Everything about Erwin Planck totally explained
Erwin Planck (
12 March 1893 –
23 January 1945) was a
German politician, and a
resistance fighter in the
Third Reich.
Born in
Berlin, Erwin Planck was the fourth child of
theoretical physicist Max Planck and his first wife. After his
Abitur in
1911, Planck went into the
military and pursued a career as an officer. In the
First World War, he rather quickly found himself a
prisoner of the
French in
1914. After he came back to Germany after the war ended, he was active on the General Staff, where he met Major
Kurt von Schleicher for the first time. They would become lifelong friends.
Schleicher, who headed the political branch, called Planck into the Reich Defence Ministry in
1920 and sent him as a liaison man to the Reich Chancellery, where he also became a government advisor after he left the
Reichswehr in
1926.
In
1932, he became Secretary of State under
Franz von Papen, and later also Schleicher in the Reich Chancellor's Office.
After
Hitler seized power in
1933, Planck left government work and went to
East Asia for a year. Shortly after he came back to Germany, Schleicher was shot by the
Gestapo. Planck tried in vain to get an explanation for his friend's murder.
In
1936, Planck changed career paths and went into
business, becoming a leading employee at the Otto-Wolff-Konzern, a large conglomerate, in
Cologne. In
1939, he took over leadership of the Berlin
branch office.
In August
1939, a group including
Prussian Finance Minister
Johannes Popitz, Planck, and
Reichsbank president
Hjalmar Schacht approached General
Georg Thomas, head of the Defence Economy and Armament Office asking him to do something to thwart the outbreak of the forthcoming
war. He agreed to write a memorandum to his superior,
Wilhelm Keitel, head of the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht in which he stated that a war against
Poland would set off a world war that Germany couldn't win owing to massive
supply (logistics) problems. However, Keitel tried to allay Thomas's fears by telling him that the Führer was planning no such war.
Such a war, of course, began the very next month.
In
1940, Planck, Popitz,
Ulrich von Hassell and
Ludwig Beck drafted a "Provisional
Constitution" on the assumption that the West's forthcoming attack would overthrow Hitler. Even afterwards, Planck vainly stayed in the resistance against the régime and was involved in the
July 20 plot. This led to his arrest on
23 July 1944, whereafter he was taken to the Gestapo's
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA).
Planck was sentenced to death by the
Volksgerichtshof and hanged at
Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
Memorial plaque
A memorial plaque to Erwin Planck and two others can be found at his old school, the
Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium in the Berlin borough of
Wilmersdorf, Bundesallee 1-12.
Sources
Further Information
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