Albrecht von Thaer

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Colonel Albrecht von Thaer, here with the order Pour le Mérite, after April 18, 1918

Albrecht Georg Otto von Thaer (born June 2, 1868 in Panten , † June 23, 1957 in Gronau ) was a German general staff officer and authorized representative of the former King of Saxony . He became known for his successful participation in the legendary military long-distance ride from Berlin to Vienna in 1892 and for the posthumous publication of the diaries he wrote during the First World War .

childhood and education

Albrecht von Thaer grew up as the eldest of six children on his parents' estate Pawonkau (today Pawonków) in the Lublinitz district in Upper Silesia . His father Georg Ernst von Thaer (1834–1898), a farmer and horse breeder, had been ennobled for his services to agriculture and cattle breeding. His mother was Franziska, born von Dresler and Scharfenstein (1843–1918), daughter of the Magdeburg and Wiesbaden senior councilors Otto von Dresler and Scharfenstein (1805–1880), one of her brothers was the future general of the infantry and knight of the order Pour le Mérite Hermann von Dresler and Scharfenstein (1857–1942). Albrecht von Thaer's great-grandfather was Albrecht Daniel Thaer , the founder of modern agriculture.

Thaer's younger brother Georg Friedrich Wilhelm von Thaer later became governor of Silesia and Lower Silesia . Another brother died as a small child, the three sisters Johanna (1869-1958), Martha (1871-1940) and Franziska (1879-1975) married Silesian or East Prussian estate owners.

Thaer was first educated by private tutors in Pawonkau, later attended the city high school in Liegnitz and graduated from the Knight's Academy in Liegnitz in 1888 . Since childhood he wanted to become a cavalry officer because of the military family tradition on his mother's side (three of his mother's four brothers were professional soldiers) and also because of his passion for horses. Nevertheless, Thaer's father insisted that he first had to study law in order to enable his son to attend a university education, which at the time was rather unusual for officers. During his student days, Thaer got involved with the YMCA and became an active supporter of the German-conservative Berlin court preacher Adolf Stoeckers and his Christian social gatherings. In 1892 Thaer passed the first legal state examination ( trainee lawyer ) after seven semesters before the Berlin Higher Regional Court .

Albrecht von Thaer on horseback as a one-year-old in the body cuirassier regiment “Great Elector” in Breslau in 1891. Equipped with a pallasch , a lance and a full pack.
Participant of the distance ride Berlin-Vienna 1892, on the gray front center is Albrecht von Thaer.
Albrecht von Thaer in the uniform of a major of the General Staff, after 1910
Imperial maneuvers 1911 in Mecklenburg (Uckermark), on horseback, left: Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke and Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Military career

The lateral entrant

First, Thaer served the one-year year in 1890/91 with the Leib-Kürassier-Regiment “Großer Kurfürst” (Silesian) No. 1 in Breslau. On October 1, 1891, he received the reserve officer license. After completing his studies, he joined the cuirassier regiment “von Seydlitz” (Magdeburgisches) No. 7 in Halberstadt on April 16, 1892 . Although he was patented here as an active lieutenant, he did not immediately receive the anticipated pre-patenting and so at the beginning of his military career was around four years older than the patented graduates of the cadet institutes because of his studies . After several submissions, a pre-patenting, even if only one year, was initiated by General Gustav Adolf von Deines , the former German military representative in Vienna . Thaers superior and commander of the regiment was Colonel von Rundstedt, the commanding general of the responsible IV. Army Corps was the general of the cavalry Karl von Hänisch .

Participation in the endurance ride from Berlin to Vienna in 1892

In the summer of 1892 the German Kaiser announced that cavalry officers of the German army would take part in a long-distance ride from Berlin to Vienna. Thaer, just a patented Second Lieutenant , reported to his disciplinary superior to get permission to participate in this competition in the uniform of the Seydlitz cuirassiers. The advertised distance ride Berlin – Vienna was - in terms of distance and conditions - unique, and it was to be expected that rider and horse would be exposed to the greatest efforts. Accordingly, the responsible commanding general von Hänisch doubted that the lieutenant, who had just finished his studies, was up to these hardships. Hänisch, who was concerned about the reputation of his cuirassiers, was also encouraged by the commander of the 8th Cavalry Brigade, Major General Willy von Haeseler , but finally allowed his participation.

