A most significant paper gouping from the early Kampfzeit

[Richard]

Next is an interesting two sided document. It appears to be something of an organization chart/plan for meetings and actions to be taken by the party member. In the upper left it has "Vorbereitungen" which is translated roughly as advance planning.

The first part is titled "Geschäftsleute" (businessmen) and has the date of March 21 1927 with the notation "ganzen Tag" (all day). There are 4 sections (I, II, II and IV) with a name to the right associated with each of the sections. I am guessing these would be the individuals responsible for whatever each of the sections had to do.

Next is a line that says "schluss der S.P.D. - Versammlung Konzerthaus am Mittwoch 16.3.27 which, roughly translated means end of SPD meeting at the Concert hall Wednesday March 16, 1927.

Then there is "Hochschule am Freitag (Montag is struck through in pencil with Freitag written in) 21.3.27 von 3/4 11 bis 1/4 2. Translation - High School on Friday March 21, 1927 from 10:45 to 1:15.

Next is "vor Finanzamt am Montag vormittag, Auguststr. 21.3.27". Translation - in front of the tax bureau on Monday morning August Street March 21, 1927

Next is "Versammlung Wollmarkt, 19.3.27 Sonnabend abend" Translation - meeting wool market March 3, 1927 Saturday evening.

Next is "vor Markthalle Sonnabend vorm. 19.3.27" Translation - in front of market hall Saturday morning March 19, 1927

Next is "Fabrikzugänge Montag 21.3.27 früh zwischen 6-7 Uhr" followed by a list of five locations. This is translated as factory access/entry Monday March 21, 1927. Each location must be a path leading to one of five or more factories in the area.

At the bottom of the first page are instructions, with times and locations,
for picking up as well as distributing and posting flyers

Each event has a name associated with it. Most probably the person responsible for executing the mission.

The reverse of this sheet seems to list tasks assigned to various individuals such as control, intermissions, sellers, those assigned to gather flags and such.

Below this list are notations referring to Dinkenlage on the 23rd and 24th of March. There is a named Vers. Leiter ( no idea what the Vers. means) and another person named for Verkauf (sales). After each of the two entries is the named location for the place to meet for everyone to march away in unison.

This is a unique planning guide for early meetings that I've never before encountered and gives some insight into the workings of the organization of events that occurred in the 1920's.

[Richard]

A really rare piece of history. Here is a signed postcard sent to Könnecke from Gottfried Feder. The postcard states he will be arriving in Braunschweig on Tuesday the 22 of March at 7:41 and to please pick him up at the train station.

Feder was an economist and a very early key member of the Party. His lecture in 1919 is what originally drew Hitler into the party. He, with Anton Drexler, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer was involved in founding the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei which would become the Nazi Party. According to Ian Kershaw's "Hitler: A Profile in Power", Feder met Hitler in the summer of 1919 and became his mentor in finance and economics. He inspired Hitler's opposition to Jewish finance capitalism.

[Richard]

That's it for today. Tomorrow is time spent with the family so I won't be posting to the thread. Next up a letter which seems to address some complaints from a Pg. Paust to Karl Dincklage. The letter was then sent by Dincklage to Könnecke along with Dincklage's response. It will take a bit of time for me to translate these so it may take a day or two to post.
Richard V

[Richard]

There is dissention in the ranks. Here is another letter, none to pleased with the way things are being handled. As the signature portion is gone, I can only surmise it is from pg. Paust as Dincklage sends a letter to Könnecke dated 14 days later as a response which mentions he included the letter from Paust.

The letter starts out with the writer stating he feels he needs to, again, bring up the conversation had on May 8 which the writer indicates, had a resolution proposed by Dincklage but which he feels cannot be accepted by him and his SA.

In order to make it clear once again, the Ortsgruppenführung Schmidt? is not recognized by myself or my SA.

We will maintain this unalterable viewpoint and are prepared, in the event of rejection of our wishes, to draw the most extreme conclusions. For my and my SA comerades wish for another truly capable Ortsgruppenleiter, you countered by bringing up the question of whether I recognize the guiding principles of Hitler. Had this question not come from your mouth, it would have been a considerable insult, as no one can be a more enthusiastic, certain and sacrificial group for Hitler and his Third Reich as ourselves. We have proven that and we are burning to prove it again and again.

