Alexander von Falkenhausen (General)

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Alexander von Falkenhausen (1940)

Ernst Alexander Alfred Herrmann Freiherr von Falkenhausen (born October 29, 1878 on Gut Blumenthal, Neisse district ; † July 31, 1966 in Nassau ) was a German infantry general in World War II and from 1940 to 1944 head of the military administration of Belgium and northern France and a resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

origin

Alexander von Falkenhausen was the second of seven children of Alexander Freiherr von Falkenhausen (1844–1909) and his wife Elisabeth, née Freiin Schuler von Senden (1853–1936). His youngest brother was the future SA leader Hans-Joachim von Falkenhausen (1897–1934).

Pre-war period

Alexander von Falkenhausen, 1911 in Nagoya

In his youth, Falkenhausen initially wanted to be an explorer. He was then expelled from the grammar school in Breslau and then attended the cadet institute in Wahlstatt . He was then transferred on March 13, 1897 as a second lieutenant to the Oldenburg Infantry Regiment 91 of the Prussian Army in Oldenburg . His first assignment abroad began in 1899 when he was sent to China to fight the Boxer Rebellion in the 3rd East Asian Infantry Regiment . On his return he married Sophie von Wedderkop, the daughter of the Oldenburg house marshal Julius von Wedderkop, in Oldenburg on November 27, 1904 . For further training he graduated from the War Academy for three years from October 1904 , which was followed by a delegation in 1908 and a transfer to the General Staff in 1910 . By 1909 Falkenhausen had advanced to become a captain . He learned Japanese and evaluated material on the Japanese sphere of influence in East Asia at the General Staff . As a result, he was employed as a military attaché at the embassy in Tokyo from March 22, 1912 . Arthur Alexander Kaspar von Rex (1856–1926) was the embassy's chargé d'affaires and thus his superior . Together with the naval attaché Corvette Captain Wolfram von Knorr , who has been working at the embassy in Tokyo since 1913 , the task of both attachés was to collect information and assess how the Japanese military will behave in the already recognizable conflicts over new territorial spheres of influence.

First World War

After Japan declared war on the German Empire on August 23, 1914 , the embassy in Tokyo was closed. Falkenhausen was then removed from his post and returned to Germany. Here he was briefly used in the staff of the 89th Reserve Infantry Brigade, before he was transferred to the 31st Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Albert von Berrer on November 26, 1914 as a General Staff Officer . First he fought on the Somme , then came to East Prussia with his large association in January 1915 and took part in the winter battle in Masuria in February . After Falkenhausen had become major on March 22, 1915 , it was used on the Eastern Front in the battles on the Nyemen and Vilna . On November 14, 1915, he returned to the Western Front with the transfer as General Staff Officer of the 5th Army . Here he coordinated the supplies for the attack on Verdun .

On May 9, 1916, Falkenhausen was posted to the German military mission in Turkey and on May 29, appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Stage Inspection of the 2nd Ottoman Army . Here he met his future friend Franz von Papen (1879–1968). On New Year's Day 1917, he was appointed as an Ottoman lieutenant colonel to inspect this inspection. With the formation of Army Group Caucasus , which included the 1st and 2nd Ottoman Army, Falkenhausen was appointed Chief of the General Staff under Marshal Ahmed İzzet Pasha on March 26, 1917 . From this post he was recalled on June 11, 1917 with the appointment of Chief of the General Staff of the 7th Ottoman Army and came to the Palestine Front . For his achievements, which led to the victory of the two Jordan battles in March and May 1918 against British troops, he received the highest Prussian valor award, the Order Pour le Mérite, from Wilhelm II on May 7, 1918 . Shortly before the end of the war, on October 1, 1918, he was still tasked with running the business as German military representative in Constantinople . However, due to the circumstances at the end of the war, he only carried out this area of ​​responsibility until the beginning of May 1919.

Interwar period

Alexander von Falkenhausen (1933)

During the Weimar Republic , Falkenhausen served in the Reichswehr in various functions. As a representative of the Reichswehr Ministry, he was involved in negotiations with Poland over the German eastern border (probably also over the Polish Corridor ) and dissolved the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade . From February 1, 1921, he was appointed chief of the army's education and training system, and one year later he moved to the post of chief of staff of the 6th Division (Reichswehr) . He was promoted to colonel on April 1, 1924. On February 1, 1925, Falkenhausen became commander of the 10th (Saxon) Infantry Regiment and was then commander of the infantry school in Dresden's Albertstadt from February 1, 1927 to January 31, 1930 . Here he was already lieutenant general . In addition to his military responsibility, Falkenhausen was also politically active as a member of the DNVP and sat for this party in the Saxon state parliament . On January 31, 1930, he was dismissed for alleged Nazi incidents in the Reichswehr, with which he had nothing to do, however. He then became involved in the Stahlhelm , but tried in vain against its integration into the SA .

