SUMMARY: This offering is a Promotion Document sitgned by Heinrich Himmler promoting Hermann Fegelein to SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen SS. Price:$1,650.00

SOLD 

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (1900 – 1945) was a Nazi German politician and head of the Schutzstaffel (SS). He was one of the most powerful men in Hitler's entourage, together with Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels. As Reichsführer-SS he oversaw all police and security forces, including the Gestapo.

This is an excellent association document in which Himmler promotes one of his favorites, Hermann Fegelein. Fegelein became a highly-decorated officer, married the sister of Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun, and then, within a year of the marriage, was executed by an SS squadron for alleged desertion as the Soviet army closed in on Hitler’s Berlin bunker.

Fegelein’s own autograph material is rare enough, but this is one of only three of Fegelein’s personal service documents of which we are aware. We are currently offering a second one, a 1944 document signed by Hitler promoting Fegelein to the dual ranks of SS-Gruppenführer and Waffen-SS Generalleutnant, the equivalent of a lieutenant general an earlier promotion in March 1940. The third, Hitler’s award to Fegelein of the oak leaves to the Knight’s Cross, is illustrated in Volume I of Charles Hamilton’s classic work Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich.

Here, early in World War II, Himmler promotes Fegelein to the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer, or lieutenant colonel, in the Waffen-SS. The Waffen-SS was the fighting component of the Nazi Protective Squadron, the Schutzstaffel or SS, and its members fought alongside soldiers of the regular army but remained under Himmler’s control. But because Fegelein was already an SS-Standartenführer, or colonel, in the SS, Himmler authorizes him to continue to wear the “service designation of an SS colonel of the Waffen-SS” and the “appropriate badges of rank.” This illustrates the sometime differences between the two components of the SS.

Originally the party’s paramilitary unit, the SS was considered an elite unit whose members were selected for their racial and ideological backgrounds. Among its several branches were the Security Service, the Sicherheitsdienst or SD, which was the SS and later the Nazi party intelligence agency, and the Secret State Police, the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo. The SD was charged with obtaining secret information about the actual and potential enemies of the Nazi leadership so that the Nazis could take appropriate action to destroy or neutralize opposition, and the Gestapo similarly targeted those thought not to be fully committed to the Nazi way of life or those who pursued “non-German” activities.

Fegelein, who was nicknamed Himmler’s “golden boy,” rose rapidly through the ranks after joining the SS in 1933. Hitler’s biographer Ian Kershaw labels him a “swashbuckling, womanizing, cynical opportunist,” and indeed Fegelein had several extramarital affairs after he married Gretl Braun in June 1944. Still he had substance as well as style: He earned 21 decorations, including decorations for being twice wounded while commanding the 8th SS Cavalry Division on the Eastern Front in September 1943. Among them were the Ritterkreuz, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, which recognized extreme battlefield bravery or successful leadership. He received that decoration in three successive degrees: the Knight’s Cross on March 2, 1942; with oak leaves on December 22, 1942; and, the month after this promotion, with swords on July 30, 1944. Fegelein was one of only 159 soldiers who received Knight’s Cross with both oak leaves and swords.

After Fegelein was wounded, Himmler brought him back to Berlin, where he made him his adjutant and the Waffen-SS representative on Hitler’s staff. His opportunism perhaps led him to marry Gretl. He did, however, return to the field in command of the 8th SS Cavalry Division “Florian Geyer,” for which he received swords to the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves.

In January 1945, Fegelein served as a liaison officer between Himmler and Hitler at the Führer Headquarters. He was in Hitler’s bunker at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin as Soviet troops closed in on the city in April 1945. On April 26, he left the bunker and returned home to Charlottenburg, on the outskirts of Berlin. Hitler noticed his absence the next day, and the SS discovered him that evening drunk at his apartment, in civilian clothes, with a woman and considerable money, his bags packed to leave. The SS hustled him back to the bunker, where he was stripped of his decorations and held. About the same time, Hitler learned that Himmler had secretly met with Count Folke Bernadotte, vice president of the Swedish Red Cross and a close relative of the King of Sweden, to discuss surrender to the American and British forces. Hitler, enraged, concluded that Fegelein was part of Himmler’s intrigue.

Historical accounts vary as to whether Eva Braun tried to intervene with Hitler, since Gretl was then pregnant, and whether Fegelein was condemned at a hastily-arranged court martial or simply shot without a trial. What seems clear is that Fegelein was shot in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery by an SS squadron on April 29, 1945. Hitler’s last surviving bodyguard, Rochus Misch, told the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2007 that Hitler did not order Fegelein’s execution himself but that the order instead came from a representative of the commander of Hitler’s personal guard.

This document is on the printed stationery of the Reichsführer-SS with a blind-embossed seal at the upper left. Himmler has signed it in black fountain pen with a bold 3” signature. His stamped Nazi party seal crosses his first initial of his signature and barely touches the first letter of his last name.

The piece has horizontal and vertical folds, one of which unobtrusively goes through the signature. There are a few pinholes in the vertical fold, which affect one letter of the typewritten text; minor paper loss at the edges of one horizontal fold; stains and typical file holes in the left margin; and remnants from prior framing on the back. There is also a small pencil initial in the lower left corner that appears to be an “F,” as aspects consistent with Fegelein’s handwriting, and thus could be Fegelein’s own docket notation. The piece is in very good to fine condition overall.

Price: SOLD

Needless to say, this listing is not to be misconstrued as an endorsement or glorification of Adolph Hitler or his policies or those of his associates. Himmler was a major leader and military figure of an important country and, at one time, he was one of the most powerful men on earth. He and Hitler are now part of history and there is no going back on that. Items presented by The History Buff, Inc. represent part of the historical record of man and are placed for sale without prejudice. Himmler represents that part of human nature which the founders of our country, like James Madison, called "the depravity of man." It was not by accident that our founding documents were designed in part to restrain that very 'depravity'. Jefferson was particularly prescient when he warned, "Man must be bound by the chains of law."