Hermann Fegelein remains one of the most notorious figures in Adolf Hitler's inner circle, a man whose rapid rise through the SS was matched only by the brutality of the units he commanded and the opportunism that defined his career. Born on October 30, 1906, in Ansbach, then part of the German Empire, Fegelein grew up around horses. His father ran an equestrian school in Munich, where the young Fegelein worked and became a proficient rider who competed in jumping events.
In 1925 he joined the 17th Bavarian Cavalry Regiment, leaving in 1928. That same year he joined the Bavarian State Police in Munich as an officer cadet. His superiors regarded him as someone whose ambition was not always easy to steer in a healthy direction. His police career ended abruptly 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 claimed he had left the police on his own account to better serve the Nazi Party and the SS.
Fegelein came into contact with Nazism through 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. That same year Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power and Germany became a dictatorship. It was the right time for a man like Fegelein, an opportunist and careerist with no morals and no boundaries.
After taking over the administration of his father's riding institute, he soon caught the eye of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. He oversaw the preparation of courses and facilities for the equestrian events of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Fegelein was called Heinrich Himmler's golden boy. His boyish face and combination of flattery and manipulation made him Himmler's protégé. The Reichsführer treated Fegelein like a son, and promotions soon followed. In 1937 Fegelein was appointed commander of the SS Main Riding School in Munich, created on Himmler's order.
The Second World War began on September 1, 1939, with the invasion of Poland. The campaign ended on October 6 with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole country. Fegelein and his Death's-Head Horse Regiment arrived in Poland shortly after. On November 15, 1939, the 1st Death's Head Cavalry Regiment was created on Himmler's order by expanding 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, the 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 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 December 7, 1939. These mass murder operations claimed the lives of 100,000 Poles.
On December 15, 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 with murder motivated by greed and with 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, chief of the Reich Security Main Office and a principal architect of the Holocaust, attempted several times to investigate the allegations against Fegelein, Himmler dismissed all of them. The German invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands started on May 10, 1940, and became known as the Battle of France. These countries, along with France, were conquered within six weeks. To further humiliate France, Hitler ordered the armistice document to be signed in the same railcar in which representatives of the then-defeated Germany had 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, June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began, and Fegelein and his unit were deployed on the Eastern Front. Because the horses were exhausted, the men were transported to the front combat zone in lorries, and the horse-drawn artillery equipment was towed using any available vehicles. Himmler ordered Fegelein and his unit to kill partisans and later to 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 Himmler's order. In December 1942 he 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 confiscating cattle. From January 1944, Fegelein belonged to Hitler's headquarters staff, to which he was assigned by Himmler as his liaison officer and representative of the SS. Members of Hitler's inner circle looked down on him and despised him. Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and Minister of Armaments and War Production, called Fegelein one of the most disgusting people in Hitler's circle.
On July 20, 1944, when Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Hitler, 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 photographs of the hanged men executed as a result of the failed assassination attempt.
On June 3, 1944, three days before Allied infantry and armored divisions began landing on the Normandy coast in France, Fegelein married Gretl Braun, one of the two sisters of Eva Braun, Hitler's longtime companion and briefly his wife. Despite increasingly common food shortages and bombings of major cities, Hitler and Eva Braun attended the wedding, which lasted three days and became the last big social event for high-ranking Nazi representatives. The 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 reception at the Berghof and a party at the Eagle's Nest at Obersalzberg lasted three days.
It is believed that the marriage was politically motivated and, for Fegelein, 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 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 January 16, 1945, Hitler moved into the Führerbunker under the Reich Chancellery Garden, and on April 21, 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 apartment, 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 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, then in the late stages of pregnancy. However, nothing helped. Junge claimed that on April 29, 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, 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 a security squad, never seeing him again.
Fegelein's wife Gretl survived the war and on May 5, 1945, gave birth to their daughter, Eva Barbara Fegelein, who committed suicide in April 1971 after her boyfriend died in a car accident. Gretl remarried and died at the age of 72 in 1987. There were no tears shed for Hermann Fegelein.