Werner Naumann

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Werner Naumann (born June 16, 1909 in Guhrau , Silesia ; † October 25, 1982 in Lüdenscheid ) was a German economist and National Socialist , SS brigade leader , state secretary in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and previously personal assistant to Joseph Goebbels . In 1953, Naumann was instrumental in a conspiracy in which a group of former Nazi officials tried to infiltrate the North Rhine-Westphalian state association of the FDP .

Early years

The son of a district court counselor joined the NSDAP in 1928 and initially achieved the rank of Oberführer in the SA by 1934 . During the internal party clean-up in the course of the so-called " Röhm Putsch " he was under the protection of Heinrich Himmler . At first he was excluded from the NSDAP, but rehabilitated in 1937.

Naumann studied law and political science in Geneva and Breslau. In Breslau he was in 1936 with a thesis on the problems of income policy for Dr. rer. nat. PhD and then senior assistant at the University of Wroclaw . There he took over the management of the local Reich Propaganda Office in 1937 . Goebbels noticed him with the organization of a "singing festival" and in 1937 he brought him to Berlin. In 1938, Reich Propaganda Minister Goebbels was appointed personal advisor.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Naumann was a non-commissioned officer in the Air Force and later promoted to lieutenant. In the spring of 1940 he switched to the Waffen SS and took part in the Western campaign , the Balkan campaign and the attack on the Soviet Union . After being seriously wounded, he returned to the Propaganda Ministry in 1942.

In 1941/42 Goebbels, through intervention with Hitler and against the resistance of the ministerial bureaucracy , pushed through Naumann's promotion to ministerial director (October 1941) or ministerial director (1942). After Leopold Gutterer's resignation on April 22, 1944, Goebbels appointed him acting State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . At the same time, Naumann acted as a special representative for Volkssturm issues . He also belonged to the so-called " Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS " and did several military service in the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler during the war . In 1943 he was promoted to SS brigade leader, his highest SS rank.

Naumann was said to have been one of the few outstanding personalities in the Propaganda Ministry. Employees reported that it was Naumann who encouraged Goebbels' fanaticism. At the same time, Naumann secretly collected material that Goebbels had lost faith in Hitler and the " final victory ". He made contact with Heinrich Himmler and Martin Bormann in an effort to overthrow and replace Goebbels. Magda Goebbels dedicated “love poems” to Naumann in the last year of the war; she had fallen in love with him.

In Hitler's political will , Naumann was named Goebbels' successor. In fact, Naumann was the last Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Naumann stayed in the Führerbunker until Hitler's death , which he did not leave until May 2, 1945, together with Martin Bormann and Arthur Axmann . Instead of going to the executive government of the Reich under Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz in Flensburg - Mürwik , Naumann went into hiding for the time being. Before that, Naumann had commanded the Volkssturm Regiment Wilhelmplatz I as regiment commander, in which the employees of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda were drafted into service.

After the war

From 1945 to 1949 Naumann lived under an assumed name in southern Germany without being recognized. He completed a journeyman's examination as a bricklayer with top marks. In 1950 he joined the Düsseldorf import-export company Cominbel (German-Belgian), the owner of which Herbert Lucht had previously been the head of the Wehrmacht propaganda branch in Paris. He lived in the Villa Luchts, whose phone was tapped as part of the Naumann affair. Lucht belonged to one of the personal "nodes" of the "National Socialist Network" in the FDP.

The so-called Düsseldorfer Kreis was formed around Naumann , which included Werner Best , the former organizer of the Einsatzgruppen and representative of Heydrich .

On January 15, 1953, the British occupying forces announced that they had uncovered a conspiracy by former leading Nazi officials and arrested the ringleaders. The group around Naumann ("Gauleiter-Kreis" or Naumann-Kreis ) had infiltrated the North Rhine-Westphalian state association of the FDP and had reached influential positions. According to the historian Ulrich Herbert , the people involved were concerned with a “rehabilitation of National Socialism in general” and “their own person in particular”. The reestablishment of an authoritarian power state also belonged to the political ideas. On August 1, 1953, Naumann was released from custody. The 2nd Holiday Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice had previously closed the proceedings against the accused.

