Hans Lammers
Hans Lammers | |
---|---|
President of the Reich Cabinet (Presiding Officer in Hitler's Absence) | |
In office January 1943 – 24 April 1945 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Hans Heinrich Lammers 27 May 1879 Lublinitz, Silesia, Prussia, German Empire |
Died | 4 January 1962 Düsseldorf, West Germany | (aged 82)
Political party | Nazi Party |
Other political affiliations | German National People's Party (until 1932) |
Spouse |
Elfriede Tepel
(m. 1913; died 1945) |
Children | 3 |
Education | Law |
Hitler Cabinet | |
Military service | |
Allegiance | German Empire Nazi Germany |
Branch/service | Imperial German Army Schutzstaffel |
Years of service | 1914–1918 1933–1945 |
Rank | Hauptmann SS-Obergruppenführer |
Battles/wars | World War I |
Awards | Iron Cross, 1st class Iron Cross, 2nd class |
Hans Heinrich Lammers (27 May 1879 – 4 January 1962) was a German jurist and prominent
Early life
Born in Lublinitz (now
Nazi career
Lammers joined the
On 30 August 1939, immediately prior to the outbreak of the
From January 1943, Lammers served as president of the cabinet when Hitler was absent from their meetings. Along with Martin Bormann, he increasingly controlled access to Hitler. By early 1943, the war produced a labour crisis for the regime. Hitler agreed to the creation of a three-man committee with representatives of the state, the army and the party in an attempt to centralise control of the war economy and over the home front. The committee members were Lammers (Chief of the Reich Chancellery), Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command; OKW), and Bormann, who controlled the Party.[7] Hitler seemed to be in agreement with that proposal since none of them posed a threat to his leadership or would disagree with him.[8] The committee was intended to independently propose measures regardless of the wishes of various ministries, with Hitler reserving most final decisions to himself. The committee, soon known as the Dreierausschuß (Committee of Three), met eleven times between January and August 1943. However, it ran up against resistance from Hitler's cabinet ministers, who headed deeply-entrenched spheres of influence and were excluded from the committee. Seeing it as a threat to their power, Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler worked together to bring it down. The result was that nothing changed, and the Committee of Three declined into irrelevance.[7]
Over time, Lammers lost power and influence because of the increasing irrelevancy of his position due to the war and as a consequence of Martin Bormann's growing influence with Hitler.[9]
1945
In April 1945, Lammers was arrested by SS troops during the final days of the Nazi regime, in connection with the upheaval surrounding Hermann Göring. On 23 April, as the Soviets tightened the encirclement of Berlin, Göring consulted Luftwaffe General Karl Koller and Lammers. All agreed that Göring was Hitler's designated successor and was to act as his deputy if Hitler ever became incapacitated.[10] Göring concluded that by remaining in Berlin to face certain death, Hitler had incapacitated himself from governing.[11] Acting on the matter, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, arguing that since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, Göring should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a time limit of 22:00 that night (23 April), when he would consider Hitler incapacitated. The telegram was intercepted by Bormann, who convinced Hitler that Göring was a traitor and that the telegram was a demand to resign or be overthrown. Hitler responded angrily and ordered SS troops to arrest Göring. Soon afterwards, Hitler removed Göring from all of his offices and ordered Göring, his staff and Lammers to be placed under house arrest at Obersalzberg.[12][13] Lammers was taken prisoner by American forces,[14] but in the meantime, his wife, Elfriede (née Tepel), committed suicide near Obersalzberg (the site of Hitler's mountain retreat) in early May 1945, as did his daughter, Ilse, two days later.[15]
Postwar insights
After the war's conclusion, Lammers provided Allied interrogators with some insights into the nature of the Third Reich's hierarchy. Postwar mythology was such that many were convinced Hitler had completely ostracised the aristocratic officers under his command, but the truth was somewhat different.[16] Lammers reported to the Allies that Nazi kingpins and high-ranking Wehrmacht officers received lavish gifts, severance packages, expropriated estates and huge cash awards. Recipients of such benefits included Generals Heinz Guderian, Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, Gerd von Rundstedt, and one of the Holocaust's chief architects, Reinhard Heydrich.[16]
Trial, conviction and death
In April 1946, Lammers was a defence witness at the trial before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Starting in April 1949, he was in the dock as one of the defendants in the Ministries Trial, one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, and was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The sentence was later commuted to 10 years by US High Commissioner John J. McCloy, and he was released from Landsberg Prison early.[c] Lammers died on 4 January 1962 in Düsseldorf and was buried in Berchtesgaden, in the same plot as his wife and daughter.[15]
References
Informational notes
- ^ Reichsminister und Chef der Reichskanzlei.
