Background
Naumann was born in Guhrau in Silesia, Prussia, Germany.
Naumann was born in Guhrau in Silesia, Prussia, Germany.
After finishing school, he studied political economics.
He was appointed head of the Propaganda Ministry by Führer Adolf Hitler in his political testament after Doctor Goebbels was promoted to Reichskanzler. Naumann was present in the Führerbunker in Berlin in late April 1945. Naumann joined the NSDAP in 1928.
Thereafter, Naumann joined the Steamship In 1937 he was Chief of the Propaganda Office in Breslau.
A year later he was made the personal aide of Joseph Goebbels and in 1942 became his assistant secretary. His official title was "Undersecretary and Chief of the Minister" General’ s Office in the Propaganda Ministry".
In April 1944 Naumann was named State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry. He was appointed Propaganda Minister in the Flensburg government of Karl Dönitz by Hitler"s Testament of 29 April 1945.
On 1 May 1945, he was the leader of break-out group number 3 from the Führerbunker.
The group included Martin Bormann, Hans Baur, Ludwig Stumpfegger and Artur Axmann. Erich Kempka testified at Nuremberg that he had last seen Naumann walking a metre in front of Martin Bormann when a Soviet rocket exploded by Bormann while crossing the Weidendammer Bridge under heavy fire in Berlin. According to Axmann, the group followed a Tiger tank which spearheaded the first attempt to storm across the bridge, but it was destroyed.
Bormann, Stumpfegger and himself were "knocked over" when the tank was hit.
Axmann crawled to a shellhole where he met up again with Naumann, Bormann, Baur, and Stumpfegger. They all made it across the bridge.
From that group, only Naumann and Axmann escaped the Soviet Army encirclement of Berlin and made it to western Germany. Following Germany"s defeat, Naumann lived under an assumed name for five years.
He reemerged after the 1950 amnesty and resumed his contacts within the far right, including Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Ernst Achenbach, Arthur Axmann, Otto Skorzeny and many others
Later on, he became director at a metal firm in Lüdenscheid owned by Goebbels" stepson Harald Quandt. He died in 1982 in Lüdenscheid in North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany, aged 73. Naumann"s own book Nau Nau gefährdet das Empire was published by Dürer Haus in 1953.
Bibliography
Beevor, Antony (2002).
Berlin: The Downfall 1945. London: Viking-Penguin Books.
.
Joachimsthaler, Anton (1999). The Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, the Evidence, the Truth.
transactions Helmut Bögler.
London: Brockhampton Press.
O"Donnell, James Preston (1978). The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Group.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
.
Tauber, Kurt (1967). Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
Naumann was arrested by the British Army on 16 January 1953 and accused of being the leader of a Neo-Nazi group that attempted to infiltrate West German political parties. He was released after seven months in custody. Beyond Eagle and Swastika: German Nationalism Since 1945.
Schutzstaffel; Sturmabteilung]
Naumann became a member of the Société Anonyme where he rose to the rank of Brigadeführer by 1933. He was a member of the Freundeskreis Reichsführer Steamship around Heinrich Himmler and served in the Waffen-Steamship during World World War World War II