Max Amann
Max Amann was a German politician, businessman and a member of the Nazi Party. He was the first business manager of the Nazi Party and became the head of Eher Verlag, the official Nazi Party publishing house. After the war ended, Amann was arrested by Allied troops and deemed a Hauptschuldiger and sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, he was released in 1953. Amann died in poverty on 30 March 1957, in Munich. Amann was born in Munich on 24 November 1891. During the First World War he obtained the rank of Feldwebel in the Royal Bavarian 16th Infantry Regiment. Amann was Adolf Hitler's company sergeant, he was awarded the Iron Cross second class during the war. Amann joined the Nazi Party in October 1921, as the Party's business manager, held NSDAP membership number 3. After 1922, he led the Nazis' publishing house, Eher Verlag. Eher Verlag published, among the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps. In 1924 he was elected as a NSDAP candidate to the Munich city council and in 1933 became a Nazi member of the Reichstag for the electoral district of Upper Bavaria/Swabia.
Amann's most notable contribution was persuading Hitler to retitle his first book from Viereinhalb Jahre gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit, to Mein Kampf, which he published. The book became a major source of Eher-Verlag's income and Amann oversaw the book through many editions, he helped. Amann enriched himself through many Nazi publications. Amann published the daily Volkischer Beobachter, the weekly Illustrierter Beobachter and the Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte. In November 1933, Hitler named Amann the president of the Reich Media Chamber and Reich Press Leader, he pursued a dual-pronged strategy to establish Nazi control over the industry. In his official role as president of the Media Chamber, Amman had the power to seize or close down any newspapers that did not support the Nazi regime; as head of the Eher-Verlag, he bought them at a substantial discount–often at "auctions" at which the Eher-Verlag was the sole bidder. By 1942, Amann controlled 80% of all German newspapers through his publishing empire.
Combined with the proceeds from Mein Kampf, this made the Eher-Verlag the largest newspaper and publishing company in Germany, one of the largest in the world. His income increased from 108,000 RM in 1934 to 3,800,000 RM in 1944, he rose to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer. However, as a party official Amann lacked talent, being a poor debater. In addition, his handwriting was illegible, thus his Chief of Staff and deputy, Rolf Rienhardt, performed these duties for him. Poor handwriting can be attributed in part to the loss of his left arm in an accident with a firearm while hunting with Franz Ritter von Epp on 4 September 1931. Arrested by Allied troops after the war ended, Amann was deemed a Hauptschuldiger and sentenced to ten years in a labour camp on 8 September 1948, he was released in 1953, but was stripped of his property, pension rights and all of his fortune. Amann died on 30 March 1957, in Munich. Hale, Oron. J, The Captive Press in the Third Reich, Princeton, 1964 Snyder, Louis. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich.
Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-1-56924-917-8. Zentner, Christian; the Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-3068079-3-0. Works by or about Max Amann at Internet Archive Newspaper clippings about Max Amann in the 20th Century Press Archives of the German National Library of Economics
Ernst Röhm
Ernst Julius Günther Röhm was a German military officer and an early member of the Nazi Party. As one of the members of its predecessor, the German Workers' Party, he was a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler and a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party's militia, was its commander. By 1934, the German Army feared the SA's influence and Hitler had come to see Röhm as a potential rival, so he was executed during the Night of the Long Knives. Ernst Röhm was born in Munich, the youngest of three children—he had an older sister and brother—of Emilie and Julius Röhm, his father Julius, a railway official, was described as strict but once he realized that his son responded better without exhortation, allowed him significant freedom to pursue his interests. Although the family had no military tradition, Röhm entered the Royal Bavarian 10th Infantry Regiment Prinz Ludwig at Ingolstadt as a cadet on 23 July 1906 and was commissioned on 12 March 1908. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was adjutant of the 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment König.
