Gauleiter of South Hanover-Braunschweig
In August 1940, Lauterbacher was appointed acting Gauleiter of South Hanover-Braunschweig, and on 8 December 1940, as Science and Education Minister Bernhard Rust's successor, he was appointed full-fledged Gauleiter. At the same time he received an appointment as Honorary Leader of the Academy for Youth Leadership in Braunschweig
In January 1941, Lauterbacher was appointed to the Prussian State Council, and took over as High President (Oberpräsident) of the Province of Hanover on 1 April 1941 as SA Chief of Staff Viktor Lutze's successor. At about the same time came his promotion to SS Gruppenführer. Lauterbacher's last promotion came in November 1942, when he was appointed Reich Defence Commissar.
On 10 April 1945, shortly before the Allied forces marched into Germany, and only 20 days before Adolf Hitler killed himself, Lauterbacher took his family to safety in the Harz, but not without having announced over wired radio the requisite exhortations to hold out against the onslaught. Two days earlier, on 8 April, he had loaded his car up with cigarettes so that he could flee south from the Harz posing as a cigarette sales agent. Nonetheless, only a day after leaving his family in the Harz, on 11 April, after making it as far as Carinthia, Hartmann Lauterbacher was seized and taken prisoner by the British.
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