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Arno Schickedanz (27 December 1892 – 12 April 1945) was a German diplomat who held paramount positions in both the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs (APA) and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) of Nazi Germany. Both ministries he held positions in were under the command of Alfred Rosenberg, a friend since childhood and a leading Nazi theorist and ideologue. Schickedanz was a vehement antisemite, and his positions within Rosenberg's ministries often involved antisemitic programming.H.D. Heilmann: Aus dem Kriegstagebuch des Diplomaten Otto Bräutigam. In: Götz Aly u. a. (Hrsg.): Biedermann und Schreibtischtäter. Materialien zur deutschen Täter-Biographie, Institut für Sozialforschung in Hamburg: Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik 4, Berlin 1987, S. 173. In particular, Schickedanz was a central figure in the expansion of the Foreign Policy Office. He was the proposed ruler of the Reichskommissariat Kaukasien; however, this territorial entity never came into existence. Schickedanz died of suicide on 12 April 1945.
According to the Rubonorum album, he continued his studies in Moscow from the summer of 1915 onwards with Rosenberg, and in January 1918, he graduated there with a degree in chemistry. Consequently, he gained personal experience with the rule of the Bolsheviks. In the autumn of 1918, he volunteered for a German cavalry regiment and thus participated as a soldier of the German Army in the First World War. Before the end of the war in 1918, Schickedanz worked together with Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, Otto von Kursell, and Max Hildebert Boehm for the German occupiers in the "Press Office Ober Ost VIII" in Riga. Otto von Kursell, with whom Schickedanz had worked until then, was one of the first people Rosenberg visited after his move to Munich at the end of 1918. In 1919, he was a member of the Baltic Landwehr, which recaptured Riga, occupied by the Bolsheviks, in May 1919.
Schickedanz supported von Scheubner-Richter in publishing the weekly magazine "Economic Policy Correspondence on Eastern Questions and Their Significance for Germany." From 1923 to 1933, Schickedanz was the head of the Berlin office of the antisemitic daily newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. Due to his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch, Schickedanz later counted among the "Old Fighters" and received the so-called "Blood Order."
In 1927, Schickedanz published the radically antisemitic text The Judaism – A Counter-Race, which appeared Gnosis and Apocalypse. In 1928, he followed it with the content-related text Social Parasitism in the Life of Nations, in which he portrayed Jews as a "race" of parasites and pests. Rosenberg explicitly referred to this latter publication and adopted the concept and idea of a parasitic "counter-race" in his 1930 work The Myth of the 20th Century.
The resentment that Joseph Goebbels had developed against Rosenberg at that time also affected Rosenberg's representatives. On February 16, 1930, Goebbels noted about Schickedanz: "He asked if I had something against him. I gave him an honest answer. He is probably decent personally. But he has nothing to eat. And a Baltic!" Goebbels' attitude did not change the fact that Schickedanz was able to establish a fairly close relationship with Adolf Hitler during those years of the Weimar Republic.
On December 26, 1934, Rosenberg expressed his interest in a connection with King Carol II of Romania, intending to use Schickedanz to establish this connection. Rosenberg wrote in his diary that day: "Christmas is coming, I must send Lecca back to Bucharest with some comforting words after almost three weeks. Hopefully, in January, we can resume the broken threads. The bond of Romania to Germany is really worth all the effort. Schickedanz should speak to the King privately to prepare a friendship treaty; with 'our' embassy, anything is possible."
In addition to his duties at the APA, at the March 1936 parliamentary election, Schickedanz was elected as a deputy to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 17, Westphalia North. He was reelected in April 1938 from constituency 34, Hamburg and retained this seat until his death. Arno Schickedanz entry in the Reichstag Members Database
On June 15, 1939, Schickedanz, in his position as head of the Eastern Office in the APA, sent a report on Eastern European questions to the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers. Against the background of the APA's Germanisation ideology, he opposed the Hitler-Stalin Pact because it would limit the "Lebensraum" expansion opportunities. Here, as later in the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the argument was always made on the same line. The report stated, particularly with regard to Ukrainians and Belarusians, that for the future organization of the eastern area, "the political-psychological handling of the population of these areas is necessary, on the one hand to relieve purely military actions, on the other hand for possible further use of individual nationalities in German interests." Schickedanz first formulated the idea here that Germany should ally with the non-Russian peoples inside and outside the Soviet Union against Russia. In the same year, Schickedanz applied for the foreign policy department of the Reich Chancellery, but his application was rejected. On August 25, 1939, Rosenberg noted in his diary: "I feel as if this Moscow Pact will eventually avenge itself on National Socialism... How can we still speak of saving and shaping Europe if we must ask the destroyer of Europe for help?"
By September 1939, the APA's connection to London had loosened. Rosenberg wrote on September 24, 1939: "Yesterday, the card of the British adviser in the English aviation ministry arrived from Montreux. He asks Schickedanz to come. He kept his word, a thin thread to London still holds. Tomorrow inform the Führer and Göring. I am curious what the gentlemen from London expect from us as a possible basis for peace."
In April 1940, Rosenberg succeeded in getting Schickedanz as the APA's liaison man in the Reich Chancellery. On April 13, 1940, he wrote in his diary: "Since the Reich Commissariat Norway is attached to the Reich Chancellery, Schickedanz had discussions with Lammers, who appointed him as the Reich Chancellery's representative. Now all correspondence with Norway (including the Foreign Office) goes through his hands."
In late April 1945, Schickedanz took his own life to evade responsibility. According to Alfred Rosenberg, who described him as a "youth comrade" and "friend," Schickedanz shot his wife, his eight-year-old daughter, and himself in Berlin.
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