Hans Oster
| Hans Oster | |
|---|---|
Hans Oster in 1939
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| Birth name | Hans Paul Oster |
| Born |
9 August 1887 Dresden, German Empire |
| Died | 9 April 1945 (aged 57) Flossenbürg concentration camp, Nazi Germany |
| Allegiance |
 German Empire Weimar Republic Nazi Germany
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| Service/branch | Abwehr |
| Years of service |
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| Rank | Generalmajor |
| Battles/wars |
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Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a general in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany who was also a leading figure of the German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the Abwehr (German military intelligence), Oster was in a strong position to conduct resistance operations under the guise of intelligence work; he was dismissed for helping Jews to avoid arrest.
He was a key planner of the Oster Conspiracy of September 1938. Oster was arrested in 1943 on suspicion of helping Abwehr officers caught helping Jews escape Germany. After the failed 1944 July Plot on Hitler’s life, the Gestapo seized the diaries of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, in which Oster’s long term anti-Nazi activities were revealed. In April 1945, he was hanged with Canaris and Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Flossenbürg concentration camp.
Oster was born in Dresden, Saxony in 1887, the son of an Alsatian pastor of the French Protestant Church. He entered the artillery in 1907. In World War I, he served on the Western Front until 1916, when he was appointed as captain to the German General Staff. After the war, he was thought of well enough to be kept in the reduced Reichswehr, whose officer corps was limited to 4,000 by the Treaty of Versailles. However, he had to resign from the army in 1932, when he got into trouble because of an indiscretion during the carnival in the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland, where Reichswehr officers were prohibited.
He soon found a job in a new organisation which Hermann Göring set up under the Prussian police. He transferred to the Abwehr in October 1933. It was in this connection that he met future conspirators Hans Bernd Gisevius and Arthur Nebe, who were then working in the Gestapo. Oster also became a close confidant of Admiral Canaris.
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Wikipedia