Talk:Hermann Fegelein
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Both the DE and NL versions of wikipedia state that Fegelein was indeed executed. How come the EN wikipedia states that he was spared?
Allied interrogations reports which were at one time classified "Secret", released and published in the U.S. in the last 10 years, substantiate the fact that in the Bunker Hitler ordered Fegelein to be executed; however, the order was not carried out. Heinrich Himmler had tried to negotiate surrender to the Allies on April 28th, and this prompted Hitler to suspect Fegelein in a conspiracy against him and to summon him for questioning. When this didn't pan out, Hitler then suspected he was leaking info to the enemy. Fegelein was drunk at the time and cursed Hitler and the Nazis, and this enraged Hitler who ordered him shot. However, German military law prohibited this action against an intoxicated German soldier in court martial so the order was not carried out by the German soldiers who led Fegelein away from the Reichs Chancellery under guard to another building on April 29, 1945. The next day Hitler and Eva Braun disappeared from the bunker after participating in a multi-couple civil marriage ceremony held in the bunker for Hitler and a few other military people who wanted to get married. Adolf Hitler had been a millionaire since 1928 with always a dozen household servants and it is hard to believe that this simple and unadorned ceremony was anything other than a staged public relations event to try to fool the Allies about something. Even Eva Braun had been giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furs, jewelry, books, clothes, and other gifts in the past week, yet nothing was done for this ceremony.
It is understandable that other survivors of the bunker would report Fegelein was shot by firing squard because this was what was reported to them and to Hitler at the time. Allied intelligence knew he was not dead and kept his parents under surveillance for a long time after the war in hopes of capturing him.
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[edit] The Problem
I'm editing this article with info from O'Donnell. The truth is: the entire circumstances surrounding Fegelein's death/execution/whatever are up in the air; at least I can detail the different theories. --L. 23:00, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Insert more subheadings, clean up English
Unfortunately I don't have time myself as I've got exams coming up, but the whole last section is a mess. The English needs to be polished up (the style is horrible and incomprehensible in parts), apart from the factual discussion above. Also, it needs to be split up in several subheadings (Death, Historical Discussion, Appearances in Popular Culture etc) A consistent use of Umlauts would please German-speaking readers.
Most of the text from just after my editing sessions was the abysmal copy-and-paste ugliness of the articles' fromer self. You have done a good job of it, as it is now unrecognisable from the original.
[edit] English clean up
I've done some grammatical editing of this article. With some more cleaning up, and the facts we have, this could end up as a featured article. Good luck in the exams, as i've just finished my A levels myself.
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- Do we have a reference for the bio info at the top? While my source (O'Donnell) is great for discussing Fegelein's end, and gives a general outline of what has been added, our contributors must have found a much better source. Can we list it? --L. 3 July 2005 15:20 (UTC
There is an interview between American military intelligence officers and the German officer in charge of the intoxicated Fegelein stating that Fegelein was not executed. Also, the Russians were in charge of this part of Berlin in May of 1945, and their top priority for Stalin, besides rape and pillage, was to account for Hitler. Even some German Red Cross nurses took care of their patients and then committed suicide rather than be raped and tortured by the invading Russians. Regarding this scenario of the advancing Russians, every corpose was closely scrutinized to see if it was Hitler's. No corpse ever found around the fuhrerbunker by the Russians ever matched up with Fegelein's, who was 6 feet and 4 inches tall, had two gold teeth(upper canine and molar), distinct receding hairline, slightly curved spine, large hands and rounded skull.
In the Fuhrerbunker, Hitler had every phone call tapped from the switchboard and played on a wall-mounted speaker in his office. The switchboard operator was still alive in 2006 and petitioned the City of Berlin to put up a marker where they found the original site of the underground bunker facility. There is now an outside bulletin board diagramming the spot. When Fegelein went to his Berlin apartment and called Eva Braun in the bunker and try to get her to leave Hitler rather than commit suicide, Hitler was eavesdropping on this conversation via the wall speaker and Eva knew this, so she played it cool with Fegelein so as not to compromise her own safety because Hitler was extremely volatile and it was a known fact that Germany experienced the highest rate of casualties of Army generals in WW II than any other country in the world.
Gretl did not have an abortion as this child's child committed suicide 2 or 3 years ago and this was reported in the media internationally. The soldier that would not marry Gretl was sent to the Russian front and died soon afterwards in battle. I note from this discussion that some source mentions paternity is in question. Gretl was living with Eva in the house in Munich purchased with Hoffman photo studio royalties from Hitler's pictures and it was Hitler who did not want any further public scrutiny to fall on the Braun sisters for the sake of his own public reputation. Hitler would occasionally visit this house at midnight in a black Mercedes with bodyguards for "sessions" with Eva. Gretl not only knew too much and could blackmail Hitler, which several other German relatives of his acquaintances had done, but both of the Braun's sisters' parents had written letters to Hitler, which were never delivered, complaining of his bad influence on Eva and requesting Hitler to end the relationship. The Braun parents eventaully accepted the arrangement and even visited the Berghof house as visitors.