It was for this reason the question posed to me was inappropriate. Therefore if I was compelled to give you my hand, it would be in no way due to a rebellion against Hitler but much to the contrary. Our loyalty for Hitler and his Ideology gives us the justification to ask an opposing question, whether it is compatible with the spirit of Hitler and lofty goals to not change an Ortsgruppenführer who is so incapable so that he is only tolerated?

The answer to this question is self evident - as far as righteousness and not personal politics. Our movement needs leaders and no weakling who let themselves be led by puppets. If that is the will, then we can hang our SA uniforms on the ?????? (surely something derogatory but missing on the paper).

For a year we can't ??????, are overwhelmed with work just to worry about details and are, as a result, totally and insufficiently apprised about current conditions. It cannot and must not continue this way. We want to be fighters, we want to promote the ideology and have no joy when hindered. That is why we strongly request help from you as our Gauführer. Not soon , not now- immediately. Give us someone for the post to replace the "straw man", an Ortsgruppenleiter for whom we will have respect. It will cause me great sorrow if an incompetent person ............

The rest has too much missing from the letter to be able to decipher, however it is clear that pg. Paust is not happy with the person assigned as Ortsgruppenleiter for Braunschweig. As Könnecke has all this paperwork, my assumption is he may be the Ortsgruppenleiter against which Paust was complaining. It is interesting to note the next letter I will post is from Dincklage to Könnecke which states he has enclosed the letter from pg. Paust where he indicates this must all be worked out. I will post Dincklage's letter tomorrow as I spent too much time translating this letter today and don't have the time or patience left to decipher the response tonight.
Richard V

[Richard]

Here is Dincklage's response to the previously posted letter.

Worthy Party associate Könnecke,

I am sending you the letter from Paust to myself. I am awaiting from Dr. Groh and yourself, that you will make it clear to Pg. Paust the discourteous way he handled this. We cannot tolerate these contrivances in the SA. I hope that Pg. Paust, in agreement with Pg. Groh, avows this view. This trend must cease. The individual upon whom this task falls in the first place is the leader of the SA, Pg. Paust.

I am coming on June 7 to the SA evening and will arrive in Braunschweig at 7:44 pm from Vienenburg. I will await then, that Pg. Groh and Pg. Paust can give me assurance measures have been met to avoid subversive agitation in the SA. In the event that Pg. Paust cannot unconditionally assure me of these measures, I see no other alternative other than to step in as SA Führer. I am hoping I will be spared from this. This will only be possible if the Political Leadership has been successful in teaching the entire SA and their Führer the correct understanding about the relationship between political Party leadership and the SA. I must absolutely have this guarantee.

Heil!

Dincklage
Gau S. A. Führer

[Richard]

Next to follow will be a letter dated June 13, 1927 from Hellmuth v. Mücke to Könnecke. von Mücke was the executive officer in WW1 of the German light cruiser SMS Emden. He joined the NSDAP in 1919 but also had some serious ties to the US, which included his wife who was an American that had been adopted by German citizens.

von Mücke served as a Representative in the Saxony Landtag, from 1926-29. By 1929 he left the Party, embraced pacifism and lectured and wrote extensively on the subject. Following the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in 1933 he became a much more vocal opponent of the regime. The Party banned his writings as subversive an in 1936 he was briefly imprisoned in the Kiel concentration camp for political dissent.

Although he volunteered to re-join the German navy as WW2 approached, he was considered politically unreliable and was ordered back to the camps for the duration of the war by Hitler himself. He was sent to the Fuhlbüttel concentration camp in Hamburg.

The Reichsstatthalter of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, considered von Mücke a national hero for his service in WW1, ignored Hitler's directive, and released von Mücke after several months, citing that he was too ill for imprisonment. The family was moved from their home on the island of Fohr during he unstable period, and was finally settled inland, in Ahrensburg, Schlewig-Holstein, where von Mücke lived from 1940 until his death in 1957.

von Mücke's oldest son and name-sake was killed on the Russian front in 1943. After the war von Mücke continued peace activism, opposing rearmament in 1950's West Germany. He died of a heart attack on July 30, 1957.

I'll try to get the letter uploaded and translated tomorrow night.

[Richard]

Here is the letter to Könnecke from v. Mücke dated June 13, 1927.

To the NSDAP Braunschweig

Dear (honored) Herr Könnecke!

On Monday morning I answered your telegram from noon Sunday, that I would speak in Braunschweig on the 19th. An earlier response was unfortunately not possible because the content of your telegram was unclear here since it was unknown to me that the Gauleitung had cancelled the speech in Hameln and set it in Braunschweig. This I first found out on Monday morning.

