27 Facts About Hermann Rauschning

Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning was a German politician and author, adherent of the Conservative Revolution movement who briefly joined the Nazi movement before breaking with it.

Hermann Rauschning was the President of the Senate of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934.

Hermann Rauschning eventually settled in the United States and began openly denouncing Nazism.

Hermann Rauschning was born in Thorn in the province of West Prussia to a Prussian Army officer.

Hermann Rauschning attended the Prussian Cadet Corps institute at Potsdam and studied history, German philology and musicology at the Berlin University, where he obtained a Dr phil.

Hermann Rauschning fought in World War I as a lieutenant and was wounded in action.

Hermann Rauschning was active in several organisations of the German minority and prominent in the Poznan historical society.

Hermann Rauschning saw this as a powerful tool to reorganize the Danzig NSDAP.

Hermann Rauschning became the agricultural advisor to the local Gau in January 1932 and in February of the same year, leader of the Danzig Agricultural League, a movement that supported the taking over of the Senate by the Nazis.

Hermann Rauschning became became chairman of the Danzig Teachers' Association in 1932.

In foreign affairs, Hermann Rauschning did not conceal his personal desire to turn neighbouring Poland into a vassal state of Germany.

Hermann Rauschning was a bitter rival of Albert Forster, the future Gauleiter of Danzig.

One of the reasons cited for Hitler's interest in Hermann Rauschning was his citizenship and political leadership in the Free City of Danzig.

One of the first questions that Hitler asked Hermann Rauschning was "whether Danzig had an extradition agreement with Germany," which drew Hitler's attention due to the possibility of him being forced to go underground.

Hermann Rauschning sold his farming interests and fled to Poland in 1936.

Hermann Rauschning moved on to Switzerland in 1937, France in 1938 and the United Kingdom in 1939.

Hermann Rauschning joined German emigres; left-wing Germans opposed his right-wing views and the fact that as a member of the Nazi Party, he had been instrumental in the takeover of Danzig.

Hermann Rauschning represented "one of the most conservative poles of the emigration" and enjoyed celebrity status through his lectures.

Hermann Rauschning sought to play a leading role in the more conservative emigre German Freedom Party, run by Carl Spiecher, later of the Centre Party, but he fell out with Spiecher, who thought Rauschning was motivated by self-interest, rather than the interest of the party.

Hermann Rauschning's Gesprache mit Hitler was a huge bestseller but its credibility would later be severely criticised, and it now has no standing as an accurate document on Hitler for historians.

In 1941, Hermann Rauschning moved to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1942 and purchasing a farm near Portland, Oregon, where he died in 1982.

Hermann Rauschning remained politically active after the war and opposed the policies of Konrad Adenauer.

Hermann Rauschning believed that the only alternative to Nazism was the restoration of the monarchy.

Hermann Rauschning's book went through 17 printings in the United States.

Hermann Rauschning would reiterate the anti-Christian nature of Nazism in Gesprache mit Hitler, where he has Hitler rule out that Jesus could have been Aryan.

Horst Pelckmann, for the defence, asked for Hermann Rauschning to be called as a witness on the matter of the party programme relating to the solution of the Jewish question and Hitler's "principle to deceive the Germans about his true intentions" so that the prosecution would have to prove that the SS "knew what Hitler actually wanted," but Hermann Rauschning was not called.

The authenticity of the discussions that Hermann Rauschning claimed to have had with Hitler between 1932 and 1934, which formed the basis of his book Hitler Speaks, was challenged shortly after Hermann Rauschning's death by an obscure Swiss researcher, Wolfgang Hanel.