Lammers, Dr. Hans Heinrich.

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Lammers, Dr. Hans, born 27-05-1879 in Lublinitz Silesia, was a prominent Nazi and head of the Reich Chancellery. The son of a veterinarian, Lammers completed law school in Breslau and Heidelberg, and was a judge in Beuthen in 1912. Lammers received the Iron Cross, First and Second Class, during the First World War, then resumed his career as a lawyer and joined the German National Peoples Party, reaching the position of Undersecretary of the Interior by 1922. In 1932, Lammers joined the Nazi Party  NSDAP-nr.: 1 010 355  in February 1932 and the SS-nr.: 118 404  from 29-09-1933, and achieved rapid promotion, appointed a police department head in 1933, and soon afterwards a State Secretary and chief of the Reich Chancellery. In this position, he became the center of communications and chief legal adviser for all government departments.   The agency served as private chancellery of Adolf Hitler handling many different issues pertaining to matters such as complaints against party officials, appeals from party courts, official judgements, clemency petitions by NSDAP fellows and Hitler’s personal affairs. The Kanzlei des Führers was headed by SS Obergruppenführer Philipp Bouhler

bearing the title of Der Chef der Kanzlei des Führers der NSDAP. As chief of the KdF, Bouhler also held the rank of a Nazi Reichsleiter. He was appointed as chief on 17-11-1934 and held that position until 23-04-1945; though largely dis empowered from 1942 on wards in favour of Bormann. In 1939 the KdF moved its seat to the New Reichs Chancellery building on Vosstrasse No. 4.  From 1937, he here with Wilhelm Keitel 

was a member of Adolf Hitler’s (did you know) cabinet as a Reich Minister without Portfolio and from 30-11-1939 a member of the Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich. In this position he was able to review all pertinent documents regarding national security and domestic policy even before they were forwarded to Hitler personally.

   Lammers was also one of the first officials to sign government correspondence with “Heil Hitler,” which became a requisite greeting for civil servants and proliferated so much so that failure to use this greeting could bring one under Gestapo suspicion since it indicated an “overt sign of dissidence”. Beginning in January 1943, Lammers served as President of the cabinet when Hitler was absent from their meetings. Along with Martin Bormann

. Bormann’s body and Hitler’s doctor SS Obersturmführer Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger

    found on 08-12-1972, near the Lehrter Station at the Invalidenstrasse, the sightings proved to be flights of fantasy. DNA taken from the remains of a body found close to where Bormann was seen trying to escape when the Red Army invaded Berlin in May 1945, confirmed he died 02-05-1945, age 44. A test on a skull thought to be Bormann’s in 1998 found the remains compatible with his son’s and the mystery was over. He had died just hours after Hitler and Eva Braun Dr. Ludwig Stumpfegger was the doctor who killed the Goebbels’s children in the Fuhrer bunker.

   

Lammers increasingly controlled access to Hitler. In February 1943, following Stalingrad (see Friedrich Paulus) , Bormann with Lammers attempted to create a three-man junta representing the Party (Bormann), The State (Lammers), and the Army which would have been led by Field Marshal, Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the OKW. This Committee of Three would have exercised dictatorial powers over the home front. Joseph Goebbels

(did you know), Albert Speer, Hermann Göring  (did you know(see Göring Peter and Heinrich Himmler 

all saw this proposal as a power grab by Bormann and Lammers and a threat to their power, and combined to block it. However, this scheme eventually collapsed due to the frequent infighting and mistrust the party, military, and the various ministries had amongst one another as Lammers himself eventually lost power and influence due to the increasing irrelevancies of his post due to the war. In April Lammers was arrested by Hitler’s forces during the final days of the Third Reich, in connection with the upheaval surrounding Hermann Goering (see Emmy Sonnemann)

 , who thought that Hitler had stepped down. Hitler vehemently opposed giving up power and wanted Lammers shot. He was rescued, but in the meanwhile his wife committed suicide near Obersalzberg, the site of Hitler’s mountain retreat, on 08-05-1945, age 51, as did his daughter two days later, on 10-05-1945, age 26.  After the war in April 1946 Lammers was a witness at the Nuremberg tribunal. In April 1949 he was put under Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the Ministries Trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 10 years, and he was pardoned and released in 1952.

Death and burial; ground of Lammers, Dr. Hans Heinrich.

   Dr. Lammers leaving the court-room at Nuremberg after receiving a sentence of 20 years.

  On 31-01-1951, this sentence was reduced to ten years by High Commissioner John Jay McCloy, but Lammers was released on 16-12-1951. On 11-3-1989, at 12:15 PM, John McCloy died of pulmonary oedema at his Greenwich home. His original name was “John Snader McCloy.” It was later changed to “John Jay McCloy”, probably to sound more aristocratic. His wife, Ellen Zinsser, had died at 87 a few years earlier of Parkinson’s disease.

Hans Lammers died on 04-01-1962, age 82, in Düsseldorf and is buried on the Stadtfriedhof of Berchtesgaden in the same plot as his wife Elfried, born Tepel, and daughter Ilse, and close by the grave of the Nazi agitator Johan Dietrich Eckart  and Gauleiter,

  Paul Giesler.  Hitler, then 37 and regular since 1923 in Berchtesgaden, visited this cemetery often together with his first mistress, age 16, Maria “Mimi” Reiter

who’s mother was buried there in 1926.

Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster:    robhopmans@outlook.com

 

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