Hitlers Iron Cross....

[Chris Boonzaier]

From what I have gleaned.... Hitler was recommended for his Iron Cross by a Jewish officer named Hugo Gutmann...

Is there any record of what happened to Gutmann after the war?

Thankinks

Chris

[Chris Boonzaier]

I ask, because I have found a very interesting dokument with the answer... but have never ever read what happened to him anywhere else.

[Vaughan]

Well google brings up many hits, this is a brief synopsis:

http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/nuremberg2/nur009.html

[Chris Boonzaier]

Ahhh... OK, I was also swamped by the choice.

Will post my finding later.

Best

Chris

[Ulsterman]

Prosper knows quite a bit. Guttman ended up in the USA with a pension from the Third Reich. Toland interviewed him.

[Chris Liontas]

Prosper knows quite a bit. Guttman ended up in the USA with a pension from the Third Reich. Toland interviewed him.

Really?? I never knew that. Is there a published copy of the interview, or was it a private one?

[Ulsterman]

Well, I saw a letter on sale at a local militria shop @ 12 years ago by Toland about his interview with Grant (Gutmann) or so i thought.

Actually, Webers' new book says a lot about what happened and Gutmann was lucky to have survived the Third Reich. He certainly was not keen on Hitlers'EK1 and avoided talking about it for the rest of his life.

He did NOT receive a pension from Hitler and was accorded no special treatment.

What did you find Chris?

[PKeating]

Gosh! It's a long time since I read Toland. Ulsterman is right in saying that Hugo Gutmann received no special pension from Hitler although I think the NS government paid him his due pension as a retired reserve officer. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 but escaped to Belgium after his release, apparently facilitated by some sympathetic security service officers who were themselves WW1 veterans. He and his family got out and away to the USA before the German invasion in 1940. There are a lot of differing accounts out there, including one I recall reading in the 1970s which contended that Gutmann was living in Vienna when the Germans annexed Austria and that Hitler gave special orders that he not be harassed in any way. In fact, the only German politician or statesman who seems to have behaved correctly was Hindenburg, who tried to protect and exempt Jewish veterans from discrimination. However, Hindenburg died in 1934 and could therefore do nothing about the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935. Hugo Gutmann, like other German Jews, was stripped of his citizenship by the Nuremberg decree and his name was removed from the army reserve rolls. This is where the stories that Hitler protected him germinate: Gutmann apparently continued to receive his army pension, unlike many but not all other Jewish veterans, and it was said that this was due to Hitler's intervention. Let's look at this more closely. When it suited Hitler, he protected Jews, as the cases of the Bechsteins, Erhard Milch and others show. Had Gutmann been under the Führer's special protection, it seems doubtful that he would have been arrested by the Gestapo and that he would have felt the pressing need to escape from Germany. There again, if memory serves me right, Hitler did make some comments about how some Jews were okay, based on his experiences of men like Gutmann. But I will dig out Toland and read him again as I think much of his interview of Henry G Grant of St Louis,Missouri found its way into his biography of Hitler.

PK

[Chris Boonzaier]

Damn, I had forgotten this post.

I HOPE I still have it, must look, but a relative of my wife worked in a department that looked after Pension claims of refuges after WW2. One of them was Gutmann's.

He sent me a photocopy of the letter Gutmann sent in 46 or so giving his Bio, what happened to him in and after the war etc.

I must search and see where it is... its Chaos here, I have papers and documents all over....

[Ulsterman]

Chris!! I would BE VERY interested in seeing that letter.

AS in Name-your-price-interested!!!!!!

Seriously.

I need it for leverage. Weber has some unidentified citations and either he is making some of his book up (and I do not think he is, he seems meticulous, although he draws some eccentric conclusions and seems to be more a bad lawyer stylistically than a good writer.

The KEY cite I want (and he is ignoring me after my tepid review on the WW1 forum) is the EK1 award statistics he allegedly found in a newspaper from July, 1918. It proves what I said about the EK1 to privates being numerically rarer than a PLM award!

Gutman made it out of Belgium just after the invasion and was almost bombed by a stuka as he and his family fled southwards into a Vichy concentration camp. Thence they managed to immigrate to the USA because of US relatives who paid their way. Gutman changed his name to Grant after the department store in NYC (WT Grants) when he got to the USA. After his encounter with the Gestapo he was not keen on Hitler finding him after the "EK1" controversy of 1931/32 in which the SPD publicized Hitlers lack of special merit for the cross.

According to the Grant family, Gutman NEVER spoke of his war time experiences with almost anyone and I am now wondering if the Toland interview even happened at all-given the Speer interviews that apparently were not as "complete" as Toland said they were. A letter from Speer showed up last year to a historian/collector in which he says that he knows Toland was no friend and was no happy about the way in which Toland misquoted things he said to fit his own 'writing style'.

Hitler certainly had other jewish/SPD/KPD members of RIR16 arrested and specifically murdered and Gutman was actively sought by the Gestapo.

[PKeating]

According to the Grant family, Gutman NEVER spoke of his war time experiences with almost anyone and I am now wondering if the Toland interview even happened at all-given the Speer interviews that apparently were not as "complete" as Toland said they were. A letter from Speer showed up last year to a historian/collector in which he says that he knows Toland was no friend and was no happy about the way in which Toland misquoted things he said to fit his own 'writing style'.

Interesting. IIRC, Toland quoted from his interview(s) with Gutmann/Grant but if Toland was prone to 'painting in broad brushstrokes', then that might raise question marks over what Gutmann/Grant allegedly told him. Presumably, Toland recorded his subjects.

PK

[Odulf]

From what I have gleaned.... Hitler was recommended for his Iron Cross by a Jewish officer named Hugo Gutmann...

Is there any record of what happened to Gutmann after the war?

