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Edmund Veesenmayer

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Edmund Veesenmayer
Veesenmayer in 1938
Born(1904-11-12)12 November 1904
Bad Kissingen, Bavaria, German Empire
Died24 December 1977(1977-12-24) (aged 73)
Darmstadt, Hesse, West Germany
Known forHis complicity in the mass deportations of approximately 300,000 Hungarian Jews
Political partyNazi Party
Criminal statusDeceased
Conviction(s)War crimes
Crimes against humanity
Membership in a criminal organization
TrialMinistries Trial
Criminal penalty20 years imprisonment; commuted to 10 years imprisonment
SS career
Allegiance Nazi Germany
Service / branch Schutzstaffel
RankSS-Brigadeführer

Edmund Veesenmayer (12 November 1904 – 24 December 1977) was a high-ranking German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. He significantly contributed to the Holocaust in Hungary and in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Veesenmayer was a subordinate of Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Joachim von Ribbentrop, and worked with Adolf Eichmann.[1] He was involved in dismembering Czecho-Slovakia in 1939,[2] in the establishment of the Ustaše-run NDH puppet state following the April 1941 German invasion of Yugoslavia, and in the selection and installation of the 1941–1944 puppet regime of Milan Nedić in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.[3] After World War II Veesenmayer was tried and convicted at the Ministries Trial; in 1949 he was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, but was released after serving two years.

Early life

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Veesenmayer was the son of school teacher Franz Xaver Veesenmayer from Oberstaufen in Kempten (Allgäu). From 1923 to 1926 he studied political science in Munich, where he received a doctorate in political science in 1928. After, he taught at the Political-Economic Institute of the Technical University of Munich for four years.[4]

Schenker AG career

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Veesenmayer served on the advisory committee of the German transportation firm Schenker AG, which played a key role in moving Nazi plunder throughout Europe between 1938 and 1945.[5][6]

SS career

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Veesenmayer joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in November 1932 and the SS in 1934. By 1934 he had obtained a position in Hitler's economic affairs office in Berlin. Before the July Putsch, he worked on aligning rivaling factions of the outlawed Austrian Nazi Party, forcing the resignation of Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, and establishing key economic connections between Austria and Germany. For this effort he was promoted to SS-Standartenführer in March 1938. His next job was dismembering Czechoslovakia and making Jozef Tiso's Slovakia subservient to Nazi Germany in March 1939. In August of the same year he worked on intelligence gathering in the Free City of Danzig where he worked on various measures designed to heighten tensions between Poland and Germany. For these efforts he was awarded the Danzig Cross Second Class.[4] He joined influential business circles, making many friends in high places. From March 1940 to July 1943 he was entrusted with planning to move the (neutral) Irish Free State against Britain.[7]

At the beginning of 1941 he was attached to the German diplomatic staff in Zagreb. Here, he arranged (with Ustashe leader Slavko Kvaternik) the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia, four hours before the Germans entered the city.[8] What Ante Pavelic meant by "independence", as Veesenmeyer reported to Berlin, was firstly to obtain German recognition of Croatia; and secondly, an opportunity to thank Hitler in person and promise him "to live and die for the Führer".[9] Veesenmayer played an important role in the persecution and murder of Croatian and Serbian Jewry. He was involved in an operation to overthrow the Hungarian government in 1944. On 15 March 1944, he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer and became Reich plenipotentiary after the German occupation of Hungary. From March to October the same year he was involved in organising the Final Solution for Hungary's Jews.[10][11]

In a telegram dated 13 June 1944 he reported to the Foreign Office: “transport Jews from Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania space … with a total of 289,357 Jews in 92 complete trains of 45 cars”. On 15 June 1944, Veesenmayer told Joachim von Ribbentrop in a telegram that some 340,000 Jews had been delivered to the Reich. He also announced that after the final settlement of the Jewish question, the number of deported Hungarian Jews would reach 900,000.

Veesenmayer's mugshot (1946)
1944 German diplomatic passport issued to the wife of Edmund Veesenmayer for travelling to occupied Hungary.

