Ernst Klink
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Ernst Klink (5 December 1923 – 1993) was a German military historian who specialised in
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
and
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. He was a long-term employee at the Military History Research Office (MGFA). As a contributor to the seminal work ''
Germany and the Second World War ''Germany and the Second World War'' (german: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg) is a 12,000-page, 13-volume work published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA), that has taken academics from the military history centre of the German ...
'' from MGFA, Klink was the first to identify the independent planning by the German Army High Command for
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
. During Klink's career as a historian, he was a member of, and worked with the denialist ''
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
'' veteran lobby group
HIAG HIAG (german: Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS, lit=Mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members) was a lobby group and a denialist veterans' organisation founded by former high-ranking Waff ...
. In recent assessments, some of Klink's work has been questioned due to his support for the ahistorical notions of the " clean ''Wehrmacht''" and that the German attack on the Soviet Union had been "preventive".


Education and career

Born in 1923, Ernst Klink grew up in
Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...
and
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
; his mother was
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink Gertrud Emma Scholtz-Klink, ''née'' Treusch, later known as Maria Stuckebrock (9 February 1902 – 24 March 1999), was a Nazi Party member and leader of the National Socialist Women's League (''NS-Frauenschaft'') in Nazi Germany. Nazi activities ...
, head of the
National Socialist Women's League The National Socialist Women's League (german: Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft, abbreviated ''NS-Frauenschaft'') was the women's wing of the Nazi Party. It was founded in October 1931 as a fusion of several nationalist and Nazi women's assoc ...
. In 1941, Klink joined the SS and was commissioned to the
SS Division Leibstandarte The 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler or SS Division Leibstandarte, abbreviated as LSSAH, (german: 1. SS-Panzerdivision "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler") began as Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard unit, responsible for guarding ...
, fighting in
Joachim Peiper Joachim Peiper (30 January 1915 – 14 July 1976) was a German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) officer and a Nazi war criminal convicted for the Malmedy massacre of U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs). During the Second World War in Europe, Peiper serve ...
's regiment against the Soviet Union
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
. Reaching the rank of '' SS-Unterscharführer'' (sergeant), he participated in the
Third Battle of Kharkov The Third Battle of Kharkov was a series of battles on the Eastern Front of World War II, undertaken by Army Group South of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Red Army, around the city of Kharkov between 19 February and 15 March 1943. Known to ...
. He was so severely wounded on the first day of the
Battle of Kursk The Battle of Kursk was a major World War II Eastern Front engagement between the forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union near Kursk in the southwestern USSR during late summer 1943; it ultimately became the largest tank battle in history ...
that he was permanently disabled from military service. After the war, Klink studied history, the German language, philosophy and the English language. He submitted his PhD thesis on the
Åland Islands dispute The Åland Islands dispute was one of the first issues put up for arbitration by the League of Nations on its formation. Åland's population's demand for self-determination was not met and sovereignty over the islands was retained by Finland, b ...
1917 to 1921 at the
University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W ...
in 1957. During the 1950s, Klink joined HIAG, a ''
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
'' veteran's association and lobby group, set up in
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
in 1951 by former high-ranking ''Waffen-SS'' personnel. Klink joined the Military History Research Office (MGFA) at Freiburg in 1958. His tenure at MGFA was controversial, especially in recent assessments, due to his perceived sympathy to the myth of the " clean ''Wehrmacht''".


