (December 26, 1941); Melee clasp 1st level (bronze); Infantry assault badge in bronze; Wound Badge (1939 in black, 1941 in bronze); Golden Hitler Youth Badge of Honor; Honor sword of the Reichsführer SS , skull ring of the SS ; Julleuchter of the SS ; Military Order for Bravery in War 4th Class (Bulgarian Order), Order of the Freedom Cross 4th Class (Finland).

Fonts

  • Richard Schulze-Kossens: Military leaders of the Waffen-SS. The Junker Schools . Osnabrück 1982. (Second, expanded edition, 1987) Munin-Verlag .
  • Richard Schulze-Kossens and Heinz Ertel: European volunteers in the picture . 1986. Munin-Verlag.
  • Richard Schulze-Kossens: Speech by Richard Schulze-Kossens for the 1978 meeting of former Junkers , slea (published around 1988).
  • Richard Schulze-Kossens and Dermot Bradley (eds.): Activity report of the chief of the Army Personnel Office General of the Infantry Rudolf Schmundt. October 1, 1942 - October 29, 1944. Continued by Wilhelm Burgdorf . Osnabrück 1984.

Videos

  • Eva Braun - Hitler's lover. The private film collection of Eva Braun , Filmlabor Beeken 1992. (Commentator)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Affidavit made on January 13, 1948 in Nuremberg. Printed in: Felix Steiner: The Army of the Outlaws . 1963, p. 128.
  2. ↑ Obituary . In: New York Times , July 11, 1988
  3. ↑ Reinhard Spitzy : So we have gambled away the Reich, 1987, p. 500.
  4. ↑ Heinz Höhne: That is the mentality of a butcher . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1985, pp. 29-32 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The mutual aid community (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic . Schöningh, Paderborn / Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77235-0 , p. 395 f . (also dissertation, Bielefeld University, 2010).
  6. ↑ Terry Dolgsworthy: A Sociological and Criminological Approach to Understanding Evil. A Case-study of Waffen-SS-Actions on the Eastern Front During World War 2 1941-45 .
  7. ↑ Jürgen Pomorin, Reinhard Junge and Georg Biemann: Secret channels - the Nazi mafia on the trail . Dortmund 1982.
  8. ↑ fpp.co.uk Also Armin D. Lehmann refers to the fact that Schulze-Kossens would have been on record that "even in his most secret conclabes with Himmler, the extermination of the Jews which never discussed", compare to Hitler's bunker. A Boy Soldier's Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer's Last Days . 2005, p. 97.
  9. ↑ See: David Irving: Hitler and Holocaust Denial . Electronic Edition (Document 500), hdot.org In the original it says: "Richard Schulze-Kossens said that he did not realize that Irving claimed in his book that Hitler didn't know: [quoting Schulze-Kossens] 'I thought it [ Irving's book] just says that Hitler didn't give the order for the extermination. One must of course conclude that he knew - I can't believe, knowing Himmler, that he would have acted off his own bat [...]. '"
personal data
SURNAME Schulze-Kossens, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schulze, Richard (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS officer
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Spandau
DATE OF DEATH 3rd July 1988
Place of death Dusseldorf