Ernst von Weizsäcker
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Ernst Freiherr[1] von Weizsäcker (25 May 1882 – 4 August 1951) was a German diplomat and convicted war criminal. Weizsäcker was the father of politician Richard von Weizsäcker, who was President of Germany 1984-94, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, famous physicist and philosopher. See Weizsäcker for the family tree.
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[edit] Early life and active naval career
Weizsäcker was born in Stuttgart to Karl Hugo von Weizsäcker, who would become Minister President (Prime Minister) of the Kingdom of Württemberg and raised to personal nobility in 1897, and Paula von Meibom. In 1911 he married Marianne von Graevenitz, who belonged to the old nobility. In 1916 he became a Freiherr (Baron), as his father and his family were raised to the inheritable nobility.
In 1900, Weizsäcker joined the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy) to become an officer, serving mainly in Berlin. In 1917, during the latter portion of WW 1 he earned the Iron Cross (both classes) and was promoted to Korvettenkapitän (equivalent to U.K and U.S. naval officer grades of Lieutenant Commander).
[edit] Diplomatic career
Only with his military credentials, without any College degree, or normally required diplomatic exams, Weizsäcker joined the German Foreign Office in 1920 on probation status, and spent the 1930s in Oslo and Bern in minor positions. After having been advised[citation needed] to do so, and to further his career, he joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (German - NSDAP) known as the Nazi Party and the SS in 1938, where his friend[citation needed] Heinrich Himmler awarded him a high rank. On the day of joining the SS, he was made Secretary of State under Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. He was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer on 30 January 1942.
[edit] Ambassador to the Vatican
After the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and the changing German war fortunes, and following his request, Weizsäcker was appointed the first and last SS Officer to be German Ambassador to the Holy See, from 1943 to 1945.
Received by Vatican State Secretary Luigi Cardinal Maglione January 6, 1944, Weizsäcker stated:
- If Germany as a bulwark against communism should fall, all of Europe will become communist.
The cardinal replied:
- What a misfortune, that Germany with its antireligious policies has stirred up such concerns.[2],
Similar representations were repeated by Weizsäcker to Monsignore Giovanni Battista Montini (the later Pope Paul VI).
Weizsäcker's record at the Vatican was mixed. While in Berlin, he had refused to accept a Papal note protesting the treatment of occupied Poland.[3] During the brutal German occupation in Rome, Weizsäcker did little to stop the deportation of Jews and other brutalities. He did help individuals to avoid persecution and helped to free Rome from all German military bases, to avoid the Allied bombing of the eternal city.[4]
His messages and documents to Berlin were nothing but lies. said his coworker Albrecht von Kessel later.[5] In these messages to Berlin, Weizsäcker purposefully painted Pope Pius XII as mild, diplomatic, an indecisive and pro-German pontiff, in order to help the Pope and avoid anti-German sentiment in Italy.[6] Like the commanding Waffen SS General Karl Wolff, Weizsäcker was clearly opposed to Hitler’s plan to occupy the Vatican, during which, Weizsäcker feared, the Pope could have been shot, "fleeing while avoiding arrest"[7]
Some Vatican documents paint a threatening posture of the ambassador. The State Secretariat papers include a February 1944 conversation with Rev. Otto Faller, on the Vatican refugee program, in which Weizsäcker attacked the Papal newspaper Osservatore Romano for its protests against the Nazi searches of Church and Convent of St. Paul, and accused Catholic institutions hoarding hams and other food items at the expense of the population. Most importantly, the Nazi ambassador questioned the right of the Vatican to provide asylum to thousands within Rome. Weizsäcker threatened military reprisals and a complete military surveillance not only against the Vatican itself but also against the many off limit Churches and Catholic institutions and other off-limit buildings, housing Jewish, socialist, foreign and domestic anti-fascist refugees. This remarkable threat from a German ambassador, indicates that Weizsäcker was not without power during the German occupation of Rome.[8]
To the very end, Weizsäcker 'pestered' the Vatican with his anti-communist slogans, threatening either a separate Russian-German peace,[9] or requesting from Monsignore Domenico Tardini an immediate Papal peace initiative to stop the war in the West, so Germany could finish communism in the East, as late as February 25, 1945.[10] Tardini saw it as a transparent effort to obtain a military solution.[11] Like many Nazis, Weizsäcker could not face certain imminent defeat. His selfish attempt to bring up the topic of a German transition government, and the likelihood of him being a member of it, failed as well.[12]
[edit] Prosecution for war crimes
After the June 1944 liberation of Rome from German occupation, Weizsäcker using diplomatic immunity hid in the Campo Santo[citation needed]. Therefore he could not be included in the first group of Nazi leaders tried at the Nüremberg War Crime Trials by the four allies. This was significant, because after the war, he had to fear the possibilities of accusations at Nürnberg, possibly sitting in the box with his protector Joachim von Rippentrop and Hermann Göring.
Weizsäcker was arrested in July 1947, in Nuremberg in connection with the Ministries Trial, also known as the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, after the location of the German Foreign Office. These American military tribunal started before and finished during the Berlin blockade confrontation with the Soviets and proceeded without participation of the USSR, and were much milder in conduct and outcome. Weizsäcker was charged with active cooperation with the deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz, as a crime against humanity. Weizsäcker, with the assistance of his son Richard, who appeared as his assistant defence counsel (Richard was a law student during the trial), claimed that he had no knowledge of the purpose for which Auschwitz had been designed and believed that Jewish prisoners would face less danger if deported to the east.
The Court, which did not possess all the incriminating evidence existing today against Ernst von Weizsäcker, was not convinced, especially when presented with records prepared at the Wannsee Conference by one of his assistants concerning the mass executions of Jews already underway in 1941. Weizsäcker was convicted and sentenced to seven years, later reduced to five.
Weizsäcker was released as part of a general amnesty in 1950, after which he published his memoirs, in which he portrayed himself as a supporter of the resistance. Some defenders have continued to argue that his record was mixed, that he did, in fact, work against the goals of the Nazi government while serving it, and that his sentence was unjust;[citation needed] Winston Churchill allegedly called his sentence a "deadly error".[citation needed]
He died of a stroke in 1951.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Regarding personal names: Freiherr is a title, translated as Baron, not a first or middle name. The female forms are Freifrau and Freiin.
- ^ Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press, 1997, p.256.
- ^ Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press, 1997, p.89-90
- ^ Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press, 1997, p.219-224
- ^ Albrecht von Kessel, Der Papst und die Juden, in Summa Injuria oder durfte der Papst schweigen Frankfurt 1963, p.168
- ^ Albrecht von Kessel, Der Papst und die Juden, in Summa Injuria oder durfte der Papst schweigen Frankfurt 1963, p.168
- ^ Albrecht von Kessel, Der Papst und die Juden, in Summa Injuria oder durfte der Papst schweigen Frankfurt 1963, p.168
- ^ 50. Le P. Otto Faller a la Secretairerie d'Etat, Actes et Documents du Daint Siege Relativs a la Seconde guerre Mondiale, Vol.11 152, 153
- ^ Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press, 1997, p.256.
- ^ 505 Notes de Mgr.Tardini, Actes et Documents du Daint Siege Relativs a la Seconde guerre Mondiale, Vol.11 505
- ^ Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press, 1997, p. 269
- ^ Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, Paulist Press, 1997, p. 257
