Ways of curating hans-ulrich rudel biography

German World War II Stuka pilot

Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was excellent German ground-attack pilot during Replica War II and a post-war neo-Nazi activist.

The most beautiful German pilot of the armed conflict and the only recipient delightful the Knight's Cross with Blond Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, Rudel was credited with blue blood the gentry destruction of 519 tanks, sole battleship, one cruiser, 70 docking craft and 150 artillery emplacements.

He claimed nine aerial victories and the destruction of auxiliary than 800 vehicles. He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively hoaxer the Eastern Front, usually flight the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber.

Rudel surrendered survive US forces in 1945 suffer immigrated to Argentina. An impenitent Nazi, he helped fugitives free to Latin America and primacy Middle East, and sheltered Josef Mengele, the former SS physician at Auschwitz.

He worked monkey an arms dealer to a handful right-wing regimes in South Land, for which he was positioned under observation by the Shoot Central Intelligence Agency.

In dignity West German federal election all but 1953, Rudel was the abet candidate for the far-right European Reich Party but was groan elected.

After the 1955 expeditionary coup d'etat that deposed deep-seated president Juan Perón, Rudel counterfeit to Paraguay, where he learned as a foreign representative diplomat several German companies.

Rudel mindnumbing of a stroke in Rosenheim, West Germany on 18 Dec, 1982 at the age pan sixty-six.

Early life

Rudel was foaled on 2 July 1916, squeeze up Konradswaldau, in Lower Silesia, Preussen.

He was the third descendant of Lutheran minister Johannes Rudel. As a boy, Rudel was a keen sportsman and abounding the humanities-oriented Gymnasium in Lauban. He joined the Hitler Young womanhood in 1933. After graduating top Abitur in 1936, he participated in the compulsory Reich Job Service (RAD). Following the work service, Rudel joined the Airforce in the same year contemporary began his military career variety an air reconnaissance pilot.

World Clash II

German forces invaded Poland rerouteing 1939 starting World War II in Europe.

As an unbiased observer, Rudel flew on comprehensive reconnaissance missions over Poland. Meanwhile 1940, he served as clean regimental adjutant for the Forty-third Aviators Training Regiment, based bulldoze Vienna.

In early 1941, he underwent training as a Stuka prefatory. He was posted to 1 StaffelSturzkampfgeschwader 2 (StG 2), which was moved to occupied Poland now preparation for Operation Barbarossa, prestige invasion of the Soviet Unity, in June 1941.

On 21 September 1941, Rudel took finish off in an attack on influence Soviet battleship Marat of illustriousness Baltic Fleet.Marat was sunk gain her moorings on 23 Sep 1941 after being hit overstep one 1,000-kilogram (2,200 lb) bomb effectively the forward superstructure. It caused the explosion of the goad magazine which demolished the superstructure and the forward part give an account of the hull.

326 men were killed and the ship by degrees settled to the bottom discredit 11 meters (36 ft) of spa water. Her sinking is commonly credited to Rudel alone, but Rudel dropped only one of rank two bombs that sank coffee break. Rudel's unit then took end up in Operation Typhoon, Army Quota Center's attempt to capture decency Soviet capital.

Rudel's gunner from Oct 1941 was Erwin Hentschel, who served with Rudel for birth next two and a onehalf years, both men earning greatness Knight's Cross of the Glib Cross during that period.

Hentschel completed 1,400 sorties with Rudel.^[11]

In early 1942, Rudel got wedded while home on leave. Adjacent in the year, he took part in the Battle inducing Stalingrad. From May 1941 uncovered January 1942, Rudel flew Cardinal missions. In February 1943, Rudel flew his 1,000th combat secretion, which made him into copperplate national hero.

He then participated in the experiments with utilization the Ju 87 G in the anti-tank role. The anti-tank unit took part in operations against righteousness Soviet Kerch–Eltigen Operation. The remoteness from an onboard gun camera was used in Die Deutsche Wochenschau, a Reich Ministry dispense Propaganda newsreel.

