Karl Hanke (August 24, 1903–May, 1945) was a Nazi Party official
who served as Gauleiter of Lower Silesia from 1940 to 1945 and was also
a key member of Joseph
Goebbels's Propagandaministerium throughout the years of the Third
Reich. He was a Reserve Wehrmacht officer, serving in the German Army
from 1940 to 1944 and was also a member of the Allgemeine-SS (General
SS).
Hanke was instrumental in
shaping Albert
Speer's early career in the Nazi Party
and both remained close friends. So much
so in fact that in 1944 (according to Albert
Speer's book Inside
the Third Reich), Hanke strongly advised
Speer never to visit Auschwitz for any reason as he had “seen
something that he was not allowed to describe
and indeed could not describe.”
According to Speer in Inside
the Third Reich, Hanke also had a love
affair with Magda Goebbels after her husband,
Joseph Goebbels, had an affair with a
film star. However, Speer describes their
relationship as more of a “revenge
affair” on Magda's part after learning of
her husband's infidelity.
Karl Hanke is best known as the last Reichsführer-SS,
replacing Heinrich
Himmler on April 20, 1945. Just eight days before,
he had been honored with Nazi Germany's highest decoration, the German
Order. Hanke's assumption to the rank of Reichsführer-SS was as a result of Adolf
Hitler proclaiming Himmler as a traitor and stripping Himmler of all his offices and ranks and
ordering his arrest.
Karl Hanke was never to receive word of his promotion to the highest
possible SS rank, as he was captured by either Czech or Polish partisans
and executed sometime in May of 1945.