Otto Ernst Remer

Otto Ernst Remer
Generalmajor Remer
Birth name	Otto Ernst Fritz Adolf Remer
Birth date	18 August 1912(1912-08-18)
Place of birth	Neubrandenburg, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, German Empire
Death date	4 October 1997(1997-10-04) (aged 85)
Place of death	Marbella, Spain
Allegiance	Weimar Republic National Socialist Germany
Service/branch	Reichswehr Heer
Years of service	1932–1935 1935–1945
Rank	Generalmajor
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves

Otto Ernst Fritz Adolf Remer (b. 18 August 1912 in Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, German Empire; d. 4 October 1997 near Marbella, Spain) was a German officer of the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht, finally Generalmajor and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves in WWII. He played a crucial role in protecting Berlin during the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. After the war he became politically active and founded the Socialist Reich Party of Germany. He was married twice and had two sons and a daughter with his first wife.

Life

Generalmajor a. D. Remer in 1992

Remer volunteered for military service with the infantry of the Reichswehr in 1932 at the age of 20.

Second World War

By the time of the Poland Campaign, in September 1939, he was an 1st Lieutenant in a motorized infantry company, and went on to serve in the Balkans campaign, as well as in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. By April 1942, he was a battalion commander, and he joined the Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland, in order to lead the special-weapons 4th (Heavy) Battalion, which supported the three rifle battalions of the elite regiment.

By February 1943, he commanded the 1st (armoured) battalion of Großdeutschland Division, after the original Infantry Regiment GD expanded to become a full division. His troops, mounted in halftracks, covered the withdrawal of an entire Waffen SS tank corps during the fighting at Kharkov. He was awarded the Knight's Cross for his service as battalion commander, and in November 1943, he was awarded the Oak leaves to the Knight's Cross for leadership at Krivoi Rog, which was presented by Adolf Hitler personally.

In March 1944, after being wounded, Remer - now a major - was chosen to command the Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland, a unit that performed public and security duties in Berlin. During this time, Remer and his men successfully stopped the 20 July plot to seize control of the German government, following the assassination attempt on Hitler.

Major Otto Ernst Remer was the commanding officer of the Wachbattalion Großdeutschland. These forces were the only excisting Battalion of the Wehrmacht in Berlin of July 20th, 1944 which was not involved by order in the comanding structure of the group of conspiracy officer - led by von Stauffenberg.

Upon being ordered by Lieutenant General Paul von Hase to arrest Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Remer went to Goebbels office to do so, pistol in hand. Goebbels, however, used his oratory skills to dissuade Remer from arresting him, insisting instead that Hitler was still alive. When Remer asked for proof, Goebbels picked up the phone and asked to be put through to Hitler. Within the minute, Hitler was on the phone, and Goebbels handed the receiver to Remer.

He was the first and only neutral officer to hear the Fuehrer's voice live, during a phone "Blitzgespräch" call to the Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. In that phone call he identified Hitler's voice as real and realized that the Führer was alive.

Hitler asked Remer whether he recognized his voice, then gave Remer orders to crush the plot with his troops, which he did. That same night Remer was promoted two ranks to Oberst (colonel). An Order by Hitler was given to surround the Berlin Government area of "Bendlerblock". Remer gave order immediately to "Großdeutschland" guard soldiers to rush to that area.

Remer discussed this incident in the Great Britain TV documentary series The World At War, produced in the early 1970s. He appeared to have no regrets about his role in crushing the plot, nor the war in general. The same was true of his appearance as himself (coaching a young actor who was to portray him) in the German-language documentary drama about the 20 July assassination attempt, filmed by the German historian Joachim Fest.

Remer went on to command an expanded Führer-Begleit-Brigade (FBB), a field unit formed from a Großdeutschland cadre, in East Prussia with little success. His men, mostly young and inexperienced, suffered high casualties. The brigade was then transferred to the west for the Ardennes Offensive, in December 1944, and again suffered high casualties for little gain.

In 1945, when the FBB was expanded to divisional status, he was promoted to General (brigadier general) and appointed to command it. He was eventually captured by American troops, and remained a prisoner of war until 1947.

Post-war

After the war, he was for two years an American prisoner of war, being released in 1947. He co-founded the Socialist Reich Party in West Germany in the 1950. It was banned in 1952, but not before it had gathered 360,000 supporters in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, and won 16 seats in the state parliament. Among other views, it supported Holocaust revisionism. While the party was banned, its popularity may have contributed to the Allies and the West German government stopping some of the unpopular "denazification" policies in 1951. Remer faced criminal charges from the West German Government for his role in party, as allegedly being engaged in attempting to re-establish a National Socialism. He moved to Egypt and possibly other Arab states, serving as a (military) advisor. He returned to West Germany in the 1980s, once more involving himself in politics with the setting up of an organization entitled Die Deutsche Freiheitsbewegung ("German Freedom Movement"), which advocated the reunification of East and West Germany, and the removal of NATO military forces from Germany. He also published a newsletter, Der Bismarck-Deutsche. From 1991 to 1994, Remer published a political newsletter entitled the Remer-Depesche, containing his political philosophy. Its content led to a court case where he was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment in October 1992, for allegd incitement of racial hatred by writing and publishing a series of articles stating that the Holocaust was a myth. In 1994, he moved to Spain to avoid the imprisonment sentence. There he also supported Holocaust revisionism. The High Court of Spain ruled against requests made by the German Government for his extradition back to Germany for imprisonment, stating that he had not committed any crimes under the Spanish law. Remer, at least in the early postwar period, has been stated to have considered the Soviet Union to be a lesser evil than the argued Jew-dominated United States, stating that it was “synonymous with the destruction of European culture”, but he welcomed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.

