Comrades Betrayed: Jewish World War I Veterans Under Hitler by Michael Geheran

Author:Michael Geheran [Geheran, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Jewish, Military, World War I, Europe, Germany
ISBN: 9781501751028
Google: Fsy9DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Cornell
Published: 2020-10-15T13:58:15+00:00

Interventions from Above

As the Nazis began deporting thousands of Jews to ghettos in Eastern Europe in October 1941, Ernst Hess had reason to remain optimistic. A former lieutenant in the List Regiment, Hess had served in the same unit as Hitler in World War I, a connection that led to the issuing of a so-called Schutzbrief—a protection letter—by the Reich Chancellery a year earlier. On 19 August 1940, Himmler’s adjutant contacted the Düssseldorf chief of police to inform him that Hess had been granted immunity from deportation and was permitted to use his name without the mandatory “Israel” in official correspondence, a decision made “in accordance with the Führer’s wishes.”121 The letter further stated that “H. is a full Jew with 4 Jewish grandparents. During the war 1914/18 he served in the same company as the Führer and also temporarily served as the Führer’s company commander. When Hess submitted a petition to obtain an exemption, the Führer, after declining the request, expressed his desire that H. be given an accommodation through other means… . I therefore request, in cooperation with all the relevant authorities and agencies, that H. remain unmolested for all intents and purposes.”122

Hitler probably had little to do with the order protecting Hess. Most likely the letter was the result of an intervention by Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler’s personal adjutant from 1934 to 1939, who had also served in the List Regiment during World War I. As we have seen, Wiedemann had helped engineer Hans Gutmann’s release from prison several years before. His proximity to Hitler afforded him unfettered access to Heinrich Lammers, director of the Reich Chancellery, a connection that enabled him to secure special exemptions for old comrades. Wiedemann eventually fell out of favor with Hitler and was transferred to the United States in early 1939, where he assumed the post of consul general. This may explain why Hess was unexpectedly ordered to appear at the local Gestapo office in May 1941, only to be informed that his special status had been rescinded and that he was now “a Jew like any other.”123 Instead of being deported to a ghetto in eastern Europe, however, Hess was incarcerated at Milbertshofen, a labor camp outside Munich, where he worked as a forced laborer until his liberation on 20 April 1945.124

Hess was not the only Jewish former officer to take advantage of connections to higher-ups in order to evade deportation. In a postwar interview, Max Plaut, chairman of the Hamburg RV office, mentioned a baptized Jew who, as a comrade of Göring and Erhard Milch in World War I, received the “highest protection,” allegedly without even having to submit any documents to the authorities. The man was allowed to change his name from Oppenheimer to a “less suspicious one,” continued to live in his own home, and was even allowed to employ an Aryan housemaid. When the Bremen Gestapo got wind of the situation, they notified the chief of the Hamburg Gestapo, Claus Göttsche, who arrested Oppenheimer and threatened to have him shot.

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