SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

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AlifRafikKhan
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SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#1

Post by AlifRafikKhan » 14 Sep 2012, 21:03

Franz Wimmer-Lamquet loved his past. He gave interviews to journalists and wrote memoirs about his activities on behalf of the Third Reich, and found his way into neo-Nazi circles. If he is still alive, he may have felt great satisfaction this week when it became known that even the British nicknamed him the "German Lawrence of Arabia." The Franz Wimmer-Lamquet file is among the materials the British security agency MI5 made accessible this week to scholars at Britain's National Archives. And from it one could see at least one characteristic this man shared with the legendary Lawrence of Arabia: He too had a tendency to make things up.

Anyone who has ever conducted historical research is familiar with the difficulty of deciding which is more dubious: biographical reports that are buried in secret files of intelligence agencies, or autobiographies that people write themselves. Autobiographical interviews that people give to newspapers are quite often the most dubious of all.

Wimmer-Lamquet was probably born in 1919, and already as a youth of 15 he joined the army of the Third Reich. As far as can be fathomed from the MI5 file and from Franz Wimmer-Lamquet's memoirs themselves, he was involved in organizing the pro-Nazi uprising of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani that took place in Iraq in April-May 1941. A while after that he proposed to his superiors that he organize an elite unit of Arab fighters, to be deployed in North Africa.

According to one version of events, his assignment was intelligence-gathering: to try to find out when the Allied forces would be landing in Europe. According to his own story, his people wore American and British military uniforms, befriended local sheikhs, and then at a certain point would suddenly turn on them, murder them, rape their daughters and disappear. The object was to incite the population against the Americans and British, before they landed there, and inflame hatred of them. At a certain stage the legend was born that Wimmer-Lamquet had led 3,000 Arab warriors in North Africa - hence his moniker.

The documents in the MI5 files attest that the British security service took an interest in him beginning in January 1945, at which time there may still have been some significance to the information the MI5 people heard and took down: Apparently, a man by the name of Abu Ali gave Col. Wimmer-Lamquet the name of a contact in one of the Arab villages in Palestine. It seems that the industrious colonel did not make it here, however: At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Soviets; his subsequent years were spent at internment camps in the USSR. In 1955 he was released and allowed to go home.

Like other prominent Nazis, Franz Wimmer-Lamquet proved to be quite a blabbermouth, and he found eager ears for his tales. The popularity of some of the SS people and of their stories is among the hallmarks of European culture in the 1950s. More than a few found a market also for the memoirs they penned. Wimmer-Lamquet's came out only seven years ago. Among other things, we learn there that Adolf Hitler himself ordered Wimmer-Lamquet to marry the daughter of the sultan of Mauritania, to make it easier for him to penetrate the Arab world.

He obeyed, of course, but at the time he was still a virgin and had never seen a naked woman in his life. So, he writes, the Fuehrer ordered that he undergo an expedited course in basic sex. According to Wimmer-Lamquet, one of his Arab men, Mohammed Sa'id, would later become a minister in the Algerian government. Evidently connections of this sort were helpful in advancing his affairs of business, after the war.

The MI5 file that was declassified this week shows that the British security service continued to take an interest in Wimmer-Lamquet in the 1950s. He also drew the attention of other secret services. The Spanish security service, which still operated under Franco's rule, suspected for some reason that Wimmer-Lamquet was a dangerous communist spy. London dismissed the Spaniards' suspicion: "They will describe anybody as a dangerous Soviet agent who is rash enough to be found carrying a copy of the New Statesman," an MI5 agent wrote, and added: "It seems likely that Wimmer-Lamquet is an arms smuggler and trouble maker probably working for the Egyptians."

In 1956 MI5 filed a report that appeared in the paper Empire News, according to which Israel as well as several Arab countries had approached the former SS colonel Wimmer-Lamquet with an offer to work for them. Needless to say, Wimmer-Lamquet himself was the source of that report; he spoke with the journalist Antony Terry, who specialized in interviews with war criminals. Wimmer-Lamquet had contemplated the offer. Naturally, he wouldn't work for the Jews, he said: After all he was and remained loyal to Hitler.
Sources:
Soldaten Fotoalbum
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-e ... a-1.414592

Any other info/bio about this "German Lawrence of Arabia"?
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Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet.jpg
Franz Wimmer-Lamquet vereidigt seine Kaempfer. Hinter ihm sin die marokkanische und die irakische Flagge zu sehen.jpg
Deutsch - Arabische Infanterie-Bataillon 845.jpg

