Rudolf Diels

Rudolf Diels in November 1933

Rudolf Diels (born December 16, 1900 in Berghausen ; † November 18, 1957 in Katzenelnbogen ) was the first head of the Gestapo . The lawyer, who worked in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior from 1930, did not join the NSDAP until 1937 , but worked with Hermann Göring even before Hitler came to power in 1933 . After the National Socialist seizure of power he became head of the Prussian political police , from which the Gestapo emerged. After he had to vacate his post in the course of power struggles between Göring and Heinrich Himmler , he worked as regional president in Cologne and Hanover. After the end of the war , Diels appeared as a witness in the Nuremberg trials .

Life

The son of a large farmer from Berghausen im Taunus received his Abitur certificate from the Royal High School in Wiesbaden on September 24, 1918 . He then volunteered for military service and was stationed for a few weeks, at the end of the First World War, at a telecommunications unit in Hagenau , Alsace . He began his studies in Gießen in the spring of 1919 and then moved to the University of Marburg in May , specializing in political science and law. Here he also joined the Corps Rhenania-Strasbourg in Marburg . After he had passed the first legal state examination in 1922 , Diels worked as a government trainee in Kassel . He passed the second state examination in 1924, which was followed by employment as a government assessor in Neuruppin , Teltow and Peine .

Prussian Ministry of the Interior

In 1930, Diels was given a job as a Councilor in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior Carl Severing . There he was "Head of Department for Combating the Communist Movement" in the political department of the police. In the same year Diels married his first wife Hildegard Mannesmann. In the course of the Prussian strike , Diels was able to advance his career considerably by providing information services. Diels leaked information to the group around Papen and Schleicher about a meeting between State Secretary Wilhelm Abegg (Diels' superior) and KPD politicians Wilhelm Kasper and Ernst Torgler . This information - which reproduced the actual meeting in a distorted form and which had also been launched in the press - formed the basis for the claim that the Prussian government was conspiring with the Communists, and thus provided a welcome pretext for appointing a Reich Commissioner in Prussia ( Abegg- Affair ).

For his help, Diels was rewarded with an unscheduled promotion to the Upper Government Council in August 1932 - such a post was unusual at his age, and there were a number of senior officials who were passed over. At the same time Diels took over the management of the political department of the Prussian police.

According to the files of the ruling chamber from Diels' denazification files , he had been in contact with von Papen and the National Socialists since the early 1930s, and since the end of 1932 he made direct contact with Göring, whom he in turn met by providing information about communists and social democrats offered.

Chief of the Political Police

Diels in front of prisoners at the Esterwegen concentration camp in December 1933

Göring appreciated these important services from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Immediately after Hitler became Chancellor, Goering began reorganizing the police. Magnus von Levetzow became the new police president of Berlin, and Diels' competencies as head of the political department were expanded. Goering pursued the plan to separate the political department from the Prussian police and submit it directly to his Ministry of the Interior.

With the establishment of the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) on April 26, 1933, Goering had achieved his goal. Rudolf Diels became its head as inspector on the same day . In July 1933 he was promoted to Ministerial Counselor.

Although Diels later portrayed his activities as resistance in this early phase of the Nazi dictatorship, it could be shown that he cooperated willingly with the new rulers. He promoted the dovetailing between the Gestapo and the SA party thugs  - of which Diels had been a supporting member since March 1932 - for example by taking on SA leaders in the police force. At Göring's case, he campaigned for the suppression of the investigation in the Albrecht Höhler case . Höhler - imprisoned since 1930 for manslaughter of Horst Wessel - was kidnapped and murdered by the SA in September 1933 .

After the war , members of the SA roll-down command in question and the Gestapa officer Pohlenz unanimously claimed that Diels had been personally present at the murder of Höhler and had even legalized this act by issuing a transfer order to the SA. There had been not a real kidnapping, but on the highway at Freienwalde have a secret, by the aforementioned issued by Diels rendition command "legally legal rendition" held prisoner by the Gestapo to the SA.

Diels was also involved in setting up the instrument of protective custody and in the persecution of Jews . Even after the war, he made positive comments about the Nazi terror against the communists.

Conflicts that Diels fought with the SA and SS - for example about the early concentration camps  - cannot be traced back to Diels' critical attitude towards the National Socialists, but primarily to disputes over competence.

