Walter Hewel

Walter Hewel (1940)

Walter or Walther Hewel (born March 25, 1904 , according to other information January 2, 1904 in Cologne , † May 2, 1945 by suicide in Berlin ) was a state secretary in the Foreign Office and SS brigade leader .

Live and act

Youth and education

Hewel's father was a partner in a cocoa factory. Walter Hewel was the only child of Anton and Elsa Hewel, née Freiin von Lindenfels. He attended the Realgymnasium in Cologne and passed the Abitur in March 1923. After a six-month internship in a mechanical engineering company, he studied industrial engineering at the Technical University of Munich from the winter semester of 1923 . At the beginning of 1925 he worked as a commercial trainee in a trading company in Hamburg. In 1926 he completed a one-year language stay in Great Britain. He then traveled to the Dutch East Indies , now Indonesia, as an employee of the British plantation company Anglo-Dutch Plantations of Java Limited . In 1936, Hewel returned to Germany after traveling through Far East Asia for another four months. Hewel became a member of the NSDAP / AO and worked as a department head, head of the economic office and press officer of the NSDAP / AO Java Dutch China.

Hitler putsch

Walter Hewel (back row, third from left) among the other defendants in the "Little Hitler Trial", April 1924.

During the Hitler putsch on November 9, 1923, Hewel was a standard bearer of the Adolf Hitler raid and took part in all of Hitler's raids during the putsch. Hewel was sentenced to one year and three months imprisonment and a fine of 30  gold marks for aiding and abetting high treason . The sentence has been suspended. In 1924 probation was suspended. In the Landsberg prison he was a fellow prisoner of Hitler. On December 30, 1924, he was pardoned.

Career in the Foreign Office and the SS

In February 1938 he became head of the personal staff of Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop . From June 1938 Hewel was Legation Councilor 1st class. In 1938, Hewel became the Foreign Office's liaison officer to the Führer and Reich Chancellor. From April 1939, Hewel was the lecturer of the Legation Council, from September 28, 1940, envoy 1st class, and from March 1943, ambassador at special disposal with the rank of State Secretary. On September 12, 1937, Hewel became an SS honorary leader with the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer . In 1938 he was SS-Standartenführer , in 1940 SS-Oberführer , in 1942 SS-Brigadführer. In addition, Hewel was from 1936 East Asia advisor for the NSDAP / AO, from 1937 main advisor for German-British affairs in the Ribbentrop office .

As a liaison officer in the Führer Headquarters (FHQ), Hewel belonged to Hitler's immediate environment. He kept a diary, which was probably written in Bahasa Indonesia for camouflage . From July 1941, SA-Standartenführer Werner Koeppen took over the parallel role to Hewel in the FHQ for the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories .

Marie Wassiltschikow wrote in her diary on November 10, 1940: “Hewel is the only one from the“ inner ”government circle who occasionally appears in other circles. Some seem to have the hope of being able to exert a positive influence through him. ”By this, the Russian Marie Wassiltschikow, who was living in Berlin at the time, meant non-National Socialist circles.

To 2 May 1945, he was in Hitler's bunker and took on the run to avoid Soviet captivity in the Malzbierbrauerei Groterjan in Prinzenallee in Berlin-Wedding by simultaneously bite a cyanide capsule and shooting life.

Archival material

Hewel's “hand files” are in the Political Archives of the Foreign Office. In the 1970s, Alexandre Kum'a Ndumbe III. Gained access to them and used them in 1980 for his dissertation Hitler voulait l'Afrique .

literature

• Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X .

Movies

In the film The Downfall Walter Hewel was portrayed by Alexander Held .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main, Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2005 ISBN 3-596-16048-0 . Page 252
2. ↑ http://www.der-untergang.de/who-is-who.php3
3. ↑ Martin Vogt: Autumn 1941 in the "Führer Headquarters" . Werner Koeppens reports to his Minister Alfred Rosenberg, Koblenz 2002, p. XVIII.
4. ^ The Berlin diaries of Marie "Missie" Wassiltschikow 1940-1945. Goldmann Verlag without location information, 2nd edition December 1991, p. 51.
5. ↑ The emergency hospital under the Reich Chancellery - A doctor experiences Hitler's end in Berlin , VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, pages 172-176, 263
6. ↑ Kum'a N'dumbe III .: Les plans secrètes pour une Afrique fasciste 1933–1945. In: Hitler voulait l'Afrique. L'Harmattan, Paris 1980, ISBN 2-85802-140-6 . (Additional diss. Phil. University of Lyon ) (German: What did Hitler want in Africa? Iko-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1993, ISBN 3-88939-104-4 .)