The following month, he was wounded in the face at Chanot Wood in Lorraine and carried the scars for the rest of his life. He was promoted to first lieutenant in April 1915. During an attack on the fortification at Thiaumont, Verdun, on 23 June 1916, he sustained a serious chest wound and spent the remainder of the war in France and Romania as a staff officer, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class before being wounded at Verdun, was promoted to captain in April 1917. Among his comrades, Röhm was considered a "fanatical, simple-minded swashbuckler" who displayed contempt for danger. In his memoirs, Röhm reported that during autumn of 1918, he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza and was not expected to live, but that he recovered after a lengthy convalescence. Following the armistice on 11 November 1918 that ended the war, Röhm continued his military career as a captain in the Reichswehr, he was one of the senior members in Colonel von Epp's Bayerisches Freikorps für den Grenzschutz Ost, formed in Ohrdruf in April 1919, which overturned the Munich Soviet Republic by force of arms on 3 May 1919.
In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party, which the following year became the National Socialist German Workers Party. Not long afterward he met Adolf Hitler, they became political allies and close friends. Röhm resigned/retired from the Reichswehr on 26 September 1923. Throughout the early 1920s, Röhm remained an important intermediary between Germany's right-wing paramilitary organizations and the Reichwehr. Additionally, it was Röhm who persuaded his former army commander, Colonel von Epp, to join the Nazis, an important development since Epp helped raise the sixty-thousand marks needed to purchase the Nazi periodical, the Völkischer Beobachter; when the Nazi Party held its "German Day" celebration at Nuremberg during early September 1923, it was Röhm who helped bring together some 100,000 participants drawn from right-wing militant groups, veteran's associations, other paramilitary formations—which included the Bund Oberland, Reich War Flag, the SA, the Kampfbund—all of them subordinate to Hitler as the "political leader" of the collective alliance.
Röhm led the Reichskriegsflagge militia at the time of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He rented the cavernous main hall of the Löwenbräukeller for a reunion and festive comradeship. Meanwhile and his entourage were at the Bürgerbräukeller, it was here that Röhm planned to announce the revolution and use the units at his disposal to obtain weapons from secret caches with which to occupy crucial points in the centre of the city. When the call came, he announced to those assembled in the Löwenbräukeller that the Kahr government had been deposed and Hitler had declared a "national revolution" which elicited wild cheering. Röhm led his force of nearly 2,000 men to the War Ministry, which they occupied for sixteen hours. Once in control of the Reichwehr headquarters, Röhm awaited news, barricaded inside; the subsequent march into the city center led by Hitler, Hermann Göring, General Erich Ludendorff with banners flying high, was ostensibly undertaken to "free" Röhm and his forces. While crowds cheered—whipped into a frenzy by Strasser—shouting Heil, the armed ragtag assembly wearing red swastika armbands accompanying Hitler and company encountered blue-uniformed Bavarian State Police, who were prepared to counter the Putsch.
Around the time the marchers reached the Feldherrnhalle near the city center, shots rang out, scattering the participants. Before the exchange of gunfire ended, there were fourteen dead Nazis lying in the street and four policemen. Following the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 9 November 1923, Röhm, General Ludendorff, Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Kriebel and six others were tried in February 1924 for high treason. Röhm was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen months in prison, but the sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation. Hitler was found guilty and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but would only serve nine months at Stadelheim Prison, during which time he dictated most of the first volume of Mein Kampf. In April 1924, Röhm became a Reichstag deputy for the völkisch National Socialist Freedom Party, he made only one speech. The seats won by his party were much reduced in the December 1924 election, his name was too far down the list to return him to the Reichstag. W
Kurt Daluege
Kurt Max Franz Daluege was the chief of the national uniformed Ordnungspolizei of Nazi Germany. Following Reinhard Heydrich's assassination in 1942, he served as Deputy Protector for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Daluege directed the German measures of retribution for the assassination, including the Lidice massacre. After the end of World War II, he was extradited to Czechoslovakia, tried and executed in 1946. Daluege, son of a Prussian state official, was born in the small Upper Silesian town of Kreuzburg on 15 September 1897, he served with the 7th Guards Infantry Regiment. He served on the Eastern Front. In October 1917, attended officer training in Doberitz. During his service on the Western Front, he was wounded in the head and shoulder, he declared 25 % disabled. Daluege was awarded second class and the Wound Badge in Black. After World War I, Daluege became leader of Selbstschutz Oberschlesien - Upper Silesian Self Defense — an Upper Silesian veterans' organization engaged in combat with the Poles in that region.
