Dr. Hans Lammers Signed Letter

Dr. Hans Lammers Signed Letter
Official letter from The State Secretary and Head of the ReichChancellery Reichminister Dr. Hans Heinrich Lammers and features a bold inksignature of Dr. Lammers. It also features a nice Academy for German Lawreceived stamp at the top of the letter.The letter reads :The State Secretary and Head of the Reich Chancellery Berlin W 812 February 1937To the director of the Academy for German Law Dr Lasch Berlin W9LeipzigerPlatz 15Dear Doctor Lasch!I am very grateful to you for the attention you showed me by handing overthe "Yearbook of the Academy for German Law 1936". I ask you to be convincedthat the Academy for German Law and its work will continue to be ofparticular interest to me in the future.Heil HitlerYour very devotedDr. LammersHans Heinrich Lammers (27 May 1879 – 4 January 1962) was a German jurist andprominent Nazi politician. From 1933 until 1945 he served as Chief of theReich Chancellery under Adolf Hitler. During the 1948–1949 Ministries Trial, Lammers was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity andsentenced to 20 years' imprisonment.In 1932, Lammers joined the Nazi Party and achieved rapid promotions: he wasappointed head of the police department, and, after the Nazi seizure ofpower in 1933 State Secretary and Chief of the Reich Chancellery. At therecommendation of Reichsminister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, he becamethe centre of communications and chief legal adviser for all governmentdepartments. From 1937, he was a member of Hitler's cabinet as aReichsminister without Portfolio. On 30 August 1939, immediately prior tothe outbreak of the Second World War, Lammers was appointed by Hitler to thesix-person Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich which was set up tooperate as a "war cabinet". In this position, he was able to review allpertinent documents regarding national security and domestic policy evenbefore they were forwarded to Hitler in person. Historian Martin Kitchenexplains that due to the centralization of power accorded to the ReichChancellery and therefore to its head, Lammers became "one of the mostimportant men in Nazi Germany". From the vantage point of most governmentofficers, Lammers seemed to speak on behalf of Hitler, the ultimateauthority within the Reich. Lammers was also one of the first officials tosign government correspondence with "Heil Hitler", which became a requisitegreeting for civil servants and eventually so ubiquitous that failure to useit was considered an "overt sign of dissidence" which could triggerattention from the Gestapo. In 1940, Lammers was also promoted to honorarySS-Obergruppenführer.From January 1943, Lammers served as President of the cabinet when Hitlerwas absent from their meetings. Along with Martin Bormann, he increasinglycontrolled access to Hitler. By early 1943, the war produced a labour crisisfor the regime. Hitler agreed to the creation of a three-man committee withrepresentatives of the State, the army, and the Party in an attempt tocentralise control of the war economy and over the home front. The committeemembers were Lammers (Chief of the Reich Chancellery), Field Marshal WilhelmKeitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command;OKW), and Bormann, who controlled the Party. Hitler seemed to be inagreement with this proposal since none of them posed a threat to hisleadership nor would they disagree with him. The committee was intended toindependently propose measures regardless of the wishes of variousministries, with Hitler reserving most final decisions to himself. Thecommittee, soon known as the Dreierausschuß (Committee of Three), met eleventimes between January and August 1943. However, they ran up againstresistance from Hitler's cabinet ministers, who headed deeply entrenchedspheres of influence and were excluded from the committee. Seeing it as athreat to their power, Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer, Hermann Göring andHeinrich Himmler worked together to bring it down. The result was thatnothing changed, and the Committee of Three declined into irrelevance. Overtime Lammers lost power and influence because of the increasing irrelevancyof his position due to the war and as a consequence of Martin Bormann'sgrowing influence with Hitler.In April 1945, Lammers was arrested by SS troops during the final days ofthe Nazi regime, in connection with the upheaval surrounding Hermann Göring.On 23 April, as the Soviets tightened the encirclement of Berlin, Göringconsulted Luftwaffe General Karl Koller and Lammers. All agreed that Göringwas not only Hitler's designated successor but was to act as his deputy ifHitler ever became incapacitated. Göring concluded that, by remaining inBerlin to face certain death, Hitler had incapacitated himself fromgoverning. Acting on the matter, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, arguing that since Hitler was cut off in Berlin, he, Göring, shouldassume leadership of Germany. Göring set a time limit of 22:00 that night(23 April), after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated. The telegramwas intercepted by Bormann, who convinced Hitler that Göring was a traitorand that the telegram was a demand to resign or be overthrown. Hitlerresponded angrily, ordering SS troops to arrest Göring. Soon afterward, Hitler removed Göring from all of his offices and ordered Göring, his staffand Lammers placed under house arrest at Obersalzberg. Lammers was takenprisoner by American forces, but in the meantime his wife, Elfriede (néeTepel), committed suicide near Obersalzberg (the site of Hitler's mountainretreat) in early May 1945, as did his daughter, Ilse, two days later.In April 1946, Lammers was a witness at the Nuremberg tribunal. Starting inApril 1949, he was tried in the Ministries Trial, one of the subsequentNuremberg trials, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The sentence waslater commuted to 10 years by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy, and, on16 December 1951, he was released from Landsberg Prison. Lammers died on 4January 1962 in Düsseldorf and was buried in Berchtesgaden in the same plotas his wife and daughter.The letter measures 205mm x 265mm and is in great condition