The destination of the German riders was Floridsdorf , a suburb of Vienna. The fastest German rider was Prime Lieutenant Freiherr von Reitzenstein from the Cuirassier Regiment No. 4 on the dairy farmer mare Lippspringe . The horse died after the race. Second fastest German rider (and ninth in the overall standings) was Thaer with a total riding time of 78 hours and 45 minutes. The prize money won was 1,800 marks. His horse, a little oriental-Polish gray mare that was smiled at at the start and bought at the Cracow horse market in 1890 , reached the finish without any damage, with the exception of a saddle pressure (due to which, however, it fell out of the “condition price” rating).

Later Thaer was squadron chief in the heavy cavalry of the Cuirassier Regiment "Queen" (Pomeranian) No. 2 (a traditional unit of the earlier Ansbach-Bayreuth Dragoons) in Pasewalk . From October 1, 1910, Thaer was then assigned to the Great General Staff in Berlin. There he was assigned to the French Department, whose head of department (Department 3) was the future Chief of Staff and Lieutenant General Hermann von Kuhl . As a rider, Thaer was responsible for processing the French cavalry. In 1910 he was promoted to major .

Honor dispute with Chief of Staff Moltke

During Thaer's time in Berlin there was a dispute between the captain and a significantly higher-ranking superior, which shows the nuances of honesty in the Prussian-imperial officer corps at that time: The 42-year-old Thaer reported back to the head of the Russian Army in 1910 after a vacation of several months in Russia Great General Staff in Berlin, Lieutenant General Helmuth Johannes von Moltke . On the occasion of the feedback, the latter asked him to openly present his view of the German-Russian relationship. Moltke probably misunderstood the captain's answer, which he understood as an invitation to a preventive war, which Thaer had not expressed. Moltke, who rejected a preventive war, dismissed Thaer from the conversation in any case with the formally correct military words: "Thank you, Herr Hauptmann." "Thaer" would have been common between superiors and subordinates. After the 24-hour waiting period had expired, Thaer complained accordingly about the address of his superior, which he considered to be unjustified, and Moltke apologized for this after clarifying things.

Other staff assignments

On September 15, 1911, he was transferred to the General Staff of the 36th Division , a border division in Danzig , whose commander at the time was Lieutenant General Kuno Arndt von Steuben . The Leib-Husaren-Brigade, also stationed in Danzig, was part of the division. Two regiments belonged to this brigade, the 1st Leib-Hussar Regiment No. 1 and the 2nd Leib-Hussar Regiment "Queen Victoria of Prussia" No. 2 . At the same time as Thaer took up service at the division headquarters, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia was also appointed commander of the 1st Leib-Hussar Regiment in Danzig-Langfuhr.

At the end of February 1913, Thaer was transferred to the Guard Corps as Ia ( First General Staff Officer ) in Berlin. The commanding general there was at the time still the general of the infantry and adjutant general Alfred von Loewenfeld , who soon after handed over the command to the general of the infantry and adjutant general Karl von Plettenberg .

Uses in World War I and the post-war period

In August 1914, the Guard Corps moved to the Western Front . On November 11, 1914, the corps took part in the concentric attack on Ypres , Thaer was deployed as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Combined Guard Corps under Plettenberg along the Menin-Gheluwe-Gheluvelt road.

In January 1915 he was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the IX. Reserve corps , which was mainly used in trench warfare on French soil and later in the material battles from 1916 to 1918. The corps took part in the defensive battles on the Somme in 1916, at Arras and in Flanders in 1917 as well as in the "Michael" offensive in March 1918 and the attack ( Operation "Georgette" ) at Armentières in April 1918. After heavy enemy offensives had been repulsed Lieutenant Colonel Thaer was awarded the order Pour le Mérite on August 6, 1917 in his function as "Corps Chief".

