Fedor von Bock

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Fedor von Bock (1939)

Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock (born December 3, 1880 in Küstrin , Brandenburg province , † May 4, 1945 in Oldenburg in Holstein ) was a German army officer (field marshal general from 1940 ). During the Second World War he was commander in chief of various army groups in the Wehrmacht .

Life

origin

Fedor von Bock was the son of the Prussian Major General Moritz von Bock and his wife Olga, born von Falkenhayn (1851-1919). His mother was a sister of Erich von Falkenhayn .

Military career

After attending school in Wiesbaden and Charlottenburg, he attended the cadet institute in Potsdam , later he switched to the main cadet institute in Groß-Lichterfelde . On March 15, 1898, he joined the Prussian Army as an ensign in the 5th Guards Regiment on foot in Spandau . On May 1, 1898, he became a second lieutenant in the same regiment , and later he became an assistant instructor at the Spandau military gymnasium as platoon leader . In July 1904 he became a battalion adjutant and in January 1906 a regimental adjutant . On September 10, 1908 he became a first lieutenant , and from April 1910 he was assigned to general staff training. Von Bock joined the General Staff in March 1911 and was promoted to captain on March 22, 1912 .

First World War

From October 1913 he served as a staff officer in the General Staff of the Guard Corps , with which he was deployed on the Western Front at the beginning of the First World War in 1914 . In May 1915 he switched to the 11th Army on the Eastern Front and took part in the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow . The following year he joined the General Staff of the 200th Division and took part in the mountain war in the Carpathians and in the defense against the Brusilov offensive . On December 30, 1916, he was appointed major . In April 1917 he served in the General Staff of the German Crown Prince Army Group on the Western Front, and on April 1, 1918, he was awarded the Order of Pour le Mérite for his general staff work in the spring offensive . He had already received both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords.

Weimar Republic

After the armistice in Compiegne in November 1918, von Bock was accepted into the provisional Reichswehr and assigned to the newly formed Group Command 1 as the first general staff officer. As Chief of Staff of the 3rd Division in Berlin, he was also the commander of the anti-republican Black Reichswehr . Newly sworn in in October 1919, he refused to participate in the Kapp Putsch . On December 18, 1920 he became a lieutenant colonel and, after many years of staff work, began working as an active troop leader in 1924. On April 1, 1924, he took over the leadership of a battalion of the 4th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Kolberg . On May 1, 1925 he was promoted to colonel and took over the leadership of this regiment on February 1, 1926. On February 1, 1929 von Bock became major general and in December 1929 he took over command of the 1st Cavalry Division in Frankfurt an der Oder . On February 1, 1931 he was promoted to lieutenant general and in December 1931 he was appointed commander of the 2nd division and commander in military district II in Stettin .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

After the takeover of the Nazi party in 1933, he behaved the Nazi regime against neutral. On March 1, 1935 he was promoted to General of the Infantry and appointed Commander in Chief of the newly established Group Command 3 in Dresden .

When annexation of Austria to the German Reich on March 12, 1938, he marched at the head of the educated from his command post 8th Army into Austria and was retroactive to March 1 for the Colonel General transported. On November 1 of the same year he was appointed Commander in Chief of Group Command 1 in Berlin and on August 26, 1939 Commander in Chief of the Army Group North formed from it .

Second World War

In this capacity he also took part in the attack on Poland . He commanded the Army Group North advancing from Pomerania ( 4th Army ) and East Prussia ( 3rd Army ) and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on September 30th after the surrender of Warsaw . After the attack on Poland was over, he was transferred with the Army Group Command to the western border, where Army Group B was set up from October 1939 . In November 1939 he learned of the "events of the 'colonization' 'of the East" which terrified him deeply. He commented on this in his notes: "If you continue like this there, these methods will one day turn against us!"

With Army Group B , which formed the northern wing of the German armed forces, he led the attack on Belgium and the Netherlands as part of the western campaign . After the invasion of Paris he took on the parade of the German troops on June 14, 1940 at the Arc de Triomphe . On July 19, 1940, he was appointed field marshal at the same time as eleven other generals . On his 60th birthday he received a grant from Hitler amounting to 100,000 Reichsmarks .

On the basis of " Instruction No. 21 Barbarossa case" of December 18, 1940, von Bock was given the task of preparing the troops under his control for the attack on the Soviet Union. To the adopted in this context, in May 1941 Commissioner command he laid at the urging of his staff officers Henning von Tresckow and Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff the Army High Command verbally contradict one. After his protest was completely fruitless, he said to his staff: "Gentlemen, I can see that Field Marshal von Bock protested".

Bock goes to a briefing in Nikolskoje, October 1941

With the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union , von Bock was Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Center , whose mission was the advance on Moscow. Von Bock was one of the strongest supporters of an offensive on Moscow in 1941. One of his arguments was that if two opponents were equally exhausted, the one with the stronger will could bring about the decision. After von Bock had pleaded and initiated a tactical retreat on the Eastern Front during the Battle of Moscow due to the exhaustion of his troops, he and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Walther von Brauchitsch were replaced on December 19 .

On January 18, 1942, after the sudden death (from a stroke) of Walter von Reichenau , he took over his Army Group South . Following renewed disputes with Hitler about the Braunschweig company , he was relieved of his post as commander of Army Group B on July 15, 1942 and was transferred to the Führer Reserve until the end of the war . His successor was Colonel General Maximilian von Weichs .

During the last years of the Second World War he lived in seclusion in Bavaria. His nephew Henning von Tresckow tried several times in vain to win him over to the military resistance against Hitler . He condemned the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 as a crime. After Hitler's suicide on April 30, 1945, he offered himself up to the new Reich government under Karl Dönitz .

On May 3, 1945, von Bock was seriously wounded in a British low-flying attack near Lensahn ; the following day he succumbed to his wounds in a naval hospital in Oldenburg in Holstein . His second wife Wilhelmine, his stepdaughter Katharina von der Osten and his driver were also killed in the attack. Fedor von Bock is the only field marshal of the Third Reich who died as a result of direct enemy action.

family

On October 9, 1905, he married Mally von Reichenbach (born March 12, 1887 in Berlin) in Berlin. In 1906 daughter Ursula was born. His wife died in 1910. In 1936 Bock remarried. His second wife was Wilhelmine von Boddien (born November 14, 1893 in Strasbourg ; † May 3, 1945 in Lensahn), who was previously married to Karl August von der Osten.

literature

Web links

Commons : Fedor von Bock  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Also on the following orders Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57982-6 , p. 621 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  2. ↑ von Bock: Between Duty and Refusal - The War Diary . P. 78.
  3. ↑ Gersdorff: Soldier in Downfall . P. 87 ff.
  4. ^ BH Liddell Hart: The Other Side of the Hill. Germany's Generals. Their Rise and Fall, with their own Account of Military Events 1939-1945 p. 235. Cassel. London 1948.
  5. ↑ Heinz Guderian: memories of a soldier. P. 239. Kurt Vowinkel Verlag. Heidelberg 1951.
  6. ↑ Ueberschär 2011, p. 42.
personal data
SURNAME Bock, Fedor from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German field marshal, commander in chief of an army group in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Küstrin
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1945
Place of death Oldenburg in Holstein