23 Facts About Hermann Gauch

Hermann Gauch was a Nazi race theorist noted for his dedication to Nordic theory to an extent that embarrassed the Nazi leadership when he claimed that Italians were "half ape".

Hermann Gauch's father was a farmer, who died of malaria in Africa when Hermann was 14.

Hermann Gauch escaped from a French prison camp in 1919.

Hermann Gauch did not renew it in 1925 when the party was re-established because by that time he was employed as a doctor in the Handelsmarine and later the Kriegsmarine, which precluded party membership.

Hermann Gauch rejoined the party in 1934, becoming a member of the SS.

Hermann Gauch was briefly Himmler's adjutant for cultural and racial affairs, but was not a success in the post.

Hermann Gauch resigned from the SS in 1935 after marriage became a requirement for membership.

Hermann Gauch remained close to Darre, whose vision of the agricultural self-sufficiency of Nordic peasantry he shared.

Hermann Gauch wrote six books of "race research" while a member of the SS, expressing both antisemitic and Nordicist ideas, emphasising them to an extent that was extreme even in Nazi Germany.

However Hermann Gauch soon caused embarrassment to the leadership when he published Out of the Flower Garden of Racial Research, in which he went further, calling Italians "half-ape".

Hermann Gauch submitted a proposal to Darre to reform the calendar, getting rid of Christian festivals and replacing them with Germanic pagan ones.

Hermann Gauch proposed that Charlemagne, known as Karl the Great in German, should be officially renamed Karl the Slaughterer, because of his wars against the pagan Saxons in the name of Christianity.

Hermann Gauch was instrumental in the creation of a memorial to pagans murdered by Charlemagne in the Massacre of Verden, which was erected in Verden an der Aller in 1935.

Hermann Gauch enlisted on the outbreak of World War II, serving initially in the Luftwaffe, but was later invalided out after damaging his spine in an accident during a training flight.

Hermann Gauch subsequently claimed that he had suggested to Himmler the policy of Germanisation in Poland, by absorbing racially suitable Polish children, who showed "Nordic" characteristics.

Hermann Gauch served in the Yugoslav campaign and was commended for his actions capturing Zagreb with a few men.

Hermann Gauch then became a doctor with the 23rd Luftnachrichtenregiment.

Hermann Gauch ran a hospital in Lauterecken until the final stage of the war, when he was transferred to the Western front, suffering a serious injury in the last few weeks of the conflict.

Hermann Gauch was cleared of involvement in war crimes following the denazifaction process, but could not work as a state physician.

Hermann Gauch argued that accepted statistics of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust were highly exaggerated, and indeed impossible.

Hermann Gauch was an active member of the Deutsche Reichspartei, and acted as its regional spokesman on culture and education.

Hermann Gauch's son Sigfrid was born in 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war.

Hermann Gauch's womanising led to him separating from his wife seven years later, and he subsequently lived with a mistress.