On April 24, 1918, Thaer was transferred to the Supreme Army Command (OHL) as Chief of Staff of Quartermaster General II . The function was created for General of the Infantry Erich Ludendorff , who led the German Army together with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg since September 1916.

From the beginning of 1919, the station was stationed in the border guard town of Schneidemühl . From here, operations in the bitter border battles with Polish units that followed the war for several weeks were carried out. In mid-February 1919, Thaer's troops then withdrew behind the newly laid out corridor as determined by the victorious Entente .

On September 7, 1919 he became Chief of the General Staff of the North High Command, an army group whose staff was stationed first in Bartenstein and then in Kolberg (from then on this army group was renamed "Group Command 3"). As part of the reorganization of the Reichswehr into a 20,000-strong, later 100,000-man army , Thaer was commissioned on March 10, 1920 with the formation of the 7th Cavalry Regiment (previously 6th Cavalry Regiment) in Breslau. This unit consisted mainly of members of the former body cuirassier regiment. The regiment was commanded by von Thaer until December 31, 1921.

Because of increasing differences with the head of the army command of the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, Major General Hans von Seeckt , he then submitted his departure and, at his own request, retired in the uniform of a colonel of the old Royal Prussian General Staff at the age of 53. Thaer received on 27 August 1939 the so-called Tannenbergtag , the character as Major General awarded.

War Diaries and Criticism of Warfare

In 1958 Siegfried A. Kaehler published the book General Staff Service at the Front and in the OHL . In this work, diary entries and letters (especially to his wife) by Albrecht von Thaer during the First World War were published and commented on. Kaehler had taken great pains to get permission for publication from Thaer. But he had finally agreed to be able to hand them over after his death. Due to Thaer's position directly in the center of power of the German army in the final phase of the war, and also because of his frankly critical attitude towards the decisions of the Supreme Army Command , his documents became outstanding sources for assessing the history of the First World War. Even if it was sometimes criticized that for reasons of secrecy he should not have written down the events in the Great General Staff, with their help the attitude of important protagonists (Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II.) In the final phase of the already lost war, their motivation and Complicity, as well as the origin of the stab in the back legend are traced.

Captured British tank Mark I. (female) after the Battle of Cambrai , December 1917
The Renault FT was used in large numbers against the German troops by the French and US armies from 1918 onwards. Here an assault gun version with a blockhouse cutter 75 mm gun in the short barrel version.
In 1918, German columns passed a captured French position between Loivre and Brimont in the Marne department. Typical "lunar landscape" of the trench warfare created by months of artillery bombardment
Anti-Semitic postcard on the stab in the back legend from 1919

The first tanks

For the first time, the Allies used tanks on September 15, 1916 at Combles , Flers and Courcelette (in the summer battle) as part of an attack by II., XIV. And XV. Corps of the 4th Army (under General Henry Rawlinson ) to positions of the German 1st Army under General Fritz von Below . Even if only a few of the 49 tanks originally available were used during this first use of tanks in war history and these made little impression on the enemy or contributed to the success of the attack, Mark- type tanks were able to emerge with increasing testing and improvement I considerably increase their impact and thus their importance in the course of the war. Ludendorff underestimated the new weapon so much that he had his own tank production cut back in Germany. As one of the first senior officers, Thaer recognized the potential danger that lay in the enemy tanks. As early as January 30, 1917 he noted: "The question of tanks continues to occupy me ... At the OHL they are probably underestimated."

During the Battle of Arras in the spring of 1917, the Allies used tanks again, the IX in particular. Reserve Corps, of which Thaer was Chief of Staff at the time. Although Arras ultimately ended in a defeat for the British attackers, he stated with another critical look at the army command: “Our infantry was definitely very frightened in front of the tanks, and rightly so, because they are defenseless against it. Infantry ammunition does not penetrate, now comes ammunition that is supposed to penetrate, but unfortunately the OHL seems to incomprehensibly underestimate the danger of the tanks. "

As the war progressed, more and more advanced tanks were used. Fast French Renault tanks also appeared in large numbers on the battlefield for the first time in 1918 . "For the artillery, meeting such beasts", Thaer judged at the time, "is almost as difficult as the rifle shot when driving at deer."

