Wilhelm Zander

Wilhelm Zander (born April 22, 1911 in Saarbrücken , † September 27, 1974 in Munich ) was a German political functionary ( NSDAP ) and SS leader, most recently with the rank of Standartenführer .

Life and activity

After attending school, Zander worked in the timber trade and as a correspondent. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 552.659) and the Schutzstaffel (SS) (SS number 27.789). In the SS he worked in the personnel department of the SS leadership from 1933. In 1935 he was used as an adjutant in the SS Upper Section North and from 1936 as an adjutant in the SS headquarters. In 1934 Zander was listed as a leader in the staff of the Reichsführer-SS , and in 1935 in the staff of the SS main office . From 1936 he belonged to the staff of the SS-Oberabschnitt Mitte and from 1937 to 1938 to the staff of the SS-Hauptamt.

In 1937 Zander was assigned to the staff of the Deputy Leader (SSdF) and promoted there to Reichsamtsleiter in 1940. The SSdF was the central control instrument for the supervision and management of the entire party apparatus of the NSDAP. Zander was placed at the SSdF's Martin Bormann , the staff leader of this facility, as adjutant and was one of Bormann's closest employees. In the meantime he was a member of various staffs of the Waffen SS from 1941 to 1943 . Zander was promoted to senior division manager in 1943. In the final phase of World War II , Zander took over the leadership of Group II W in the party office of the NSDAP - under which the SSdF has been operating since 1941.

In his position as a close associate of Bormann, Zander belonged to the group of people who spent the last days of Adolf Hitler's life in April 1945 in the Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery. After Hitler's political will was written on April 29, 1945, three copies of the text were given to von Bormann's shop stewards, who were given the task of transporting the text out of the capital, which was about to be taken over by the Red Army , in order to use this document for the To preserve posterity. Bormann chose Zander as one of these three emissaries. In addition to Hitler's will, he received an accompanying letter from Bormann and the original certificate of Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun . His task was to hand over these documents, if possible, to Hitler's designated successor as head of state, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz .

Zander then actually succeeded in penetrating the siege ring that the Red Army had laid around the government district and escaping from occupied Berlin. He made his way west, but refrained from going to Schleswig-Holstein , where Dönitz resided. Instead he hid the documents in a suitcase that he deposited in Tegernsee and then went into hiding under the false name of Friedrich Wilhelm Paustin . On December 28, 1945, he was finally identified and arrested by the American occupation authorities, and his copy of Hitler's will was discovered and confiscated. The texts of the documents found at Zander's were published soon after, in January 1946 in the Anglo-Saxon press. After his release, Zander lived in Munich .

Promotions

• June 12, 1933: SS-Sturmführer
• January 30, 1934: SS-Obersturmführer
• April 20, 1934: SS-Hauptsturmführer
• April 20, 1937: SS-Sturmbannführer
• April 20, 1943: SS-Obersturmbannführer
• September 12, 1944: SS Standartenführer

literature

• Henrik Eberle & Matthias Uhl (eds.): The book Hitler . NKVD secret dossier for Josef W. Stalin, compiled on the basis of the interrogation protocols of Hitler's personal adjutant, Otto G possibly, and the valet Heinz Linge, Moscow 1948/49. From the Russian by Helmut Ettinger; with a foreword by Horst Möller. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2005, ISBN 3-7857-2226-5 . Paperback edition: Bastei-Lübbe-Taschenbuch, Bergisch Gladbach 2007, ISBN 978-3-404-64219-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Herbert Michaelis: Causes and Consequences. From the German collapse in 1918 and 1945 to the state reorganization of Germany in the present , vol. 23, p. 202.