Alexander Conrady (General)

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Alexander Edmund Conrady (born July 16, 1903 in Neu-Ulm , † December 21, 1983 in Augsburg ) was a German major general in World War II .

family

Conrady was born as the son of Edmund Conrady, chief engineer and manager of the Neu-Ulm power station . He married on July 4, 1928 in Waffenbrunn Beatrix Renata von Paur, daughter of Joseph Carl von Paur, landowner to Waffenbrunn. Conrady was related by marriage to the later lieutenant general Walter Stettner Ritter von Grabenhofen .

Military career

Weimar Republic

Conrady joined the training battalion of the 19th (Bavarian) Infantry Regiment of the Reichswehr in Landshut in April 1923 . After basic training , he was transferred to the 2nd company of this regiment in October 1923 and passed the officer candidate examination in July 1924. He was promoted to officer candidate the following month and to NCO in November 1924 . Since October 1925 Ensign and from August 1926 midshipman , he became courses at the Infantry School reassigned. In December 1926 Conrady received the patent as a lieutenant . Afterwards he served as a company officer of the 1st company of his regiment. The advancement to first lieutenant in April 1929 was followed by participation in a pioneer course. In May 1931 Conrady was transferred to the 4th company of the regiment.

time of the nationalsocialism

In March 1934 Conrady successfully passed the military district examination and was posted to the War Academy in Berlin six months later . During his stay there, he was promoted to captain in December 1934 . After completing his studies, Conrady was appointed chief of the 8th (MG) company of the 40th Infantry Regiment, which was stationed in Augsburg , in October 1936 . In March 1938 he was transferred again. As the first orderly officer on the staff of the 27th Infantry Division , he was after the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Austria at the location Vienna stationed. At the beginning of the Second World War, he first took part in the Polish and later in the French campaign in the division staff.

After promotion to Major in July 1940 Conrady was for a short time in command of the II. Battalion of Infantry Regiment 91. From September 1940 he became the leader Reserve of the Army High Command added. During this time, the commander in military district VII regulated his service , who in the following month ordered him to the command staff of the infantry course of the 71st Infantry Division as head of inspection for battalion commander courses / marching into the Königsbrück military training area . In March 1941 he was appointed leader of the 27th Infantry Replacement Regiment in Augsburg. In July he took over duties in the staff of the 118th Infantry Regiment (motorized). Conrady only received his own command again in August 1941, when he was appointed battalion commander of the 1st Battalion of the 118th Infantry Regiment. In December of that year he was wounded, but in February 1942 he was able to perform the task of commander of the 118th motorized infantry regiment. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in April 1942. During the heavy defensive battles in the Rshew area , Conrady represented the regimental commander who was on leave and, thanks to his flexible approach and personal commitment, achieved successes that were of decisive importance for the entire corps were. He was therefore awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on October 17, 1942 . In October 1942 he was appointed commander of the 118 Motorized Infantry Regiment, which was soon renamed the 118 Grenadier Regiment. With this association he took part in the battle of Kursk . During the heavy defensive fighting following the offensive succeeded the wounded Colonel Conrady with his regiment in Orel to erhindern the breakthrough of Soviet superiority, although the regiment was repeatedly overrun by enemy tanks. He led his troops into new defensive positions. Conrady was awarded the Knight's Cross Oak Leaves for his skillful approach and his example of bravery.

He was only able to return to service in December 1943. He was initially employed as deputy leader of the 707th Infantry Division , took over the duties of deputy commander of the 6th Infantry Division in January 1944 and in the same month took over the leadership of the 36th Infantry Division . From March to April 1944 he took part in the 10th division leader course in Hirschberg (Silesia). He took over the command of the 36th Infantry Division in May 1944. At the same time, Conrady was promoted to major general.

During the Soviet summer offensive in June 1944, he was captured by the Soviets on July 1, 1944 near Bobrujsk .

Call of the 50 generals
on December 8, 1944
Sheet 1 of the call
Sheet 2 of the call
Sheet 3 of the call
Sheet 4 of the call

Captivity

Conrady was initially interned in the POW camps 48 / Cerncy near Ivanovo , Leznovo , 362 / Stalingrad , 476 / Sverdlovsk , in the special hospital 3840 / Suja near Ivanovo and in prison no. 1 / Bobrujsk .

