Diplomat (1933–1945) 's post-war reports etc. on Hans Otto Meissner (
PDF:
NARA) In December 1933, Meissner passed the entrance examination for the Foreign Service. On 12 December 1933 he was admitted to the
SS (membership number 241,955) in the so-called Motor-SS (after 1 May 1940 in the rank of Hauptsturmführer). According to Meissner's autobiography,
Prince Josias zu Waldeck und Pyrmont had proposed him to join. In February 1934, Meissner entered the diplomatic service as a civil servant in the rank of attaché. He first belonged to Division IV "Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, East Asia". Other young leaders who came into the service with him included
Ernst vom Rath. In 1934, Meissner was in the barracks of the
Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in
Berlin-Lichterfelde, where he had been ordered together with other members of the Berlin section of the
Motor-SS to defend the institution in case of an SA rebellion. He became an eyewitness of executions in the course of the political purge known as the
Röhm Putsch. From August 1935 to March 1936, Meissner was employed at the German embassy in London. He passed the diplomatic consular examination on 24 June 1936, and in September, he was sent to the German embassy in Tokyo. He worked from December 1936 to December 1938 under
Eugen Ott. On 12 December 1936, Meissner became a member of the
NSDAP (membership number 3,762,629). From March 1939 until the declaration of war on 3 September 1939, he was reinstated at the German embassy in London. From September 1939 to March 1940 , he was employed in the Information Department of the Foreign Office in Berlin in Unit II (Military Intelligence and Propaganda Service) and from March to July 1940 to the German embassy in Moscow. From August 1940 to January 1941, he served in the
Wehrmacht (XXXXI Army Corps) and then again at the embassy in Moscow from January 1941 to March 1941, followed, from March to December 1941, by service in the XXXXI. Corps of the German Army, where he was promoted to lieutenant of the reserve on 1 November 1941. After a wound on the Eastern Front in the tank battle on the
Dubysa in December 1941, he returned to the diplomatic service. In December 1941, Meissner was transferred under the name of a consul to the lead the German Consulate in Milan, which he led until 1945. He also had the function of a "cultural lecturer" such as by taking part in the meeting of the anti-Jewish foreign action under Horst Wagner in early April 1944 in
Krummhübel, where the embassies' "Referees for Jewish Affairs" met to discuss a tightening of the European persecution of Jews and propaganda measures to shield them from public accusation by the Allied forces about the persecution of the Jews. According to the minutes of the meeting, Meissner made proposals to intensify the
anti-Semitic propaganda In May 1945, two weeks after the end of the war, Meissner and his consulate personnel were arrested by American troops at
Bellagio and interned in prison camp No. 334 at
Scandicci. After a few weeks, he and his fellow inmates were transferred to a comfortable camp in a hotel complex at
Salsomaggiore. Meissner himself later said that a letter requesting help from Pope
Pius XII (a close friend of the Meissner family since his time as nuncio in Berlin in the 1920s) had probably led to that improvement in his situation.
After 1945 After the war, Meissner denied the authenticity of the conference minutes of the Krummhübler Conference of April 1944. On 29 April 1947 in Allied custody, he denied that he had made any of the documented anti-Semitic proposals. In spite of occasional criticism because of his past as a Nazi diplomat, Meissner received numerous honours. In 1986, he was awarded
Grand Cross of Merit, at the suggestion of
Franz Josef Strauß the then
Minister-President of Bavaria. He died 8 September 1992 in
Unterwössen, Germany. ==Personal life==