Hauptmann Karl Mayr, Adolf Hitler's immediate superior

[Keir]

A name that keeps popping up in the literature as the catalyst for Hitler's career is that of his superior Karl Mayr who seems to have been the first to recognise and develop Hitler's 'talent', pushed him to join the DAP, trained and financed him when the army was rapidly demobilising, and provided contacts and support to the fledgling party. But by the time of the Kapp putsch attempt, the name disappears completely.
Embarrassingly, I've had to resort to Wikipedia that ends its four-sentence biographical account with
"He fled to France in 1933 after the Nazis rose to power, was tracked down by the Gestapo, arrested and imprisoned, and later murdered at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1945."
Why? When? Can anyone flesh these details out for me?

[Dieter Zinke]

Here is his bio in german
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mayr_(SPD)

Dieter Z.

[ThomasWeber]

He was targeted by the Nazis for two reasons. He developed politically very differently from Hitler becoming a defender of Weimar democracy and because of his knowledge of what Hitler really was up to in 1919. You'll find more about this in my 'Hitler's First War'

Best,

Tom Weber

[jeffhan373]

The whole Mayr affair feels odd. He leaves Germany in 1933 and goes to live in France. But in 1940 the Gestapo tracks him down, then brings him back to Germany where he's kept in KLs until his death in Buchenwald in 1945. Why would there have been such interest in him? Why was the Gestapo interested in him at all after an exile of seven years? He was clearly a person of interest to someone, but why? Given his role in 1919 he could have been slapped on the wrist about his political tendencies and admonished to keep quiet...but that wasn't his fate at all.

Strange. Additional information would be great in solving this mystery.

[J. Duncan]

Maybe it was because of what he wrote in this article? (see link).
can anyone post a photo of him to go along with the subject? I've never seen a photo of him.

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/mar ... rsBoss.htm

[jeffhan373]

Here's the only photo I've ever seen of Karl Mayr. He's standing in the middle of the image, wearing military uniform. Next to him (tall man with hat & glasses) is Reichswehrminister Gustav Noske.

The article Mayr did for "Current History" is a tabloid style attack. In it, among other things, he claims that Hitler tried to become a letter carrier after the Great War, but failed the intelligence test. Also, that his "deformity" (not explained in the article) caused Hitler to be a pariah with other soldiers and deeply traumatized him. The whole article is a vitriolic attack on Hitler with almost nothing of substance in it. By the time it was published, Mayr was in a concentration camp, from which he never emerged....

[michael mills]

Maybe it was because of what he wrote in this article? (see link).

By the time it was published, Mayr was in a concentration camp, from which he never emerged....

The article referred to was published in November 1941, in a magazine called "Current History", presumably in the United States.

It must have been written after May of that year, since it refers to Hess's flight to Britain, which it claims was for the purpose of putting an end to the war between that country and Germany.

If the article was indeed written by Mayr (and it seems to be, since the activities that the writer claims for himself were dcertainly those of Mayr in 1919), then it means that in mid-1941 he must still have been hiding out in France somewhere, and still able to write an article and have it smuggled out to the United States by some unknown method.

The Wikipedia article states that he was hunted down by the Gestapo in France and sent to a concentration camp, but it does not say exactly when he was arrested. It would have to have been some time after mid-1940, after Mayr had written his article (if he indeed wrote it) and had passed it on to whomever it was who organised its transmission to the United States and its publication.

Obviously a lot of the claims made in the article are nonsense, such as that Göring was the real power in the National Socialist Party and in the German Government.

The part I found most interesting was the claim that "Mein Kampf" was not written by Hitler, but was put together by Hess out of materials contributed by a number of different persons. I have in fact seen claims made elsewhere that substantial parts of "Mein Kampf" were written by Hess, in particular the parts dealing with the "Lebensraum" ideology and foreign policy. Hess is supposed to have received these ideas from the theoretician of geopolitics, Karl Haushofer, who was a friend of his.

However, Hitler must have contributed all the autobiographical information, the story of his childhood and Vienna years, of his life in the army during the First World War, and of his role in the NSDAP fropm 1919 to 1923.

Streicher is named in the article as one of the contributors of material to "Mein Kampf", and that rings true, since many of the references to Jews in the book reflect the sexually-based obsessions that were so typical of Streicher, in particular the image of the Jewish youth lying in wait to rape the German maiden.

It is also highly possible that much of the material in the unpublished typescript that is referred to as "Hitler's Second Book" or "Hitler's Secret Book" was also drafted by Hess, since many of the chapters have the flavour of lecture notes from courses on geopolitics that Hess is known to have attended at Munich University after the war.

[PF]

Postscript
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Karl_Mayr.htm

[DavidFrankenberg]

From https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mayr ... ker,_1883) :

He came to Buchenwald as a prisoner via the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1941. Since he does not appear in the camp's number index or in the list of prominent prisoners, research has suggested that he had the status of Hitler's special prisoner. [19]
He died on February 9, 1945 in the Buchenwald concentration camp, although it has not yet been fully clarified whether he fell victim to an Allied air raid during an external command or whether he was murdered on the basis of a special order.

It is claimed that Mayr died the 9 february of 1945 in Bucehnwald during an air raid. He was working in an ammunition factory.
It is not clear if he died executed or during an accident.
Maybe an assassination disguised in accident ?
If he was Hitler' special prisoner, it must have been Hitler who decided his assassination.

[DavidFrankenberg]

Thomas Weber (Becoming Hitler) says he died in a british bombing in an amno factory.