The network around Naumann included numerous former Nazi functionaries, such as the former head of the radio department in the Reich Ministry of Propaganda , Hans Fritzsche , the former head of the Anti-Comintern department , Eberhard Taubert , the SS-Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser , the former HJ area leader Horst Huisgen , temporarily regional manager the FDP, the former head of broadcasting in the Propaganda Ministry, Wolfgang Diewerge , and Ernst Achenbach , who was involved in the deportation of Jews as an attaché to the embassy in Paris.

Naumann failed in this endeavor, as did his leading candidacy for the right-wing German Reich Party in Lower Saxony in autumn 1953 . He was later hired by the industrialist and stepson of Goebbels Harald Quandt as director of Busch-Jaeger Metallwerk GmbH Lüdenscheid.

literature

  • Joachim Joesten : Dr. Naumann's conspiracy, pattern of the world-wide crypto-nazi plot , New York 1953
  • Lew Besymenski , In the footsteps of Martin Bormann , 1965
  • Ulrich Herbert , Best. Biographical studies on radicalism, worldview and reason 1903–1989 . 2nd edition, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8012-5019-9 (Habilitation, 1992, Fernuniversität Hagen)
  • Norbert Frei , politics of the past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past . 2nd Edition. Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42557-7
  • Norbert Frei, German program. How North Rhine-Westphalia's FDP invited tried and tested Nazis to infiltrate the party in the early 1950s . In: The Time No. 23 BC May 29, 2002. p. 82
  • David K. Yelton, Hitler's Volkssturm. The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany 1945-1945 , Lawrence (Kansas) 2002, ISBN 0-7006-1192-4
  • Rüdiger Jungbluth , The Quandts. Your quiet rise to the most powerful economic dynasty in Germany . Campus publishing house, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 2002, ISBN 3-593-36940-0
  • Ernst Klee , Werner Naumann . Entry in ders .: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 . P. 429
  • Stefan Krings, The Propaganda Ministry. Joseph Goebbels and his specialists . In: Lutz Hachmeister , Michael Kloft (ed.): The Goebbels Experiment. Propaganda and politics . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-05879-2 , pp. 29-48
  • Franz Menges:  Naumann, Werner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 773 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Kristian Buchna, National Collection on the Rhine and Ruhr. Friedrich Middelhauve and the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP 1945–1953 . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2010, 248 pages. (Holger Löttel, April 2011: Review by H-Soz-u-Kult).
  • Günter J. Trittel, "You can't betray an ideal ..." Werner Naumann - Nazi ideology and political practice in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1300-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Niels Beintker: Enemy of European Integration. Günter J. Trittel: "You can't betray an ideal ..." , July 8, 2013. ( online at deutschlandfunk.de ).
  2. ↑ Beate Baldow: Episode or Danger? The Naumann affair. Unprinted dissertation, FU Berlin 2012, p. 21, footnote 115 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Ulrich Herbert : Best. Biographical studies on radicalism, world view and reason 1903-1989. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-68860-7 , p. 653
  4. ↑ Beate Baldow: Episode or Danger? The Naumann affair. Unprinted dissertation, FU Berlin 2012, p. 22, footnotes 115–122 ( online ).
  5. ^ Willi A. Boelcke: War Propaganda 1939–1941. Secret ministerial conferences in the Reich Propaganda Ministry. DVA, Stuttgart 1966, p. 55 f.
  6. ↑ Beate Baldow: Episode or Danger? The Naumann affair. Unprinted dissertation, FU Berlin 2012, p. 23, footnote 123 ( online ).
  7. ^ Naumann dismissal - The offer of the CDU. In .: Der Spiegel from August 5, 1953.
  8. ↑ Marie-Luise Recker: The foreign policy of the Third Reich. 2nd edition expanded to include a supplement, 2010 R. Oldenbourg Verlag… Chapter: Back Matter. Approaching France in the service of Hitler? online ( memento of September 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).
  9. ^ New York Times January 15, 1953
  10. ↑ Der Spiegel 32/1953: The CDU's offer
  11. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 429
personal data
SURNAME Naumann, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist and National Socialist, SS brigade leader and personal advisor to Joseph Goebbels
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Guhrau , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1982
Place of death Ludenscheid