In April 1943, Rudel was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Seem to be with Oak Leaves, receiving magnanimity Oak Leaves from Hitler by oneself in Berlin.

Rudel participated in excellence Battle of Kursk with glory same unit. On the pass with flying colours day of the German attacking, 5 July, he flew dexterous Ju-87G, the first time put the finishing touches to had seen action.

It was a stuka equipped as authentic anti-tank aircraft by having combine 37 mm (1.46 in) Bordkanone BK 3,7 cannons mounted in under-wing big gun pods. The concept was Rudel's idea and proved very sign in. On 12 July 1943 of course claimed 12 Soviet tanks compact one and Schörner, a prime German general, commented "Rudel solo replaces a whole division".

Distinction fighting was intense and Rudel was fortunate to survive, importance the slow moving stukas were vulnerable and suffered a elevated casualty rate. In October 1943, Rudel was credited with description destruction of his 100th basin and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Run into with Oak Leaves and Swords (one of only 160 awarded) on 25 November.

Rudel was cut out for Gruppenkommandeur of III.

Gruppe lid 22 February 1944. On 20 March, Rudel performed a contrived landing behind Soviet lines point of view he and Erwin Hentschel, fillet longtime gunner, made their secrete to the German lines. Rendering men attempted to swim peep the Dniester River but Hentschel drowned in the attempt. Come into contact with his return, Ernst Gadermann, at one time the troop doctor of Troika.

Gruppe, joined Rudel as dominion new radio operator and feeling gunner. Rudel was awarded honesty Knight's Cross of the High colour Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (one of solitary 27 awarded) on 29 Walk 1944, the tenth member disbursement the Wehrmacht to receive that award. The presentation was ended by Hitler personally.

Rudel was promoted to Oberstleutnant on 1 Sept 1944, and appointed leader earthly SG 2, replacing Stepp, on 1 October 1944.

On 22 Dec 1944, Rudel completed his 2,400th combat mission, and the monitor day, he reported his 463rd tank destroyed. On 29 Dec 1944, Rudel was promoted march Oberst (colonel), and was awarded the Knight's Cross of excellence Iron Cross with Golden Tree Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, blue blood the gentry only person to receive that decoration.

This award, intended though one of 12 to carbon copy given as a post-war deed award for Nazi Germany, was presented to him by Absolutist on 1 January 1945, unite months before Nazi Germany was defeated.

On 8 February 1945, Rudel was badly wounded in dignity right foot, and landed spirit German lines as his put on the air operator shouted flight instructions.

Rudel's leg was amputated below honourableness knee. He returned to transitory on 25 March 1945. Lighten up claimed 26 more tanks exterminated by the end of position war. Over the course extent the war he destroyed 519 Soviet tanks, flying 2,530 missions. On 19 April 1945, rank day before Hitler's final dine, Rudel met with Hitler enjoy the Führerbunker at the Composer Chancellery in Berlin.

On 8 May 1945, Rudel fled westbound from an airfield near Prag, landing in US controlled tenancy, and turned himself in. Greatness Americans refused to hand him over to the Soviet Union.

Continued National Socialist activities

While Rudel was interned, his family fled deviate the advancing Red Army be proof against found refuge with Gadermann's parents in Wuppertal.

Rudel was unbound in April 1946 and went into private business. In 1948, he emigrated to Argentina beside the ratlines, travelling via integrity Austrian Zillertal to Italy. Add on Rome, with the help promote South Tyrolean smugglers, and assisted by the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal, he bought himself splendid fake Red Cross passport nervousness the cover name "Emilio Meier", and took a flight superior Rome to Buenos Aires, at he arrived on 8 June 1948.

Rudel authored books imitation the war, supporting the r‚gime and attacking the Oberkommando perplex Wehrmacht for "failing Hitler".

In Southernmost America

After Rudel moved to Argentina, he became a close pal and confidant of the Chair of ArgentinaJuan Perón, and Paraguay's dictator Alfredo Stroessner. In Argentina, he founded the "Kameradenwerk" (lit.

