1. Hinrich Lohse was a German Nazi Party official, politician and convicted war criminal.
28 Facts About Hinrich Lohse
1. 2.
Hinrich Lohse served as the Gauleiter and Oberprasident of Schleswig-Holstein and was an SA-Obergruppenfuhrer in the Nazi paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung.
3.
Hinrich Lohse is best known for his rule of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, during the Second World War.
4.
Hinrich Lohse was born into a peasant family in the town of Muhlenbarbek in the Province of Schleswig-Holstein.
5.
Hinrich Lohse served in combat on the western front with Reserve Infantry Regiment 94 until he was severely wounded on 9 August 1916.
6.
Hinrich Lohse returned to employment in the shipbuilding industry and later moved into banking.
7.
From 1919, Hinrich Lohse was an associate at the Schleswig-Holstein Farmers' Association and, as of 1920, business manager in Neumunster of the Schleswig-Holstein Farmers and Farmworkers Democracy, the regionel agrarian political party.
8.
In early 1923, Hinrich Lohse joined the Nazi Party and was appointed the Party's Gauleiter for Schleswig-Holstein on 27 March 1925.
9.
When Hitler refounded the Nazi Party in February 1925, Hinrich Lohse became the Ortsgruppenleiter of Altona, and formally re-enrolled in the Party on 13 June.
10.
Hinrich Lohse continued to sit on the city council as a Nazi Party member until 1930.
11.
In September 1925, Hinrich Lohse joined the National Socialist Working Association, a short-lived group of northern and western German Gaue, organized and led by Reich Organization Leader Gregor Strasser, which unsuccessfully sought to amend the Party program.
12.
In May 1928, Hinrich Lohse was elected to the Landtag of Prussia where he served until it was dissolved by the Nazis in October 1933.
13.
Between 3 September 1928 and 15 April 1929, Hinrich Lohse temporarily administered Gau Hamburg before the appointment of Karl Kaufmann as Gauleiter.
14.
In November 1932, Hinrich Lohse was elected to the Reichstag for electoral constituency 13 and retained this seat until the fall of the Nazi regime in May 1945.
15.
Hinrich Lohse thus united under his control the highest Party and governmental offices in the province.
16.
On 11 July 1933, Hinrich Lohse was named to the recently reconstituted Prussian State Council.
17.
On 16 November 1942, Hinrich Lohse was appointed the Reich Defense Commissioner for his Gau.
18.
On 25 July 1941, after the German conquest of the Baltic states from the Soviet Union, Hinrich Lohse was appointed Reichskommissar for the Ostland.
19.
Hinrich Lohse retained his functions in Schleswig-Holstein and shuttled between his two seats of Riga and Kiel.
20.
Hinrich Lohse reported to Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and was responsible for the implementation of Nazi Germanization policies, which were built on the foundations of the Generalplan Ost: the killing of almost all Jews, Romani people, and Communists and the oppression of the local population that was its necessary corollary.
21.
Hinrich Lohse did not have direct line authority over the police forces and Einsatzgruppen A whose murderous actions were under the control of SS-Brigadefuhrer and Generalmajor der Polizei Franz Walter Stahlecker, and Higher SS and Police Leader SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Friedrich Jeckeln, the chief organizer of the Rumbula massacre.
22.
On 31 October 1941, Georg Leibbrandt, a high official in the Reich Ministry, wrote to Hinrich Lohse requesting an explanation for his order forbidding the execution of Jews in Libau.
23.
Hinrich Lohse fled the Reichskommissariat Ostland without authorization on 13 August 1944 in the face of the Red Army advance, and he was immediately removed as Reichskommissar.
24.
Hinrich Lohse returned to Gau Schleswig-Holstein where he continued to exercise absolute power as Gauleiter and Reich Defense Commissioner until the last days of the war in Europe.
25.
On 6 May 1945, Hinrich Lohse was dismissed as Oberprasident of Schleswig-Holstein by German President Karl Donitz and, shortly thereafter, was imprisoned by the British Army.
26.
Hinrich Lohse was tried by the court in Bielefeld between October 1947 and January 1948, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison and confiscation of his property.
27.
Hinrich Lohse was held at the prison in Esterwegen until he was released in March 1951 due to ill health.
28.
Hinrich Lohse spent his later years in his hometown of Muhlenbarbek, where he died in February 1964.