Adolf Heusinger

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Adolf Heusinger, around 1960

Adolf Bruno Heinrich Ernst Heusinger (born August 4, 1897 in Holzminden ; † November 30, 1982 in Cologne ) was a German general and from 1957 to 1961 the first general inspector of the Bundeswehr . Heusinger served in four German armies: from 1915 to 1920 in the Army of the German Empire , from 1920 to 1935 in the Reichswehr , from 1935 to 1945 in the Wehrmacht , in which from 1937 to 1944 he led the operations department of the General Staff in the Army High Command . From 1955 to 1964 Heusinger was finally soldier of the newly founded Bundeswehr , on whose construction he had significant share. Most recently, he was Chairman of the NATO Military Committee .

Stage of life until 1945

His father was the grammar school teacher Ludwig Heusinger († 1924), who was born in Gandersheim in 1862 and who became the grammar school director in Helmstedt. His mother Charlotte came from the noble family von Alten († 1913) from Helmstedt. His brother Bruno Heusinger later became President of the Federal Court of Justice .

Promotions

Adolf Heusinger attended the grammar school in Holzminden from 1907 to 1910 and the humanistic grammar school Julianum in Helmstedt from January 1911 to 1915 . His mother died on April 13, 1913. After the outbreak of World War I , he completed pre-military training in November 1914. In 1915 he left school with a secondary school diploma and joined the 7th Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 96 in Gera on June 17, 1915 as a volunteer ( Fahnenjunker ) . From August to November 1915 he completed a training course in Döberitz. From December 1915 to June 1916 he was deployed in the field. This was followed by a wound and recovery in the Dun war hospital, Hildburghausen hospital and Helmstedt hospital. In August 1916 he came back to the troops. From September to November 1916 he completed the 12th war science course in Erfurt. In November he became a company officer. This was followed by a gas protection course in Ghent (1916) and an MG course in Solesmes (1917). In March 1917 he became a deputy battalion adjutant and in April 1917 intelligence officer. On July 4, 1917, he was promoted to lieutenant . In autumn 1917 he was seriously wounded and taken prisoner by the British in Flanders . Heusinger was in a Yorkshire camp until December 1919 .

After his release, he first began to study law and political science at the University of Göttingen , but was then sworn in again in May 1920 after a few intermediate stops and in October 1920 joined the 15th Infantry Regiment of the Reichswehr in Kassel as a lieutenant . On July 31, 1925, he was promoted to first lieutenant . In February 1927 he passed the military district examination as the best of his year. He was then assigned to the 5th Artillery Regiment . From 1927 to 1929 he took part in the training of assistant leaders in the 5th Division in Stuttgart. Then he was transferred to the staff of the 3rd Division and a course for assistant leaders in the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin. In October 1929 he was assigned to the commandant's office in Berlin. From 1930 to 1934 he served as a general staff officer in the operations department of the troop office in the Reichswehr Ministry.

On September 23, 1931, Heusinger married the art historian and daughter of a doctor, Gerda Luise Krüger (* August 17, 1907), with whom he had two daughters (Ruth * July 21, 1932 and Ada * June 1, 1939).

On October 1, 1932, Heusinger was promoted to captain . From 1934 to 1935 he was company commander in the 2nd battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment in Paderborn and from 1935 to 1937 first general staff officer (Ia) of the 1st Infantry Division in Allenstein . There he was promoted to major on March 16, 1936 and served in the 11th Infantry Division . From June 17 to July 10, 1937, the Army Personnel Office granted him a vacation abroad in Schwarzort in the Memelland annexed by Lithuania . From August 1937 to 1944 he served in the operations department of the General Staff in the Army High Command in Berlin. He was instrumental in the plans for a military aggression against Czechoslovakia in 1938/39.

Heusinger (far left) during a briefing with Hitler, June 1, 1942.

Heusinger was on March 20, 1939, Lieutenant Colonel and on August 1, 1940 Colonel promoted. From October 15, 1940, he was chief of the operations department of the General Staff in the Army High Command (OKH), which was responsible for the strategic and operational management of the army units. Heusinger was also significantly involved in the preparation of the Blau case , which was planned for the summer of 1942 , the Wehrmacht's summer offensive in 1942 during the German-Soviet War. Before that, Heusinger and the Chief of the General Staff, Franz Halder , had not been able to prevail with Adolf Hitler in the conflict over the direction of this "Second Campaign in Russia". Both would have preferred a push towards Moscow instead of Stalingrad / Caucasus.

