Franz Uhle-Wettler

Franz Uhle-Wettler (born October 30, 1927 in Eisleben ; † July 11, 2018 in Meckenheim ) was a lieutenant general in the Bundeswehr and a military historian . He was the elder brother of Brigadier General a. D. Reinhard Uhle-Wettler and most recently commander of the NATO Defense College in Rome . As a historical revisionist military writer, he also wrote under the pseudonym Ulrich Werner .

Origin and military career

Franz Uhle-Wettler was born in Eisleben in 1927 as the son of an officer. He grew up in Ohrdruf , Jena and Eisleben, where he also attended school. Uhle-Wettler was a flak helper from 1943 , then a midshipman , and remained a prisoner of war until December 1947 .

After that and during the semester break he worked as a miner at the Zeche Zollern in Dortmund and the Zeche Monopol in Kamen , before studying Modern History and Oriental Languages at the Philipps University of Marburg from 1948 to 1956 and receiving a Fulbright scholarship from Denison University (a Liberal Arts College) in Granville, Ohio. To complement his studies, he rode his bike to India via the Balkans, Turkey, Iran and Iraq and attended Birla Vidya Mandir , a residential school for boys in Naini Tal, Uttar Pradesh . On his way back he crossed Afghanistan and parts of Persia on horseback. With the dissertation State Thought and Adoration of England among the early Göttingen historians. Achenwall from Schlözer, Freiherr von Spittler, fire, Rehberg, Heeren he was at Fritz Wagner to Dr. phil. PhD. His second reviewer was Wolfgang Abendroth ( Marburg School ).

In October 1956 he joined the newly formed Bundeswehr as a flag junior and attended Army Officer School II in Husum . At the command academy of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg he was trained as a general staff officer and had various posts in staff and in the troops, including from April 1, 1978 to September 25, 1980 as commander of Panzerlehrbrigade 9 in Munster , from October 1980 to September 1982 he consultant for operational plans at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Casteau near Mons, Belgium and from October 1, 1982 to July 11, 1984 as commander of the 5th Armored Division . From 1984 to 1987 he was Commander of the NATO Defense College in Rome and Lieutenant General. After this use, he was retired.

With his thesis, advocated in the text Gefechtsfeld Mitteleuropa, Danger of Overtechnology of Armed Forces (1980), that the Bundeswehr is over-engineered and therefore better suited to attack than defense, he caused a sensation.

He was married and the father of three daughters.

History revisionism

As an author of military history books, partly under the pseudonym Ulrich Werner , and as a speaker, he disseminated historical revisionist theses. He was committed to the defense of SS- Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke , who was tracked down in 1994 in an Argentine spa town. He published in right-wing conservative , new -right and right-wing extremist magazines such as German military magazine , Die Aula , Europa Vorn , Criticón , Junge Freiheit , Ostpreußenblatt , state letters , but also in Spiegel .

Franz Uhle-Wettler was a speaker at the right-wing extremist Berlin cultural community Prussia .

Among other things, he was a speaker at the Society for Free Journalism , the largest right-wing cultural association in Germany according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution .

In 1995, together with other right-wing conservative journalists , he initiated the “ Appeal May 8, 1945 - Against Forgetting ” , which called for people to remember on this date in the spirit of Theodor Heuss that “we were redeemed and destroyed in one”. In 2005 the appeal was repeated again with an advertisement in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

In 1995, Andreas Molau , long-time director of the GfP, published the historical revisionist anthology Opposition für Deutschland, published by the Berg publishing house. In addition to Molau himself, his later colleague in the Saxon state parliament Karl Richter as well as Huwald Fröhlich , Hartmut Hesse , Ansgar Hofacker , Winfried Knörzer , Hans-Ulrich Kopp , Klaus Kunze , Carl Meyerson , Harald Neubauer , Germar Rudolf , Hans B. . von Sothen , Franz Uhle-Wettler and Claus-M. Wolfschlag represented with contributions. Here Andreas Molau also expressed the basic motto of his political action, “to bring all right-wing, conservative, national, national-conservative, etc., mentally, to one table”.