Otto Hermann Fegelein had a brother who was in the military in WW II and he survived the war. His name is Waldemar Fegelein and here is an early photograph of them posing together:
http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=5500
and this link contains a picture of him in full uniform at his brother's wedding with the bride:
http://www.thirdreichruins.com/berghofvisitors.htm
Hermann Fegelein's medal German nameplate from his uniform was found in Latvia and was sold on eBay two years ago, further reason to believe that since his body was not found by the Russians or Americans in Berlin, and his uniform got to Latvia (where he knew Count Puckler), perhaps he did too. Hermann Fegelein always had an Adjutant assigned to him, even though he was not high enough in office or responsibilities to have an Adjutant -- it appears this Adjutant was to do all of the paperwork and read letters to him.
In the summer of 1945 Hermann's father was told that Hermann had escaped on a submarine with Hitler in 1945 to Argentina to continue the fight: I completely discount this scenario because Fegelein had stabbed Hitler in the back in the bunker when Hitler had given him some papers from a safe to burn to keep out of the hands of the Russians, and Fegelein ignored the order and went to the car pool and and requisitioned a car from SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Kempka, Hitler's long time chaeuffeur, who was in charge of the carpool for the Reichs Chancellery, to go to his apartment to meet up with a red-headed spy where they were caught red-handed with foreign currency and Swedish passports in other names; the female spy escaped out the kitchen window while feigning to prepare drinks for the SS men who had come to arrest Fegelein. The Nazi's took Fegelein back to the bunker to face the music alone. Actually, if he had the female companion with him, this would have certainly turned Eva and Hitler against him more violently and immediately as much time and effort had been spent to try to prop up Gretl into appearing to be a respectable person to the German public. This, coupled with the fact that Fegelein was supposed to have met Heinrich Himmler regarding the "separate peace with the Allies" deal they were working on with Count Bernadotte but traffic prevented this rendezvous, and Fegelein was arrested by the Nazi's with documents implicating him in the deal, makes me feel that Hitler did not take Fegelein with him on a submarine to Argentina with a ton of gold in May of 1945; however, Hermann Fegelein's father had no way of knowing this in 1945 or 1946 and it sounded good to him that Hermann was still a high ranking Nazi fighting for the Father Land. I think the intelligence agencies from UK/MI6, Russia and SOS/CIA were all tripping over each other feeding false information to try to flush out Nazi's in sting operations. 07:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)Jan le Fey, Marseille68.211.85.31 07:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] [['CITATIONS, REFERENCES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, weblinks can be added here']]
ongoing no book written about Fegelein -- he is mentioned in various WW II books:
Riding East by Mark C. Yerger
The SS Cavalry Brigade in Poland and Russia 1939-1942
ISBN: 0764300601
[[discussion:]] Hermann Fegelein was actively sought after by the Russians in May of 1945 as a war criminal because he was the regional Nazi commander of a large territory, the size of a US State, called the Pripet Marshes, part of Russia, conquered by the Nazi's. He approved of retaliatory raids to subdue the rebellious civilian Russians and random terror attacks and killings to induce submission to Nazi rule. Sometimes the Russian civilians would throw a rock at a German soldier or attack him and the respose from Fegelein was all out of proportion to the actual threat. While the Russians wanted to locate and verify Hitler's fate, they also, in May of 1945, searched the Bunker in Berlin diligently to look for Hermann Fegelein and failed to locate him or his remains. German prisoners held by the Russians who had been in the bunker in April of 1945 were questioned repeatedly about Fegelein's whereabouts as Hanna Reitsch, who had flown in Robert Ritter von Greim to the bunker, claimed that Heinrich Himmler's Junkers JU-52 was waiting at the Brandenburg Gate to fly Fegelein out of Berlin before the Russians arrived. In addition to von Greim being given Goring's Luftwaffe position and carrying Hitler's orders to Donitz, Hanna told U.S. Intelligence, while under de-Nazification interrogation, that she was given in the Bunker several letters from Eva Braun written to the German people saying that she (Eva) was giving her life for the fatherland, etc., and Hanna said it was all so nauseating, phony and disgusting that she destroyed these letters of Eva Braun out of fear that some uninformed person might believe them and try to make Eva Braun out as some kind of Germman hero, which Hanna felt she was not. In fact, Eva never showed any political proclivities all her life, including the time spent with Hitler and his entourage. She had a life of her own in Munich and many people that saw her did not know of her close affiliation with Hitler.
The Allies/Americans did not arrive in Berlin until July of 1945. When the Russians arrived in Berlin at the end of April, 1945, SHEAF's General Eisenhower ordered a media blackout of any news about Berlin, even though Allied troops had not occupied the city yet. Stalin was very secretive about what he found in Berlin and never made a full and accurate accounting to the British or to General Eisenhower or President Truman. As you know, Russia was never a signatory to the Geneva convention on treating prisoners of war kindly, and Russian soldiers were given small boxes they could mail home for free to encourage them to steal as many small valuables as possible from the German civilians. (Some of the Russian soldiers were so backwards that they stole light bulbs out of electrical sockets, thinking that the bulbs produced light independently like a flashlight.) Stalin also never said he had definitely found Hitler's remains and Stalin never requested Allied assistance in locating Hitler or his remains, which leads to speculation that the Russians had information which they did not want to share with the rest of the world regarding the Battle of Berlin in 1945. This is not about Hitler but the only "evidence" provided that Hitler's remains were retained by a Soviet agency was that after the burned corpse was found, they went to Hitler's last known dentist's office and could not obtain his dental records, so the dental assistant drew a sketch from memory of the dental work he remembered existed in Hitler's mouth. Also, the witnessess who supposedly saw Eva Braun's corpse being carried out of the bunker wrapped up in a carpet were contradictory: some said her legs where showing and that's how they knew it was her, other people said they could not see her legs at all. And of course, they said Martin Bormann was carrying it out to be burned! From all that I have read about the Third Reich, Martin Bormann would never pick up Eva Braun, dead or alive, but preferably dead.
It is next to impossible that Eva or Gretl Braun ever submitted to an abortion by Dr. Morrell. It is to Hermann Fegelein's credit that he caused Hitler to have Dr Morrell expelled from Hitler's entourage; however, Fegelein, being a newcomer to Hitler's inner circle, was unaware that Dr. Morrell's unconventional prescriptions to Hitler continued just the same under Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger. Dr. Stumpfegger is the doctor who administered, at Hitler's request, a cyanide capsule to the German Shepherd, Blondi, so Hitler could see how fast the poison worked and would work on the German generals. As you know, Hitler had 5,000 cyanide capsules prepared for distribution to the top German military officers to Hari Kari on, since he blamed them for losing the war. The military officers had other ideas and were fast exchanging concentration camp loot for gold and fake passports to leave Germany and Martin Bormann and Herman Fegelein were conspiring behind Hitler's back to make sure this didn't happen and that the German officers would have a golden parachute and rat lines to South America. Bormann had already stashed millions in secret Swiss bank accounts and had the German military courier killed each time he made a trip to Switzerland to make a deposit, to cover his tracks.
In the 1940's, Dr. Morrell, who was in close collaboration with Martin Bormann to control Hitler and access to Hitler, plotted to kill Eva Braun. While at the Berghof one day, he convinced Eva to submit to a blood test. She was strapped to an examination table in his office. She and a female associate saw Dr. Morrell prepare a syringe which they considered to be poison and she became alarmed and felt she had been duped. Eva told her friend to get help immediately. An SS guard was told and he ran in the room and said that Hitler wanted to see Eva immediately so they had to stop the procedure. Eva was released but Martin Bormann immediately transferred the SS guard to the front and he was soon killed in action. Eva knew that she narrowly escaped death that day on Dr. Morrell's examination table. Due to the fact that this appeared to be the first time Eva had treatment from Dr. Morrell as she had to be coaxed into it, it is unlikely she had any treatment from him prior to this and certainly not after. Everyone close to Hitler knew Dr. Morrell was a STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) Specialist only, and not a general medical practitioner. In fact it was Dr. Morrell's treatment of Heinrich Hoffman for syphillis that brought him to the attention of Hitler and led to his position. He coddled Hitler and Hitler even allowed him to design his own uniform, which looked like a general's uniform, so he would blend in more unobstrusively in the military entourage constantly surrounding Hitler in his travels.
Hermann's brother, SS-Standartenführer Waldemar Fegelein, survived the war by several decades. 68.218.27.203 20:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)F.Eugen
[edit] Vandalism?
User from IP 122.163.34.236 made the following change: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hermann_Fegelein&diff=prev&oldid=156467610 Same IP undertook multiple acts of subtle vandalism latter in the day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/122.163.34.236
Since this isn't clear vanalism, and this edit took place hours before the latter vandalism, it may not have been by the latter vandal, rather by some other individual. I'll let you all decide if you want that changed back or if it's actually "cleaning up" the article, since I can't decide which is appropriate.
65.95.237.214 02:39, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
