SS standard Kurt Eggers
The SS standard Kurt Eggers was set up in January 1940 as the SS war reporter company . Their platoons , consisting of war reporters , journalists, and also writers, were assigned to the fighting units of the Waffen-SS . In August 1941 the company became the SS war reporter division. Since the beginning of the Russian campaign there have been numerous front formations of the Waffen SS; more war correspondents were needed than before.
On October 31, 1943, the unit was named after the writer Kurt Eggers , who died in August 1943 .
Foreign volunteers from the Waffen-SS also served in the standard , including the American Martin James Monti and the British Benson Railton Metcalf Freeman , John Leister , the son of the poet Knut Hamsun , Arild Hamsun, the son of the Icelandic President Björn Björnsson and Francis Paul Matton. Unit leader was SS-Standartenführer Gunter d'Alquen .
In 1943 the unit strength was 141 men and increased to 1180 men by 1944.
A member of the SS Standard Kurt Egger was convicted of war crimes: Karl Gustav Lerche was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1955 for the shooting of a British prisoner of war. The crime occurred on September 24, 1944 after SS officers had a drinking bout at the accommodation of the SS unit Skorpion-West in Arnhem .
A well-known member of the SS standard Kurt Eggers was the later editor of the magazine Der Stern , Henri Nannen , who worked in the Südstern subunit in Italy until 1945. He published products by his SS comrade Paul Carell , including in his own book publishing company . B. 1964: “The desert foxes. With Rommel in Africa ”, a glorification by Erwin Rommel . Also Willem Sassen , who in Argentina recordings of Adolf Eichmann Customized and transcripts, among others, the Star sold belonged to the standard.
The journalist Hermann Pirich , the writer and journalist Joachim Fernau and the painter Wilhelm Petersen also worked as war correspondents in the standard. The Reichsfilmdramaturg Carl-Dieter von Reichmeister also belonged to the SS standard .
structure
Rod
- adjutant
- Liaison officer at SS-FHA and OKW
- Ordinance officer
- Standard Engineer
- Censorship officer
- Group leader abroad
- Group leader word
- Group leader picture
- Group leader film
- Head of the Film Unit
- Group leader broadcasting
- Group leader RF technology (RF = broadcasting)
- Group leader RF broadcast
- Group leader sign
Administration department
- Accommodation management
Group word
- Liaison Leader Press
Group picture
- Image technology department
- Image handwriting department
- Image archive section
Group broadcasting
- Broadcasting division
- Broadcasting Unit
- Section Russia-North
- Russia-South section
- Section of Latvia and Latvian Units
- Southeast section
- West section
- Special company southeast
- Oslo Command
- Copenhagen Command
- French command
- Brussels Command
- Southeast Command
- Adria command
Replacement company
- Training group
Group combat propaganda
- 2 × SS combat propaganda train
Special company "Südstern"
- "Scorpio East"
- "Skorpion West" (Upper Rhine)
- Company "winter fairy tale"
Labelling
The soldiers wore Kurt Egger's sleeve stripe on their left arm .
literature
- Ortwin Buchbender: The sounding ore . German propaganda against the Red Army in World War II. Seewald-Verlag, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-512-00473-3 .
- Georg Schmidt-Scheeder: Reporter from Hell . War correspondent in World War II. 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1990. (New edition, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-02237-0 .)
- Miriam Y. Arani: “And the photos sparked criticism” . The " Wehrmacht Exhibition ", its critics and the new concept. A contribution from a photo-historical-source-critical point of view. In: Photo history . Contributions to the history and aesthetics of photography. Issue 85/86 (2002). Jonas Verlag, Marburg 2002, pp. 96–124. Available online: archive
- Kurt Eggers. From the Freikorps to the Waffen SS . Winkelried-Verlag, Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-938392-00-3 ( indexed in Germany by the BPjM ).
- Eric Kaden: The word as a weapon. The propaganda war of the Waffen SS and the SS standard "Kurt Eggers" . Winkelried-Verlag, Dresden 2009, ISBN 978-3-938392-19-5 .
- Werner H. Krause: SS standard "Kurt Eggers" - the propaganda unit of the Waffen SS. Report and documentation. , Druffel & Vowinckel-Verlag , Stegen am Ammersee 2009.
- Jochen Lehnhardt: The Waffen-SS: Birth of a Legend. Himmler's warriors in Nazi propaganda . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78688-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Eric Kaden : The word as a weapon, Der Propagandakrieg der Waffen-SS and the SS standard 'Kurt Eggers' , Dresden 2009, pp. 57 f., 149
- ^ Regional Court Munich I , December 16, 1955 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XIII, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1975, No. 424, pp. 443–450 Subject matter of the proceedings: Shooting of a British prisoner of war after a feast with SS officers in the accommodation of the SS unit 'Skorpion-West' in Arnhem ( Memento des original from 4. March 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) sueddeutsche.de
- ↑ Bettina Stangneth in taz.de
- ↑ Peter Wapnewski : Joachim Fernau and the German soul , in: Die Zeit , February 3, 1967
