Hermann Fegelein

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Hermann Otto Fegelein
Hermann Fegelein
Born	30 October 1906 Ansbach, Germany
Died	probably on or about 29 April 1945 Berlin, Germany

Obergruppenführer Hermann Otto Fegelein (30 October 1906–c. 29 April 1945) was a senior officer of the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany, a member of Adolf Hitler's entourage, and brother-in law to Eva Braun through his marriage to her sister, Gretl. However, he probably died before Braun married Hitler, and details of his death are controversial.

Contents 1 Early career 2 SS membership 2.1 Relationship with Himmler 2.2 Marriage 3 Death 4 Aftermath 5 Awards 6 Portrayal in media 7 References

[edit] Early career

Fegelein was born in Ansbach in Bavaria. As a young boy he worked at his father's horse riding school in Munich. When it closed due to the world-wide economic depression of the 1920s, he worked as a stable boy for Christian Weber, who in the 1930s was one of the original members of the Nazi Party.

In 1925, Fegelein joined the Reiterregiment 17, leaving it in 1928 to join the Bavarian State Police in Munich. Whilst in Munich, he came into early contact with National Socialism, joining the Party (membership number 1,200,158) and the SA in 1930. By 1931, Fegelein had transferred to the SS.

A note on his rank. Calling Fegelein an Obergruppenführer is not exactly accurate. Most SS officers had two ranks, one for the Waffen-SS, the other for the Allgemeine SS. The Waffen-SS rank was usually higher than the rank of the Allgemeine SS. Fegelein's actual rank was "SS Gruppenführer and Generaleutnant der Waffen-SS." His last film appearance was in a Nazi newsreel shot on Hitler's birthday (April 20, 1945). This is the infamous newsreel where Hitler is giving iron crosses to children for destroying Red Army tanks with the German antitank weapon known as the Panzerfaust. Fegelein is in the background; his plainly visible collar tabs are those of a Gruppenführer.

[edit] SS membership

On July 25, 1937, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, by special order of the Oberabschnitt (SUD), created the SS Main Riding School in Munich and made Hermann Fegelein the School Commander. Only former royalty from the Hohenzollern and Kaiserzeit dynasties could send representatives, along with the top heads of German industry, who donated to Martin Bormann's German industry fund. Hermann requested his friend, Captain Marten von Barnekow, be allowed to enter the horse riding school, and Himmler granted his request.

Fegelein rose quickly through the ranks and was briefly sent to the Russian front in 1943 with the Florian Geyer Cavalry Division, along with members of his SS Riding School (Haupt-Reitschule München). He had served under Reinhard Heydrich, and being an SS officer, was involved in the Nazi rituals at Wewelsburg Castle. The Florian Geyer is reputed to have murdered thousands of innocent civilians in the Pripet Marshes while under Fegelein's command^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Relationship with Himmler

Fegelein was nicknamed Heinrich Himmler's "golden boy"; his boyish face and subservient attitude gained him considerable favour with Himmler, who treated him like a son. Himmler granted him the best assignments (mostly related to horses), the best staff and generous budgets. When he was injured on the Russian front, Himmler brought him home to work in Hitler's staff as Himmler's adjutant and representative of the Waffen SS.

Already the holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Fegelein received an ever greater distinction with the award of the Swords to his Knight's Cross on 30 July 1944. Heinrich Himmler also presented him with a gold-plated Walther P-38 pistol with a mother-of-pearl handle, decorated with oak leaves, and Fegelein's name carved on it, and bearing the inscription Meine Ehre heißt Treue ("loyalty is my honor") on the barrel.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Marriage

His politically arranged marriage took place on June 3, 1944, and a two-day celebration was held at Hitler's and Martin Bormann's Obersalzberg mountain homes. It was the largest, longest and most publicized, purely social event Hitler ever attended^{[citation needed]}. Photographs of the wedding dinner appeared in Britain's weekly Picture Post Magazine the next year after the war ended, showing Hitler at the festivities. A marriage license was obtained at the local town clerk's office and Heinrich Himmler presided over the simple ceremony in which a Pagan ritual substituted for exchanging wedding rings^{[citation needed]}. This ceremony was photographed and filmed by the Nazis. [1]

Hitler had been actively trying to find a husband for Gretl for some time—doing so would provide a valid reason for presenting Eva Braun to visitors and bringing her to official functions^{[citation needed]}. Prior to the marriage, Hitler often forced Braun to hide herself from other Nazi officials when they visited.

