Harlan W. Newell

Harlan Willard Newell (born November 30, 1916 in Shaker Heights , † August 4, 2012 in Cleveland ) was an American officer. In 1945 he was major in the US field artillery and city commander of the Allied occupation forces in Aschersleben . He became an honorary citizen of this city in 1995.

Vita before 1945

Newell attended a Naval Academy in Culver ( Indiana ), the Kent School in Connecticut , the Harvard College in Boston and the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Before the beginning of the war he worked as a geologist in the oil sector.

Use in Germany until May 1945

As Captain Newell was with the 240mm howitzers of the US Army used. He was also trained in March 1945 in Frankfurt am Main for duties in the military government . With his group of four other officers, including Lieutenant William T. Morris and ten soldiers, he was commanded on April 12 to join the advancing American troops, which were to take the town of Aschersleben. On the afternoon of April 17th, the attack of the 39th US Infantry Regiment on Aschersleben began from Quenstedt and initially met with some resistance, so that no decision could be reached by evening. On the morning of April 18, other US units attacked Aschersleben like a tongs and at around 9 a.m. Newell's group took possession of the town hall.

In order to create a functioning administration, Newell, who was now city commander, was looking for a new mayor on the same day and, following information from the population, found a former German general, whom he installed at the head of the previous city administration. On April 29, against Newell's orders, the latter called a meeting of old party cadres and leaders of local Nazi organizations with the aim of driving the weak US occupation forces out of Aschersleben. With the help of advanced armored units Newell was able to thwart this conspiracy; those responsible were detained in the city prison. On May 3, 1945, said German general was handed over to French intelligence officers according to a valid arrest warrant for previous war crimes. However, the general was not taken to Paris for trial, but shot a few kilometers outside the city. City Commandant Newell is said to have ordered the dead man to be buried as inconspicuously as possible.

After the end of the war

Newell remained the head of the US military government from Aschersleben until it was replaced by British units. Then he and his team were transferred to Naila in Upper Franconia as a senior officer in the military government , where he began his work on June 28, 1945 in the building of the local court. In autumn 1945 Capt. William T. Morris led the military government in Naila.

After his discharge from military service in 1946 with the rank of major and the marriage in Munich to his fiancée Gisela Salzmann, whom he had taken with him as an interpreter from Aschersleben to Upper Franconia in 1945 , Newell returned to Cleveland, where he started a family and continued worked as a senior executive in the automotive industry. Since 1995 Harlan W. Newell was an honorary citizen of Aschersleben. He died in his sleep on August 4, 2012, leaving behind the widow three children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

literature

• Mühle, Reiner, and Wolfgang Kilian: Moments in Contemporary History - Aschersleben and the Second World War , self-published 2012
• Helko Trentzsch: Contributions to the military history of the city of Aschersleben: Die Artilleriekaserne ... BOD 2008, ISBN 9783837045277 , page 86

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harvard Alumini Directory 1948, p.1640; Retrieved Sept. 18, 2012
2. ↑ Notification of death in the Star Tribune on August 8, 2012, accessed September 18, 2012
3. ↑ Blog entry, based on content from Reiner Mühle's book, accessed Sept. 18, 2012  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ google-books, cf. 86, Trentzsch, BOD 2008, accessed Sept. 18, 2012
5. ↑ Geschichtsverein Bad Steben eV, accessed September 18, 2012 ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ date according to www.aschersleben.de, accessed September 18, 2012 ( Memento of the original from September 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Local press 'Wochenspiegel', July 13, 2012, accessed September 19, 2012