Hans-Ulrich Rudel was born on 2 July 1916, in Konradswaldau, in Lower
Silesia, Prussia. He was the third child of Lutheran minister Johannes
Rudel. As a boy, Rudel was a poor scholar but a keen sportsman. Rudel
attended the humanities oriented Gymnasium, in Lauban. He joined the
Hitler Youth in 1933. After graduating with Abitur in 1936, he
participated in the compulsory Reich Labour Service (RAD). Following the
labour service, Rudel joined the Luftwaffe in the same year and began
his military career as an air reconnaissance pilot.
German forces
invaded Poland in 1939 starting World War II in Europe. As an air
observer, Rudel flew on long-range reconnaissance missions over Poland.
During 1940, he served as a regimental adjutant for the 43rd Aviators
Training Regiment, based at Vienna.
In early 1941, he underwent
training as a Stuka pilot. He was posted to 1st Staffel of
Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 (StG 2), which was moved to occupied Poland in
preparation for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union,
in June 1941. On 21 September 1941, Rudel took part in an attack on the
Soviet battleship Marat of the Baltic Fleet. Marat was sunk at her
moorings on 23 September 1941 after being hit by one 1,000-kilogram
(2,200 lb) bomb near the forward superstructure. It caused the explosion
of the forward magazine which demolished the superstructure and the
forward part of the hull. 326 men were killed and the ship gradually
settled to the bottom in 11 meters (36 ft) of water. Her sinking is
commonly credited to Rudel alone, but Rudel dropped only one of the two
bombs that sank her. Rudel's unit then took part in Operation Typhoon,
Army Group Center's attempt to capture the Soviet capital.
Rudel's
gunner from October 1941 was Erwin Hentschel, who served with Rudel for
the next two and a half years, both men earning the Knight's Cross of
the Iron Cross during that period. Hentschel completed 1,400 sorties
with Rudel and drowned on 21 March 1944 when they were making their way
to the German lines following a forced landing.
In early 1942,
Rudel got married while home on leave. Later in the year, he took part
in the Battle of Stalingrad. From May 1941 to January 1942, Rudel flew
500 missions. In February 1943, Rudel flew his 1,000th combat mission,
which made him into a national hero. He then participated in the
experiments with using the Ju 87 G in the anti-tank role. The anti-tank
unit took part in operations against the Soviet Kerch–Eltigen Operation.
The footage from an onboard gun camera was used in Die Deutsche
Wochenschau, a Reich Ministry of Propaganda newsreel. In April 1943,
Rudel was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves,
receiving the Oak Leaves from Hitler personally in Berlin. Rudel
participated in the Battle of Kursk with the same unit. On 12 July 1943
Rudel claimed 12 Soviet tanks in one day. In October 1943, Rudel was
credited with the destruction of his 100th tank and was awarded the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (one of only
160 awarded) on 25 November.
Rudel was appointed
Gruppenkommandeur of III. Gruppe on 22 February 1944. On 20 March, Rudel
performed a forced landing behind Soviet lines and he and Hentschel
(his gunner, mentioned above) escaped to the German lines. The men
attempted to swim across the Dniester River but Hentschel drowned in the
attempt. Upon his return, Ernst Gadermann, previously the troop doctor
of III. Gruppe, joined Rudel as his new radio operator and air gunner.
Rudel was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves,
Swords and Diamonds (one of only 27 awarded) on 29 March 1944, the tenth
member of the Wehrmacht to receive this award. The presentation was
made by Hitler personally.
Rudel was promoted to Oberstleutnant
on 1 September 1944, and appointed leader of SG 2, replacing Stepp, on 1
October 1944. On 22 December 1944, Rudel completed his 2,400th combat
mission, and the next day, he reported his 463rd tank destroyed. On 29
December 1944, Rudel was promoted to Oberst (colonel), and was awarded
the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and
Diamonds, the only person to receive this decoration. This award,
intended as one of 12 to be given as a post-war victory award for Nazi
Germany, was presented to him by Hitler on 1 January 1945, four months
before Nazi Germany was defeated.
