Dieter Hildebrandt

Dieter Hildebrandt (23 May 1927 – 20 November 2013) was a German Kabarett artist. Biography Hildebrandt was born in Bunzlau, Lower Silesia, Weimar Germany (now Boleslawiec, Poland) where he attended school. In World War II he became a Flakhelfer of the Luftwaffe but after four months was conscripted to the German Wehrmacht, in the same role. In June 2007, a year after the Günter Grass Waffen-SS revelations, documents were released which showed that some prominent German intellectuals like Siegfried Lenz, Martin Walser and Dieter Hildebrandt had been members of the Nazi Party. For all three the documents showed their membership at a young age, during a late stage of the fascist regime in Germany – Hildebrandt's application was dated 19 February 1944 (when Hildebrandt was still 16) and he was admitted on 20 April 1944, Hitler's 55th birthday. Both Lenz and Hildebrandt said they were unaware of having written an application, and unaware that they became a member of the Nazi Party in 1944. Historians like Norbert Frei and Götz Aly said in that context that some local Nazi party leaders might have written mass applications to the party without the knowledge of the supposed applicants. On 8 May 1945, Hildebrandt was taken captive by the United States Army, but was released a few months later.