Erich Kordt
Erich Kordt ( born December 10, 1903 in Dusseldorf, † November 11, 1969 ibid ) was German ambassador.
Life
After studying law and the promotion Kordt met in May 1928 to the Foreign Office (AA).
He subsequently held various foreign assignments, including Geneva and Bern, before 1936 Counsellor II class at Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop was in London in October. On November 1, 1937, Kordts joined the NSDAP and the SS He was promoted in 1940 to Obersturmbannführer ( Lieutenant Colonel ) in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).
In the course of the carriage shaft of 4 February 1938, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Kordt became head of his ministerial office.
Was about his brother Theodor Kordt, the chargé d'affaires at the German Embassy in London, he tried on 6 and 7 September 1938 in vain to the British government to initiate a radio broadcast that the German Reich as a triggering moment for a Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster should serve planned coup against Hitler.
Mid- June 1939 Kordt traveled to London to warn the first diplomatic adviser to the government of Great Britain Robert Gilbert Vansittart before eventually leading to the German -Soviet non-aggression pact German - Soviet secret negotiations.
Possibly Kordt hidden behind an unnamed officers of the Foreign Office, the one formulated marginal note on a letter from the RSHA to the AA, in which he calls the " known - bad major action of Gauleiter Wagner ( s ) ( 6000-7000 ) from Baden and the Palatinate " mentioned. Signed was this remark by the abbreviation " K." what the historian Peter Steinbach interprets as a reference to one of the brothers Kordt that were 1938 joined the opponents of the regime.
In April 1941 Kordt envoy was first class in Tokyo, Ambassador Eugen Ott and from October 1943 in Nanjing under Ambassador Ernst Woermann.
In the Nuremberg Wilhelmstraßen process Kordt presented in June 1948 his anti- regime activities as initiatives of the accused Secretary of State Ernst von Weizsäcker dar. This presentation he also retained in the 1950 memoirs Not from the files at.
Kordt habilitated in 1948 and was a lecturer in international law, constitutional law and diplomatic history at the University of Cologne since 1951. Since 1951 he worked as a Ministerial Counsellor at the state government of North Rhine -Westphalia.
Supposedly on personal intervention of the Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer he never had a re-use in the Foreign Service of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Works
- Not from the file ...: The Wilhelmstrasse in peace and war. Experiences, encounters and impressions 1928 - 1945, Stuttgart: Union 1950
- Delusion and reality (among Mitw by Karlheinz Abshagen ), Stuttgart: Union 1947