The 3rd of June, 1944, three days
before the Allied infantry and armored divisions begin landing
on the Normandy coast in France. Despite the increasingly common food
shortages and bombings of major cities, Adolf Hitler together with his companion
Eva Braun attend the wedding which would last three days and become the last big social
event for the high-ranking Nazi representatives. Gretl Braun, Eva’s sister, who would
later become the Führer’s sister in law, marries a high-ranking and quickly advancing SS
officer who together with his unit had committed unspeakable atrocities on civilians in Poland
and the area of Soviet Byelorussia and Ukraine, killing thousands of innocent Jewish men, women
and children. His name is Hermann Fegelein. Hermann Fegelein was born on the 30th of October
1906 in Ansbach, then part of the German Empire. As a young boy, Fegelein used to work at
his father’s equestrian school in Munich and would later become a proficient
rider and participate in jumping events. In 1925 Hermann joined the 17th Bavarian
Cavalry Regiment which he left in 1928. The same year he joined the Bavarian State
Police in Munich as the officer cadet. Fegelein ‘s superiors regarded him as someone for
whom it was not always easy to steer his ambition in a healthy direction. His police career came
to an abrupt end in the summer of 1929 after it became known that he had broken into a superior's
room to steal an examination answer sheet. Fegelein later stated that he had
left the police on "his own account" to better serve the Nazi Party and the SS to which
he turned completely in the following years.
Hermann Fegelein came into contact
with Nazism thanks to his father who several times made his riding
institute available to the SS as a meeting place. Nazi equestrian units also
used his father’s training facilities and horses. In August 1930 Fegelein joined
the Nazi Party and the SA and in 1933 he joined the SS. The same year
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came into power and Germany became a dictatorship. This was
the right time for people like Hermann Fegelein who was an opportunist and careerist
with no morals and no boundaries. After he took over the administration
of his father’s riding institute, he soon caught the eye of Heinrich Himmler,
the head of the SS, and oversaw the preparation of the courses and facilities for the equestrian
events of the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin. Hermann Fegelein was called
"Heinrich Himmler's golden boy". His boyish face and combination of flattery
and manipulation made him Himmler's protégé. The Reichsführer Himmler treated Fegelein
like a son and promotions soon followed. In 1937 Hermann Fegelein was appointed
a commander of the SS Main Riding School in Munich which was created on
the order of Heinrich Himmler. The Second World War started on the 1st of
September 1939 with the invasion of Poland. The campaign in Poland ended on the 6th of
October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of the country.
Fegelein and his Death's-Head Horse Regiment, which he commanded, arrived in Poland
shortly after. On the 15th of November 1939, the 1st Death's Head Cavalry Regiment was created
on the order of Heinrich Himmler by expansion of the regiment from four to thirteen squadrons.
Additional members were recruited from Ethnic Germans living in Nazi occupied Poland. The
unit was placed under the command of the order police which operated either independently
or in conjunction with the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany.
In Poland, they were officially supposed to fight gangs and partisans. Instead, Fegelein
and his unit took part in killing the civilians, mostly the Polish intelligentsia such as
teachers, priests, physicians, and other prominent members of Polish society. These enemies
of the Reich had been identified before the war and after they were murdered, they were buried in
mass graves. Fegelein's unit also participated in the mass shooting of 1,700 such people in the
Kampinos Forest on the 7th of December 1939. These mass murder operations
claimed the lives of 100,000 Poles. On the 15th of December, the 1st
Death's Head Cavalry Regiment was split into two units. Fegelein’s regiment
was short of supplies such as food and weapons and incidents of corruption and theft occurred.
After they were caught stealing money and luxury goods for transportation back to Germany, Fegelein
faced court-martial charges. He was also charged for murder motivated by greed and having had
a sexual relationship with a Polish woman. During the Second World War, sexual relationships
between German soldiers and Polish women were officially banned as the Poles were considered
an “inferior race”. When Fegelein found out that his lover was pregnant, he forced her to have an
abortion. Even though Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Security Main Office and a principal
architect of the Holocaust attempted several times to investigate the allegations against
Fegelein, Heinrich Himmler dismissed all of them. The German invasion of
France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands started on the 10th of May
1940 and became known as the Battle of France. These countries, along with France were conquered
within 6 weeks. To further humiliate France, Hitler ordered the document of armistice to
be signed in the same railcar in which the representatives of then defeated Germany signed
the armistice at the end of the First World War. Fegelein took part in the French Campaign and was
awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class in December 1940. On Sunday, the 22nd of June 1941 started
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and Hermann Fegelein and
his unit were deployed on the Eastern Front. Because the horses were exhausted, the man were
transported to the front combat zone in lorries and the horse-drawn artillery equipment
was towed using any available vehicles. Heinrich Himmler ordered Fegelein and his unit
to kill partisans and later exterminate Jews in the area of Soviet Byelorussia and Ukraine.