General Remer's suit over alleged violations of constitutional fairness of trial and freedom of speech (Application No. 25096/94) was unanimously rejected by the European Commission on Human Rights, which existed from 1954 to 1998.

Exile and death

In February 1994, Remer went into exile in Spain, in a successful effort to avoid imprisonment for his controversial public statements about the Holocaust. Remer was an avid supporter of studies by key individuals in Holocaust revisionism, such as Fred Leuchter and Germar Rudolf. The high court of Spain ruled against appeals made by the German government to extradite Remer, claiming that he had not committed any crime under Spanish law. Later living in Egypt and Syria, Remer returned to Spain, and remained a wanted man in Germany until his 1997 death in Marbella at 85.

Legacy

A fellow veteran of the Grossdeutschland Division had the following to say about his former commanding officer:

We, his former comrades, have deeply regretted that destiny confronted this young officer in July 1944 with a situation with consequences the bearing of which I should assume are beyond the powers of any human being. No judgment will be made here as to whether his decision on 20 July was right or wrong. But the consequences of his decision were so terrible, and have cost so much of the best German blood, that we old soldiers had expected that a man to whom destiny gave such a burden to carry until the end of his life would recognize this, and would thereafter live quietly and in seclusion. We, his former comrades, lack any sympathy for the fact that Herr Remer fails to summon up this attitude of self-effacement.

Awards and decorations

• Wehrmacht Long Service Award (Wehrmacht-Dienstauszeichnung), 4th Class
• Iron Cross (1939)
  • 2nd Class (20 May 1940)
  • 1st Class (11/12 June 1940)
• General Assault Badge (Allgemeines Sturmabzeichen) on 18 November 1940
• Reference in the Wehrmachtbericht (Namentliche Nennung im Wehrmachtbericht)
• Wound Badge (Verwundetenabzeichen 1939) in Black, Silver and Gold
  • in Black on 16 October 1942 for his wound from 10 September 1942
• Bulgarian Order of Bravery, IV Grade, I Class with Swords on 16 March 1942
• Winter Battle in the East 1941–42 Medal (Medaille „Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42“)
• Close Combat Clasp in Bronze and Silver (de)
• Goldenes HJ-Ehrenzeichen with Oak Leaves from Reichsjugendführer Artur Axmann (de) after the bomb attack in 1944
• German Cross in Gold on 29 August 1942 as Hauptmann in IV./Infanterie-Regiment "Großdeutschland"
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
  • Knight's Cross on 18 May 1943 as Major and commander of I.Bataillon/Grenadier-Regiment "Großdeutschland"
    • The Knight's Cross award ceremony was conducted by the regiment's commander, Colonel Karl Lorenz, in Akhtyrky near Poltava.
  • 325th Oak Leaves on 12 November 1943 as Major and commander of the I. (gepanzertes) Bataillon/Grenadier-Regiment (motorized) "Großdeutschland"
    • He learned of the award from a congratulatory telegram from Generalleutnant Hoernlein in the military hospital (Lazarett) in Kolberg, where he lay wounded.

Works

• 20. Juli 1944, Verlag Deutsche Opposition, Hamburg 1951 (PDF-Datei | PDF-Datei)
• Verschwörung und Verrat um Hitler – Urteil des Frontsoldaten (Conspiracy and Betrayal Around Hitler), Verlag K. W. Schütz, Preußisch Oldendorf 1981 [5th edition 1993]
• Kriegshetze gegen Deutschland – Lüge und Wahrheit über die Ursachen beider Weltkriege, Remer-Heipke, Bad Kissingen 1989

Depictions

• Liberation - Hinrich Köhn.
• Valkyrie — Thomas Kretschmann

See also

• H. Keith Thompson

Further reading

• Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, (1991, ISBN 0-13-089301-3)
• The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee (1997, ISBN 0-316-51959-6)
• God, Honor, Fatherland: Pictorial History of the Grossdeutschland Division 1942-1944 by Remy Spezzano and Thomas McGuirl (1997, ISBN 0-9657584-0-0)
• Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and the Debate on Rearmament, 1949-1959 by Alaric Searle. Praeger Pub., Westport, Conn. (2003, ISBN 0-275-97968-7)
• Schaulen, Fritjof (2005). Eichenlaubträger 1940 - 1945 Zeitgeschichte in Farbe III Radusch - Zwernemann (in German). Selent, Germany: Pour le Mérite. ISBN 3-932381-22-X.
• Thomas, Franz (1997): Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945, Band 1: A–K (in German). Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7648-2299-6
• Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000): Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945, Podzun-Pallas, Friedburg, ISBN 3-7909-0284-5
• Patzwall, Klaus D. / Scherzer, Veit (2001): Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber, Band II (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8
• 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 (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Miltaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2

External links

By Otto Ernst Remer

• My Role in Berlin on July 20, 1944
• An Interview with General Otto Ernst Remer

Others

• Otto-Ernst Remer Sentenced to 22 Months Imprisonment for Revisionist Publications
• Remer Evades Imprisonment for "Thought Crime"
• Remer Seeks Asylum in Spain
• Remer Dies in Exile
• Stalin's German-Nationalist Party