District President and SS Leader

December 18, 1933, prisoners released from the Oranienburg concentration camp ; front. Row 3rd v. left: Police Vice President Rudolf Diels

Diels' steep career suffered an abrupt setback when he became involved in the power struggle between Göring and Himmler at the end of 1933. Himmler strove for control of the entire police apparatus in Germany, including the police in the largest state of Prussia. As yet on September 15, 1933 Rank leader of Himmler as Obersturmbannführer included in the SS, Diels was dismissed as head of the Gestapo by Goering and looked for refuge in Czechoslovakia causes. His home and office were searched by the SS and SA. It was only at Göring's insistence that Diels returned to Berlin, and on November 18, 1933, was appointed Police Vice President of Berlin . On November 29, he was able to resume his previous position as Inspector of the Gestapo. The portrayal of Diels as being persecuted by the SS (especially Heydrich ) was worked out by himself after the war and can hardly be reconciled with the fact that he joined the SS in autumn 1933 (SS no. 187.116) and on 9. November 1933 was promoted honorary SS-Standartenführer .

Regardless of this, Diels seemed to have made himself unpopular with some influential personalities in the Nazi apparatus, probably also because he had helped some Nazi opponents (Severing, Löbe and Kempner ) to emigrate . On April 21, 1934 he was put into temporary retirement, and his successor as Gestapo chief was Himmler. On May 9, 1934, Diels received a post as district president in Cologne.

Diels survived the purges in the course of the Röhm affair in the summer of 1934. On the one hand, he could be sure of Göring's protection (until the end of the Third Reich ), on the other hand, he had apparently brought incriminating documents about various NSDAP leaders abroad at an early stage and was able to use them as a means of pressure.

Probably after conflicts with the Essen Gauleiter Terboven , he was transferred to Hanover as District President in July 1936. It was not until September 1, 1937 that Diels joined the NSDAP (membership number 3,955,308) and became a Gau leader of the NS-student combat aid of the province of Hanover. On August 16, 1938, his daughter Corinna was born in Konstanz . She came from a relationship with the actress Gudrun Genest and later became an actress herself. On April 20, 1939, Diels was appointed SS-Oberführer and served on the staff of SS Section IV (Hanover). In 1941 he became - again thanks to Göring - in the course of the reorganization of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring general director and chairman of the board of the holding company Reichswerke AG for inland shipping Hermann Göring . From March 1, 1942, Diels worked on the staff of the SS main office , until November 30, 1944 he had received the SS sword of honor and the SS skull ring.

Diels' first marriage had been divorced in 1936. On January 17, 1943, Diels married Ilse Göring. She was a daughter of Corvette Captain Otto Burchard (1865–1904) and his wife Frieda geb. Göring (1875–1929) and their first marriage to a half-brother of their mother and brother Hermann Göring, Karl Ernst Göring (1885–1932). After he had further difficulties with the Gestapo at the end of 1943, he was sent to Lugano for a cure at Göring's instigation . Apparently he tried to apply for asylum there, but was turned away by the Swiss immigration police . In Lugano, Diels also met Hans Bernd Gisevius again, his former competitor to head the Gestapo and one of the co-conspirators of July 20, 1944 . After his return, Diels was arrested twice by the Gestapo (spring and November 1944).

post war period

Diels was arrested on May 3, 1945 and interned until 1948. From autumn 1945 to summer 1947 he appeared as a witness in the Nuremberg trials . Diels then worked for the American military government  - he had already made contact with the CIC in 1948 . Diels emerged relatively unscathed from his denazification process in mid-1949, as he had advocates such as Paul Löbe and Ernst Torgler . Regardless of this, an arrest warrant was issued against him in the Soviet Zone on January 5, 1949, but it was not carried out in the western zones.

Also in 1949 Diels published his autobiography “Lucifer ante portas. The first chief of the Gestapo speaks ”, which was published in a nine-part series (May to July 1949) as a preprint (the book version was still being changed) in Spiegel magazine and, despite its apologetic character, is considered an important source for the early history of the Nazi dictatorship . According to the publicist and former Spiegel editor Peter-Ferdinand Koch , Fritz Tobias established the contacts between Diels - and Paul Karl Schmidt  - with Spiegel . Diels had good contacts with Rudolf Augstein and had a considerable influence on the political orientation of the Spiegel .

After the end of his internment, Diels lived alternately on his estate in Kaltenweide -Twenge ( Langenhagen ) near Hanover, which he sold in 1955, and on his parents' farm in Berghausen , which he continued to run until his fatal accident two years later. He was paid as a civil servant for reuse until his death by the state of Lower Saxony. In connection with the John affair, Diels published a desolate pamphlet against Otto John in 1954 , which brought him legal proceedings.

