| Born on 18 August 1912,
Otto-Ernst Remer joined the German Army in 1932; by April of 1942 he was a battalion
commander and joined GD to lead the IV (Heavy) battalion. By February of the next
year, he commanded the 1st (Armoured) battalion of Grenadier Regiment GD. His
halftrack-mounted troops managed to cover the withdrawal of an SS panzer corps from
Kharkov, and the battalion also covered itself with glory during the German counter-attack
on the city. His leadership of the battalion, which helped pursue the defeated
Russians as far as Belgorod, helped the German Army as a whole regain the strategic
initiative for the summer of 1943, and earned Remer personally the Knight's Cross of the
Iron Cross. Major Remer led his
battalion competently during the Battle of Kursk, and then again at Krivoi Rog, and in
November 1943 Remer was awarded the Oakleaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
In March 1944, Remer left the GD Division to command Wachbattaillon GD (the unit
entrusted with public duties and security for Hitler in Berlin.)
As the commander of the only large combat
formation in the capital during the July 20 Bomb Plot, Remer was able to play a large role
in crushing the rebellious elements attempting to seize control of the government.
After being ordered by one of his superiors (and a key member of the anti-Hitler forces)
to arrest the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, Remer arrived at the ministry to be
persuaded by Goebbels to telephone Hitler personally, who not only convinced Remer that he
was not dead (as was claimed by the conspirators), but promoted Remer to Oberst on the
spot and granted full authority to take aggressive action to crush the plot. Remer
acted enthusiastically and efficiently, and by the evening of 20 July the revolt had been
stopped and the key conspirators were dead or in custody. |
Otto-Ernst Remer as a Major, wearing the coveted Oakleaves to the Knight's
Cross of the Iron Cross. The ribbons are for the Iron Cross II Class, Winter War
Medal, and Wehrmacht Long Service Medal.
Colour photo courtesy of Paal Waland
|
While Remer had been a competent enough battalion commander, his new duties after
the Bomb Plot as commander of the Führer Begleit Brigade (itself formed from a GD cadre)
showed he was out of depth in higher command positions. The brigade suffered heavy
casualties (due, it is reported, to his leadership) in East Prussia. The Brigade
then transferred to the west for the Ardennes Offensive in December 1944, and again
suffered high casualties for little gain. The brigade, expanded to division status,
moved to Silesia in March 1945, and again Remer was criticized for lack of ability.
 |
Remer finished the war in the rank of Generalmajor; his promotion had come due to
his loyalty to Hitler, but unfortunately for Remer (and untold numbers of those under his
command), he had never been given the proper training to lead his new commands. |
|
Otto-Ernst Remer as a
Generalmajor (above) and shortly before his death (left)
|
| Remer was lucky to avoid Russian captivity,
and remained an American prisoner of war until 1947. During this period, the commander of
his prison camp, an officer of the US First Infantry Division, said that "Of
the 87 German generals in this General Remer is the only one whom I respect as courageous
and honorable." Remer
became involved in politics after WW II, helping form the "Socialist Reich
Party," which, after gaining sixteen seats in a state parliament, was banned in 1952.
Remer then lived in Egypt and Syria, in exile, for several years, eventually
publishing two books, including Conspiracy and Treason Around Hitler (Verschwörung
und Verrat um Hitler), which was both a memoir and a study.
Remer's devotion to Hitler and the Nazi
regime lasted long after the war, and he was sentenced to 22 months in prison in October
1992 for publicly denying the scope of the Holocaust, which was a crime in the newly
reunited Germany. His arguments in a newsletter, that there was no historical basis
for the accepted death toll figures of those killed at Auschwitz, and the method of
execution (poison gas), were not considered by the court who refused to hear his
testimony. He died in exile in Spain on October 4, 1997, aged 85. |
The cover of the 1 December 1949 issue of
Der Spiegel, showing Remer as a Generalmajor in 1944, and as he looked after the war.
|
| A fellow GD veteran had this to
say about the former hero of July 20: 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 judgement will be made here as to whether his
decision on July 20 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.
- Baigent, Michael and Leigh, Richard. 1994. Secret Germany. London, New York: The Penguin Group.
Mark Weber, of the Journal of
Historical Review, however, had this to say about Remer's situation in his last years
(Weber also points out that Germany continued to try and extradite Remer from Spain,
despite the Spanish position that Remer's "thought crimes" were not illegal
under Spanish law.)
The Remer case points up the strange and
even perverse standards that prevail in Germany today. Although his "crime" was
a non-violent expression of opinion, to dispute claims of mass gassings in wartime
concentration camps is regarded in today's Germany as a criminal attack against all Jews,
who enjoy a privileged status there.
More than half a century after the end of
the Third Reich and the Second World War, Germans are ceaselessly exhorted to "never
forget" the anti-Jewish measures of the Hitler era, to atone for what is called the
most terrible crime in history, and to regard themselves as a nation of criminals and
moral misfits. As a further expression of the country's "national masochism,"
the July 1944 conspirators are officially venerated, while outstanding wartime combat
heroes and selfless patriots such as Remer are dishonored.
Otto-Ernst Remer shall remain a controversial
figure for many years. |
|
