Paul Hausser: SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer, SA-Standartenführer and Leader of Waffen-SS lobby group (1950)

(7 October 1880 – 21 December 1972)

Early life and military career

Hausser was born on 7 October 1880 in Brandenburg an der Havel into a Prussian military family and entered the army in 1892. In 1899, he graduated from a cadet academy and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 155th (7th West Prussian) Infantry Regiment. Hausser graduated from the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin in 1911. Hausser married Elisabeth Gerard in 1912; the couple had one daughter who was born in December 1913. They remained married until his death in 1972.

During World War I he served in the German General Staff and in staff roles on the Eastern Front, primarily serving with the 109th Infantry Division between 1916 and 1918. He was promoted to major in 1918 and was retained in the postwar Reichswehr, reaching the rank of Oberst (colonel) by 1927.

Hausser retired from the Reichswehr in 1932 with the rank of Generalleutnant, having filled various appointments including chief of staff of Wehrkreis II (Military District 2) in Stettin, commander of the 10th Infantry Regiment, and deputy commander of the 4th Infantry Division. Hausser joined the right-wing World War I veterans' organization Der Stahlhelm, becoming the head of its Brandenburg-Berlin chapter in 1933. Soon after, the Stahlhelm was incorporated into the Sturmabteilung (SA), and, with the SA's demise, into the SS.

SS career

In November 1934 Hausser was transferred to the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS Dispositional Troops; SS-VT) and assigned to the SS-Junkerschule Bad Tölz. He became the Inspector of the SS-VT in 1936. In this role, Hausser was in charge of the troop's military and ideological training but did not have command authority. The decision on deployment of the troops remained in Heinrich Himmler's hands. This aligned with Hitler's intentions to maintain these troops exclusively at his disposal, "neither [a part] of the army, nor of the police", according to Hitler's order of 17 August 1938.

Hausser served during the 1939 invasion of Poland as an observer with the mixed Wehrmacht/SS Panzer Division Kempf. In October 1939 the SS-VT was formed as a motorized infantry division known as the SS-Verfügungs-Division with Hausser in command. He led the division, later renamed 2nd SS Division Das Reich, through the French campaign of 1940 and in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa. For his service in the Soviet Union, Hausser was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in 1941 and the Oak Leaves in 1943 (he received the Swords for his service in Normandy). He was severely wounded, losing an eye.

After recovering, he commanded the newly formed SS-Panzer Corps (renamed II SS Panzer Corps in June 1943) and against Hitler's explicit orders withdrew his troops from Kharkov to avoid encirclement. He led the 1st, 2nd and 3rd SS divisions during the Battle of Kursk. After Kursk, his Corps was re-formed (substituting the 1st, 2nd and 3rd SS Panzer Divisions with the 9th and 10th SS divisions) and sent to Italy, then to France where he commanded them in the early stages of the Normandy Campaign.

After the death of Friedrich Dollmann, commander of the Seventh Army, Hausser was promoted to its command. During the Falaise encirclement in 1944, Hausser was seriously wounded (shot through the jaw). Hausser was promoted to SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer in August 1944 and subsequently commanded Army Group Oberrhein and later Army Group G until 3 April 1945. On the day he was relieved, Joseph Goebbels wrote, "He has definitely not stood the test." He ended the war on the staff of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. At the Nuremberg Trials, he claimed that the Waffen-SS only had a military role and denied that it was involved in war crimes and atrocities.

Post-war activities

Following the war, Hausser participated in the work of the U.S. Army Historical Division, where under the guidance of Franz Halder, German generals wrote World War II operational studies for the U.S. Army, first as POWs and then as employees. In the late 1940s, Hausser authored an operational study on the Seventh Army's response to the Allied Normandy breakout. The study, together with contributions from Rudolf Christoph von Gersdorff, Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, Wilhelm Fahrmbacher and Heinrich Eberbach, was published in 2004 as Fighting the Breakout: The German Army in Normandy from COBRA to the Falaise Gap.

Leader of Waffen-SS lobby group

From 1950, Hausser was active in HIAG, a revisionist organization and a lobby group of former Waffen-SS members. HIAG began in late 1950 as a loose association of local groups; by October 1951, however, it claimed to embrace 376 local branches across West Germany. In December 1951, Hausser became its first spokesperson.

With the publication of its first periodical in late 1951, HIAG was beginning to draw attention to itself and generate public controversy, including speculation that it was a neo-NS organization. In response, Hausser wrote an open letter to the Bundestag denying these accusations and describing the HIAG as an advocacy organisation for former Waffen-SS troops. Hausser asserted that its members rejected all forms of radicalism and were "upstanding citizens".

As part of its lobbying efforts, HIAG attempted to "manipulate historical record or simply to ignore it", according to the historian David C. Large, who studied HIAG in the 1980s. HIAG's rewriting of history included significant multi-prong propaganda efforts, including tendentious periodicals, books and public speeches, along with the publishing house of Munin Verlag, to serve as a platform for its publicity aims. The express aim of Munin Verlag was to publish the "war narratives" of former Waffen-SS members, in cooperation with HIAG.