Arto O
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#2

Post by Arto O » 30 Sep 2012, 19:55

Thanks AlifRafikKhan,
for your interesting post. I am not sure if I made enough research, but how his SS rank? The arab units were never transferred to SS, even on paper.
with best regards
Arto


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AlifRafikKhan
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#3

Post by AlifRafikKhan » 01 Oct 2012, 04:48

Wimmer-Lamquet was a Brandenburger. Please read this: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=21553

Arto O
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#4

Post by Arto O » 01 Oct 2012, 04:57

Thanks,
I didn´t think in that.
Arto

giselher
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#5

Post by giselher » 05 Jan 2013, 13:57

Franz Wimmer-Lamquet must be /have been an interesting character. In the above article his rank is given als colonel and I also found his name in a book (Hedeler/Hennig: "Schwarze Pyramiden, rote Sklaven" about the uprising in the Soviet Gulag of Vorkuta in 1953) and his former rank is given as SS-Standartenführer. Is that possible?

My grandfather and Wimmer-Lamquet were together in Vorkuta and I have some letters here, that Wimmer-Lamquet wrote to my grandfather in 1956 after both had returned home to Germany.

Funny how you still find new connections every now and then...

Best Tilman

Ian Hulley
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#6

Post by Ian Hulley » 07 Jan 2013, 17:51

The SS-Staf rank could be a pre-war Allgemeine-SS 'der Reserve' rank .. obsolete if called up to another branch of the Wehrmacht.

Ian

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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#7

Post by giselher » 07 Jan 2013, 22:26

Hi Ian,

thank you for your post.

I am not really sure if that can be the case if he was only born in 1919. He would have had to be SS-Stardartenführer (Allgem. SS) at the age of 20. Not very likely if you ask me.

According to his bio in the above mentioned book he was chosen by Heydrich to head a "Sonderkommando Wimmer" which, after the death of Heydrich was not under the command of the Afrika Korps but under Hitler's dirct command. Task was anti-Allied action in northern Africa.

The bio also mentions: "SS-Standartenführer in spring 1943".

The book "Die Toten kehren zurück" by Joseph Scholmer (book is also about Vorkuta mainly) calls him "high functionary of the Gestapo", mentions that he was trained at a Gestapo school soon after 1933 and that at some point in time at least he had direct contact with Hitler.

I don't know what is true of all this though....

Tilman

giselher
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#8

Post by giselher » 07 Jan 2013, 22:39

I have a photo of him here from post war that he sent to my grandfather. He is second from left. According to the writing on the backside the photo was taken in Berlin in January 1956.

Tilman
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9. Jan. 1956 Berlin.jpg
Franz Wimmer-Lamquet post war.

krisgreystone
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#9

Post by krisgreystone » 18 Mar 2014, 21:40

Hello, i am looking all kind of information about franz Wimmer Lamquet and his wife Annalize. My mother's was in Vorkuta camp with his wife and we have visited them in Wien. I have their old adresse : favoritenstrassr 35/6> Would you be so kind to tell me if he is still alive

thanks

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ttvon
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#10

Post by ttvon » 19 Mar 2014, 06:00

Hi,
I find two pics in some newsreel. But sorry, I forget the source.
Maybe they are the same man.
They look like the same Heer uniform and armband.
Is it Franz Wimmer-Lamquet?
Or who are they?
Thanks.
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1.jpg
2.jpg
2.jpg (40.04 KiB) Viewed 4747 times

Tank Researcher
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Re: SS-Untersturmführer Franz Wimmer-Lamquet

#11

Post by Tank Researcher » 19 Mar 2014, 18:17

[quote="giselher"]Franz Wimmer-Lamquet must be /have been an interesting character. In the above article his rank is given als colonel and I also found his name in a book (Hedeler/Hennig: "Schwarze Pyramiden, rote Sklaven" about the uprising in the Soviet Gulag of Vorkuta in 1953) and his former rank is given as SS-Standartenführer. Is that possible?

My grandfather and Wimmer-Lamquet were together in Vorkuta and I have some letters here, that Wimmer-Lamquet wrote to my grandfather in 1956 after both had returned home to Germany.

Funny how you still find new connections every now and then...

Best Tilman[/quote


Lieber Giselher,

do you now more about the career of Franz Wimmer? I often talked with him at telephone and I got one of his
manuscripts. Somethings there seem to be not correct.
Naturally he was never Standartenführer.

Best
Tank Researcher

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