Thankinks

Chris

Are you refering to his EK2 or EK1 Chris?

As there has been some doubt about Hitler's EK1.

[Ulsterman]

Gutman was responsible for the EK1. Hitler got the EK2 very early in the war and was noted for having done so.

[Kev in Deva]

The name of the Jewish officer is given as:

Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann

In THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER

By Robert Payne 445-08254-195,

Page 113 Chapter The Dispatch Runner.From page 118:-

According to Mend, Hitler cordially disliked Hugo Gutmann and refused to salute him. One day Mend and Hitler met in the street and began talking. Gutmann strode past, expecting to be saluted, but Hitler paid no attention to him. The adjutant was annoyed and threatened him with punishment.

Hitler simply shrugged his shoulders and resumed his conversation with Mend, saying "I recognise these Jews as officers only in the firing line." The war fed his bitterness against the Jews, for he (Hitler believed they always got the "cushy jobs"

He received the Iron Cross Ist Class on the recommendation of First Lieutenant Hugo Gutman*, (who was Jewish) who had ordered him to carry urgent dispatches to the rear, commanding the artillerymen to stop shelling the German forward trenches. There had been a breakdown in communications, the artillery men did not know there had been a slight German advance and many German soldiers had been killed by German shells.

The patch of ground between Lt. Gutmans dug-out and the base artillery was under heavy English-machine gun fire, and the dispatch runner who crossed that patch of ground would have to be a very courageous man indeed. Lt. Gutmann promised Hitler the Iron Cross I Class, if he succeeded.

Hitler accomplished the task and Lt. Gutmann kept his promise. The citation, dated July 31, 1918 was signed by Baron von Godin, the regimental commander, and read as follows:

"As a dispatch runner, he has shown cold-blooded courage and exemplary boldness in positional warfare and in the war of movement, and he always volunteered to carry messages in the most difficult situations and at the risk of his life. Under conditions of great peril, when all the communications lines were cut, the untiring and fearless activity of Hitler made it possible for important messages to go through."

According to one source on the internet:

"Hugo Gutmann was Hitler's immediate superior officer from January 29 to August 31, 1918.

His military papers have been preserved, and they tell that he was born on November 19, 1880 in Nuremberg as the son of the shop-keeper Salomon Gutmann and his wife Emma.

He himself stated his religion as Jewish. In 1902 he volunteered for the army and was appointed non-commissioned officer, before he in 1904 was transferred to the reserve.

At the outbreak of war in 1914 Hugo Gutmann was called up and soon after he was transferred to Regiment List.

On April 15, 1915, he was promoted to lieutenant, and after that he acted as adjutant for the regiment's artillery battalion.

On the same day as Hitler received his Iron Cross, the regimental commander, Freiherr von Tubeuf, wrote a recommendation on Gutmann which shows his energy as a front officer.

Gutmann was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class on December 2, 1914,

incidentally the same day as Hitler - and the Iron Cross 1st class on December 4, 1915.

MORE:-

"Hugo Gutmann was still unmarried when, at the age of 38, he was demobilized on February 8, 1919. He married the year after and his wife later bore two children.

Late in 1933 he asked the Bavarian War Archives for a copy of his military papers - probably in order to take advantage of President Hindenburg's stubborn defense of the civil rights of the Jewish war veterans.

Hugo Gutmann at that time owned an office-furniture shop in Vordere Steingasse 3 in Nuremberg.

Together with his family he escaped in 1939 to Belgium, and in 1940 he came to the United States, where he changed his name to Henry G. Grant.

According to the historian Werner Maser, he received - by Hitler's intervention - a pension from the Third Reich down to the end of the war."

However, the author of the above makes it clear that, despite the possible assistance regarding the pension, Hitler's feelings about Gutmann may have been rather complex and far from warm.

If you are interested, I suggest you take a look at the entirety of the fairly long article from which I took the above, located at:

http://holocaust-info.dk/shm/2_uk.htm (Link now non-operational)

(Originally posted by Member JAMES AXIS HISTORY FORUM in 2002.)

Another source refered too:-

Other known military awards to Hitler:-

2 - 12 - 1915 Iron Cross, II Class;

17 - 9 -1917, Bavarian Cross of Military Merit, third class, with swords;

9 - 5 - 1918, the (List) Regimental Diploma;

4 - 8 - 1918, the Iron Cross, First class;

18 - 5 - 1918 a Black wound badge;

25 - 8 - 1918 the Bavarian Medal of Military Service, Third class.”

*

Hitlers II Class Iron Cross award was for interposing his body between enemy fire directed at Lieutenant-Colonel Englehardt while at Wytschaete

Kevin in Deva. :beer:

Edited January 15, 2011 by Kev in Deva

[Ulsterman]

Good information, Kev, but the more I dig in ancestry, the more I find is questionable.

Payne's book must be treated with GREAT caution. Payne used many of the interviews found in the NSDAP archives- many of which were heavily colored by their POST 1933 timeframe. The Zeitgeist after the Machtergreifung was somewhat "different". Some of these interviews are just plain crap and Gutmann for example, wasn't even with BRIR16 until @ 1916 as I recall.

I have problems with BOTH books (Weber and Payne) at this point but IMHO Maser should be treated with a "prove it to me" mindset.

[Ulsterman]

Chris- any news???

[Paul R]

This is going to be good... Chris, I hope that you are able to find that letter!! Exciting stuff!

[Ulsterman]

a-hem! Chris...any luck in the desk archaeology?

:whistle:

[Chris Boonzaier]

a-hem! Chris...any luck in the desk archaeology?

No,

but I sure found a lot of other things I did not know I had... the house looses nothing! it will turn up...

[Ulsterman]

well...I live in hope.

The book ranges from decent to awful. But I want that citation.