On 8 February 1945, Rudel was
badly wounded in the right foot, and landed inside German lines as his
radio operator shouted flight instructions. Rudel's leg was amputated
below the knee. He returned to flying on 25 March 1945. He claimed 26
more tanks destroyed by the end of the war. On 19 April 1945, the day
before Hitler's final birthday, Rudel met with Hitler in the
Führerbunker at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. On 8 May 1945, Rudel
fled westward from an airfield near Prague, landing in US controlled
territory, and surrendered. The Americans refused to hand him over to
the Soviet Union.
While Rudel had been interned, his family fled
from the advancing Red Army and had found refuge with Gadermann's
parents in Wuppertal. Rudel was released in April 1946 and went into
private business. In 1948, he emigrated to Argentina via the ratlines,
travelling via the Austrian Zillertal to Italy. In Rome, with the help
of South Tyrolean smugglers, and aided by the Austrian bishop Alois
Hudal, he bought himself a fake Red Cross passport with the cover name
"Emilio Meier", and took a flight from Rome to Buenos Aires, where he
arrived on 8 June 1948. Rudel authored books on the war, supporting the
regime and attacking the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for "failing
Hitler".
After Rudel moved to Argentina, he became a close friend
and confidant of the President of Argentina Juan Perón, and Paraguay's
dictator Alfredo Stroessner. In Argentina, he founded the
"Kameradenwerk" (lit. "comrades' agency"), a relief organization for
Nazi war criminals. Prominent members of the "Kameradenwerk" included SS
officer Ludwig Lienhardt, whose extradition from Sweden had been
demanded by the Soviet Union on war crime charges, Kurt Christmann, a
member of the Gestapo sentenced to 10 years for war crimes committed at
Krasnodar, Austrian war criminal Fridolin Guth, and the German spy in
Chile, August Siebrecht. The group maintained close contact with other
internationally wanted fascists, such as Ante Pavelić and Carlo Scorza.
In addition to these war criminals that fled to Argentina, the
"Kameradenwerk" also assisted Nazi criminals imprisoned in Europe,
including Rudolf Hess and Karl Dönitz, with food parcels from Argentina
and sometimes by paying their legal fees. In Argentina, Rudel became
acquainted with notorious Nazi concentration camp doctor and war
criminal Josef Mengele. Rudel, together with Willem Sassen, a former
Waffen-SS and war correspondent for the Wehrmacht, who initially worked
as Rudel's driver, helped to relocate Mengele to Brazil by introducing
him to Nazi supporter Wolfgang Gerhard. In 1957, Rudel and Mengele
together travelled to Chile to meet with Walter Rauff, the inventor of
the mobile gas chamber.
In Argentina, Rudel lived in Villa Carlos
Paz, roughly 36 kilometers (22 mi) from the populous Córdoba City,
where he rented a house and operated a brickworks. There, Rudel wrote
his wartime memoirs Trotzdem ("Nevertheless" or "In Spite of
Everything"). The book was published in November 1949 by the
Dürer-Verlag in Buenos Aires. Dürer-Verlag (1947–1958) issued a variety
of apologia by former Nazis and their collaborators. Besides Rudel,
among the early editors were Wilfred von Oven, the personal Press
adjutant of Goebbels, and Naumann. Sassen convinced Adolf Eichmann to
share his view on The Holocaust. Together with Eberhard Fritsch, a
former Hitler Youth leader, Sassen began interviewing Eichmann in 1956
with the intent of publishing his views. The Dürer-Verlag went bankrupt
in 1958.
Discussion ensued in West Germany on Rudel being allowed
to publish the book, because he was a known Nazi. In the book, he
supported Nazi policies. This book was later re-edited and published in
the United States, as the Cold War intensified, under the title, Stuka
Pilot, which supported the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Pierre
Clostermann, a French fighter pilot, had befriended Rudel and wrote the
foreword to the French edition of his book Stuka Pilot. In 1951, he
published a pamphlet Dolchstoß oder Legende? ("Stab in the Back or
Legend?"), in which he claimed that "Germany's war against the Soviet
Union was a defensive war", moreover, "a crusade for the whole world".