In 1957 the magazines Stern and Weltbild printed series about the Reichstag fire and the seizure of power , which were essentially based on Diels' information and in which the SA was made responsible for the Reichstag fire.

Diels died on a hunting trip in November 1957 after a shot went off while his hunting rifle was removed from the car.

characterization

Rudolf Diels always characterized himself as an opponent of National Socialism and referred to his persecution by the SS, especially by Heydrich. It is confirmed that he helped isolated Nazi persecutees to emigrate, which he benefited from during the denazification through exonerating statements from Paul Löbe and Carl Severing, for example . However, he also made it clear: "I did not give in to the urging of my friends to ally with those who wanted to kill Hitler, although I should have done it out of personal self-defense."

According to another opinion, Diels is said to have been an opportunist who adapts to the respective circumstances when it was beneficial to his career. During the Weimar Republic , Diels was close to liberal circles and frequented the Berlin Democratic Club , whose president was the Jewish Vice Police President Bernhard Weiß . Even before the seizure of power , Diels had got on well with Göring, whose protection he enjoyed until the end of the war. During his tenure as head of the Gestapa, Diels worked on legal regulations for protective custody and the persecution of Jews, and he was also involved in building the Sonnenburg concentration camp . After the fall of the Third Reich , Diels was already in the service of the Allied occupation administration from 1948/49.

Representatives of the thesis that the Reichstag fire was staged by the SA portray Diels as an accomplice. Allegedly, the incriminating material that he took abroad should also contain documents that identified the “real perpetrators”. Diels himself was contradicting himself in this regard. Until 1949 he believed that the SA had set fire to the Reichstag, but later changed his mind to the effect that the Dutchman van der Lubbe was the sole perpetrator. Diels did not comment on his reasons for the respective views. Shortly before his death, according to the founder of the single perpetrator thesis Fritz Tobias in the 1960s, he is said to have planned to work with the Institute for Contemporary History on a reconstruction of the events at that time. The American historian Benjamin Carter Hett contradicts this . He points out that in a letter dated July 22, 1946, Diels named the former SA leader Hans Georg Gewehr to the British delegation at the International Military Tribunal as the likely main culprit in the arson. His later, partly contradicting statements on this question were of a tactical nature.

Works

• Lucifer ante portas. Between Severing and Heydrich. Interverlag, Zurich 1949.
• The Otto John case. Göttinger Verlag-Anstalt, Göttingen 1954.

literature

• Christoph Graf : Political police between democracy and dictatorship. The development of the Prussian Political Police from the state security organ to the secret state police office of the Third Reich. Colloquium, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-7678-0585-5 .
• Klaus Wallbaum : The defector. Rudolf Diels (1900–1957) - the first Gestapo chief of the Hitler regime. . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59818-4 . (Also: Dissertation, University of Hannover 2009)

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Diels  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Rudolf Diels in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ School-leaving certificate of August 24, 1918 (Moscow Military Archives, Fund Reichsinnenministerium, 720k-5-146; in: Kalus Wallbaum, Der Überläufer, Peter Lang Verlag Frankfurt / Main 2010, p. 43).
2. ↑ The Night of the Long Knives ... did not take place . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1949 ( online - first episode; further episodes in No. 21 to 28).
3. ↑ Peter-Ferdinand Koch: Unmasked - double agents. Names, facts, evidence. Ecowin-Verlag, Salzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-59818-4 , p. 219.
4. ^ Klaus Wallbaum: The defector: Rudolf Diels (1900-1957), the first Gestapo chief of the Hitler regime. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59818-4 , p. 352.
5. ^ The Gestapo chief: Rudolf Diels. from: stadtmagazinlangenhagen.de , accessed on May 25, 2015.
6. ↑ Documentation of his great-nephew for the 50th anniversary of the "Hof am Buchenbusch", Berghausen
7. ^ Klaus Wallbaum: The defector: Rudolf Diels (1900-1957), the first Gestapo chief of the Hitler regime. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-59818-4 , p. 344.
8. ^ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer ante portas. Between Severing and Heydrich. Interverlag, Zurich 1949, p. 308.
9. ^ Fritz Tobias : The Reichstag fire. Legends and Reality. Grote, Rastatt 1962, p. 529.
10. ^ Benjamin Carter Hett: Burning the Reichstag. An investigation into the Third Reich's enduring mystery. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-932232-9 , pp. 191 f.