Dietrich Klagges (German pronunciation: [ˈdiːtʁɪç ˈklaɡəs]; 1 February 1891 – 12 November 1971) was a Nazi Party politician and from 1933 to 1945 the appointed premier (Ministerpräsident) of the now abolished Free State of Brunswick.

After leaving the DNVP, Klagge was for a short time a member of the extreme right-wing German Völkisch Freedom Party (Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei), which had been founded late in 1922.

Already in 1931, two years before the Nazis seized power, Klagges imposed professional bans against Social Democrats and Jews in the civil service, which struck, among others, many teaching staff at the Braunschweig Technical College.

The City of Braunschweig bears the stigma of being responsible for the former Austrian citizen – and since 1925, at his instigation, stateless person – Adolf Hitler's getting his first official job on 25 February 1932.

Klagges first tried to procure for Hitler an associate professorship in the made-up discipline of "Politics and Organic Sociology" at the Braunschweig Technical College.

Without meaning to, Klagges had given the Nazi Party the very thing that they had wanted to avoid at all costs: their intentions had now been made public and Hitler had become a target of ridicule.

On 16 February 1933 the new Reichskanzler requested in a short telegram discharge from the Brunswick State Service, which was promptly granted "effective immediately".

Henceforth, Klagges was to submit all plans to Reichsstatthalter Wilhelm Loeper in Dessau as well as Reichsminister Hanns Kerrl for approval, thereby being degraded to provincial politician and thrust off the stage of higher NSDAP politics.

[2] Klagges's plans for a Nazi model state entailed the goal of further keeping Brunswick as independent as possible from Berlin's overlordship so that he could go on running his little "Reich" as he deemed fit, doing whatever he liked to do.

For Brunswick was a small state, and part of Gau Southern Hanover-Brunswick, composed largely of the Prussian Province of Hanover and controlled by powerful Gauleiter Bernhard Rust.

[5] Klagges would not hear of his state being integrated into Prussia – as this would have put an end to his independence – despite Hitler's assurances that Brunswick would still be a cultural centre, and not merely part of a new proposed "Reichsgau Hannover."

Klagges found support for his idea among Braunschweig educators, from the middle class, the chamber of commerce, and even the Protestant Church.

Furthermore, he brought many important Nazi institutions to the city, such as the Academy for Youth Leadership (Akademie für Jugendführung), the German Research Centre for Aviation (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt), the Führer School for German Trades and Crafts (Führerschule des deutschen Handwerks), the Regional Führer School of the Hitler Youth (Gebietsführerschule der Hitler-Jugend), the Luftwaffe Command 2, the Reich Hunting Lodge (Reichsjägerhof, intended to impress passionate hunter Göring), the SS Ensigns' School (SS-Junkerschule), the SS Upper Division "Middle", and also the Bernhard Rust College for Teacher Training.

A short time after the Nazis' seizure of power, the first acts of terror were seen in both the City of Braunschweig and throughout the state of Brunswick, in which the so-called "Hilfspolizei" ("Auxiliary Police") were involved.

The murder of eleven communists and labour organisers in Rieseberg (about 15 miles east of Braunschweig) by members of the SS on 4 July 1933 was the most important of these events.

Böhme had the dedication of former Brunswick Ministerpräsident Heinrich Jasper (who had likewise been persecuted by Klagges) to thank for the return of his freedom a short time later.

The failed attempt on Hitler's life at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia on 20 July 1944 furnished another pretense on which to arrest Jasper yet again on 22 August 1944.

August Merges (1870–1945) belonged to various leftwing parties, was one of the leaders of the November Revolution in Braunschweig and was President of the Socialist Republic of Brunswick.

The new General Prosecutor Fritz Bauer, who had come to Braunschweig in 1950, and who was later active in the 1960s, likewise as a prosecutor, in the Auschwitz Trials, contributed to a great extent to getting Klagges sentenced in a normal criminal trial on 4 April 1950 to a life term in labour prison for crimes committed by him as Brunswick State Minister and Premier, including, among others, the Rieseberg murders.

In a second trial in which it could be proved that Klagges had taken part in murders, torture, false imprisonment, and so on, and that he had planned (by himself or with others) these deeds, his prison term was reduced to 15 years.

In his defence, Klagges put it to the court that he had known nothing about all that, as he had only worked from a desk and he was deceived by his underlings as to the true extent of the Nazi terror that was being perpetrated.

In 1957, however, Klagges was released after having served about 80% of his prison term, and moved with his wife to Bad Harzburg, where he busied himself mainly with editing right-wing writings and maintaining contacts with neo-Nazi groups in Lower Saxony until he died in 1971.

In 1970, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (another federal court) decided that Klagges had to receive an amount accumulated from his pension as premier (Ministerpräsident), approximately DM 100,000.