Gretl Braun had an extremely bad reputation as being promiscuous—within the SS, she was nicknamed "the nymphomaniac of the Obersalzberg."^{[citation needed]} Hitler had earlier tried to marry her off to a Captain Fritz Darges, but Darges actually asked to be sent to fight in the Eastern Front rather than marry her. Moreover, at the time of the marriage, Gretl Braun was pregnant by a man other than Fegelein.^{[citation needed]}

Fegelein became known as the playboy of the Third Reich, and after his marriage to Gretl Braun, engaged in numerous extramarital affairs.

Nonetheless, Hitler was apparently aware of Fegelein's dalliances, and while not entirely approving, turned a blind eye to them. This was common within Hitler's inner circle. Martin Bormann had 10 children with his wife and also kept a mistress, while Heinrich Himmler had children with both his wife and mistress.

Fegelein also became the Commandant of the SS Horse Farm at Fischhorn Castle near Zell am See, Austria. Although he had a house with his wife, a love-nest apartment in Berlin, and a bedroom in Hitler's underground bunker below the Reich Chancellery, it was the farm where he was in charge and had his best friends. The day-to-day operation of the horse farm was managed by Erwin Haufler. The administrative officer was Franz Konrad, of Warsaw ghetto fame, who skimmed almost a million dollars off the top of the Nazi loot and buried it in various relatives' yards. Heinrich Himmler had a safe and many steel filing cabinets in the castle during the time it was the SS horse farm.^{[citation needed]}

Large amounts of looted gold, museum-quality artwork, and other valuable movable assets changed hands here in late April 1945. At this time most of the top Nazi military officers^[clarify] met here to launder their gold, money, looted jewelry from concentration camp victims, stolen artwork and other valuables, and to receive new identification papers and passports to allow them to flee to other countries after Germany's official capitulation^{[citation needed]}. According to published interviews with Allied soldiers, SS-Standartenführer Waldemar Fegelein (Hermann's brother) was stationed at Fischhorn Castle in April 1945 along with other SS officers, and was believed to have received shipments from his brother in Berlin containing personal possessions of Eva Braun and some of the looted artwork of Hermann Göring^{[citation needed]}. The Fegelein brothers' knowledge of the disposition of these shipments was another reason they were actively sought by the Allies at the end of the war.

[edit] Death

From January to April 1945, Fegelein and Martin Bormann controlled access to Hitler's office. After Fegelein's boss, Heinrich Himmler, tried to negotiate a backdoor surrender to the Allies via Count Bernadotte in April 1945, Fegelein left the Reich Chancellery bunker and was caught by SS-Obersturmbannführer Peter Högl in his Berlin apartment apparently preparing to flee to Sweden or Switzerland with cash and forged passports in civilian clothes with his Hungarian mistress. He was also, according to all accounts^{[citation needed]}, highly intoxicated when arrested and brought back to the bunker.

At this point, historical accounts begin to differ radically. In The Last Days of Hitler, historian Hugh Trevor-Roper remarked:

The real causes and circumstances of the execution of Fegelein provide one of the few subjects in this book upon which final certainty seems unattainable.

Journalist James O'Donnell discovered in his interviews numerous claims and theories as to what happened next to Fegelein, many of which disagreed with each other, and some of which seemed preposterous (i.e., a claim that Hitler himself gunned Fegelein down). Many claimed he had been shot following a court-martial, and this theory predominated for many years. General Wilhelm Mohnke, who presided over the court-martial, told O'Donnell the following:

Hitler ordered me to set up a tribunal forthwith. I was to preside over it myself...I myself decided the accused man [Fegelein] deserved trial by high-ranking officers. The panel consisted of four general officers - Generals Burgdorf, Krebs, Rattenhuber, and me...We did, at that moment, have every intention of holding a trial.