In March 1934, Falkenhausen was given the character of general of the infantry and in the following month went to China as Chiang Kai-shek's military advisor , where he succeeded Hans von Seeckt , who was known to and friends from his time in Turkish service . Falkenhausen supported Chiang Kai-shek in building up the national Chinese army . As head of the German military mission , he worked for the modernization of the Chinese army and in September 1937 led the troops under his command in Luodian against the Japanese in the Second Battle of Shanghai . At that time, German policy in the Far East wavered between an alliance with China , which was large, unorganized and torn by changing civil wars, or with Japan, the enemy in the last world war. Influential circles of German diplomats considered the alliance with China to be more in line with German interests, also because it had considerable reserves of raw materials that were of interest to German industry, but Joachim von Ribbentrop's faction, which also had ideological proximity , finally prevailed Japan was looking for. In 1938, Joachim von Ribbentrop forced the German military mission under Falkenhausen and the representatives of the German-Chinese military aid company to return to the Reich under threat of family reprisals .

After his return from China in 1938 - Germany had meanwhile been brought into line - he learned the real background to the death of his brother Hans Joachim von Falkenhausen, who was murdered in the context of the Röhm putsch on June 30, 1934. During this period he made contact with opponents of the regime such as Franz Halder and others.

Second World War

On July 10, 1939, Falkenhausen was drafted (he did not volunteer ). From August 28, 1939, he became commander of the Deputy General Command in Military District IV (Dresden) . On May 12, 1940, he learned that he was going to be military commander of the Netherlands and parts of Belgium. On May 27th he was informed that Seyss-Inquart had been appointed Reich Commissioner and General Christiansen the Wehrmacht Commander in Chief in the occupied Netherlands . They arrived in The Hague the following day and urged the business to be handed over immediately. From May 22, 1940 to July 15, 1944 he was in command of the military administration in Belgium and northern France . In this role - despite previous resistance to the persecution of the Jews  - he was jointly responsible for the deportation of Belgian Jews , the Aryanization of their property and the shooting of hostages. Falkenhausen tried to prevent or delay the deportation of Belgian Jews and forced laborers . In the meantime he had established solid links with the German resistance and was close friends with Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , Ulrich von Hassell and Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel .

On the day of the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , Falkenhausen tried, although he had been relieved of his command a few days earlier , to call the Commander-in-Chief West , Field Marshal Günther von Kluge , and convince them to open the front to the Allied units in Normandy and to convince them To end the war like that, however, the answer was "now that the pig is not dead, I can do nothing." Clever inaction contributed to the failure of the planned uprising of July 20 in Paris and in the West. On July 20, Falkenhausen was decommissioned and possible mobilization provisions against him due to suspicion of involvement in the attack were lifted.

Because of his connections to the assassins of July 20, 1944, Falkenhausen was arrested a few days later and held by the SS in the so-called "prominent barracks" in the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps . However, in the absence of evidence, he was not tried. On April 24, 1945 he was transported to Niederdorf (South Tyrol) together with 138 other prominent inmates . Wichard von Alvensleben freed this transport as a captain of the Wehrmacht on April 30, 1945 (see Liberation of the SS hostages in South Tyrol ).

After the end of the war

On May 4, 1945, the freed SS hostages were taken over by US troops. Falkenhausen was interned again, this time as a prisoner of war, and was held in various camps and prisons. It was not until 1948 that he was tried in a Belgian court for his actions between 1940 and 1944. His Belgian defense lawyer criticized: “The court is not there to judge Germany or the Third Reich, but about von Falkenhausen, who bears no moral responsibility for the horrors of the Nazi regime . It is certain that he did everything to avert the horrors of the Nazi regime, to which he was politically opposed. "

On February 7, 1951, Falkenhausen was sentenced to twelve years of forced labor, despite his age of 72 years. However, he was released after just three weeks in prison and deported to Germany. In 1953, Falkenhausen received a check for US $ 12,000 from Chiang Kai-shek in recognition of his military advisory services in China . At first he lived near the then inner-German border in the property of his friend Franz von Papen and then - as there was fear of kidnapping by East German agents - until his death in Nassau an der Lahn .

Falkenhausen became a widower in 1950; In 1960 he married Cécile Vent (1906–1977), a Belgian resistance fighter whom he met during his imprisonment in 1948, when she was on the administrative commission of the Verviers prisons .

