(PHOTO) Man Refuses to Perform Nazi Salute, 1936 - Hamburg, Germany

Retronaut ^ | Capsule curated by Ben Griffith

[DogByte6RER]

August Landmesser (born May 24, 1910; missing and presumed dead Oct 17, 1944; declared dead in 1949) was a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, best known for his appearance in a photograph refusing to perform the Nazi salute at the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel on 13 June 1936.

August Landmesser was the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmine Magdalene (née Schmidtpott). He joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1931 in hope of getting a job. When he became engaged to the Jewish woman Irma Eckler in 1935, he was expelled from the party. They registered to be married in Hamburg, but the Nuremberg Laws enacted a month later prevented it.

On October 29, 1935, their first daughter Ingrid was born. In 1937, they tried to flee to Denmark but Landmesser was arrested and it became known that Irma Eckler was pregnant and expecting another daughter.

Landmesser was charged and found guilty of "dishonoring the race" under Nazi racial laws in July 1937. Landmesser argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and he was acquitted on May 27, 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence. Landmesser and Eckler publicly continued their relationship, and on July 15, 1938 he was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in the concentration camp Börgermoor.

Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene. From there she was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp, then the Lichtenburg concentration camp for women, and then the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941. After her grandmother's death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942. It is believed that she was brought to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed; she was pronounced dead in 1949, with a date of April 28, 1942.

Landmesser was discharged from prison on 19 January 1941. Landmesser worked as a foreman for the firm Püst, a haulage company. The company had a branch at the Heinkel-Werke (factory) in Warnemünde. In February 1944 he was drafted into a penal battalion, the 999th Fort Infantry Battalion. He was declared missing in action and presumably killed during fighting in Croatia on October 17, 1944. He was declared dead in 1949, with an effective date of August 1 that year. The marriage of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler was recognized retroactively by the Senate of Hamburg in the summer of 1951, and in the autumn of that year Ingrid assumed the surname Landmesser. Irene continued to use the surname Eckler.

- Wikipedia

[Fred Hayek]

Somehow this reminded me of Daniel, Schadrach, Mesach, and Abendnego(sp?) refusing to bow.

[ctdonath2]

I don't suggest not acting. I suggest not acting a mere gesture (or pointed lack thereof). “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

[RPTMS]

I have that picture as my wallpaper for my computer.

[sten]

look no further for balls of steel

will you be ready? will you have the fortitude?

he was not the first. nor will he be the last. socialism leads to pure evil, every time.

[Lancey Howard]

Great post right there.

[glock rocks]

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is available on Netflix streaming.

[Lazamataz]

“And soon dead, to no meaningful end.”

It is 76 years later, his bones are now dust, and here YOU are reading all about the life and looking at the photo of a man whom you never knew.

Effing brilliant. Thanks.

[cripplecreek]

At least he didn’t go to his grave hating himself.

In contrast, all across Germany, allied soldiers found beer halls full of nazis and supporters who had committed suicide. They knew they were caught and that justice would be harsh.

[ctdonath2]

Indeed - a man whose death cemented obedience to Hitler. “Ya hear what happened to August? They f-ing killed him just because he didn’t salute! I don’t like this stuff any more than he did, but I dont wanna wonder whether I will return alive each day when I have to say good-bye to my family.”

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

There was that Goebbels thing, but the Nazis are not the ones who suffered with Selbsthass, or if they did, they turned it against others. The people who hated themselves were the anti-Nazis who did nothing and said nothing and thereby became complicit in the crimes of the Nazis.

Suicide rates (which were generally low among Germans), did spike after the War, but mostly among women who had been repeatedly gang raped by the Red Army, many of whom were pregnant and could not accept the idea of an abortion. That is what Germans really mean when they say that they did not understand what Hitler was doing.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

There was that Goebbels thing, but the Nazis are not the ones who suffered with Selbsthass, or if they did, they turned it against others. The people who hated themselves were the anti-Nazis who did nothing and said nothing and thereby became complicit in the crimes of the Nazis.

Suicide rates (which were generally low among Germans), did spike after the War, but mostly among women who had been repeatedly gang raped by the Red Army, many of whom were pregnant and could not accept the idea of an abortion. That is what Germans really mean when they say that they did not understand what Hitler was doing.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Very provocative and interesting post. Thank you. If this were Facebook I would definitely “like” it ;)

[Safetgiver]

Joe Wilson should be remembered thusly. By ALL of us.

[cripplecreek]

There was definitely some serious guilt felt by those who did nothing.

In my opinion this is the single best documentary on the rise and fall of the 3rd Reich because its from the perspective of the German people themselves. Lots of commentary from people who did nothing because they didn't want to be noticed.

Third Reich - The Rise

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I watched it on the History Channel. I also grew up watching The Twentieth Century series on CBS, narrated by Walter Krankheit (Cronkite). Although it aired in the 50's and 60's, with almost half the Century left to go, it was mostly about Nazi Germany and the War. I also grew up in Queens, where our local deli man and his wife had numbers tattooed on their arms (maybe that's why tattoos never appealed to me) and every adult male between thirty and fifty had served in the War, and the ones who served in actual combat would gladly have foregone the entire experience. My own father who was a cavalryman in the New York National Guard on 12/7/41 and ended the War as a bandsman in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, would have gladly foregone the entire experience.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I watched it on the History Channel. I also grew up watching The Twentieth Century series on CBS, narrated by Walter Krankheit (Cronkite). Although it aired in the 50's and 60's, with almost half the Century left to go, it was mostly about Nazi Germany and the War. I also grew up in Queens, where our local deli man and his wife had numbers tattooed on their arms (maybe that's why tattoos never appealed to me) and every adult male between thirty and fifty had served in the War, and the ones who served in actual combat would gladly have foregone the entire experience. My own father who was a cavalryman in the New York National Guard on 12/7/41 and ended the War as a bandsman in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, would have gladly foregone the entire experience.

[cripplecreek]

My grandfather went into that fight as an agnostic but returned from Europe as a solid Christian.

[CodeToad]

“And soon dead, to no meaningful end.”

His life has already served a more meaningingful end than your cowardly life ever could.

[Lazamataz]

Indeed - a man whose death cemented obedience to Hitler. “Ya hear what happened to August? They f-ing killed him just because he didn’t salute! I don’t like this stuff any more than he did, but I dont wanna wonder whether I will return alive each day when I have to say good-bye to my family.”

Dude, what's up with the quavering, under the table, in the fetal position??!?

Not only would I follow in his footsteps, I might even take out (read: Murder with whatever implement was handy) a Nazi functionary or two.

I mean, you can't be THIS pussified, already, can you??!?

[ctdonath2]

It’s your “I might” that I’m advocating, and the pussification that I’m condemning.

A whole lotta y’all are seriously missing the point.