What really happened was that we set up the court-martial in a room next to my command post...We military judges took our seats at the table with the standard German Army Manual of Courts-Martial before us. No sooner were we seated than defendant Fegelein began acting up in such an outrageous manner that the trial could not even commence.
Roaring drunk, with wild, rolling eyes, Fegelein first brazenly challenged the competence of the court. He kept blubbering that he was responsible to Himmler and Himmler alone, not Hitler...He refused to defend himself. The man was in wretched shape - bawling, whining, vomiting, shaking like an aspen leaf. He took out his penis and began urinating on the floor...

I was now faced with an impossible situation. On the one hand, based on all available evidence, including his own earlier statements, this miserable excuse for an officer was guilty of flagrant desertion... Yet the German Army Manual states clearly that no German soldier can be tried unless he is clearly of sound mind and body, in a condition to hear the evidence against him. I looked up the passage again, to make sure, and consulted with my fellow judges...In my opinion and that of my fellow officers, Hermann Fegelein was in no condition to stand trial, or for that matter to even stand. I closed the proceedings...So I turned Fegelein over to [SS] General Rattenhuber and his security squad. I never saw the man again. (O'Donnell, The Bunker, 1978).

Many other people in the bunker argued that Mohnke was lying, that he had in fact had Fegelein killed, and only made the above statement to try and explicate himself from any guilt.

This situation was complicated by the fact that Mohnke was the only survivor of the supposed court martial—Hans Krebs and and Wilhelm Burgdorf both committed suicide by May 2. Although Johann Rattenhuber survived, he was captured by the Red Army, kept in custody until the 1950s, and died shortly after being released (and before he could be interviewed about Fegelein).

However, as O'Donnell noted, nobody actually saw Fegelein's execution (or, if they did, they weren't talking). O'Donnell and many historians, with the evidence at hand, agreed with Mohnke, and have concluded that Fegelein was doomed because of a combination of Himmler's betrayal and suspicions that Fegelein's mistress was a spy. Fegelein, then, was killed without a proper trial on Hitler's orders, probably hanged by members of the SS in a nearby cellar. Furthermore, O'Donnell noted that Hitler held off on his marriage to Eva Braun until after he was satisfied Fegelein was dead—a means of ensuring that he would not have a "traitor" as a brother-in-law^{[citation needed]}.

Some survivors of the bunker say Eva Braun pleaded to Hitler to spare her new brother-in-law, Hermann, and some say she didn't speak a word in his defense. There is agreement among bunker survivors that, when Fegelein was first arrested, Braun did inform Hitler that her sister was pregnant, and that this apparently led Hitler to initially consider releasing him without punishment. However, there is no agreement on whether she said anything once Hitler condemned him to death.

[edit] Aftermath

Both Fegelein's parents survived the war and claimed to have received messages (via a third party) that he was continuing resistance underground. His wife, who inherited some of her sister Eva's valuable jewelry (of questionable provenance), also survived the war and gave birth to a daughter (named Eva after her late aunt) whose true parentage is the subject of some speculation and who committed suicide in 1975.

The fate of the baby she was pregnant with at the time of her marriage is unknown. Some members of Hitler's entourage claimed she had an abortion with the aid of Theodore Morell, one of Hitler's doctors.

However, claims of his parents not withstanding, all evidence indicates that Fegelein was dead by April 29, 1945, and no bunker witnesses have ever suggested otherwise.

[edit] Awards

• Infantry Assault Badge (silver)
• Close Combat Clasp (silver)
• Wound Badge (silver)
• Eisernes Kreuz 2. and 1. class
• German Cross in Gold
• Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves
  • Knight's Cross (2 Mar 1942)
  • Oak Leaves (22 Dec 1942)
  • Swords (30 Jul 1944)

[edit] Portrayal in media

• In the 1981 adaptation of O'Donnell's book, The Bunker, Fegelein was portrayed by Terrence Hardiman.
• He was depicted by German actor Thomas Kretschmann in the 2004 film Downfall (Der Untergang).

[edit] References

• O'Donnell, James. The Bunker. New York: Da Capo Press (reprint)(2001). ISBN 0-306-80958-3
• Florian Berger. Mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern. Die höchstdekorierten Soldaten des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Selbstverlag Florian Berger (2006). ISBN 3-9501307-0-5