With the reserve corps at the front

Thaer, from 1915 to spring 1918 at the IX. Reserve Corps deployed directly at the front experienced the increasing physical and mental fatigue of the troops in trench warfare . On August 7th, 1917 he wrote a letter to his wife about the previous days, which despite the fight had led to a considerable loss of terrain, that the IX. Reserve Corps after 14 days of uninterrupted deployment at the end of its strength. The infantry have lost at least half of the men, the survivors are no longer human, they are unable to take any further action. Energetic officers were broken.

The motivation of the German soldiers decreased increasingly: “Now the disappointment is there and it is big,” Thaer wrote in April 1918. “This is the reason why even artillery well-prepared attacks run dry as soon as our infantry beats them heavily Zone comes out. ”Until the failed spring offensives of the German army in 1918, however, there were relatively few cases of desertion in relation to the Allied troops. During the spring offensive, the troops' motivation and morale even reached a high point and only after it failed did morale crumble. Thaer commented: “... Personally, I had to convince myself that the troops were now under the depression of a very great disappointment. It was no longer the aggressive spirit of March 21st and the days immediately following, as I witnessed it south of Arras 4 to 6 weeks ago ... Every company commander and every battery commander and accordingly every musketeer and gunners are convinced that this hope has failed in the section of Armentières clearly ... The weaker characters already show worse consequences: ... general shirking ... "

Thaer noted about an imperial visit to the corps: “His Majesty looked very good, was gracious and spoke mostly of commonplace things, what he said about the war was better kept silent about it. Your Excellency von Boehn (the commanding general) went pale as a sheet. Does his Majesty have any idea what this war is about for him too, and that it is about scepter and crown, also for the Hohenzollern. "

The last months of the war at the Grand Headquarters

After he was transferred to the OHL staff at the end of April 1918, Thaer reported to Hindenburg and Ludendorff on May 1, 1918. He had made up his mind to report openly to the two army commanders on the situation at the front. His assessment was correspondingly sober. Hindenburg reacted to this with the words: “Well, my dear Herr von Thaer, your nerves are now certainly a bit worn by the last bad weeks that you have been through. I think you will soon straighten up because of the good mood in the main headquarters. ”A similar thing happened shortly afterwards when reporting to the first quartermaster general. Ludendorff shouted: “What is all of you doing? What do you want from me, should I make peace a tout prix now? ”Thaer replied:“ Your Excellency, I have not said a word about that… It is my duty, and very painful, to point out that our troops are not getting better, but Gradually worse and worse. "Ludendorff continued:" If the troops get worse, if the discipline slackens, it is your fault, the fault of all the command posts at the front, which do not take hold. How else would it be possible that entire divisions got stuck and drunk with captured enemy magazines and failed to advance the necessary attack. That is the reason that the great March offensive and now Georgette did not get any further. "

Subsequently, Thaer increasingly recognized Ludendorff's misjudgment of the situation, although he valued him as a superior and military leader. From a certain point in time, Ludendorff was also aware of the lost war. After his statements to officers of the General Staff on October 1, 1918, which were received by Thaer's report, he had to present him with the situation. When Thaer Ludendorff asked whether he would accept the request for an armistice in place of the enemy, he replied: "No, certainly not ..."

Creation of the stab in the back legend

It is controversial who coined the metaphor of the stab in the back as the reason for the lost First World War. From Thaer's notes it emerges that the idea of ​​such a transfer of responsibility arose in the headquarters of the Supreme Army Command. Even if Hindenburg and Ludendorff recognized the impending defeat and thus the failure of their own prognoses in the course of the last year of the war and tried to cover up their failures by finding guilty parties outside the military, they are not yet talking about a planned or malicious betrayal , but rather from the more or less negligent failure of the homeland in the last two years of the war (“Homeland only supplies poor human material and insufficient means of war”). Thaer quoted Ludendorff on October 1, 1918: “So at the moment we don't have a Chancellor. Who will be? But I asked SM to bring those circles to the government to whom we owe it mainly for the fact that we have come this far. So we shall now see these gentlemen move into the ministries. They should now make the peace that must now be made. They should now eat the soup that they got us! ”One can therefore only describe this argument as a kind of ideology of retreat and thus the first phase of the rise of the stab in the back legend. It served to cover up the failures of military leaders and thus to protect individuals.

