36 Facts About Otto Wagener

Otto Wilhelm Heinrich Wagener was a German professional military officer and Nazi Party official.

Otto Wagener was a member of the Nazi paramilitary unit, the Sturmabteilung, rising to become its effective leader as the first SA-Stabschef from 1929 to 1930.

Otto Wagener survived the Rohm purge of SA leaders in 1934 and returned to military service in the Second World War, becoming a Generalmajor and military governor of the Italian Dodecanese islands.

Otto Wagener then entered the Imperial German Army as a Fahnenjunker with the 111th Infantry Regiment.

Otto Wagener was commissioned as a Leutnant in November 1907 and served as a battalion adjutant.

Otto Wagener attended the Prussian Staff College between October 1913 and July 1914.

Otto Wagener was promoted to Oberleutnant and Hauptmann serving as a brigade adjutant, a company commander and a battalion commander in Reserve Infantry Regiment 110.

Otto Wagener was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class but, in May 1918, he was dismissed from the army following a military court of honor.

Otto Wagener served in Courland as the chief of the general staff of the German Legion, a component of the Freikorps in the Baltic.

Otto Wagener briefly assumed leadership of the Legion between November and December 1919 after its leader, Paul Siewert, was killed in action.

Otto Wagener was discharged from the Freikorps at the end of March 1920.

Otto Wagener worked as the assistant manager, then as the director and a board member at his father's sewing machine factory in Karlsruhe between 1920 and 1924.

Otto Wagener continued his education, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Wurzburg in 1924.

Otto Wagener lectured on economics in business courses at that university and at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe.

Otto Wagener briefly was a member of the Sturmabteilung in 1923 before it was banned after Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch.

Otto Wagener began to establish contacts with the Nazi Party in July 1929.

On 1 October 1929, Otto Wagener formally was accepted into the Party and rejoined the SA, having been recruited by his old Freikorps comrade Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, then the Supreme SA Leader.

Pfeffer was seeking to build up a central staff structure and, as a former general staff officer, Otto Wagener had the right credentials.

Otto Wagener was able to put his business acumen and contacts to good use for the SA and for himself.

Otto Wagener became a limited partner in a cigarette company and benefited financially from their joint business venture.

When Pfeffer resigned on 29 August 1930 in the wake of the Stennes Revolt, Otto Wagener assumed effective operational command of the SA for four months through 31 December 1930, until the assumption of command by Ernst Rohm as the new SA-Stabschef in early January 1931.

In October 1930, Otto Wagener expressed the expectation that the SA would form the manpower pool for the future national army following the envisioned Nazi takeover of the government.

Otto Wagener's views reflected the desire of the SA leadership for a high degree of autonomy from the political leadership that would continue to cause friction between the two and which would culminate in the Night of the Long Knives.

Otto Wagener became embroiled in disputes with leaders of industry during the process of Gleichschaltung, even forcibly occupying the RDI headquarters with the intention of shutting it down.

Such heavy-handed tactics led to Otto Wagener being replaced as Reichskommissar for the Economy by Wilhelm Keppler at the end of June 1933.

Keppler was a long-term intermediary between the Party and leading industrialists who, unlike Otto Wagener, enjoyed the trust of both sides.

However, at the November parliamentary election, Otto Wagener was elected a member of the Reichstag from electoral constituency 21 and was reelected at the March 1936 election.

Otto Wagener then went into a self-imposed isolation, working in agriculture near Wiesenbad in the Ore Mountains region of Saxony.

Otto Wagener subsequently was promoted to Major and Oberstleutnant.

Briefly placed into the Fuhrerreserve, Otto Wagener was reassigned on 20 July 1944 as the Commandant of the Eastern Aegean and the Military Governor of the Italian Dodecanese Islands, headquartered in Rhodes, and was promoted to Generalmajor on 1 December.

Otto Wagener established internment camps and a concentration camp at Kallithea where Italian prisoners of war were incarcerated.

Otto Wagener surrendered his command to British authorities on 8 May 1945, the same day as Germany's unconditional surrender.

Otto Wagener was kept first in British custody at Island Farm in Bridgend, Wales and was transferred to the custody of Italian authorities on 1 July 1947.

Otto Wagener was put on trial by Italy and was defended by the fascist lawyer Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi.

Otto Wagener described him as a "rare personality" and viewed him with a mixture of sycophantic admiration and awestruck fear.

In 1946, while being held by the British, Otto Wagener wrote his memoirs about Hitler and the Nazi Party's early history, entitled Hitler aus nachster Nahe.