In 1921, he became active in the Freikorps Rossbach while studying engineering at the Technical University in Berlin. Two years he joined the Nazi Party and was assigned Party number 31,981. From 1924, he helped to organize the Berlin Frontbann a front organization for the Nazi Sturmabteilung, since it and the Nazi Party were banned in Prussia at the time. In 1926 he joined the SA directly becoming the leader of Berlin's SA and Goebbels' deputy Gauleiter, or Party leader, in Berlin. Throughout the period 1926—1929, Daluege led the Berlin-Brandenburg division of the SA. In July 1930, in accordance with Hitler's wishes, Daluege resigned from the SA and joined the SS with the rank of SS-Oberführer and membership number 1,119, his main responsibility was to spy on political opponents of the Nazi Party. Berlin SS headquarters was strategically placed at the corner of Lützowstrasse and Potsdamerstrasse, opposite the SA headquarters. In August 1930, when Berlin SA leader Walter Stennes had his men attack the Berlin Party headquarters, it was Daluege's SS men who defended it and put the attack down.
Sometime afterwards in an open letter to Daluege, Adolf Hitler proclaimed "SS Mann, deine Ehre heißt Treue!". Hitler promoted both Daluege and Heinrich Himmler to SS-Obergruppenführer, with Daluege the SS leader of northern Germany while Himmler controlled the southern SS units out of Munich in addition to serving as national leader for the entire SS. In 1932 Daluege became a Nazi Party delegate in the Prussian state parliament, in November 1932 was elected to the Reichstag representing the Berlin East electoral district, a seat he retained until 1945. At the same time, Hermann Göring moved Daluege to the Prussian Interior Ministry, where he took over the nonpolitical police with the rank of General der Polizei. Intrigue created by Göring and Heydrich surrounding Ernst Röhm led to Daluege's playing an important role in the infamous Night of the Long Knives during which Röhm along with many leading members of the SA were killed between 30 June and 2 July 1934, thus neutralizing the SA and shifting the balance of power within the party to the SS.
Evidence of Daluege's ruthlessness goes beyond his intrigue against his former SA comrades, are discernible in his remarks about anyone he considered a threat to society. He once argued that "the consciously asocial enemies of the people" must be eliminated by state intervention "if it hopes to prevent the outbreak of complete moral degeneration." Historian George Browder claims that Daluege "bragged that the Police Institute for detective training had been reorganized according to NS viewpoints", that advancement within this organization was contingent to a considerable degree on the internalization of Nazi ideology. By November 1934, Daluege's authority over the uniformed police was extended beyond Prussia to include all of Germany; that meant he commanded municipal police forces, the rural gendarmerie, traffic police, the coastguard, the railway police, the postal protection service, fire brigades, the air-raid services, the emergency technical service, the broadcasting police, the factory protection police, building regulations enforcement, the commercial police.
In 1936, the entire German police force was reorganized with the administrative functions exercised by the now defunct federal states reassigned to the nominal control of the Reich Interior Ministry, but under the actual control of Himmler's SS. Making the most of his police expertise and coinciding with his appointment, Daluege wrote and published a book entitled National-sozialistischer Kampf gegen das Verbrechertum; that same year, Himmler appointed Daluege as chief of the Ordnungspolizei, which gave him administrative, though not executive, authority over most of the uniformed police in Nazi Germany. He commanded the Orpo until 1943, rising to the rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer und Generaloberst der Polizei. By August 1939, the strength of the Orpo under Daluege's command and control had reached upwards of 120,000 active-duty personnel. Further indications of the brutality coming from Deluege's office, are shown in a report dated 5 September 1939 outlining the methods to be employed during pacification operations in Poland.