- ^ Staatssekretär und Chef der Reichskanzlei. The post was elevated to the rank of ministry on 26 November 1937, becoming Reichsminister und Chef der Reichskanzlei.
- ^ There are conflicting reports about Lammers's release date. According to Zentner and Bedürftig, in The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich vol. 1 [A-L] (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1991), p. 254, Lammers received a pardon reducing his sentence in 1951 but he was not released until 16 December 1954; Max Williams in SS Elite: The Senior Leaders of Hitler's Praetorian Guard, vol. 2 (Fonthill Media, 2017), p. 183, also states that his sentence was reduced to 10 years in January 1951 and he was released on 16 December 1954; Robert Wistrich in Who's Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Routledge, 2001), p.184, notes the reduced sentence and gives the release date as 16 December 1951; Dr. Louis Snyder has him released sometime in 1952 in Encyclopedia of the Third Reich (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 204; Gerald Reitlinger reported Lammers free in November 1951 in The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1989), p. 470; Tim Kirk claims Lammers was released sometime in 1951 in The Longman Companion to Nazi Germany (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 222; Roderick Stackelberg has him amnestied at an unspecified 1951 date in The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 220, as does William Shirer in The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 965 fn.
Citations
- ^ a b c Williams 2017, p. 182.
- ^ Wistrich 2001, p. 149.
- ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 523.
- ^ Broszat 1981, pp. 308–309.
- ^ Kitchen 1995, p. 11.
- ^ Evans 2006, p. 45.
- ^ a b Kershaw 2008, pp. 749–753.
- ^ Read 2005, p. 779.
- ^ Fischer 1995, p. 312.
- ^ Shirer 1960, p. 1,115.
- ^ Shirer 1960, p. 1,116.
- ^ Shirer 1960, p. 1,118.
- ^ Evans 2008, p. 724.
- ^ Zentner & Bedürftig 1991, p. 524.
- ^ a b "Hans Heinrich Lammers". nndb.com.
- ^ a b Hanson 2017, p. 456.
Bibliography
- Broszat, Martin (1981). The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich. New York: Longman Inc. ISBN 0-582-49200-9.
- ISBN 978-0-14-013564-0.
- Evans, Richard (2006). The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303790-3.
- Evans, Richard J. (2008). The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4.
- Fischer, Klaus (1995). Nazi Germany: A New History. New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-82640-797-9.
- Hanson, Victor Davis (2017). The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-46506-698-8.
- Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6.
- Kitchen, Martin (1995). Nazi Germany at War. New York: Longman. ISBN 978-0582073876.
- Read, Anthony (2005). The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-039332-697-0.
- ISBN 978-0-671-62420-0.
- Williams, Max (2017). SS Elite: The Senior Leaders of Hitler's Praetorian Guard. Vol. 2. Fonthill Media LLC. ISBN 978-1-78155-434-0.
- Wistrich, Robert (2001). Who's Who in Nazi Germany. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41511-888-0.
- Zentner, Christian; Bedürftig, Friedemann (1991). ISBN 0-02-897500-6.
External links
- Media related to Hans Heinrich Lammers at Wikimedia Commons
- Hans Lammers entry in the Deutsche Biographie
- from The Simon Wiesenthal Center Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
- Newspaper clippings about Hans Lammers in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW