Otto Wagener

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Otto Wagener (29 April 1888 in Durlach-9 August 1971 in Chieming) was a German major general and Adolf Hitler's economic advisor.

An industrialist's son, Wagener graduated from Gymnasium and then became an army officer. In 1916 during the First World War, Wagener was promoted to the General Staff.

After the war, Wagener was involved in the planning of an attack against the city of Posen (now Poznań, in Poland), but had to flee to the Baltic countries to avoid arrest. There he merged all Freikorps associations into the German Legion, and assumed leadership after its leader, Paul Siewert, was murdered. After returning to Germany, he was active in Freikorps in Upper Silesia, Saxony, and the Ruhr area.

In 1920 he studied economics and managed to broaden his knowledge by traveling abroad.In 1923, Wagener joined the Sturmabteilung, and in 1929 also became a member of the Nazi Party. He functioned as SA Chief of Staff from October 1929 through December 1930, and in 1933 became a member of the Reichstag.

In January 1931, Wagener led the Political-economic Department of the Nazi Party, and in September 1932 he was appointed the Führer's personal economic advisor. Hitler appointed him Reich Commissar for the Economy from April to June 1933.

Internal conflicts led to legal proceedings against Wagener in 1933 and 1934 in a case brought before the Party Tribunal. After the Night of the Long Knives, Wagener was detained for a short time. Nevertheless, he was rehabilitated, and he went back into the army.

In the Second World War, Wagener served at the front, rising to the rank of major general and division commander. After the war, Wagener found himself first in British and later, from 1947 to 1952, Italian prisoner of war camps.

In 1946, Wagener wrote his memoirs about Hitler and the Nazi Party's early history, entitled Hitler aus nächster Nähe. His work was not published until six years after his death, in 1977.