Only later does this claim of protection develop into a legend, mainly motivated by domestic politics, which initially tried to blame the revolutionaries of November 1918 as well as democratic politicians for the war defeat, which was also reflected in the Ludendorff address on Sept. October 1918: “Unfortunately, our own army is already contaminated by the poison of Spartakist socialist ideas. The troops can no longer be relied on ... He cannot operate with divisions that cannot be relied on ... "

The assertion that the actually victorious advancing army ("undefeated in the field") had been stabbed and the associated talk of the " November criminals " was a heavy burden for the Weimar Republic. Even later, the legend about the stab in the back of the allegation of an Allied war guilt lie and the involvement of Jewish forces was so propagandistically developed that it largely prevented the German officer corps from taking action against the National Socialist regime until the end of the Second World War.

Süsswinkel manor, Lower Silesia Province, around 1940.
Bridal picture of Albrecht von Thaer with Elisabeth Walther-Weisbeck in 1894

Civil career

After his departure from the Reichswehr, the then 54-year-old Thaer became General Director and General Representative for the Silesian possessions of the King of Saxony, Friedrich August III , who abdicated in 1918, in 1922 . The former king, who had taken up residence in Sibyllenort near Oels in Lower Silesia in 1918 , owned around 20,000 hectares of agricultural and forestry here. In 1922 Thaer moved into an official apartment in Domatschine near Sibyllenort. Thaer's activity ended in 1934, about two years after the death of Friedrich August III. One of Thaer's last official acts was to organize the funeral ceremonies on February 23, 1932 in Dresden for the former king who had become a friend over the years.

After the death of Friedrich August von Sachsen, Thaer managed the approx. 1,000 hectare manor Süßwinkel (since 1945 Kątna), also located near Oels. Hans Merensky had this estate in 1934 from the possession of Friedrich August III. bought out. In 1938 Thaer and his brother Georg Suesswinkel received it as a gift from Merensky. He - a geologist of German descent who had made a considerable fortune in South Africa through discoveries of diamonds and platinum - had spent his childhood together with the Thaer brothers of about the same age in Pawonkau, as his father Alexander Merensky , a Friend of the Thaer family, worked as a missionary and doctor in the Transvaal .

At the beginning of 1945 Thaer had to flee from the advancing Russian troops and moved to Gronau near Hanover.

family

Thaer married Elisabeth Walther-Weisbeck (1876–1941) in Wegeleben in 1895 , the daughter of the royal council and owner of the manor in Wegeleben, August Walther-Weisbeck (1845–1925). The couple had four children (Ursula, Albrecht Ernst, Brunhild, Gisela). The son, Rittmeister of the reserve Albrecht Ernst von Thaer (1900-1946) was since 1934 district administrator of the Oberbarnim district . He was married to Annemarie von Lucke (* 1913), daughter of a district administrator and manor owner, and died after being deployed in the war as a result of a gunshot wound and the ensuing Soviet imprisonment.

The first daughter Ursula died as a child. The daughter Brunhilde died unmarried (1901–1994). The youngest daughter Gisela (1904–1999) was married to Bogislav Graf von Pfeil and Klein-Ellguth (1895–1977) from Wildschütz (Oels district). A daughter from this marriage married Eckard von Scherenberg (1934-2008), owner of the moated castle Kriegshoven near Heimerzheim in 1960 .

publication

  • General staff service at the front and in the OHL From letters and diary entries 1915–1919. Edited by Siegfried A. Kaehler with the collaboration of Helmuth KG Rönnefarth. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958.
  • From the present and the past! In: Brunhilde von Thaer: Copy of the family chronicle of the von Thaer family, begun by Ernst von Thaer in Panthen and Liegnitz. Family archive, Oberkassel near Bonn, approx. 1982, p. 30ff.