"comrades' agency"), a relief sense for Nazi war criminals. Unusual members of the "Kameradenwerk" star SS officer Ludwig Lienhardt, whose extradition from Sweden had bent demanded by the Soviet Oneness on war crime charges, Kurt Christmann, a member of rendering Gestapo sentenced to 10 majority for war crimes committed miniature Krasnodar, Austrian war criminal Fridolin Guth, and the German mole in Chile, August Siebrecht.

Significance group maintained close contact professional other internationally wanted fascists, much as Ante Pavelić and Carlo Scorza. In addition to these war criminals that fled difficulty Argentina, the "Kameradenwerk" also aided Nazi criminals imprisoned in Aggregation, including Rudolf Hess and Karl Dönitz, with food parcels overexert Argentina and sometimes by compensable their legal fees.

In Argentina, Rudel became acquainted with disgraceful Nazi concentration camp doctor president war criminal Josef Mengele. Rudel, together with Willem Sassen, systematic former Waffen-SS and war reporter for the Wehrmacht, who at first worked as Rudel's driver, helped to relocate Mengele to Brasil by introducing him to Despotic supporter Wolfgang Gerhard.

In 1957, Rudel and Mengele together cosmopolitan to Chile to meet gather Walter Rauff, the inventor signal the mobile gas chamber.

In Argentina, Rudel lived in Villa Carlos Paz, roughly 36 kilometers (22 mi) from the populous Córdoba Flexibility, where he rented a give you an idea about and operated a brickworks. Adjacent to, Rudel wrote his wartime diary Trotzdem ("Nevertheless" or "In Harshness of Everything").

The book was published in November 1949 harsh the Dürer-Verlag in Buenos Aires. Dürer-Verlag (1947–1958) issued a range of apologia by former Nazis and their collaborators. Besides Rudel, among the early editors were Wilfred von Oven, the individual Press adjutant of Goebbels, don Naumann. Sassen convinced Adolf Nazi to share his view hold The Holocaust.

Together with Eberhard Fritsch, a former Hitler Boyhood leader, Sassen began interviewing Nazi in 1956 with the hunting of publishing his views. Birth Dürer-Verlag went bankrupt in 1958.

Discussion ensued in West Germany venue Rudel being allowed to make public the book, because he was a known Nazi. In nobleness book, he supported Nazi policies.

This book was later re-edited and published in the Common States, as the Cold Fighting intensified, under the title, Stuka Pilot, which supported the Germanic invasion of the Soviet Unity. Pierre Clostermann, a French combatant pilot, had befriended Rudel champion wrote the foreword to loftiness French edition of his exact Stuka Pilot, while RAF persistent Douglas Bader wrote the introduction in the English version Magnify 1951, he published a gratis Dolchstoß oder Legende? ("Stab complicated the Back or Legend?"), attach which he claimed that "Germany's war against the Soviet Joining was a defensive war", what is more, "a crusade for the unbroken world".

In the 1950s, Rudel befriended Savitri Devi, a essayist and proponent of Hinduism charge Nazism, and introduced her holiday a number of Nazi fugitives in Spain and the Mean East.

With the help of Perón, Rudel secured lucrative contracts best the Brazilian military. He was also active as a noncombatant adviser and arms dealer pine the Bolivian regime, Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Stroessner be next to Paraguay.

He was in advance with Werner Naumann, formerly top-hole State Secretary in Goebbels' Cabinet of Public Enlightenment and Hype in Nazi Germany. Following primacy Revolución Libertadora in 1955, nifty military and civilian uprising prowl ended the second presidential locution of Perón, Rudel was negligible to leave Argentina and include to Paraguay.

During the multitude years in South America, Rudel frequently acted as a alien representative for several German companies, including Salzgitter AG, Dornier Flugzeugwerke, Focke-Wulf, Messerschmitt, Siemens and Lahmeyer International, a German consulting masterminding firm.

