page_title: Hans Dichand
section_title: Youth and service in World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Hans Dichand / Youth and service in World War II
caption_attribution_description: British U class submarine HMSM UPHOLDER underway.
context_page_description: Hans Dichand was an Austrian journalist, writer, and media businessman. He published the tabloid newspaper Kronen Zeitung, Austria's largest newspaper in terms of readership, in which at the time of his death he held a 50% stake. As the publisher and majority owner of this newspaper Dichand became a highly significant political power factor during recent decades. Although this influence is direct only in Austria, it indirectly affects the European Union through the behavior of the Austrian government, which cannot afford to ignore the Kronen Zeitung.
context_section_description: Information on Hans Dichand's early life has to rely on information published in two authorized biographies (one by the U.S. correspondent of the Kronen Zeitung Hans Janitschek and another one by Austrian writer Lore Jarosch to which Arnold Schwarzenegger has written the preface), and his autobiography. If Jarosch states in her book that "Austria's most powerful man is a mystery," this is true to the extent that little or no independently verified information has been published on the youth of Hans Dichand, or on the early stages of his career.
  According to the aforementioned sources Dichand's father Johann had been a leather cutter and later a master craftsman who supplied semi-finished leatherware for the Humanic shoe factory in Graz. His mother Leopoldine worked as a society  entertainer in the household of Count Carl Attems, and it appears that young Hans Dichand has lived there for some time. However, it is uncertain how much access he had to aristocratic lifestyle and culture. In the biography written by Janitschek (who had been Secretary General of the Socialist International) Dichand describes himself as a "true working class child." (Janitschek p. 19.)
  At some point during the economically difficult period which Austria experienced during the inter-war period, Johann Dichand's leathermaker business folded. The family was compelled to leave the Attems Villa, exchanging it for accommodation in a housing project. Hans found it difficult to adapt to his new social environment: "When he wanted to play with the other children he was ridiculed or beaten." (Janitschek p. 34) His father subsequently left the family.
  During this time Hans Dichand became an avid reader, and began to aspire to journalism: "It was the writing, all the time only the writing about the experiences and observations of what I saw happening around me, that kindled my interest." (Janitschek p. 47) At the age of 14 years (implying the year 1935) he wrote to Austrian newspapers asking for advice how to become a journalist. The editor in chief of the Kronen Zeitung recommended an apprenticeship as a typesetter. Dichand did so, while also attending evening courses for his high school education.
  When World War II began 18-year-old Hans Dichand volunteered for the Kriegsmarine and was initially stationed at Naples, for service in an anti-aircraft detachment tasked with protecting the naval supply routes for the North African theatre. As Dichand has stated in 2007 the hastily converted armed merchantman Leverkusen on which he served was attacked and sunk on 1 May 1941 by the British submarine Upholder. Dichand fractured a leg when he jumped ship, narrowly avoided being sucked down with the sinking hull, was rescued by an Italian destroyer, and brought to a navy hospital near Tripoli. Nothing is known about his further military record until 1943, when he served as a gunner on "the Italian warship Orsa." (This might refer not to an individual ship, but merely to an Orsa-class torpedo boat.) When Italy changed sides he managed to be transferred to an Axis-run navy academy in Liepāja. When the Red Army approached the Baltic the academy was evacuated, and Dichand eventually became a British prisoner of war.
  Hans Dichand has always denied having been a member of the Nazi Party. When in 2006 the 85-year-old powerful newspaper publisher learned during an interview that the German Wikipedia had assigned his biography article to the category "NSDAP member" he angrily exclaimed, "I never even came close to the NSDAP! I even managed to avoid compulsory membership in the Hitlerjugend!"
caption: HMS Upholder which almost killed Hans Dichand in 1941
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