Enemy soldiers in uniform were to be taken prisoner, while those without
a uniform were to be shot. Jewish men, with the exception of a few skilled
leather workers and doctors, would also be shot. Because the number of Jews being killed was too
low, Himmler issued an order calling for all male Jews over the age of 14 to be shot and the
women and children to be driven into the swamps and drowned. Because the water in the swamps was
too shallow and some areas had no swamps at all, the women and children were shot as well. The
killing of Jews was often disguised as “fighting partisans”. Fegelein's final report on the
operation stated that his unit killed some 16,000 people. The losses of Fegelein’s unit were
17 dead, 36 wounded, and 3 missing soldiers. In October 1941 Fegelein was again
brought before a court for stealing but again the charges were dismissed
on the order of Heinrich Himmler. In December 1942, Hermann Fegelein was twice
seriously wounded by a sniper but during the following year, he and his division were again
involved in operations against partisans, killing civilians, destroying
villages and confiscated cattle. From January 1944, Fegelein belonged
to Hitler's headquarters staff to which he was assigned by Heinrich Himmler
as his liaison officer and representative of the SS. The members of the Hitler’s inner circled
looked down on him and despised him. Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and the Minister of
Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany, called Fegelein "one of the most
disgusting people in Hitler's circle". On the 20th of July, 1944 when Claus von
Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Hermann Fegelein
was present at the Wolf's Lair headquarters. The Führer survived and Fegelein received a minor
wound to his left thigh from the bomb explosion. Many of the conspirators appeared before the
notorious People’s Courts for show trials, but this practice was ended as it gave conspirators
a platform to condemn the Nazi regime. In the end more than 7,000 people were
arrested, and 4,980 were executed, often on the barest evidence. Fegelein used
to show around the photographs of the hanged men who had been executed as a result
of this failed assassination attempt. On the 3rd of June 1944 Fegelein married Gretl
Braun who was one of the two sisters of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s longtime
companion and briefly his wife. Their wedding took place at the Mirabell Palace in
Salzburg, far from the bombing and fighting, with Hitler, Himmler, and Martin Bormann as witnesses.
Eva Braun made all the wedding arrangements. A wedding reception at the Berghof and party
at the Eagle's Nest at Obersalzberg lasted three days. It is believed that this marriage
was politically motivated and for Fegelein it was a way to advance his career. However, he was
a known playboy and had many extramarital affairs. After the war, Traudl Junge, Hitler’s last
private secretary, said that Fegelein had told her that the only things that mattered
were "his career and a life full of fun." In early 1945 the Third Reich was on the edge
of collapse. On the 16th of January 1945, Adolf Hitler moved into the Führerbunker under the
Reich Chancellery Garden and on the 21st of April 1945 the Soviet Red Army reached the outskirts
of Berlin. It was clear that the war was lost. Because Fegelein had abandoned his post at the
Führerbunker, Hitler sent for him. When the SS found him in his Berlin appartment, Fegelein was
drunk, wearing civilian clothes and preparing to flee to Sweden or Switzerland. He was also
carrying cash and jewelry, some of which belonged to Braun. In his briefcase the SS found documents
containing evidence of Himmler's attempted peace negotiations with the Western Allies. Fegelein
was arrested and taken back to the Führerbunker. When Hitler found out about Himmler’s secret
negotiations, he considered them a betrayal and ordered Himmler’s arrest and Fegelein to
be stripped of all rank and court-martialed. According to the testimony of Hitler’s secretary
Traudl Junge who was present in the bunker, Eva Braun pleaded with Hitler
to spare her brother-in-law and tried to justify Fegelein's actions. Eva
liked Hermann who was married to her sister Gretl who was then in the late stages
of pregnancy. However, nothing helped. Junge claimed that on the 29th of April,
1945, Fegelein, then 38 years old, was taken to the garden of the Reich
Chancellery and was "shot like a dog". According to the Journalist James P. O'Donnell,
who conducted extensive interviews in the 1970s, Hitler ordered Wilhelm Mohnke, one of his
last remaining generals, to set up a tribunal. According to his testimony, Hermann Fegelein was
so drunk that he was crying and vomiting and even urinated on the floor. Fegelein refused
to accept that he had to answer to Hitler stating that he was responsible only to Himmler.
Because German military and civilian law both require a defendant to be of sound mind and
to understand the charges against him, Mohnke closed the proceedings and turned the defendant
over to security squad never seeing him again. Fegelein’s wife Gretl survived
the war and on the 5th of May 1945 gave birth to their daughter Eva Barbara Fegelein
who committed suicide in April 1971 after her boyfriend had died in a car accident. Gretl
remarried and died in at the age of 72 in 1987. There were no tears shed for Hermann Fegelein.