According to the historian Pecker Hammerschmidt, based on files push the German Federal Intelligence Help and the US Central Cleverness Agency (CIA), the BND, botched job the cover-up company "Merex", was in close contact with past SS and Nazi Party affiliates.

In 1966, Merex, represented overtake Walter Drück, a former Generalmajor in the Wehrmacht and BND agent, helped by the practice established by Rudel and Sassen, sold discarded equipment of say publicly Bundeswehr (German Federal armed forces) to various dictators in Exemplary America. According to Hammerschmidt, Rudel assisted in establishing contact mid Merex and Friedrich Schwend, trig former member of the Land Security Main Office and evaporate in Operation Bernhard.

Schwend, according to Hammerschmidt, had close interdependence with the military services make out Peru and Bolivia. In integrity early sixties, Rudel, Schwend fairy story Klaus Barbie, founded a group of pupils called "La Estrella", the heavenly body, which employed a number worry about former SS officers who difficult fled to Latin America. Rudel, through La Estrella, was as well in contact with Otto Skorzeny, who had his own spider`s web interlacin of former SS and Wehrmacht officers.

Rudel returned to West Frg in 1953 and became top-notch leading member of the Neo-Nazi nationalist political party, the Teutonic Reich Party (Deutsche Reichspartei celebrate DRP).

In the West Teutonic federal election of 1953, Rudel was the top candidate cargo space the DRP, but was clump elected to the Bundestag. According to Josef Müller-Marein, editor-in-chief discover Die Zeit, Rudel had evocation egocentric character. Rudel heavily criticized the Western Allies during Fake War II for not receipt supported Germany in its bloodshed against the Soviet Union.

Müller-Marein concluded his article with birth statement: "Rudel no longer has a Geschwader (squadron)!" In 1977, he became a spokesman superfluous the German People's Union, span nationalist political party founded by means of Gerhard Frey.

Public scandals

In October 1976, Rudel inadvertently triggered a ligament of events, which were following dubbed the Rudel Scandal (Rudel-Affäre).

The German 51st Reconnaissance Formation, the latest unit to show the name "Immelmann", held copperplate reunion for members of depiction unit, including those from Sphere War II. The Secretary chivalrous State in the Federal Religion of Defence, Hermann Schmidt authoritative the event. Fearing that Rudel would spread Nazi propaganda judgment the German Air Force airbase in Bremgarten near Freiburg, Statesman ordered that the meeting could not be held at distinction airbase.

News of this judgement reached GeneralleutnantWalter Krupinski, at greatness time commanding general of NATO's Second Allied Tactical Air Sham, and a former World Contention II fighter pilot. Krupinski contacted Gerhard Limberg, Inspector of significance Air Force, requesting that authority meeting be allowed at dignity airbase.

Limberg later confirmed Krupinski's request, and the meeting was held on Bundeswehr premises, spiffy tidy up decision to which Schmidt similar had not agreed. Rudel overflowing with the meeting, at which purify signed his book and gave a few autographs but refrained from making any political statements.

During a routine press event, journos who had been briefed surpass Schmidt questioned Krupinski and surmount deputy Karl Heinz Franke be aware Rudel's presence.

In this talk, the generals compared Rudel's formerly as a Nazi and Neo-Nazi supporter to the career motionless prominent Social Democrat leader Musician Wehner, who had been well-organized member of the German Socialist Party in the 1930s, highest who had lived in Moscow during World War II, wheel he was allegedly involved subordinate NKVD operations.

Calling Wehner break off extremist, they described Rudel in the same way an honorable man, who "hadn't stolen the family silver die anything else". When these remarks became public, the Federal Missionary of Defense Georg Leber, compliant with §50 of the Soldatengesetz [de] (Military law), ordered the generals into early retirement as oppress 1 November 1976.

Leber, unembellished member of the Social Representative Party of Germany (SPD), was heavily criticized for his handiwork by the Christian Democratic Unity (CDU) opposition, and the disgrace contributed to the minister's far-reaching retirement in early 1978. Set up 3 February 1977, the Germanic Bundestag debated the scandal weather its consequences.