During this time Conrady was one of the 17 prisoner-of-war generals of the " Army Group Center " who signed the appeal "The truth about the situation on the Eastern Front" of July 22, 1944, which was written on the initiative of Lieutenant General Vinzenz Müller to the officer corps of the German Wehrmacht . He was also one of the fifty German generals who were in Soviet captivity and signed the appeal "To the people and the Wehrmacht" dated December 8, 1944, calling on the German population and the Wehrmacht to break away from the National Socialist leadership and to end the war .

From 1945 the Soviet Union carried out numerous show trials against German Wehrmacht members, which were dealt with in military courts. As part of the investigation, confessions were obtained through torture or attrition. "All day or all night" interrogations, which Conrady later reported, were the order of the day.

With the publication of a communique on October 17, 1947, on the conclusion of the investigations, the public prosecutor initiated the second wave of show trials. From October 28, a trial against twenty-one defendants took place in Bobrujsk, including Major General Conrady, Lieutenant General Wilhelm Ochsner , Lieutenant General Hans Traut and Major General Johann Tarbuk . The defendants were charged with alleged war crimes . The proceedings blatantly contradicted the rule of law. The judgments were certain before the proceedings began. Like most of the defendants, Conrady was sentenced by the military tribunal on November 4, 1947 to a maximum sentence of 25 years in a labor camp. He spent his imprisonment in the Vorkutinskij and Recnoj camps in Vorkuta near Arkhangelsk . There he had to serve the sentence under extreme living and working conditions.

Conrady was most recently interned in the POW camp 5110/48 Woikowo . The conditions of detention in this camp, in which only generals were held, were comparatively comfortable. He was released in October 1955. He arrived in Herleshausen on October 9, 1955, on a transport in which there were all generals .

post war period

Conrady returned to Augsburg and published his war experiences in the right-wing extremist Vowinckel-Verlag .

Fonts

  • History of the 36th Rhenish-Palatinate Infantry Division (mot.) 1940–1941 , self-published, no place or year.
  • Withdrawal from Moscow. Winter 1941–1942. From the history of the 36th Motorized Infantry Division. December 6, 1941– January 23, 1942 . Volume 1. Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, Neckargemünd 1974.
  • Rshew 1942-1943. From the history of the 36th Motorized Infantry Division. 1.1.1942-25.3.1943. Volume 2. Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, Neckargemünd 1976.
  • The turning point in 1943. Kharkov-Orel. From the history of the 36th Infantry and Panzer Grenadier Division. 25.3.1943-20.8.1943. Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, Neckargemünd 1978. ISBN 978-3-87879-128-7 .

Awards

literature

  • Dermot Bradley , Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Markus Rövekamp: The Generals of the Army 1921-1945. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 2: v. Blanckensee – v. Czettritz and Neuhauß. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1993, ISBN 3-7648-2424-7 , pp. 458-459.
  • Irina Vladimirovna Bezborodova: Generals of the Third Reich in Soviet hands 1943–1956. Publication by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War Graz-Vienna-Klagenfurt. Volume 4. Self-published by the Association for the Promotion of Research into Consequences after Conflicts and Wars, Graz / Moscow 1998. ISBN 978-3-901661-03-7 . P. 57.
  • Franz Thomas, Günter Wegmann (ed.): The knight cross bearers of the German armed forces. 1939-1945. Part 3: Infantry. Volume 4: Canders – Dowerk. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1998. ISBN 3-7648-2534-0 , p. 90 ff.
  • Manfred Zeidler: The Minsk war crimes trial of January 1946. Critical comments on a Soviet show trial of German prisoners of war. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Volume 52, issue 2. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, Munich 2004, pp. 211–244. Digitized
  • Manfred Zeidler: Stalin justice versus Nazi crimes. The war crimes trials against German prisoners of war in the USSR in 1943–1952. State of knowledge and research problems. Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research eV at the TU Dresden. Reports and Studies No. 9. Dresden 1996. ISBN 3-931648-08-7 . Digitized

