ABSTRACT
Lammers, Hans Heinrich (1879–1962) Chief of the Reich Chancellery from 1933 to 1945 and Hitler's closest legal adviser, Hans Heinrich Lammers was born in Lublinitz, Upper Silesia, on 27 May 1879, the son of a veterinary surgeon. After studying law at Breslau and Heidelberg, he was appointed a county court judge in Beuthen in 1912. After military service during World War I, Lammers joined the Reich Ministry of the Interior as a senior government adviser and in 1933 he was promoted to head of the Reich Chancery when the Nazis came to power. An unimaginative bureaucrat who combined a sense of protocol with natural brutality, Lammers's legal expertise was much appreciated by Hitler who had known him for many years and looked to him as his most important subordinate in State matters. For months at a time Lammers and his staff would carry on Chancery business at Hitler's private retreat on the Obersalzberg and he was frequently consulted by the Führer on legal matters. A member of the German Law Academy and a Prussian State Councillor, Lammers was made Reich Minister without Portfolio in 1937 and two years later on 30 November 1939 he became Ministerial Councillor for Reich Defence. In 1940 Lammers was promoted to Honorary SS General. From January 1943 onwards, Lammers presided over cabinet meetings in Hitler's absence and, together with Martin Bormann (q.v.), usurped a great deal of power by controlling access to the Führer. From 1943 all orders to be signed by Hitler had to be cleared first by a triumvirate consisting of Lammers, Bormann and Field Marshal Keitel (q.v.). Bormann's intrigues against him and Lammers's involvement in Goering's (q.v.) telegram of 23 April 1945, informing Hitler that he was assuming control of the country, led to an order for his arrest. Imprisoned and interned by the Allied authorities after the war, Lammers was accused at the Wilhelmstrasse trial of 1949 of formulating and giving legal authority to Nazi anti-Jewish measures leading to the ‘Final Solution’.
