Hase, Karl Paul Immanuel von.

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Hase, Karl Paul Immanuel von, born 24-07-1885, in Hanover, the fifth child of the royal Prussian chief medical officer Paul and Friederike (Frieda), born Sperber, Hase (1849–1943)  On 12-12-1921, Hase married Margarete, Baronesse von Funck in Neustrelitz. They had four children: Ina, Maria-Gisela, Alexander and Friedrich-Wilhelm.   His grandfather was theologian Karl August von Hase (25-08- 1800 – 03-01-1890), who was born at Steinbach (near Penig) in Saxony. He studied at Leipzig and Erlangen, and in 1829 was called to Jena as professor of theology. He retired in 1883 and was made a baron. He was  also the great-grandfather of theologian and resistance man against Hitler Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer also a nephew of Paul Hase and resistance man who was murdered. . Karl Paul Hase was  an unusually well-informed person, he’s alert, open, sociable, affable, possesses independent judgment. Originally a supporter of Adolf Hitler in 1935 he was appointed Commander 50th Regiment, but from 1938, Brigadier-General von Hase was privy to the conspiracy plans plotted by such men as Wilhelm CanarisHans Oster, Generals Erwin von WitzlebenFranz Halder and Erich Hoepner. He was an uncle of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous Lutheran pastor who also took part in the conspiracy.

On 20th July, 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and Werner von Haeften left Berlin to meet with Hitler at the Wolf’ Lair. After a two-hour flight from Berlin, they landed at Rastenburg at 10.15. Stauffenberg had a briefing with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitell, Chief of Armed Forces High Commandat, at 11.30, with the meeting with Hitler due to take place at 12.30. As soon as the meeting was over, Stauffenberg, met up with Haeften, who was carrying the two bombs in his briefcase. They then went into the toilet to set the time-fuses in the bombs. They only had time to prepare one bomb when they were interrupted by a junior officer who told them that the meeting with Hitler was about to start. Stauffenberg then made the fatal decision to place one of the bombs in his briefcase. “Had the second device, even without the charge being set, been placed in Stauffenberg’s bag alone with the first, it would have been detonated by the explosion, more than doubling the effect. Almost certainly, in such an event, no one would have survived.”

When he entered the wooden briefing hut, twenty-four senior officers were in assembled around a huge map table on two heavy oak supports. Stauffenberg had to elbow his way forward a little in order to get near enough to the table and he had to place the briefcase so that it was in no one’s way. Despite all his efforts, however, he could only get to the right-hand corner of the table. After a few minutes, Stauffenberg excused himself, saying that he had to take a telephone call from Berlin. There was continual coming and going during the briefing conferences and this did not raise any suspicions.

Stauffenberg and Haeften went straight to a building about 200 hundred yards away consisting of bunkers and reinforced huts. Shortly afterwards, according to eyewitnesses: “A deafening crack shattered the midday quiet, and a bluish-yellow flame rocketed skyward… and a dark plume of smoke rose and hung in the air over the wreckage of the briefing barracks. Shards of glass, wood, and fiberboard swirled about, and scorched pieces of paper and insulation rained down.” 

Stauffenberg and Haeften observed a body covered with Hitler’s cloak being carried out of the briefing hut on a stretcher and assumed he had been killed. They got into a car but luckily the alarm had not yet been given when they reached Guard Post 1. The Lieutenant in charge, who had heard the blast, stopped the car and asked to see their papers. Stauffenberg who was given immediate respect with his mutilations suffered on the front-line and his aristocratic commanding exterior; said he must go to the airfield at once. After a short pause the Lieutenant let them go.

According to eyewitness testimony and a subsequent investigation by the Gestapo , Stauffenberg’s briefcase containing the bomb had been moved farther under the conference table in the last seconds before the explosion in order to provide additional room for the participants around the table. Consequently, the table acted as a partial shield, protecting Hitler from the full force of the blast, sparing him from serious injury of death. Wishing to get a better view of a map, Major Heinz Brandt Keitel’s adjudant, moved the suitcase to the other side of a thick table leg from Hitler, sparing Hitler the brunt of the blast when the bomb exploded, but losing a leg and Brandt died the next day after surgery in the Wolf’s Lair hospital[, The stenographer Heinz Berger, Berger, Heinrich  died that afternoon, and three others, General Rudolf Schmundt, General Günther Korten, and Colonel Heinz Brandt did not recover from their wounds. Hitler’s right arm was badly injured but he survived.

Death and burial ground of Hase, Karl Paul Immanuel von.

On 20 July 1944, after the failed assassination of Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, Hase ordered Major Otto Ernst Remer of the Infantry Regiment Großdeutschland to seal off the government quarter in Berlin during the subsequent coup d’état attempt. Remer later removed the cordon and Hase was arrested by the Gestapo that evening whilst he was dining with Joseph Goebbels.

Adolf Hitler, seized by a “titanic fury and an Unquenchable thirst for revenge” ordered SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt Ernst Kaltenbrunner to arrest “every last person who had dared to plot against him”. Hitler laid down the procedure for killing them: “This time the criminals will be given short shrift. No military tribunals. We’ll hail them before the People’s Court. No long speeches from them. The court will act with lightning speed. And two hours after the sentence it will be carried out. By hanging – without mercy.”

In the trial against him and a number of other members of the plot at the Volksgerichtshof under Jurist Roland Freisler

on 08-08-1944.

 

Hase was sentenced to death and hanged, age 59, later the same day at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. He ashes got a place on the Plötzensee cemetery, in an anonymous grave, like all Plö]tzensee victims.

Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster:    robhopmans@outlook.com

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