With German greetings,
Hellmuth v. Mücke

Notice the Reichstag seal on the lower right indicating a Reichstag representative.

[Richard]

Tomorrow I will post a letter which I believe is signed by Erich Koch dated October 25, 1927. Here is an interesting bio of Koch from Wikipedia:

Erich Koch (June 19, 1896 – November 12, 1986) was a Gauleiter of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945. Between 1941 and 1945 he was the Chief of Civil Administration (Chef der Zivilverwaltung) of Bezirk Bialystok. During this period, he was also the Reichskommissar in Reichskommissariat Ukraine from 1941 until 1943. After the Second World War, Koch stood trial in Poland and was convicted in 1959 of war crimes and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a year later.

Koch joined the NSDAP in 1922 {NSDAP # 90}. From 1922 he worked in various party positions in the NSDAP-Gau Ruhr. During the Occupation of the Ruhr, he was a member of Albert Leo Schlageter's group and was imprisoned several times by the French authorities. In 1927 he became Bezirksführer of the NSDAP in Essen and later the deputy Gauleiter of Gau Ruhr. Koch belonged to the left wing of the party and was a supporter of the faction led by Gregor Strasser.
In 1928 Koch became Gauleiter of the Province of East Prussia and the leader of the NSDAP faction in the provincial diet. From September 1930 he was a member of the Reichstag for East Prussia. After the Machtergreifung, Koch was appointed to the Prussian State Council in July 1933. He became Oberpräsident of East Prussia in September 1933, replacing Wilhelm Kutscher. In 1938 Koch was appointed SA-Obergruppenführer

Koch's industrialization plans led him into conflict with R. Walther Darré, who held the office of the Reich Peasant Leader (Reichsbauernführer) and Minister of Agriculture. Darré, a neopaganist rural romantic, wanted to enforce his vision of an agricultural East Prussia. When his "Land" representatives challenged Koch's plans, Koch had them arrested.

Soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Koch was appointed "civil commissioner" (Zivilkommissar) on August 1, 1941, and later as Chief of Civil Administration in Bezirk Bialystok. On September 1, Koch became Reichskommissar of Reichskommissariat Ukraine with control of the Gestapo and the uniformed police.

Koch was appointed as head of the Volkssturm of East Prussia on November 25, 1944. As the Red Army advanced into his area during 1945, Koch initially fled Königsberg to Berlin at the end of January after condemning the Wehrmacht from attempting a similar breakout from East Prussia. He then returned to the far safer town of Pillau, "where he made a great show of organizing the marine evacuation using Kriegsmarine radio communications, before once more getting away himself" by escaping through this Baltic Sea port on April 23, 1945, on the icebreaker Ostpreußen. From Pillau through Hel Peninsula, Rügen, and Copenhagen he arrived at Flensburg, where he hid himself after unsuccessfully demanding that a U-boat take him to South America. He was captured by British forces in Hamburg in May 1949.

Koch was one of the few Nazi party leaders to consider himself a professing Christian. In addition to his political career, Koch was also the elected praeses of Synod of the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia. Although Koch gave preference to the Deutsche Christen movement over traditional Protestantism, his contemporaries regarded Koch as a bona fide Christian, whose success in his church career could be attributed to his commitment to the Lutheran faith.
Koch officially resigned his church membership in 1943, but in his post-war testimony he stated: "I held the view that the Nazi idea had to develop from a basic Prussian-Protestant attitude and from Luther's unfinished Protestant Reformation". On the 450th Anniversary of Luther's birth (November 10, 1933), Koch spoke on the circumstances surrounding Luther's birthday. He implied that the Machtergreifung was an act of divine will and stated that both Luther and Hitler struggled in the name of belief.
It has been speculated that Koch's conflicts with Rosenberg and Darré had a religious element to them: both Rosenberg and Darré were anti-ChristianNordicists who did not believe that the Nazi Weltanschauung ("world view") was compatible with Christianity.

[Richard]

Here is the letter from Erich Koch dated 25 October 1927. It is addressed to the National Socialistic German Workers Party, Ortsgruppe Braunschweig intended for Herrn Könnecke.

Dear Pg. Könnecke!

In answer to your all of your questions about election meetings, I will let you know that I wrote to Pg. Dinklage, Hannover yesterday. - I will almost certainly come there for six days. Therefore you will want to immediately get in touch with Pg. Dinklage so you can soon provide me with with notice.

