Franz Neuhausen
NSFK-Obergruppenführer Franz Neuhausen | |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | Fat Franz[1] |
Born | Merzig, German Empire | 13 December 1887
Died | 14 April 1966 Munich, West Germany | (aged 78)
Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
Rank |
|
Commands held | Chief of the Military Administration in Serbia |
Awards | Knights Cross to the War Merit Cross |
Franz Neuhausen (13 December 1887 – 14 April 1966) was a wealthy industrialist who became the special
Neuhausen was considered "sleazy and unscrupulous" and "notoriously corrupt". After complaints by senior Nazi officials in south-east Europe he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, but survived to be captured by United States authorities. He was handed over by the US to the Yugoslav authorities after the war, and was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released in 1953 and died in Munich, West Germany in 1966.
Early life and inter-war years
Franz Neuhausen was born on 13 December 1887 in the town of
Role in the occupied territory
Promoted to
Rivalry and arrest
The presence in Belgrade of direct representatives of senior Nazi officials such as Himmler and Göring meant there were often competing interests at work. As plenipotentiary for economic affairs and a "favourite" of Göring,[16] Neuhausen acted as a virtual economic dictator on the Reichsmarshall's behalf in the occupied territory, squeezing the maximum amount of resources out of the local economy to feed the German war machine. Neuhausen was described as being "notoriously corrupt"[5] and "sleazy and unscrupulous",[16] and had numerous disagreements with other senior officials of the occupation regime regarding the extent of his jurisdiction. In particular, he strenuously opposed attempts by Foreign Affairs Envoy Hermann Neubacher to give more power to the Belgrade puppet government of Milan Nedić. Neubacher believed that Neuhausen was corrupt and that he had amassed a huge fortune while serving in Belgrade. After a series of complaints against him by the commander-in-chief southeast Europe Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Maximilian von Weichs and Neubacher himself, an agreement was reached with the Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Himmler, and Neuhausen was subsequently arrested for corruption in August 1944.[17] He was replaced as plenipotentiary for economic affairs by his mining chief Theo Keyser, and as Chief of the Military Administration in Serbia by Dr. Justus Danckwerts. Neuhausen spent five months in a concentration camp and, although Göring arranged his release,[5] and the award of the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross to him,[18] he still spent the remainder of the war in detention.[13][17]
After the war
After being captured by US forces he was handed over to the Yugoslav authorities at the end of the war, and although sentenced to 20 years imprisonment following a trial in October 1947, he was soon paroled,[1] then released in March 1953. Neuhausen died on 14 April 1966 in Munich, West Germany.[2]
Footnotes
- ^ a b Der Spiegel & 47/1949.
- ^ a b Völkl & Lengyel 1991, p. 52.
- ^ a b c d Tomasevich 2001, p. 76.
- ^ a b Kroener, Müller & Umbreit 2000, p. 96.
- ^ a b c Kurapovna 2010, p. 258.
- ^ Alford 2012, pp. 17–18.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 617.
- ^ Gall 2006, p. 112.
- ^ Hehn 1971, p. 350; Pavlowitch 2002, p. 141, official name of the occupied territory.
- ^ Kroener, Müller & Umbreit 2003, p. 216.
- ^ Kroener, Müller & Umbreit 2003, p. 39.
- ^ a b Mojzes 2011, p. 91.
- ^ a b Tomasevich 2001, pp. 76–77.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, p. 320.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 619.
- ^ a b Hehn 2005, p. 109.
- ^ a b Pavlowitch 2008, p. 230.
- ^ Höttl 1997, p. 183.
References
Books
- Alford, Kenneth D. (2012). Hermann Göring and the Nazi Art Collection: The Looting of Europe's Art Treasures and Their Dispersal after World War II. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-8955-8.
- Gall, Lothar (2006). Der Bankier Hermann Josef Abs: eine Biographie (in German). Schnellbach: C.H.Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-54738-6.
- Hehn, Paul N. (2005). A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930-1941. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-1761-9.
- Höttl, Wilhelm (1997). Einsatz für das Reich (in German). Schnellbach: Verlag Siegfried Bublies. ISBN 978-3-926584-41-0.
- Kroener, Bernard R.; Müller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, eds. (2000), Germany and the Second World War, Volume 5: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power. Part I. Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources, 1939-1941., vol. 5, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-822887-5
- Kroener, Bernard R.; Müller, Rolf-Dieter; Umbreit, Hans, eds. (2003), Germany and the Second World War, Volume 5 : Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power. Part II. Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1942-1944/5, vol. 5, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-820873-0
- Kurapovna, Marcia Christoff (2010). Shadows on the Mountain: the Allies, the Resistance, and the Rivalries that Doomed WWII Yugoslavia. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-08456-4.
- Mojzes, Paul (2011). Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th century. Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-0663-2.
- ISBN 978-1-85065-476-6.
- Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2008). Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-1-85065-895-5.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-0857-9.
- Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Vol. 2. San Francisco: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
- Völkl, Ekkehard; Lengyel, Zsolt K. (1991). Der Westbanat 1941–1944: die deutsche, die ungarische und andere Volksgruppen (in German). Munich: Trofenik. ISBN 978-3-87828-192-4.
Journals
- Hehn, Paul N. (1971). "Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil War and Revolution in the Balkans". Canadian Slavonic Papers. 13 (4). University of Alberta: 344–373. . Retrieved 8 April 2012.
Magazines
- "Neuhausen behielt seinen Kopf", Der Spiegel (in German) (47/1949), 17 November 1949