literature

  • Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon. Endurance ride. Volume 5, Leipzig 1906, p. 56.
  • Ernst Kabisch (Ed.): The leaders of the Reichsheeres 1921 and 1931. In memory of the 10-year return of the founding of the Reichsheer on January 1st, 1921. With 800 portraits. Dieck, Stuttgart 1931.
  • Eberhard Willich: Descendant table by Martin Willich (1583–1633). As of December 2004, Heidelberg 2004, p. 51, 267–269.
  • Major General A. v. Thaer died in Gronau. Witness the last days of the Empire at the Grand Headquarters. Obituary in: Gronauer Tageszeitung. June 24, 1957.
  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2011, ISBN 3-7648-2586-3 , pp. 408-409.

References and comments

  1. ↑ Eberhard Willich: Descendant table. P. 51, 63. see bibliography
  2. ↑ a b c d According to From the present and the past! see publication
  3. ↑ It is an excerpt from an engraving by Schnaebeli & Co, Berlin with the 120 German participants in the distance riding competition. Front from left to right: Premier Lieutenant Diestel ( Dragoon Regiment No. 5 ), Rittmeister Freiherr von Esebeck ( Guard Uhlan Regiment No. 3 ), Captain Freiherr von Müffling ( 1st Guard Regiment on foot ), Lieutenant Colonel Count von Geldern-Egmond, Prime Lieutenant Freiherr von Reitzenstein ( Cuirassier Regiment No. 4 ), Second Lieutenant von Thaer (Cuirassier Regiment No. 7), Premier Lieutenant von Kronenfeldt (Field Artillery Regiment No. 10) Premier Lieutenant Edler von Planitz ( Field Artillery Regiment No. 15 ), Rittmeister Kimmerle (4th Ch), Second Lieutenant von Massow (Cuirassier Regiment No. 4), Rittmeister von Poser Dragoon Regiment No. 26
  4. ↑ From: German Federal Archives, Fig. 136-C0087
  5. ↑ The permission was given with the words: “So you are the strange gentleman who has already thought of pre-patenting because of his completed legal traineeship exam? Oh no! First you show whether you can do more than drink beer! ” Albrecht von Thaer, Gen.-Major a. D .: Distance ride Vienna – Berlin, Berlin – Vienna. October 1892. Journal of Time.
  6. ↑ Since the non-renewal of the three-year neutrality agreement ( reinsurance treaty ) between Germany and Russia, which was still negotiated by Bismarck , by Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Helgoland-Zanzibar Treaty between Germany and England, the relationship between Russia and Germany, as well as between the related rulers constantly deteriorated. In 1910 it was already predictable that a major European war would break out , mainly because of the problems in the Balkans .
  7. ↑ Franz Uhle-Wettler : When courage was not an empty phrase. in: oA, Junge Freiheit Verlag, edition 07/04 of February 6, 2004, p. 4.
  8. ↑ a b Alexander Griebel : The end of the war in 1918 in a new perspective (The year 1918 in the light of new publications). In: Hans Rothfels , Theodor Eschenburg (Hrsg.): Quarterly books for contemporary history . 6th year 1958, 4th issue (October), Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1958 ( PDF ).
  9. ↑ A misleading term that refers to his function as chief of the corps staff
  10. ↑ Thaer wrote in a letter of August 8, 1917 to his wife Elisabeth: “... His Excellency Ludendorf just called and announced the award of the Pour le Mérite. This is a big thing for me, but my famous, good employees deserved it more than I did, especially my excellent Major von Stülpnagel, to whom I will also tell. But now that's the way it is and I'm supposed to be celebrated tonight. I have invited myself Seckendorf (meaning Rittmeister von Seckendorf, head of a hussar squadron in which Thaer's son served as a lieutenant) and Aka (meaning Thaer's son, lieutenant d. Res. Albrecht Ernst von Thaer) ... "
  11. ↑ The Bonn historian Klaus Hildebrand also sees Thaer as a political advisor to Ludendorff, according to Klaus Hildebrand: The Past Reich. German foreign policy from Bismarck to Hitler 1871–1945. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, ISBN 978-3-486-58605-3 . P. 374.
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g h Siegfried A. Kaehler (Ed.): Major General a. D. Albrecht v. Thaer. General staff service at the front and in the OHL From letters and diary entries 1915–1919. Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class, 3rd part, No. 40, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1958.