Regarding uniformed polic
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe, Southeast Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It has been known as the Great Patriotic War in the former Soviet Union and modern Russia, while in Germany it was called the Eastern Front, or the German-Soviet War by outside parties; the battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, immense loss of life due to combat, exposure and massacres; the Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches and the majority of pogroms, was central to the Holocaust. Of the estimated 70-85 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, the majority of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front.
The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations. The two principal belligerent powers were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though never engaged in military action in the Eastern Front, the United States and the United Kingdom both provided substantial material aid in the form of the Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union; the joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front. In addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. Germany and the Soviet Union remained unsatisfied with the outcome of World War I. Soviet Russia had lost substantial territory in Eastern Europe as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where the Bolsheviks in Petrograd conceded to German demands and ceded control of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and other areas, to the Central Powers.
Subsequently, when Germany in its turn surrendered to the Allies and these territories were liberated under the terms of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 at Versailles, Soviet Russia was in the midst of a civil war and the Allies did not recognize the Bolshevik government, so no Soviet Russian representation attended. Adolf Hitler had declared his intention to invade the Soviet Union on 11 August 1939 to Carl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations Commissioner, by saying: Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine as happened in the last war; the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was a non-aggression agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union.
Finland, Estonia and Lithuania would return to the Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided. The Eastern Front was made possible by the German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement in which the Soviet Union gave Germany the resources necessary to launch military operations in Eastern Europe. On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. On 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland, and, as a result, Poland was partitioned among Germany, the Soviet Union and Lithuania. Soon after that, the Soviet Union demanded significant territorial concessions from Finland, after Finland rejected Soviet demands, the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 in what became known as the Winter War – a bitter conflict that resulted in a peace treaty on 13 March 1940, with Finland maintaining its independence but losing its eastern parts in Karelia. In June 1940 the Soviet Union illegally annexed the three Baltic states; the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ostensibly provided security to the Soviets in the occupation both of the Baltics and of the north and northeastern regions of Romania, although Hitler, in announcing the invasion of the Soviet Union, cited the Soviet annexations of Baltic and Romanian territory as having violated Germany's understanding of the Pact.
Moscow partitioned the annexed Romanian territory between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum: acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, in particular in Russia, he envisaged settling Germans there, as according to Nazi ideology the Germanic people constituted the "master race", while exterminating or deporting most of the existing inhabitants to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labour. Hitler as early as 1917 had referred to the Russians as inferior, believing that the Bolshevik Revolution had put the Jews in power over the mass of Slavs, who were, in Hitler's opinion, incapable of ruling themselves but instead being ruled by Jewish masters; the Nazi leadership, saw the war against the Soviet Union as a struggle between the ideologies of Nazism and Jewish Bolshevism, ensuring territorial expansion for the Germanic Übermensch, who according to Nazi ideology were the Aryan Herrenvolk, at the expense of
Stabschef
Stabschef was an office and paramilitary rank in the Sturmabteilung, the paramilitary stormtroopers associated with the Nazi Party. The rank is equivalent to the rank of Generaloberst in the German Army and to General in the US Army; the position of SA-Stabschef, not yet a rank, was established in 1929 to assist the Oberste SA-Führer with the administration of the fast-growing organization. Otto Wagener held the office under Oberste SA-Führer Franz Pfeffer von Salomon from 1928-1930, headed the SA from Hitler's assumption of the title Oberste SA-Führer in August until Ernst Röhm replaced him in January 1931; the actual SA rank of Stabschef was created by Röhm for himself in 1933 after Hitler became Chancellor. Although Hitler became the supreme commander of the stormtroopers in 1930, the day-to-day running of the organization was left to the Chief of Staff. Further, the men who held the rank of Stabschef after 1930 were the actual leaders of the SA; the office of Stabschef was held by four different people between 1929 and 1945 and was, in each case of succession, inherited due to the death of a predecessor.
