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Alfred Saalwächter (1940)

Alfred Saalwächter (born January 10, 1883 in Neusalz / Oder , † December 6, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German naval officer. During the First World War he was submarine commander in the Second Admiral General.

Life

Alfred Saalwächter was the son of a factory director.

Military career

Saalwächter occurred on 10 April 1901 as a midshipman in the Imperial Navy , where he was trained on the cruiser frigate SMS Moltke and on the School Cruiser SMS Hertha began.

His first years as an officer until the outbreak of war in 1914 he spent almost exclusively with on-board commands, initially with the 2nd Sailor Division, then on the liner SMS Hessen and with the 2nd Werft Division. On March 10, 1906, at the age of 23, he was first lieutenant in the sea and then until 1908 in the 2nd Torpedo Division as an adjutant in the 1st Division. He then served on the large cruiser SMS Gneisenau . In 1910 he became a flag lieutenant on board the ships of the line SMS Hannover and later SMS Westphalia , ie adjutant of a flag officer , the Vice Admiral Hugo von Pohl (1855-1916), who was in command of the 1st Squadron at the time. On April 10, 1911, Saalwächter was promoted to lieutenant captain and assigned to the admiralty staff of the Navy in Berlin , to which he was a member until March 1915, most recently as head of the operations department.

See also : Naval Officer (Germany)

First World War

On March 31, 1915, Saalwächter became a flag lieutenant in command of the high seas on the liner SMS Friedrich der Große . In February 1916 he was transferred to the submarine weapon. After completing the submarine school, he was in service from September 1916 to March 1918 as commander of the SM U 25 , SM U 46 and SM U 94 . His success as a submarine commander was honored with the award of the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords.

He ended the war as an admiralty staff officer with the commander of the submarines , Commodore Andreas Michelsen .

See also : Naval Warfare in World War I

Between the wars

After being taken over into the Reichsmarine , Saalwächter was appointed corvette captain in 1920. After various other assignments - including in the personnel office of the naval command - he became 1st admiral staff officer with the staff of the commander of the naval forces on the liner Braunschweig .

On October 1, 1926, he became the commander of the small cruiser Amazone and a year later, as a frigate captain, he took command of the ship of the line Silesia . After his promotion to sea captain on October 15, 1928, Saalwächter was assigned to the chief of staff of the fleet under Vice-Admiral Iwan Oldekop for two years . He then belonged for three years - from October 1, 1932 - as a rear admiral to the naval command as head of the naval defense department.

On October 2, 1933, Saalwächter was appointed inspector of marine education. During the next five years he had a strong influence on the development of the young naval officer corps. On April 1, 1935 he was promoted to Vice Admiral and on June 1, 1937 to Admiral . On October 28, 1938 he was appointed commanding admiral of the North Sea naval station in Wilhelmshaven , one of the highest positions in the navy at the time.

World War II and death

When the war broke out, Saalwächter was given supreme command of the Marine Group Command West and was thus responsible for the management of operations in the North Sea from September 1939, which, however, led to some friction with the fleet chiefs, Vice Admirals Hermann Boehm , Wilhelm Marschall and Günther Lütjens .

On January 1, 1940, he was promoted to Admiral General. Together with Admiral Rolf Carls, Saalwächter was responsible for the tactical management of naval operations during the operation in Norway ( company Weser exercise ); in recognition of this, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on May 9, 1940 .

From the summer of 1940, Saalwächter directed the operations of the German surface naval forces in the North Atlantic and the English Channel , until he was placed at the disposal of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy in September 1942 and replaced by Admiral Theodor Krancke .

Saalwächter finally retired from active naval service a few months after this change of command. He was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities in July 1945 and taken to the former youth prison in Magdalenenstrasse in Berlin-Lichtenberg. In August he was tried there before a Soviet military court and sentenced to many years of forced labor. According to another version, he was sentenced to death for war crimes and aiding and abetting the war of aggression and shot on December 6, 1945. The exact circumstances have not yet been clarified. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was rehabilitated by the Russian judicial authorities in 1994.

Honors

• Order of the Siamese Crown , Knight's Cross (November 1, 1905)
• Russian Order of Saint Anne IV Class (May 9, 1910)
• Red Eagle Order IV Class (November 7, 1912)
• Order of the Iron Crown (Austria) III. Class (May 12, 1914)
• Iron Cross (1914) Second Class (August 1, 1916)
• Iron Cross (1914) 1st Class (February 14, 1918)
• Royal House Order of Hohenzollern , Knight's Cross with Swords (March 5, 1918)
• Hamburg Hanseatic Cross (March 5, 1918)
• Submarine War Badge (1918) (January 1, 1929)
• Repeat clasp for the Iron Cross II. And I. Class
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (May 9, 1940)
• German Cross in Gold (December 14, 1942)

literature

• Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849–1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1990. ISBN 3-7648-1700-3 . Pp. 172-173.
• Manfred Dörr: The knight's cross bearers of the surface forces of the navy. Volume 2: LZ. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1996. ISBN 3-7648-2498-0 . Pp. 195-198.
• Alfred Saalwächter , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 07/1967 of February 6, 1967, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Newspaper article about Alfred Saalwächter in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard Stumpf: The Wehrmacht Elite. Harald Boldt Verlag. Boppard am Rhein 1982. ISBN 3-7646-1815-9 . P. 270.
2. ↑ uboat.net: Alfred Saalwächter
3. ^ Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947) , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, p. 579; Excerpt from books.google.de
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Manfred Dörr: The knight's cross bearers of the surface forces of the navy. Volume 2: LZ. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1996. ISBN 3-7648-2498-0 . Pp. 195-198.