Hans Heinrich Lammers

Hans Lammers ( Lubliniec , Upper Silesia , 27 of maypole of 1879 - Dusseldorf , 4 of January of 1962 ) was a lawyer and prominent personero of Nazi Germany with the rank of Obergruppenführer-SS who served as Chief of the Chancellery of the Third Reich From 1933 to 1945.

Biography

Hans Heinrich Lammers was born in 1879 in Lubliniec , Upper Silesia . He was the son of a Protestant veterinarian. He studied law and graduated from the Breslau Law School . Revalidated his title as lawyer and Doctor of Laws at the University of Heidelberg . Lammers came to occupy a court seat in Beuthen and Breslau in 1912. On April 29, 1913 he married Efreide Tepel and had two daughters born in 1914 and 1918 respectively.

In World War I , Lammers served in the Army, in Infantry Regiment No. 51, BE Battalion No. 22, and obtained the First Class Iron Cross . After the war he continued his career as a lawyer by joining the German National People’s Party (DNVP) with which he became Under-Secretary of the Interior in 1922.

In 1932 he joined the NSDAP under No. 1010355 and, in parallel, the SS with No. 118401 in 1933. Appointed Chief of Police ( ORPO ) with the SS- Oberführer degree , he achieved a brilliant rise thanks to the favor of Hitler , who appointed him Head of the Chancellery of the Reich with the degree of Obergruppenführer that same year.

Lammers legally advised practically all departments of Hitler’s government. By his hands passed all the edicts, draft agreements, penal laws, international treaties and decrees that were filtered to the technical satiety by him before passing into the hands of the German statesman. It occupied a preponderant position in the judicial scope of the Third Reich advising personally to Hitler from subjects of International Law to subjects like testamentos, divorces (as it is the case of Hermann Esser ). Lammers had the mission to legalize all the political desires of Hitler, thanks to which it gained great influence in the government. ¹

Together with Martin Bormann , Führer’s personal secretary since 1942, Lammers served on a committee of three together with Wilhelm Keitel in Bormann’s machinations and intrigues legally instrumented by Lammers to bring down prevailing personalities fallen in disgrace to his Private secretary From the onset of World War II, Lammers gradually lost influence on the political scene.

During the battle of Berlin , 23 of April of 1945 Lammers supported with technical technical support to Hermann Göring to usufruct the power vacuum that apparently left Hitler in the last rales of the Third Reich, reason why was stopped along with Göring in its own Domiciles as traitors. Hitler asked for an honorable suicide, but Lammers rejected the proposal. However his wife Elfriede and his daughter Ilse Hoffmann Lammers committed suicide under dark circumstances 8 and 10 of May of 1945 respectively in Obersalzberg . Later Lammers was captured by the allies.

Lammers was used as a prosecution witness in the Nuremberg Trials against several personalities in 1946 and then submitted to the so-called Judgment of the Ministers for his collaboration with the Third Reich, especially with the so-called Final Solution . ² He was sentenced in the first instance to 20 years in prison, a penalty that was reduced to 10 years in second instance, but for reasons of health and physical precariousness he was pardoned in 1952.

Lammers died in Düsseldorf on January 4, 1962, at age 82, and was buried with his wife and daughter in Berchtesgaden .

References