In the 1950s, Rudel befriended Savitri Devi, a writer and proponent of
Hinduism and Nazism, and introduced her to a number of Nazi fugitives in
Spain and the Middle East.
With the help of Perón, Rudel secured
lucrative contracts with the Brazilian military. He was also active as a
military adviser and arms dealer for the Bolivian regime, Augusto
Pinochet in Chile and Stroessner in Paraguay. He was in contact with
Werner Naumann, formerly a State Secretary in Goebbels' Ministry of
Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany. Following the
Revolución Libertadora in 1955, a military and civilian uprising that
ended the second presidential term of Perón, Rudel was forced to leave
Argentina and move to Paraguay. During the following years in South
America, Rudel frequently acted as a foreign representative for several
German companies, including Salzgitter AG, Dornier Flugzeugwerke,
Focke-Wulf, Messerschmitt, Siemens and Lahmeyer International, a German
consulting engineering firm.
According to the historian Peter
Hammerschmidt, based on files of the German Federal Intelligence Service
and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the BND, under the
cover-up company "Merex", was in close contact with former SS and Nazi
Party members. In 1966, Merex, represented by Walter Drück, a former
Generalmajor in the Wehrmacht and BND agent, helped by the contacts
established by Rudel and Sassen, sold discarded equipment of the
Bundeswehr (German Federal armed forces) to various dictators in Latin
America. According to Hammerschmidt, Rudel assisted in establishing
contact between Merex and Friedrich Schwend, a former member of the
Reich Security Main Office and involved in Operation Bernhard. Schwend,
according to Hammerschmidt, had close links with the military services
of Peru and Bolivia. In the early sixties, Rudel, Schwend and Klaus
Barbie, founded a company called "La Estrella", the star, which employed
a number of former SS officers who had fled to Latin America. Rudel,
through La Estrella, was also in contact with Otto Skorzeny, who had his
own network of former SS and Wehrmacht officers.
Rudel returned
to West Germany in 1953 and became a leading member of the Neo-Nazi
nationalist political party, the German Reich Party (Deutsche
Reichspartei or DRP). In the West German federal election of 1953, Rudel
was the top candidate for the DRP, but was not elected to the
Bundestag. According to Josef Müller-Marein, editor-in-chief of Die
Zeit, Rudel had an egocentric character. In his political speeches,
Rudel made generalizing statements, claiming that he was speaking on
behalf of most, if not all, former German soldiers of World War II.
Rudel heavily criticized the Western Allies during World War II for not
having supported Germany in its war against the Soviet Union. Rudel's
political demeanor subsequently alienated him from his former comrades,
foremost Gadermann. Müller-Marein concluded his article with the
statement: "Rudel no longer has a Geschwader (squadron)!" In 1977, he
became a spokesman for the German People's Union, a nationalist
political party founded by Gerhard Frey.
In October 1976, Rudel
inadvertently triggered a chain of events, which were later dubbed the
Rudel Scandal (Rudel-Affäre). The German 51st Reconnaissance Wing, the
latest unit to hold the name "Immelmann", held a reunion for members of
the unit, including those from World War II. The Secretary of State in
the Federal Ministry of Defence, Hermann Schmidt authorized the event.
Fearing that Rudel would spread Nazi propaganda on the German Air Force
airbase in Bremgarten near Freiburg, Schmidt ordered that the meeting
could not be held at the airbase. News of this decision reached
Generalleutnant Walter Krupinski, at the time commanding general of
NATO's Second Allied Tactical Air Force, and a former World War II
fighter pilot. Krupinski contacted Gerhard Limberg, Inspector of the Air
Force, requesting that the meeting be allowed at the airbase. Limberg
later confirmed Krupinski's request, and the meeting was held on
Bundeswehr premises, a decision to which Schmidt still had not agreed.
Rudel attended the meeting, at which he signed his book and gave a few
autographs but refrained from making any political statements.
