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Obergruppenführer Hermann Fegelein (30 October 1906 - 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 supposedly died before Braun married Hitler, and details of his death are controversial.
Early career
As a teenager Fegelein worked as a stable boy for Christian Weber, who in the 1930's was one of the original members of the Nazi Party. Fegelein was barely literate but learned to ride horses expertly and made himself further useful by procuring dates for Weber.
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.
Membership of the SS
On July 25, 1937, Reichsführer 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, Hauptmann 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, "The Butcher of Prague", 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.
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.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. Photographs of the wedding dinner appeared in Britain's weekly Picture Post Magazine the next year showing Hitler at the festivities.Hitler had been actively trying to find a husband for Gretl for some time – in so doing, he would have an excuse to present Eva Braun to visitors, and to bring her to official functions. 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 promiscious – within the SS, she was nicknamed "the nymphomaniac of the Obersalzberg." 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.
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 of it, cast it a blind eye. 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.
Hermann Fegelein also became the Commandant of the S.S. Horse Farm in Fischhorn Castle near Zell am See. 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.
Large amounts of looted gold, artwork, and other valuable moveable assets changed hands in late April 1945. 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 file cabinets in the castle during its tenure as the Nazi SS horse farm. At this time all the top Nazi military officers met here to launder their gold, money, looted jewelry from concentration camp victims, stolen artwork and other valuables, and to receive new identification papers to flee to foreign countries after Germany's official capitulation.
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 Reichs Chancellery bunker and was caught in his Berlin apartment apparently preparing to escape to Sweden with cash and forged passports in civilian clothes with a mistress. He was also, according to all accounts, highly intoxicated when brought 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 * 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 * 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 was complicated by the fact that Mohnke was the only survivor of this court martial - Krebs and Burgdorf committed suicide by May 2. While Rattenhuber survived, O'Donnell was only able to speak with him once before his death, and Rattenhuber did not discuss Fegelein with him.
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 his 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.
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.
Possible survival?
Both of Fegelein's parents survived the war and felt he was continuing resistance underground and claimed to receive messages via a third party. His wife, who inherited some of Eva Braun's valuable jewelry (of questionable provenance), survived the war and gave birth to a daughter. However, after Fegelein was found trying to escape to Sweden with another woman in the last days of the war, Hitler ordered his execution personally.
The daughter's true parentage is the subject of some speculation – it was clearly conceived after her marriage to Fegelein, though it is not certain Fegelein was the father (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).
The daughter (named 'Eva' after her late aunt) committed suicide in 1975.
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 Der Untergang (Downfall).
References
- O'Donnell, James - The Bunker. - New York: Da Capo Press (reprint)(2001). - ISBN 0306809583
1906 births | 1945 deaths | SS officers
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"Hermann Fegelein"