The following SA officers held the office of Stabschef: Early insignia for Stabschef consisted of an oak leaf patch worn on the collar of the stormtrooper uniform. Photographic evidence shows Ernst Röhm wearing such an insignia in his early days as the SA Chief of Staff; as Röhm's authority increased, so did his insignia and by mid 1931 photographic evidence shows him wearing wreathed star, designed after that of a Bolivian General's collar, due to Röhm’s previous military experience as a military adviser in Bolivia. After 1933, the insignia for Stabschef consisted of a "crossed lances" pattern, wreathed by a half oak leaf circle. After 1934, the insignia was changed to a wreathed tri-foil oak leaf pattern similar to the SS rank insignia of Reichsführer-SS. With the fall of Nazi Germany, the Sturmabteilung ceased with it the Stabschef. List of senior officers of the Sturmabteilung
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Franz Xaver Schwarz
Franz Xaver Schwarz was a German Schutzstaffel functionary and politician in Nazi Germany. He served as Reichsschatzmeister of the Nazi Party during most of the party's existence. Schwarz was born in the seventh of eight children born to a master baker and his wife, he was educated up to a high school level at the Günzburger vocational training school. Schwarz married Berta Breher on 26 August 1899. From 1900 to 1924, except for the war years of 1914 to 1918, he worked as an "administrative official" in the city government of Munich. During World War I, Schwarz served as a second lieutenant in the German Army. Due to gastric troubles which afflicted him for his entire life, he was spared field duty beginning in 1916. Schwarz joined the Nazi Party in 1922. Schwarz participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. With the re-establishment of the Nazi Party in Germany on 27 February 1925, Schwarz became party member number six, he left his job as an accountant at the Munich City Hall to become the full-time treasurer of the Nazi Party on 21 March 1925.
He rebuilt the administrative functions of the party. It was Schwarz who raised the money for the publication of Mein Kampf. In April–May 1930 Schwarz negotiated the purchase of the party headquarters, the Brown House at 45 Brienner Straße in Munich. From 16 September 1931 forward, Schwarz had control of all financial matters of the Nazi Party, he was elected to the Reichstag in 1933, representing the Franconia electoral district and continued thus to the end of World War II. He was named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank of the Nazi Party. Hitler attended Schwarz's 60th birthday celebration on 27 November 1935. Hitler's will, dated 2 May 1938 included the provision. Besides the party treasury, Schwarz was responsible for the central assignment of NSDAP unique membership numbers; when members died or stopped paying dues, the old numbers were not freed up for new members. If old members picked up their dues a new party number would be assigned; the Nazi Party had 8.5 million members on the books by 1945.
Schwarz was regarded as an able administrator who kept out of party politics. In June 1933, Schwarz joined the Schutzstaffel, his SS member number was 38,500. On 1 July 1933 he was appointed SS-Obergruppenführer, he was one of only four people to have held the rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer. On 5 June 1944, Schwarz received a high military award, the War Merit Cross, 1st class with Swords by Hitler for his work during the Munich air raids of 24–25 April of that year. Further, Schwarz led a Volkssturm battalion in Grünwald at the end of the war, he was arrested by the Americans. Schwarz died in an Allied internment camp near Regensburg on 2 December 1947, due to recurring gastric troubles, he was 71. In September 1948, Schwarz was posthumously classified by the Munich de-Nazification court as a "major offender". List of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Biondi, Robert. SS Officers List: SS-Standartenführer to SS-Oberstgruppenführer. Schiffer Military History Publishing. ISBN 978-0764310614. Hallgarten, George W. F..
"Adolf Hitler and German Heavy Industry, 1931-1933", The Journal of Economic History. Hamilton, Charles. Leaders & Personalities of the Third Reich, Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 0-912138-27-0. McNab, Chris. Hitler's Masterplan: The Essential Facts and Figures for Hitler's Third Reich. Amber Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1907446962. Orlow, Dietrich; the History of the Nazi Party: 1933-1945. University of Pittsburgh Press. Weinberg, Gerhard L.. "Hitler's Private Testament of May 2, 1938", The Journal of Modern History. Zentner, Christian; the Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-3068079-3-0. Picture and an article Newspaper clippings about Franz Xaver Schwarz in the 20th Century Press Archives of the German National Library of Economics
Nazi Germany
Schutzstaffel
Sturmabteilung
National Socialist Motor Corps
National Socialist Flyers Corps