During
a routine press event, journalists who had been briefed by Schmidt
questioned Krupinski and his deputy Karl Heinz Franke about Rudel's
presence. In this interview, the generals compared Rudel's past as a
Nazi and Neo-Nazi supporter to the career of prominent Social Democrat
leader Herbert Wehner, who had been a member of the German Communist
Party in the 1930s, and who had lived in Moscow during World War II,
where he was allegedly involved in NKVD operations. Calling Wehner an
extremist, they described Rudel as an honorable man, who "hadn't stolen
the family silver or anything else". When these remarks became public,
the Federal Minister of Defense Georg Leber, complying with §50 of the
Soldatengesetz (Military law), ordered the generals into early
retirement as of 1 November 1976. Leber, a member of the Social
Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was heavily criticized for his
actions by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition, and the
scandal contributed to the minister's subsequent retirement in early
1978. On 3 February 1977, the German Bundestag debated the scandal and
its consequences. The Rudel Scandal subsequently triggered a
military-tradition discussion, which the Federal Minister of Defense
Hans Apel ended with the introduction of "Guidelines for Understanding
and Cultivating Tradition" on 20 September 1982.
During the 1978
World Cup, held in Argentina, Rudel visited the German national football
team in its training camp in Ascochinga. The German media criticized
the German Football Association, and viewed Rudel's visit as being
sympathetic to the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina following
the 1976 Argentine coup d'état. During the 1958 FIFA World Cup in
Sweden, he visited the German team at Malmö on 8 June 1958. There he was
welcomed by team manager Sepp Herberger.
Rudel was married three
times. His 1942 marriage to Ursula Bergmann, nicknamed "Hanne",
produced two sons, Hans-Ulrich and Siegfried. They divorced in 1950.
According to the news magazine Der Spiegel, one reason for the divorce
was that his wife had sold some of his decorations, including the Oak
Leaves with Diamonds, to an American collector, but she also refused to
move to Argentina. On 27 March 1951, Der Spiegel published Ursula
Rudel's denial of selling his decorations, and further stated she had no
intention of doing so. Rudel married his second wife, Ursula née
Daemisch, in 1965. The marriage produced his third son, Christoph, born
in 1969. Rudel survived a stroke on 26 April 1970. Following his divorce
in 1977, he married Ursula née Bassfeld.
Rudel died following
another stroke in Rosenheim on 18 December 1982, and was buried in
Dornhausen on 22 December 1982. During Rudel's burial ceremony, two
Bundeswehr F-4 Phantoms appeared to make a low altitude flypast over his
grave. Dornhausen was situated in the middle of a flightpath regularly
flown by military aircraft, and Bundeswehr officers denied deliberately
flying aircraft over the funeral. Four mourners were photographed giving
Nazi salutes at the funeral, and were investigated under a law banning
the display of Nazi symbols. The Federal Minister of Defence Manfred
Wörner declared that the flight of the aircraft had been a normal
training exercise.
Rudel flew 2,530 combat missions on the
Eastern Front of World War II. The majority of these were undertaken
while flying the Junkers Ju 87, although 430 were flown in ground-attack
variants of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. He was credited with the destruction
of 519 tanks, severely damaging the battleship Marat, as well as
sinking a cruiser (incomplete and heavily damaged Petropavlovsk), a
destroyer (the Leningrad-class destroyer Minsk) and 70 landing craft.
Rudel also claimed to have destroyed more than 800 vehicles of all
types, over 150 artillery, anti-tank or anti-aircraft positions, 4
armored trains, as well as numerous bridges and supply lines. Rudel was
also credited with 9 aerial victories, 7 of which were fighter aircraft
and 2 Ilyushin Il-2s. He was shot down or forced to land 30 times due to
anti-aircraft artillery, was wounded five times and rescued six
stranded aircrew from enemy-held territory.
Rudel remained
popular with the German far-right after his death, especially with the
German People's Union, the DVU, and its leader Gerhard Frey. Frey and
the DVU established the Ehrenbund Rudel – Gemeinschaft zum Schutz der
Frontsoldaten (Honour federation Rudel – Community for the protection of
the front soldiers) in 1983 during a memorial service for Rudel.
British holocaust denier David Irving was given the Hans-Ulrich Rudel
Award by Frey in June 1985; he delivered a memorial speech on the death
of Rudel.
Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel
https://reibert.info/threads/xans-ulrix-rudel-hans-ulrich-rudel.6079/
