Otto Wagener

Otto Wagener
Wagener signing unconditional surrender papers in Rhodes in 1945
Stabschef of the Sturmabteilung
In office October 1929 – 31 December 1930
Leader	Franz Pfeffer von Salomon (as Oberste SA-Führer)
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Ernst Röhm
Reichskommissar für die Wirtschaft
In office April 1933 – June 1933
Succeeded by	Wilhelm Keppler
Personal details
Born	Otto Wilhelm Heinrich Wagener (1888-04-29)29 April 1888 Durlach, Karlsruhe, German Empire
Died	9 August 1971(1971-08-09) (aged 83) Chieming, Bavaria, West Germany
Nationality	German
Political party	National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Military service
Allegiance	German Empire Nazi Party Nazi Germany
Branch/service	Imperial German Army Sturmabteilung German Army
Rank	Generalmajor
Battles/wars	World War I World War II
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross

Otto Wilhelm Heinrich Wagener (29 April 1888 – 9 August 1971) was a German major general and, for a period, Adolf Hitler's economic advisor and confidant.

Life and career

An industrialist's son, Wagener was born in Durlach, 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 operations in Upper Silesia, Saxony, and the Ruhr area.

In 1920 he studied economics and managed to broaden his knowledge by traveling abroad. In 1929 Wagener joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and the Sturmabteilung (SA), having been recruited by his old Freikorps comrade Franz Pfeffer von Salomon. Wagener was able to put his business acumen and contacts to good usage for the Nazi Party, in this case for the SA:

Wagener had used his business contacts to persuade a cigarette firm to produce "Sturm" cigarettes for SA men – a "sponsorship" deal benefiting both the firm and SA coffers. Stormtroopers were strongly encouraged to smoke only these cigarettes. A cut from the profit went to the SA ....

He functioned as SA Chief of Staff from October 1929 through December 1930, assuming effective command of the SA for a few months in the wake of the Stennes Revolt until the assumption of command by Ernst Röhm as the new Chief of Staff in early January 1931. In 1933 he became a member of the Reichstag for the NSDAP. In January 1931, Wagener led the Political-economic Department of the NSDAP, and in September 1932 he was appointed Hitler's personal economic advisor. Hitler appointed him Reichskommissar für die Wirtschaft from April to June 1933.

By late 1930 or early 1931 Wagener had made a mark on National Socialist economic policy. As Patch notes (p. 201-02):

Wagener formulated an original set of economic policies based on corporatist and leadership principles in confidential talks with Hitler and succeeded in recruiting many middle echelon industrial managers and owners of small factories for the NSDAP....[A confidential draft by Wagener] embraced the ideal of the corporatist "company union" (Werksgemeinschaft) and described the employer as the "Fuhrer" within his factory. All disputes over wages and working conditions would be settled within the "family" of the individual company in the National Socialist state of the future. Trade unions would be responsible merely for vocational training.

Wagener was replaced in his role as Commissioner for Economic Questions by Wilhelm Keppler, as Wagener had become embroiled in "coordination" disputes with leaders of industry after the National Socialist assumption of national power in January 1933, even forcibly occupying the industry-run trade association "Reich Association of German Industry" with the intention of shutting it down. Internal conflicts led to legal proceedings against Wagener in 1933 and 1934 in a case brought before the USCHLA (Party tribunal). After the Night of the Long Knives, Wagener was detained for a short time. Nevertheless, he was rehabilitated, and he resumed his career in the army.

Wagener signs the instrument of surrender for the German forces in the Dodecanese to the British, 8 May 1945

In the Second World War, Wagener served at the front, rising to the rank of major general and becoming a division commander. Under his command of the island of Rhodes, a post he held from 20 July 1944, almost the complete Jewish population was murdered. After the war, Wagener was kept first in British and later, from 1947 to 1952, Italian prisoner of war camps.. Wagener was tried by Italy (Rome Territorial Military Tribunal) and on October 16, 1948, sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The sentence was commuted in 1951.

In 1946, while being held by the British, Wagener wrote his memoirs about Hitler and the Nazi Party's early history, entitled Hitler aus nächster Nähe. Aufzeichnungen eines Vertrauten 1929−1932 (known in English as Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant). His work was not published until seven years after his death, in 1978. His memoirs are used, to some degree, by historians of Nazi Germany.

Otto Wagener died in Chieming in 1971.

Decorations and awards

• 1914 Iron Cross 2nd Class
• 1914 Iron Cross 1st Class
• Military Karl-Friedrich Merit Order
• 1929 Nuremberg Party Day Badge, c.1929
• 1939 Clasp to the Iron Cross 2nd Class
• 1939 Clasp to the Iron Cross 1st Class
• The Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 with Swords,
• Honour Chevron of the Old Guard, 1934
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, 5 May 1945 as Generalmajor and commander of the Division Insel Rhodos

References

Bibliography

• Evans, Richard J. (2004). The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin. ISBN 1-59420-004-1.
• Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000) [1986]. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile [The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945 — The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War of all Wehrmacht Branches] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas. ISBN 978-3-7909-0284-6.
• Kershaw, Ian (1999). Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-04671-0.
• Lambert, Angela (2007). The Lost Life of Eva Braun. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-36654-4.
• Miller, Michael (2015). Leaders Of The Storm Troops Volume 1. England: Helion & Company. ISBN 978-1-909982-87-1.
• Patch, William L. (1985). The Christian Trade Unions in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: The Failure of Corporate Pluralism (illustrated ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03328-1.
• Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2.

External links

Media related to Otto Wagener at Wikimedia Commons

• Review of memoirs at The New York Times