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ City Chronicle 1950–1964. Events in Ulm based on the daily newspapers in Ulm (selection). (PDF) p. 1164, "Schwäbische Donauzeitung 1956 (No. 171)". (No longer available online.) Ulm City Archives, archived from the original on February 25, 2017 ; accessed on February 28, 2020 .
  2. ^ Franz Josef Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst: Genealogical manual of the nobility enrolled in Bavaria . tape 4 . Verlag Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch 1953, p. 420 .
  3. ^ Franz Thomas, Günter Wegmann (ed.): The knight's cross bearers of the German Wehrmacht. 1939-1945 . Part 3: Infantry. tape 4 : Canders – Dowerk. . Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1998, ISBN 3-7648-2534-0 , p. 90 ff .
  4. ↑ Irina Vladimirovna Bezborodova: Generals of the Third Reich in Soviet hands 1943–1956 . In: Publication by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War Graz-Vienna-Klagenfurt . tape 4 . Self-published by the Association for the Promotion of Research on the Consequences of Conflicts and Wars, Graz / Moscow 1998, ISBN 978-3-901661-03-7 , p. 57 .
  5. ↑ Manfred Zeidler: Stalin Justice contra Nazi crimes. The war crimes trials against German prisoners of war in the USSR in 1943–1952. State of knowledge and research problems . In: Reports and studies of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Research eV at the TU Dresden . No. 9 . Dresden 1996, ISBN 3-931648-08-7 , p. 33 f .
  6. ^ Walter A. Schmidt: So that Germany live. a source work on the German anti-fascist resistance struggle. 1933-1945 . Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1958, p. 609 .
  7. ^ Peter Joachim Lapp: General with Hitler and Ulbricht. Vincenz Müller - a German career . 1st edition. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-286-7 , p. 143 f .
  8. ^ Copy of the text "To the people and the armed forces". (PDF) In: Peter Godzik. Quoted from: Free Germany. Organ of the National Committee. Volume 2, No. 50, December 10, 1944, p. 1. 1944, accessed on February 20, 2019 .
  9. ^ Manfred Zeidler: The Minsk war criminals trial of January 1946. Critical comments on a Soviet show trial of German prisoners of war . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Volume 52, No. 2 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, Munich 2004, p. 211 ff. (224) .
  10. ↑ Irina Vladimirovna Bezborodova: Generals of the Third Reich in Soviet hands 1943–1956 . In: Publication by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War Graz-Vienna-Klagenfurt . tape 4 . Self-published by the Association for the Promotion of Research on the Consequences of Conflicts and Wars, Graz / Moscow 1998, ISBN 978-3-901661-03-7 , p. 57 .
  11. ↑ Manfred Zeidler: Stalin Justice contra Nazi crimes. The war crimes trials against German prisoners of war in the USSR in 1943–1952. State of knowledge and research problems . In: Reports and studies of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Research eV at the TU Dresden . No. 9 . Dresden 1996, ISBN 3-931648-08-7 , p. 31 f .
  12. ↑ Manfred Zeidler: Stalin Justice contra Nazi crimes. The war crimes trials against German prisoners of war in the USSR in 1943–1952. State of knowledge and research problems . In: Reports and studies of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Research eV at the TU Dresden . No. 9 . Dresden 1996, ISBN 3-931648-08-7 , p. 70 .
  13. ↑ Gerhard Wettig: The release of prisoners of war from the Soviet Union in 1955. Result of the negotiations with Adenauer? Investigation on the basis of new archival documents . In: Historical-Political Messages. Archive for Christian Democratic Politics . Volume 14 (2007). Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie., Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-19906-7 , p. 341-352 (348) .
  14. ↑ Augsburger Adreßbuchverlag Konrad Arnold (Ed.): Adressbuch der Stadt Augsburg 1961. Edited and published according to the status of September 1, 1960 based on official and own documents and with the cooperation of the statistical office of the city of Augsburg . 76th edition. Augsburg address book publisher Konrad Arnold, Augsburg 1960, p. 49 .
  15. ^ Franz Thomas, Günter Wegmann (ed.): The knight's cross bearers of the German Wehrmacht. 1939-1945 . Part 3, infantry. tape 4 , Canders-Dowerk. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1998, ISBN 3-7648-2534-0 , p. 93 .
personal data
SURNAME Conrady, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Conrady, Alexander Edmund (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German major general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH New Ulm
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1983
Place of death augsburg