Already in March 1941 the OKH in the person of Halder, Heusinger and Eduard Wagner had been informed by Hitler that the war in Russia was to be carried out as a "battle of annihilation". From August 1942, Heusinger coordinated the “ fight against partisans ” in the occupied territories and had “guidelines for fighting gangs” drawn up in his organization department. As a witness in the Nuremberg trials , he testified that the treatment of the civilian population and the methods of fighting gangs in the operational area of ​​the top political and military leadership were a welcome opportunity to carry out their goals, namely the "systematic reduction of Slavs and Judaism " , have bid. While Heusinger's biographer Georg Meyer attests to this that he treated the civilian population with understanding in spite of everything in order to deprive the partisans of their base of operations, Johannes Hürter sees this evaluation in Heusinger's suggestion that a strip of 50 km on both sides of the supply lines should be ruthlessly evacuated, refuted.

On December 23, 1941, Heusinger was promoted to major general on December 1, 1941 and to lieutenant general on January 21, 1943 . After Colonel General Kurt Zeitzler fell ill , Heusinger was commissioned to represent him in July 1944 and thus served as Chief of Staff of the Army for about two weeks.

Heusinger knew of the plans of the conspirators to assassinate Hitler . However, he was not involved in the specific planning and execution. Despite the realization that the war was lost, the lieutenant general was of the opinion that he had to fulfill his duty as a soldier. Apparently he had no inkling of the imminent attack. On July 20, 1944, he was standing next to Hitler when the bomb exploded that Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg had left in his briefcase. Heusinger suffered head, arm and leg injuries. Then he was transferred to the Führerreserve . On July 23, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in the hospital in Rastenburg , but released from prison in October 1944 because nothing could be proven. During his imprisonment he also wrote a "memorandum" that Hitler sympathetically received, in which he disclosed all information known to him about the July 20 conspirators.

On September 6, 1944, the new Army Chief of Staff, Heinz Guderian , received Hitler's permission to set up a “Landsturm” to defend the East together with the SA . Martin Bormann took up this initiative and on September 14th convinced Hitler to entrust the NSDAP with the organization of the new associations instead . On September 25, 1944, the Führer decree to form the Volkssturm was issued . Since Guderian later wrote that he had taken up a plan from Heusinger's organizational department in his proposal, Heusinger was also seen as the intellectual originator of the Volkssturm. Heusinger denied Guderian's version in 1956, two years after his death. His plan of a "land storm" was supposed to serve the evacuation of East Prussia only, while armed civilians had no place in modern warfare in his opinion.

Shortly before the end of the war, on March 25, 1945, Heusinger was appointed the first head of the newly created Wehrmacht card system . At the end of the war he last lived in Walkenried .

Period of life 1945–1982

Until mid-April 1945, Heusinger lived camouflaged as a civilian in Walkenried in the Harz Mountains. After the end of the war, Heusinger became an American prisoner of war . From 1945 to 1948 it was under Allied supervision. During this time he testified several times in the Nuremberg trials .

In the light of the looming Cold War , Heusinger began working with the Gehlen organization of the former General Reinhard Gehlen in Pullach in 1948 . Heusinger was from 1948 to 1950 under the code name Adolf Horn head of the evaluation of the organization Gehlen und u. a. engaged in exploring the military situation in the Soviet Union. In addition, Heusinger was from 1947 deputy Franz Halder in the German department of the war history research group of the United States Army , the so-called " Historical Division ". According to the assessment of the military historian Rolf-Dieter Müller , together with Gehlen and Halder, in his post-war representations he distracted from the joint responsibility of the generals, and thus his own war guilt, in the planning of the Barbarossa operation and tried “Hitler as sole culprit for the Eastern War and the failure of one to put up a supposedly ingenious campaign plan ”.

Heusinger (left) with Theodor Blank and Hans Speidel in 1955

In 1950 he published the autobiographical book Command in Contrast, Fateful Hours of the German Army 1923–1945 . In December 1950 he became an advisor to the West German Federal Government under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for the Petersberg talks with the Allies. He took part in several meetings with the US High Commissioner John Jay McCloy and later Samuel Reber and US General George Price Hays . On January 22, 1951, he took part with Adenauer and Hans Speidel at a meeting with McCloy and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe Dwight D. Eisenhower , at which it turned out that Eisenhower valued the two former generals very much and they were positive for the idea of ​​a European Defense Community (EVG) wanted to win.

From 1952 Heusinger became head of the military department in Amt Blank , the forerunner of the Federal Ministry of Defense , which began its work in 1955. From 1955 to 1957 he chaired the Military Leadership Council.

On November 12, 1955, Heusinger received the certificate of appointment as Lieutenant General from Federal President Theodor Heuss and thus became one of the first generals of the newly established armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany . From March 1, 1957 he was head of the armed forces department. On June 1 of the same year he was promoted to general and appointed first inspector general of the Bundeswehr .