  13. ^ From: German Federal Archives, image 146-1998-098-10
  14. ↑ From: German Federal Archives, image 102-00178
  15. ^ From: Wiener Arbeiterzeitung from March 26, 1919
  16. ↑ Alexander Fasse: Under the sign of the "tank kite". Dissertation, Humboldt University Berlin , 2007, pp. 95ff.
  17. ↑ a b crumbs in hand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1968 ( online ).
  18. ↑ From May 31, 1918 at Ploisy in Picardy
  19. ^ Alan Kramer: Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. University Press, ISBN 0192803425 , 2007. Diary entry by Albrecht von Thaer from 26./27. April 1918, translated and with reference to the original source: Otto & Schmiedel, eds, The First World War. P. 289.
  20. ↑ Karl-Volker Neugebauer (ed.), Michael Busch: The Age of World Wars. Peoples in arms. in: Basic course in German military history. Military History Research Office (MGFA), Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag , 2007, p. 36.
  21. ↑ Quoted from: Helmut Otto, Karl Schmiedel (Ed.): The First World War. Documents. In: Writings of the military history institute of the GDR. Volume 2, ISBN 978-3-486-58099-0 , Berlin 1977, pp. 291f.
  22. ^ John CG Röhl : Wilhelm II. Volume 3. The way into the abyss. 1900-1941. 2nd edition, CH Beck, 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57779-6 .
  23. ↑ The accusation of drunkenness relates to statements that the fighting troops in the attack on Albert as part of the Michael Offensive, which started on March 21 and came to a standstill on March 26, 1918, the wine stocks found at the captured French storage facilities had drunk and thus became unable to fight; see. Among other things: Correspondence between the later Quartermaster General and Minister Wilhelm Groener and the Giessen theology professor Hans Schmidt in: Hans Schmidt: Our defeat in the world war. Military objections to my writing about the failure of the German attacks in the spring and summer of 1918 and my replies. Hamburg 1925, p. 43ff.
  24. ↑ Thaer sees Ludendorff as a "... truly beautiful Germanic heroic figure ..." crumbs in hand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1968 ( online ).
  25. ↑ Ludendorff here quotes his conversation with the Kaiser and the Reich Chancellor a few days earlier: “He is obliged to say that our military situation is terribly serious. The western front could be broken through every day. He had had to report about it to His Majesty in the last days ... The OHL and the army were at an end; the war is not only no longer to be won, rather the final defeat is inevitable ... That is why the OHL has demanded from SM and the Chancellor that the application for a ceasefire be submitted to President Wilson of America without delay of a peace based on its 14 points. "
  26. ↑ a b Gerd Krumeich : The stab in the back legend. In: Etienne François, Hagen Schulze (ed.): German places of memory. Volume I (of 3 volumes), ISBN 3-406-50987-8 , CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 585ff.
  27. ↑ The 75-year-old former Chancellor, Count von Hertling , immediately resigned from his office after the meeting of the Supreme Army Command with him and the Emperor cited here
  28. ↑ Abbreviation for "His Majesty"
  29. ↑ A common claim, based on Hindenburg's last daily order to the army of November 11, 1918: "... we kept the enemy away from our borders and saved our homeland from the horrors and devastation of war ..." In: Official war dispatches. 8th volume. June 1, 1918 to November 12, 1918. Berlin, oJ p. 2977f.
  30. ↑ The criminal offense of degradation of military strength introduced in 1938 by the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance was based on the argument of the stab in the back used by the National Socialists; according to Gerd Krumeich: The stab in the back legend. In: Etienne François, Hagen Schulze (ed.): German places of memory. Volume I (of 3 volumes), ISBN 3-406-50987-8 , CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 599.
personal data
SURNAME Thaer, Albrecht von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thaer, Albrecht Georg Otto von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cavalry officer
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Panting
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 1957
Place of death Gronau