Awards

swell

literature

  • Dermot Bradley , Karl Friedrich Hildebrand, Markus Brockmann: 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 3: Dahlmann – Fitzlaff. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1994, ISBN 3-7648-2443-3 , p. 405 f.
  • Norbert Frei (ed.): Transnational politics of the past. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-89244-940-6 .
  • Albert De Jonghe: La lutte Himmler-Reeder pour la nomination d'un HSSPF à Bruxelles (1942-1944). In: Cahiers d'histoire de la Seconde guerre mondiale. Bruxelles 1976-1984.
  • Hsi-Huey Liang: The Sino-German connection: Alexander von Falkenhausen between China and Germany 1900-1941. van Gorcum, Assen 1978.
  • Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume I: A-L. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Berlin 1935, pp. 294-295.
  • Hans Werner Neulen: Field gray in Jerusalem. The Levant Corps of Imperial Germany. Munich 1991, ISBN 3-8004-1437-6 .
  • Holger Wilken: Between command and dungeon. Alexander von Falkenhausen - German military commander in Brussels 1940–1944. In: IFDT - Journal for Inner Leadership. No. 2/2002, pp. 64-71.
  • Liman von Sanders : Five years in Turkey.

Web links

Commons : Alexander von Falkenhausen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility . Volume 95, Starke, Limburg 1989, ISBN 3-7980-0700-4 , p. 109.
  2. ↑ The dates February 1, 1927 to January 31, 1930 come from What I Thought and What I Did - DIE ZEIT Archive - Edition 17/1950
  3. ↑ German general and Chinese woman in the Tagschau blogspot
  4. ↑ Foreign News: Recalled. Time Magazine, July 18, 1938, accessed April 7, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Article in World War II Database
  6. ↑ Falkenhausen later wrote in his report (Part 1): “In June 1938 I received instructions from Ribbentrop through the embassy to leave immediately with all German military advisers. I reported back that I had to negotiate with the marshal first. We would not be a military mission; each individual would have a personal contract with the Chinese government that they could not easily break. My people would have their families in China; their return journey must be ensured, as well as a corresponding position in life; I also have to negotiate with Marshal [Chiang Kai-shek] first, since we would have precise insight into the Chinese potential de guerre , and he would not let us go without further ado, since Germany would obviously be on the side of Japan. - In response I received a telegram through the embassy from Ribbentrop threatening me with expatriation, confiscation of my property and locking up my siblings if I do not leave immediately. Then the marshal, although it was important to at least keep me there - and I was determined to accept and remain Chinese citizenship - generously recognized that I could not take it upon myself to plunge my siblings into misery. He agreed to our departure. At a farewell dinner the Marshal gave us, I said in a speech of thanks that I was convinced that the end of this struggle would lead to China's victory over Japan. Naturally, the newspapers brought this prediction of mine, which corresponded to my deepest conviction. After all, in the years of cooperation with the Chinese, I had experienced what tremendous, inner change had taken place in the mass of the Chinese people, especially in the younger officer corps, civil servants and students! I said goodbye to the Minister of War in Hankou with a similar prediction. When I arrived in Hong Kong on July 7th, the Consul General there sent me a threatening warning from Ribbentrop: I should abstain from any statement [...] I returned to Europe on a Lloyd Triestine ship , and the newspapers brought them as usual of the ports the ship called, pictures of me and, since I was not allowed to give interviews, the statement I made in Hankou. Every time I was warned again by Ribbentrop in the next port, until I finally asked a consul to tell the Foreign Ministry how these things were to be explained, since nobody in the office seemed to recognize them. In Port Said I was also told that I was not allowed to express myself in any way in Germany. - I first went to Berlin to take care of my unemployed people. "
  7. ^ Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Fischer Taschenbuch 1982, Volume 2, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 631 ff.
  8. ↑ Peter Koblank: The Liberation of Special Prisoners and Kinship Prisoners in South Tyrol. Online edition Myth Elser 2006.
  9. ^ Spiegel.de: General Alexander von Falkenhausen. In: Der Spiegel. 5/1948.
  10. ^ According to zeit.de , the trial began on May 22, 1950.
  11. ↑ zeit.de: The plague of the category. Falkenhausen trial - a symptom of the disease of democracy.
  12. ↑ Cécile Vent in Resistance.
  13. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1924, p. 116.
  14. ↑ Klaus D. Patzwall , Veit Scherzer : The German Cross 1941-1945. History and owner. Volume II. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2001, ISBN 3-931533-45-X , p. 540.
personal data
SURNAME Falkenhausen, Alexander von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Falkenhausen, Ernst Alexander Alfred Herrmann Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German infantry general, head of the military administration in occupied Belgium
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH at Gut Blumenthal, Neisse district
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1966
Place of death Nassau