With German Greetings,
Erich Koch

[Richard]

Does anyone know if any of the signatures provided so far were either Blood Order recipients or Coburg Badge recipients?

Tomorrow I will post a letter from Ernst Graf zu Reventlow (Ernst Christian Einar Ludwig Detlev Graf zu Reventlow). He was an editorial writer during WW1. He founded a newspaper in 1920 called "Der Reichswart" (this letter is on that paper's letterhead) which was critical of Kaiser Wilhelm and the Weimar Republic.

In 1924 Reventlow and Albrecht von Graefe broke from the German National People's Party (DNVP) to form the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP) which was both more “Völkish” (racist/nationalistic) and socialistic than the conservative DNVP. Both men were elected to the Reichstag as DNVP deputies, though in May 1927 Reventlow quarreled with the more conservative Graefe and left the party to join the NSDAP (Nazi Party), bringing over his faction en bloc, including Bernhard Rust, Franz Stöhr, and Wilhelm Kube, each of whom were to enjoy prominent roles in the Nazi Party. This greatly improved the NSDAP position in northern Germany, where the DVFP had always been stronger than the NSDAP, and by the end of 1928 the DVFP had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist.
Reventlow’s group quickly allied themselves with the more socialistic wing of the NSDAP headed by Gregor Strasser which favored genuine socialistic measures and an alliance with the Soviets against the western democracies. Though a power in the party to the end, this group became less influential as Hitler turned to overt militarism and antisemitism after attaining power.

Reventlow was never liked or trusted by Hitler, but his personal popularity was substantial and Hitler chose not to cross him but to ignore him. Reventlow was never given a high party office nor, after the seizure of power, was he given any government post. Though often critical of government policies, he was allowed to publish his newspaper, Der Reichswart, until his death in 1943.

[Richard]

As promised the letter from zu Reventlow dated 26. October 1927.

Dear honorable Herr Könneke (sp)

I received your letter of the 24th of the month. Unfortunately it will not be possible to me to give a speech on the November 26 or, of course on the 24th as I am already engaged for Schleswig Holstein. Therefore please do not plan on me. I will write to you again in a few days which days I would be able to.

With German greetings,
Your devotee,
Reventlow

[Richard]

Here is a letter from the Reichstag from someone who's signature I cannot read. I have done my best to read it but there are too many words that escape me. Below is what I have been able to decipher, much of it which may not be correct.

Sehr geehrter Herr Kg(?)!

XXX XXXX XXXX XXX mit meinem Vortrag
in Braunschweig vorhanden XXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXX wollen XXX mir XXX auf
mein XXXXXXXkonto

Leipzig 100164
XXXXX XXXX Geschäftsführer(?)
Berlin = Reglitz

Im Betrag vom R.M. 30.-

XXXX XXXXXX = heil!

XXX
XXX

Really need some help on this one. No idea on who this is or what to fill in for the missing words.

[Richard]

And one more for tonight. One of the gems of this set of letters. This one is from the Reichskanzlei of Adolf Hitler in Munich dated on 9. November 1927. This is one of the earliest letters I have seen signed by Rudolf Hess.

Here is the translation.

Munich, the 9.November 1927

To the
Ortsgruppe Braunschweig der NSDAP,
to Pd. ds. Herrn Könnecke

II/F

Braunschweig
Schleinitzstrasse 1a


This confirms my telegram, in which I committed to an a meeting Herrn Hitler's for the 25. November.
Today I wired you that Herr Hitler is also prepared to speak by you on the 24th November, then the 25th would be omitted.
In the interests of the Braunschweiger voters(?) I hope they still have the biggest hall in Braunschweig available for the 24th November. I draw attention to the fact Herr Hitler will only speak in a hall.
Please thoroughly heedtThe already provided acceptable guidelines for Hitler-meetings.
Awaiting your notification,
With German Greetings
R. Hess

[Richard]

Tomorrow I will attempt to post two letters. Another for whom I cannot read or make out the signature but the letterhead reads "Mitglied des Preussischen Landtags" and another from a letterhead of von Kropff. Not sure if this is Generalmajor Helmuth on Kropff as the letter indicates an address in Bad Harzburg. This one is also difficult for me to read and I can only decipher part. Any help, once posted, will be very much appreciated.

[Richard]

Here is the letter with letterhead of the Preußischen Landtags. It is dated November 10, 1927 and I cannot make much headway on translation. I have some things translated and will try to post them tomorrow but, for the most part, most of the letter eludes me. I have not idea who signed the letter.