Hans Lammers

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Hans Lammers

Hans Heinrich Lammers (May 27, 1879 – January 4, 1962) was a prominent Nazi and head of the Reich Chancellery.

Born in Lublinitz in Upper Silesia, the son of a veterinarian, Lammers completed law school in Breslau and Heidelberg, and was a judge in Beuthen in 1912.

Lammers received the Iron Cross, First and Second Class, during the First World War, then resumed his career as a lawyer and joined the German National Peoples Party (DNVP), reaching the position of Undersecretary of the Interior by 1922.

In 1932, Lammers joined the Nazi Party and achieved rapid promotion, appointed a police department head in 1933, and soon afterwards a State Secretary and chief of the Reich Chancellery. In this position, he became the center of communications and chief legal adviser for all government departments. From 1937, he was a member of Hitler's cabinet as a Reich Minister without Portfolio, and from November 30, 1939 a member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich. In this position he was able to review all pertinent documents regarding national security and domestic policy even before they were forwarded to Hitler personally.

Beginning in 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.

Lammers was briefly arrested during the final days of the Third Reich, in connection with the upheaval surrounding Hermann Göring. Lammers' wife committed suicide near Obersalzburg (the site of Hitler's mountain retreat) in early May 1945, as did his daughter two days later.

After the war, the Nuremberg tribunal sentenced Lammers to 20 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 10 years, and he was pardoned and released in 1952. He died on January 4, 1962 in Düsseldorf, and was buried in Berchtesgaden in the same plot as his wife and daughter.