Activities within HIAG

In 1958, Klink became the spokesperson for the
Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...
branch of HIAG, a ''Waffen''-SS lobby group and a revisionist veterans' organisation. Klink's tenure at MGFA was controversial, especially in recent assessments. According to Jens Westemeier in his biography of Joachim Peiper, Klink was "one of the most important lobbyists for the in-house historical falsification" by HIAG. He gave lectures at veterans' meetings, assisted with documentation, and in the words of the historian
Jörg Echternkamp Jörg Echternkamp (born 1963) is a German military historian, who specialises in the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. He is a lecturer in modern history at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and a research director at the ...
, "cultivated the image of the clean Wehrmacht". Klink worked with HIAG and its in-house historian
Walter Harzer Walter Harzer (September 29, 1912 – May 29, 1982) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. He commanded the SS Division Hohenstaufen and SS Polizei Division. After the war, Harzer became active in HIAG, a lobby group established by ...
to screen materials donated to the in Freiburg for any information that may have implicated units and personnel in questionable activity. In the 1960s and 70s, Klink maintained a friendship with Peiper until the latter's death; the two spoke by telephone shortly before Peiper died in a fire on the night of 14 July 1976. Klink was approached by HIAG to write Peiper's biography, but declined; he was unwilling to stake his academic reputation on an attempt to rehabilitate Peiper. Nonetheless, in 1990, Klink wrote an article sharply critical of the
Malmedy massacre trial The Malmedy massacre trial (''U.S. vs. Valentin Bersin, et al.'') was held in May–July 1946 in the former Dachau concentration camp to try the German Waffen-SS soldiers accused of the Malmedy massacre of 17 December 1944. The highest-ranking d ...
and favourable towards the ''Waffen-SS''. According to the researcher Danny Parker, Klink "pretended to be a politically neutral historian at the MGFA", but his bias, especially towards the ''Waffen-SS'', was obvious from the personal papers of Klink that Parker had examined.


Military historian of Nazi Germany

Klink was a contributor to the fourth volume, ''The Attack on the Soviet Union'', of ''
Germany and the Second World War ''Germany and the Second World War'' (german: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg) is a 12,000-page, 13-volume work published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA), that has taken academics from the military history centre of the German ...
'', produced by historians of the MGFA. The volume appeared in 1983 and focused on
Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. In what the historian
David Stahel David Stahel (born 1975 in Wellington, New Zealand) is a historian, author and senior lecturer in history at the University of New South Wales. He specialises in German military history of World War II. Stahel has authored several books on the mil ...
describes as "groundbreaking research" that (as of 2009) was "unsurpassed", Klink was the first to provide a comprehensive account of the military planning for Barbarossa. Klink was also the first to identify the German Army's independent planning for an attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, known as
Operation Otto Operation Otto (also known as Plan Otto) was the code name for two independent plans by Nazi Germany. The 1938 plan was to occupy Austria; the second envisaged an attack on the Soviet Union and was developed from late July 1940. The Two Plans The ...
. Stahel commends Klink on the operations study of the Battle of Smolensk, despite over-reliance on the files of the '' Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (OKW, "High Command of the Armed Forces") and the ''
Oberkommando des Heeres The (; abbreviated OKH) was the high command of the Army of Nazi Germany. It was founded in 1935 as part of Adolf Hitler's rearmament of Germany. OKH was ''de facto'' the most important unit within the German war planning until the defeat at ...
'' (OKH, "High Command of the German Army"), which were at times at odds with diaries of the combat units and did not fully reflect the difficulties on the ground. Klink's colleague at the MGFA, Gerd R. Ueberschär, remarks that Klink based his study solely upon military records and attempted to portray the operations as "apolitical". Ueberschär criticises Klink for portraying Hitler as an excellent military leader, contrasting his decisions favourably to the "poor decisions" by the Chief of General Staff Franz Halder. According to Ueberschär, other researchers denied this notion, and it is not supported by the available records. "Klink's narrow military view," Ueberschär writes, "also enticed him into sidling up to the long disproved Nazi claim that this was a preventive war".


Works


In English

* Horst Boog,
Joachim Hoffmann Joachim Hoffmann (1 December 1930 – 8 February 2002) was a German historian who was the academic director of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office. Life Joachim Hoffmann was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, in 1930. In ...
,
Rolf-Dieter Müller __NOTOC__ Rolf-Dieter Müller (born 9 December 1948) is a German military historian and political scientist, who has served as Scientific Director of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office since 1999. Rolf-Dieter Müller, is also ...
and Gerd R. Ueberschär et al. ''
Germany and the Second World War ''Germany and the Second World War'' (german: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg) is a 12,000-page, 13-volume work published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA), that has taken academics from the military history centre of the German ...
, Vol. IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union''. Oxford University Press, 1998, .


In German

* ''Das Gesetz des Handelns. Die Operation »Zitadelle« 1943'', 1966, MGFA


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Klink, Ernst 20th-century German historians 1923 births 1993 deaths Waffen-SS personnel German military historians Historians of World War II Members of HIAG Military History Research Office (Germany) personnel SS non-commissioned officers