Walther Wüster

While Walther Wüster was in charge of the information department at the Foreign Office, the touring exhibition Le Juif et la France was shown in occupied France from September 1941 to August 1942 and attracted more than 300,000 visitors.

Walther Wüster , also Walter (born April 28, 1901 in Halle (Saale) ; † October 9, 1949 in Thüngersheim ) was a German diplomat in World War II .

Life

Walther Wüster studied mechanical engineering and electrical engineering at the Technical University of Hanover , the Technical University of Munich and the University of Stuttgart . From 1925 he worked at Junkers Motorenbau and Junkers Flugzeugwerk and at AEG , from 1932 to 1934 he headed the company X. Herberger, his father-in-law's flax factory and linen weaving mill in Olching .

Wüster had been a functionary in the Jungsturm of the National Youth Movement from 1921 to 1928 . In 1931 he joined the NSDAP . From 1934 he was a member of the Propaganda Department of the Gaus Munich. From 1935 he was managing director of the German-Italian Society and deputy head of the Gau propaganda in Munich. As such, he initiated a series of traveling exhibitions, including from August 2 to October 23, 1938 The Eternal Jew .

In 1938 he became the Bavarian district commissioner for the Ribbentrop office and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and headed the Bavarian regional association of the Association for German Cultural Relations Abroad . In the Ribbentrop office he was considered a specialist in Italy and met Martin Luther . He was appointed by the Ribbentrop office as main advisor south. In this capacity he visited Spain and Portugal to get an overview of the propaganda situation. From September 1939 he was involved in building up the Reich Propaganda Office in occupied Krakow from the Ribbentrop office ; in December 1939, on orders from Ribbentrop, he accompanied the DAF leader Robert Ley to Italy. In 1940 he became consul general in Milan and built up the cultural department at the embassy of the German Reich in fascist Italy . In Rome he had works of art acquired for Ribbentrop at the expense of the embassy. Ribbentrop had put Wüster in charge of German propaganda in Bratislava , Slovakia. He received special assignments from Ribbentrop, so from August 1940 he was " adviser to Jews " in Slovakia and subsequently in Romania , Hungary , Serbia and Greece . From June 15, 1941 to April 1943, he headed the information department of the Foreign Office . In this function he negotiated with Mohammad Iqbal Shedai in Rome in 1941 about a closer connection to German foreign policy and the move from Rome to Berlin. The information department supported the Indian with money. On May 21, 1943 he became consul general in Naples. On September 11, 1943, he reported on the Axis case from Rome . On September 16, 1943, he reported in a telegram to the Foreign Office of the confiscation of Albanian gold and banknotes in Italy and on September 20, 1943 of the constitution of the government of the Italian Social Republic .

From 1944 to 1945 he headed the district office of the Foreign Office's alternative point in Krummhübel .

Wüster had been married to Betty Herberger since 1928 and they had four children.

literature

Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Vol. 5: T – Z, supplements. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , pp. 337–338.

Web links

Interrogation of Walther Wüster in 1947 (PDF; 1.0 MB) at the Institute for Contemporary History , Munich

Individual evidence

↑ Brigitte Zuber: Great power dream in the prayer room. Which exhibitions Munich schoolchildren visited in 1933–1943 for each class. Archived from the original on November 20, 2012 ; accessed on November 27, 2015 .
↑ Foreign Office / Political Archive and Historical Unit: Files on German Foreign Policy. 1918-1945. From the archive of the Foreign Office . Göttingen u. a. 1950–1995, here: Series D. Volume VIII, Document 436, pp. 399-401.
↑ Tatjana Tönsmeyer : The Third Reich and Slovakia 1939–1945: political everyday life , 2002, p. 358.
↑ Jan Kuhlmann: Subhas Chandra Bose and the India policy of the Axis powers . Schiler, Berlin 2003, pp. 183-184, ISBN 3-89930-064-5 ( digitized version ).

^ Martin Seckendorf and Günter Keber: The occupation policy of German fascism in Yugoslavia . 1992.

↑ Wüster reported: “downright disgusting. . . haggled for ministerial chairs ”26. Finally, the list was finished“ according to plan ”by noon on September 22nd, and Mussolini approved it that evening at his office in Bavaria.

personal data
SURNAME	Wüster, Walther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Wüster, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German diplomat in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH	April 28, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Halle (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH	October 9, 1949
Place of death	Thüngersheim

[1] Brigitte Zuber: Great power dream in the prayer room. Which exhibitions Munich schoolchildren visited in 1933–1943 for each class. Archived from the original on November 20, 2012 ; accessed on November 27, 2015 .

[2] Foreign Office / Political Archive and Historical Unit: Files on German Foreign Policy. 1918-1945. From the archive of the Foreign Office . Göttingen u. a. 1950–1995, here: Series D. Volume VIII, Document 436, pp. 399-401.

[3] Tatjana Tönsmeyer : The Third Reich and Slovakia 1939–1945: political everyday life , 2002, p. 358.

[4] Jan Kuhlmann: Subhas Chandra Bose and the India policy of the Axis powers . Schiler, Berlin 2003, pp. 183-184, ISBN 3-89930-064-5 ( digitized version ).

[5] Martin Seckendorf and Günter Keber: The occupation policy of German fascism in Yugoslavia . 1992.

[6] Wüster reported: “downright disgusting. . . haggled for ministerial chairs ”26. Finally, the list was finished“ according to plan ”by noon on September 22nd, and Mussolini approved it that evening at his office in Bavaria.