Trial and conviction

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In the Ministries Trial in 1949,[12] Veesenmayer received a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity, slavery and membership in a criminal organization. In 1951, that was reduced to 10 years by U.S. High Commissioner of Germany John J. McCloy under massive pressure from the West German government and public. Veesenmayer was released on 16 December 1951.[10][13]

After his release, between 1952 and 1955, Veesenmayer worked in Tehran as a representative of Toepfer, a German commodity trading company.[14] According to British intelligence, he had connections to the Naumann Circle, which aimed to infiltrate the Free Democratic Party and eventually restore Nazism in Germany.[15]

At the end of his life, he lived in Darmstadt, where he died in 1977.

Notes

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  1. ^ Reitlinger, SS – Alibi of a Nation, at pages 351–352, 360, 367.
  2. ^ Adams, Jefferson (September 2009). Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Volume 11 of Historical Dictionaries of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 470. ISBN 9780810863200. Retrieved 30 September 2022. [Veesenmayer] next played a key role in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by assisting the Slovakian People's Party led by Jozef Tiso. Initially reluctant, Tiso eventually succumbed to the pressure applied by Veesenmayer and others, and a treaty confirming the subservience of the new Slovakian state to Nazi Germany was signed in March 1939.
  3. ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 52–55, 68 & 179.
  4. ^ a b Jefferson Adams: Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence, Scarecrow Press, 2009 ISBN 9780810863200 p. 470
  5. ^ "The Schenker Papers". GERMAN-FOREIGN-POLICY.com. 8 May 2016. Archived from the original on 5 September 2019. Retrieved 6 May 2021. Schenker's leadership was applying a radical program of racist persecution against its own employees - a dress rehearsal for the anti-Semitic crimes, in which the Aryanized staff participated in the following years. The SS ruled Schenker. Edmund Veesenmayer, a member of the Supervisory Committee, (a company surveillance organ under the railway's aegis) ensured compliance with the "Aryanisation program."[1
  6. ^ "Lawsuit Over Schiele Drawing Has Legs". Observer. 19 February 2007. Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 6 May 2021. The Nazi leadership forced the appointment of Dr. Edmund Veesenmayer to the company's board. A talented economist, he was also an SS member trusted by the German leadership with establishing local Nazi groups in Vienna before the 1938 Anschluss.
  7. ^ Mark M. Hull: Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Ireland, 1939-45, Irish Academic Press, 2003, ISBN 9780716527565, p. 192-3
  8. ^ Jean W. Sedlar: The Axis Empire in Southeast Europe 1939-1945, BookLocker.com, 2007, ISBN 9781591136347 p. 65
  9. ^ Debórah Dwork, Robert Jan Pelt, Robert Jan Van Pelt: Holocaust: A history; Publisher W. W. Norton & Company, 1 September 2003 page 183
  10. ^ a b Robert S. Wistrich: Who's Who in Nazi Germany, Routledge, 2013, ISBN 9781136413889, p. 266
  11. ^ "The Schenker Papers". GERMAN-FOREIGN-POLICY.com. 8 May 2016. Archived from the original on 5 September 2019. Retrieved 6 May 2021. Mass Murder. In June 1944, Veesenmayer reported to Berlin that "a total of 289,357 Jews had been deported in 92 trains" from Hungary.[15] Those doomed to die arrived in Auschwitz with the German railroad several days later in "45 wagons at a time." The profits Schenker reaped from these transports were transferred to the Reichsbahn.
  12. ^ "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal" (PDF). Library of Congress. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 February 2008.
  13. ^ Gabrielle Kirk McDonald: Substantive and Procedural Aspects of International Criminal Law: The Experience of International and National Courts: Materials,BRILL, 2000, ISBN 9789041111340, p. 2180
  14. ^ Richard J. Evans: The Third Reich in History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN 9780190228392, p. 233
  15. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer, 2005, S. 618.

Sources

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Further reading

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  • Reitlinger, Gerald, The SS – Alibi of a Nation, Viking (Da Capo reprint), New York 1957 ISBN 0-306-80351-8
  • (German-language biography) Igor-Philip Matić: Edmund Veesenmayer. Agent und Diplomat der nationalsozialistischen Expansionspolitik. Oldenbourg 2002, ISBN 3-486-56677-6.
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