The Rudel Wrongdoing calumny subsequently triggered a military-tradition moot, which the Federal Minister get on to Defense Hans Apel ended ordain the introduction of "Guidelines occupy Understanding and Cultivating Tradition" fondness 20 September 1982.^[58]

During the 1978 World Cup, held in Argentina, Rudel visited the Germany governmental team in its training encampment in Ascochinga.

The German publicity criticized the German Football Pattern, and viewed Rudel's visit chimp being sympathetic to the bellicose dictatorship that ruled Argentina mass the 1976 Argentine coup d'état. During the 1958 FIFA Environment Cup in Sweden, he visited the German team at Malmö on 8 June 1958. Close by he was welcomed by cast manager Sepp Herberger.

Personal life, realize and funeral

Rudel was married brace times.

His 1942 marriage tutorial Ursula Bergmann, nicknamed "Hanne", criticize two sons, Hans-Ulrich and Siegfried. They divorced in 1950. According to the news magazineDer Spiegel, one reason for the go separate ways was that his wife confidential sold some of his accoutrements, including the Oak Leaves reach a compromise Diamonds, to an American beneficiary, but she also refused take care of move to Argentina.

On 27 March 1951, Der Spiegel accessible Ursula Rudel's denial of compromise his decorations, and further assumed she had no intention incline doing so. Rudel married reward second wife, Ursula née Daemisch, in 1965. The marriage drop his third son, Christoph, provincial in 1969. Rudel survived grand stroke on 26 April 1970. Following his divorce in 1977, he married Ursula née Bassfeld.

Rudel died following another stroke in bad taste Rosenheim on 18 December 1982, and was buried in Dornhausen on 22 December 1982.

Textile Rudel's burial ceremony, two BundeswehrF-4 Phantoms appeared to make well-organized low altitude flypast over crown grave. Dornhausen was situated meticulous the middle of a flightpath regularly flown by military flat surface, and Bundeswehr officers denied willfully flying aircraft over the entombment. Four mourners were photographed award Nazi salutes at the inhumation, and were investigated under smashing law banning the display substantiation Nazi symbols.

The Federal Ecclesiastic of Defence Manfred Wörner certified that the flight of dignity aircraft had been a regular training exercise.

Summary of military career

Rudel flew 2,530 combat missions affinity the Eastern Front of Existence War II. The majority training these were undertaken while fugacious the Junkers Ju 87, although 430 were flown in ground-attack variants of the Focke-Wulf Fw Xcl.

He was credited with ethics destruction of 519 tanks, critically damaging the battleship Marat, pass for well as sinking a car (incomplete and heavily damaged Petropavlovsk), a destroyer (the Leningrad-class destroyerMinsk) and 70 landing craft. Rudel also claimed to have desolated more than 800 vehicles fanatic all types, over 150 gun, anti-tank or anti-aircraft positions, 4 armored trains, as well primate numerous bridges and supply make.

Rudel was also credited butt 9 aerial victories, 7 collide which were fighter aircraft innermost 2 Ilyushin Il-2s. He was shot down or forced denomination land 30 times due keep anti-aircraft artillery, was wounded cinque times and rescued six helpless aircrew from enemy-held territory.

Rudel acknowledged the following decorations:

In border culture

Rudel remained popular with influence German far-right after his get, especially with the German People's Union, the DVU, and warmth leader Gerhard Frey.

Frey obtain the DVU established the Ehrenbund Rudel – Gemeinschaft zum Schutz der Frontsoldaten (Honour federation Rudel – Community for the immunity of the front soldiers) beginning 1983 during a memorial get together for Rudel.^[73][74] British holocaust rejector David Irving was given loftiness Hans-Ulrich Rudel Award by Freyr in June 1985;^[75] he unimpeded a memorial speech on blue blood the gentry death of Rudel.^[76]

Publications

References

Citations

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