Andreas Nielsen (officer)

Andreas Nielsen (born December 23, 1899 in Flensburg ; † April 24, 1957 ibid) was a German Lieutenant General in the Air Force in World War II .

Life

Nielsen joined the Prussian Army in October 1917 and took part in the First World War as an infantryman . After the end of the war he was accepted into the newly founded Reichswehr and served at the infantry school in Munich in 1923 . The soldiers of this facility, led by their initiated officers, took part in the Hitler putsch on November 8th on the side of the putschists. For this, Nielsen later received the so-called " Blood Order " on November 9, 1933 , after the National Socialists came to power . On December 1, 1924, he was promoted to lieutenantand in 1926 made private training to become a pilot. After serving as a lieutenant in the 6th Infantry Regiment on August 1, 1928 , he took part in the secret pilot training at the Soviet Lipetsk airfield . After completing his pilot training on September 30, 1929, he was promoted to first lieutenant the next day . This was followed by instrument flight training and in 1933 general staff training .

After he was promoted to captain on August 1, 1934 , Nielsen moved to the newly created Air Force on July 1, 1935, where he took over a post in the Air Force Personnel Office of the Reich Aviation Ministry . A promotion to major on August 1, 1936, followed on April 1, 1937, when the Düsseldorf hunting group was taken over as group commander . After he returned to the General Staff of the Air Force on July 1, 1937, he went to Spain from February 1939 and took part in the Spanish Civil War with the Condor Legion . On March 21, 1939 he took over the bomber group called Kampfgruppe 88 and led it until June 1939. Then he took over the III. Group of Kampfgeschwader 27 while at the same time exercising the position of air base commander of the Delmenhorst air base. With this group, consisting of twin-engine Heinkel He 111 bombers , he took part in the attack on Poland under the command of Luftflotte 1 at the beginning of World War II from September 1, 1939 . There Nielsen was promoted to lieutenant colonel on October 1, 1939 . On February 25, 1940 he moved to the II. Air Corps to take over the post of Chief of the General Staff. On June 30, 1940, he changed his occupation again and went to Air Fleet 4 to head the command department there, before he became Chief of the General Staff of Air Fleet 5 in Oslo on October 20, 1940 . There he was promoted to colonel on October 1, 1941, and on November 1, he took command of the Fliegerführer Nord (West) in Norway . Here he received the German Cross in Gold on April 20, 1942, and on March 1, 1943, he was promoted to major general . On January 1, 1944, he took over the post of Commanding General of the German Air Force in Denmark, before becoming Chief of Staff of the Reich Air Fleet in Germany on May 12, 1944 . In this post he was promoted to lieutenant general on July 1, 1944. At the end of the war he fell into British captivity, from which he was released on July 7, 1947.

Web links

• Henry L. deZeng IV, Douglas G. Stankey: Air Force Officer Career Summaries, Section L – R. (PDF) 2016, p. 396 , accessed on May 12, 2017 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Files of the Reichsarchiv, Kabinett Stresemann, p. 1056; Kahr to Knilling, December 12, 1923, in: Ernst Deuerlein : The Hitler Putsch. Bavarian documents for the 8th / 9th November 1923, Stuttgart 1962, p. 498.