Hermann Fegelein

Hermann Fegelein was born in Ansbach, Germany, in 1906. In his youth he worked as a stable boy for Christian Weber, one of the original members of the German Nazi party. He enlisted in the German army in 1925, staying for three years, and when his service was up he joined the Bavarian State Police and was posted to Munich. In his capacity as a policeman he came into contact with many members of the Nazi party, found the party's philosophy to his liking, and quit the state police to join the party in 1930. In 1931 he transferred to the SS. His rise through the ranks of the SS was impressive, and in 1937 he was appointed by Heinrich Himmler as head of the SS Riding School, a prestigious institution restricted only to members of German royalty and wealthy industrialists (who, not coincidentally, were major financial backers of the Nazi party). In 1943 he was briefly posted to the Russian front--where his unit was accused of massacring thousands of civilians--but, after being wounded, he was transferred back to Germany and went to work as Himmler's personal assistant. In 1944 Fegelein married Gretl Braun, the sister of Adolf Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun. It was apparently a marriage of political and career expediency for Fegelein, as Hitler had been trying to marry off Gretl for some time so as to have a legitimate reason to present Eva to visitors and have her accompany him to official functions; Gretl had a reputation for being extremely promiscuous, and it was getting more and more difficult for Hitler to find a man who would want anything to do with her (she was, in fact, pregnant with another man's child when she married Fegelein). Now that Fegelein had performed such a valuable favor for "Der Fuhrer", though, his personal stock went up with Hitler and his professional stock went up with Himmler. However, as the war began to turn against the Nazis, Fegelein's duties as commandant of the SS horse farm, headquartered in Fischhorn Castle near Zell am See, began to include the distribution to various high Nazi officials of large amounts of gold, works of art, jewelry and other valuables looted from most of occupied Europe, along with new ID papers that would allow them to escape capture after Germany's defeat and make their way to countries outside Europe. In April of 1945 Himmler, Fegelein's boss, tried to negotiate a secret surrender to the Allies, with himself as leader of postwar Germany. The Allies would have nothing to do with Himmler or his offer, but Hitler found out what Himmler had done and ordered his arrest. Although Himmler escaped capture by the SS, Fegelein didn't; he was caught trying to escape to Sweden with large amounts of cash and forged passports and brought back under arrest to the Chancellery bunker where Hitler and the remnants of his Nazi regime were making their last stand. It is here where accounts of Fegelein's fate differ. He was charged with desertion--punishable by death--and tried by court-martial. Some of those present in the bunker say Fegelein apparently had a mental breakdown and was unable to defend himself at the court-martial, resulting in the trial being postponed, and an outraged Hitler then had him hanged by SS executioners. Others believe he was shot in his cell after he was returned there, and there are even some who claimed he escaped and made his way out of Berlin. Most knowledgeable sources, however, agree that he was indeed executed in the bunker, although it will probably never be known exactly how or when.