After the serious accident in the Iller on June 3, 1957, in which 15 people doing basic military service were killed, Heusinger founded the soldiers' relief organization . From 1961 until February 26, 1964, he was Chairman of the Military Committee (Military Committee) of NATO in Washington, DC , USA, and co-initiator of the 1967 used NATO's nuclear strategy of flexible response (flexible response). In December 1961, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully demanded that the United States extradite Heusinger for war crimes committed by the German general during World War II . In August 1963, Adolf Heusinger received the Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

Heusinger supported France's position in the Algerian war , as it was important to prevent the spread of communism at all costs. In 1958 he received the South Korean government's second highest award . Heusinger rejected a nuclear weapons-free zone in Central Europe because the resulting military “vacuum” would endanger the continued existence of the Federal Republic.

Heusinger retired on April 1, 1964. On June 20, 1966, he took part in the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the Bundeswehr garrison in his hometown of Holzminden. The General Heusinger Prize has existed since August 4, 1967 , with which a participant in the general staff course at the command and control academy of the German Armed Forces is honored for outstanding performance.

Adolf Heusinger died on November 30, 1982 in Cologne. On October 31, 1986 one of the barracks in the infantry school in Hammelburg was named General-Heusinger-Kaserne . In his native town of Holzminden, Heusingerstraße was named after him near the pioneer barracks on Solling (formerly Medem barracks).

Awards

Publications

  • Orders in conflict - fateful hours of the German army 1923–1945. Rainer Wunderlich Verlag Hermann Leins Tübingen 1950.

literature

  • Federal Ministry of Defense - Staff of the Armed Forces I 3 (Ed.): Adolf Heusinger - a German soldier in the 20th century. Bonn 1987 ( Series of publications, Innereführung . Supplement 3/87, ISSN  0171-3981 )
  • Dermot Bradley , Heinz-Peter Würzenthal, Hansgeorg Model : The generals and admirals of the Bundeswehr. 1955-1999 . the military careers (= Germany's generals and admirals; part VIb). Volume 2, 1: Gaedcke - Hoff . Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 2000, ISBN 978-3-7648-2369-6 , pp. 345-348.
  • Gerhard P. Groß : Myth and Reality. History of operational thinking in the German army by Moltke d. Ä. to Heusinger . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77554-2 .
  • Georg Meyer: Adolf Heusinger. Service of a German soldier 1915 to 1964. Mittler, Hamburg a. a. 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0769-2 .
  • Dieter Lent: Heusinger, Adolf. In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Günter Scheel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 19th and 20th centuries. Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 271 f.
  • The tragic career . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1956 ( online ).
  • Petition to the Gestapo . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1959 ( online ).

Movies

  • The Heusinger case ( GDR 1959, director: Joachim Hellwig ).
  • Heusinger's television interview with Heinz Werner Hübner . In: Operation Barbarossa. The prehistory of the Russian war. A report by Heinz Werner Huebner, broadcast by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) on June 21, 1966.

Web links

Commons : Adolf Heusinger  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. a b c The tragic career . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1956, pp. 24 ( online - cover story).
  2. Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 237f.
  3. ^ Whitney R. Harris: Tyrants in Court. The trial of the main German war criminals after the Second World War in Nuremberg, 1945–1946 . Berlin 2008, p. 184.
  4. ^ Meyer: Adolf Heusinger , p. 239 f.
  5. Johannes Hürter: Hitler's and Adenauer's General . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 29, 2001.
  6. ^ A. Heusinger: Orders in Conflict, Fateful Hours of the German Army 1923–1945 . Tübingen and Stuttgart 1950, p. 362.
  7. ^ Ralf Meindl: East Prussia Gauleiter. Erich Koch - a political biography . Osnabrück 2007, p. 423f.
  8. Christopher Duffy: Red Storm on the Reich. The Soviet March on Germany, 1945 . Routledge, London 1991, p. 52 f.
  9. John Zimmermann : Ulrich de Maizière. General of the Bonn Republic, 1912 to 2006 (Zugl .: Potsdam, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2011). Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71300-8 , p. 137.
  10. ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller: The enemy is in the east. Hitler's secret plans for war against the Soviet Union. Ch. Links, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86153-617-8 , p. 261; see also review at H-Soz-u-Kult .
  11. ^ Rheinische Post , Düsseldorf, October 3, 1958.
  12. a b c d e Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1930, p. 159.
  13. ^ Jörg Nimmergut : German medals and decorations until 1945. Volume 4. Württemberg II - German Empire. Central Office for Scientific Order Studies, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-00-001396-2 , p. 2228.
predecessor Office successor
BRPF Hasselman Chairman of the NATO Military Committee
1961–1964
Charles de Cumont