Hermann Rauschning - Life and Works

Life and Works

Rauschning was born in Thorn (Toruń), at the time part of the German Empire, to a Prussian officer in the province of West Prussia. He attended the Prussian Cadet Corps institute at Potsdam and in 1911 he obtained a Doctorate from Berlin University. He fought in World War I as an Officer and was wounded. After the war, he settled in the area around Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), where he owned land.

He lived in Posen and was prominent in its Historical Society. In 1930 he published a work under the title Die Entdeutschung Westpreußens und Posens (The de-Germanisation of West Prussia and Posen). According to Rauschning, Germans in these areas were constantly put under pressure to leave Poland.

In 1932 he moved to a new estate in Warnow and became leader of the Danzig Land League. Previously affiliated with the German National People's Party, he then joined the Nazi Party believing that they offered the only way out of Germany's troubles, including the incorporation of Danzig into Germany. He became President of the Danzig Teachers' Association in 1932. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis in Danzig won control of the Free City's government, and Rauschning became the President of the Senate of Danzig on 20 June 1933; that is, head of state of the Free City government. He was an excellent speaker. In foreign matters Rauschning did not conceal that his personal desire was to turn neighbouring Poland into a vassal of Nazi Germany. As a conservative nationalist Rauschning was not typical of Nazi members, and the Nazis' violent anti-Semitism was alien to him. He was a bitter rival of Albert Forster, the future Gauleiter of Danzig.

On 23 November 1934, he resigned from the Senate and the Party. In the April 1935 Danzig elections, he supported "constitutionalist" candidates against the Nazis, and wrote articles supporting co-operation with the Poles, which angered the Nazis, and Rauschning found himself in personal danger.

He sold his farming interests and fled to Poland in 1936. He moved on to Switzerland in 1937, to France in 1938 and to the United Kingdom in 1939. Rauschning joined German emigres but his right wing beliefs did not endear him to left-wing Germans, nor the fact that whilst a member of the Nazi Party he had been instrumental in the take over of Danzig. Rauschning represented "one of the most conservative poles of the emigration" and enjoyed celebrity status through his lectures. He sought to play a leading role in the more conservative emigre 'German Freedom Party', run by Carl Spiecker (later of the Centre Party), however he fell out with Spiecher who thought Rauschning was motivated by self-interest rather than the interest of the party.

Between 1938 and 1942 he would write a number of works in German addressing the problem of the Nazis which were also published in a number of languages including English. His Gespräche mit Hitler (Conversations with Hitler) was a huge bestseller but its credibility would later be severely criticised, and it now has no standing as an accurate document on Hitler for historians. However, as anti-Nazi propaganda it was taken seriously by the Nazi regime. At the beginning of the war the French dropped leaflets on the Western Front containing excerpts from Rauschnings writings, but with little response.

In 1941 Rauschning moved to the United States, becoming a US citizen in 1942 and purchasing a farm near Portland, Oregon where he died in 1982. He remained politically active after the war and was opposed to the policies of Konrad Adenauer.