In 1999, the military historian Bruno Thoss criticized Uhle-Wettler's work Erich Ludendorff in his time , with the statement that it fell far behind the state of research because of its “apologetic tendency”.

Franz Uhle-Wettler was the author of Ares Verlag , which belongs to Leopold Stocker Verlag and whose program consists of right-wing conservative literature with intersections with right-wing extremism.

In 2001 he co-signed another appeal; this was directed against the dismissal of the first lieutenant of the reserve and leading thought leader of the " New Right " Götz Kubitschek , from the Bundeswehr.

The historian Klaus Naumann wrote about him in a review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in 2006 : “[Franz Uhle-Wettler] is an educated and uncomfortable observer. With a conservative attitude, Uhle-Wettler's heart belongs to the common soldier [...], the committed subordinates and troop officers. "

In 2009 Franz Uhle-Wettler criticized a speech given by Chancellor Merkel at a recruit swearing in Berlin :

"When she spoke, Ms. Merkel was in the first minute of the Holocaust, which she called the Shoah in Hebrew ... And a few minutes later she assured the recruits that they would no longer be raised to" cadaver obedience ". In this way, it continued the war propaganda of the Allies, in which only those with ideological inspiration there believe. In addition, the German thoroughness in mourning work has condensed into one of those pseudo-religions that also influence politics. "

In 2014, Franz Uhle-Wettler was, among others, together with Günther Deschner , Menno Aden , Albrecht Jebens , Bernd Nossak , Manfred Backerra and Walter Post , speaker at the extreme right-wing conference " Conversations on Time " in Lower Bavaria, the magazine " Deutsche Geschichte " published by the history revisionist publisher Gert Sudholt " , the ultra-right" Staats- und Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft e.V. ", headed for a long time by his brother Reinhard . and the "Forum Culture and History".

Honors

• 1983: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1987: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Publications (selection)

• Light infantry in the atomic age. The danger of over-engineering modern armed forces . Defense and Knowledge Publishing Company, Darmstadt, 1966.
• Central Europe battlefield. Risk of over-engineering of armed forces , Berard and Graefe Verlag, 1980. ISBN 3763753060 . [1]
• High points and turning points in German military history. From Leuthen to Stalingrad. Ares-Verlag , Graz 2006, ISBN 978-3-902475-26-8 (first edition 1984).
• Move! Path, performance and crisis of the Bundeswehr. Ares-Verlag , Graz 2006, ISBN 3-902475-13-7 .
• Crete and Arnhem. The largest airborne operations of World War II. (together with Arnold D. Harvey). Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-7020-1051-3 .
• Alfred von Tirpitz in his time. Mittler, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-8132-0552-5 (revised, new edition 2008, Ares-Verlag).
• Erich Ludendorff in his time. Soldier, strategist, revolutionary. A reassessment. Verlagsgesellschaft Berg , Berg 1996. ISBN 3-86118-051-0 .
• The Versailles Dictation. (Foreword), Arndt-Verlag , Kiel 1999, ISBN 3-88741-195-1 .
• The war - yesterday today - tomorrow? Mittler, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0767-6 .
• As Ulrich Werner : Soviet Marxism. 2nd expanded edition. Fundus Verlag, Darmstadt 1964.
• Thoughts on the tradition of the Wehrmacht. (PDF; 24 kB) In: Reinhard Uhle-Wettler (Ed.): Risk Truth. Historians in handcuffs? Commemorative publication for David Irving . Arndt-Verlag , Kiel 1998, ISBN 3-88741-199-4 , pp. 7-12.

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Uhle-Wettler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Franz Uhle-Wettler in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Franz Uhle-Wettler: Move! 2006, p. 11. (Biographical information on the author)
2. ↑ Franz Uhle-Wettler: Who throws the enemy out of the Rhön? In: Der Spiegel 25 (1980).
   Jürgen Reusch: Peace Research in the Federal Republic. Development, positions, perspectives. IMFS, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-88807-001-5 , p. 474.
3. ↑ Against forgetting. (pdf) Institute for State Policy, archived from the original on September 26, 2007 ; accessed on July 3, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Bruno Thoss : Military decision and political and social upheaval. The year 1918 in the more recent world war research. In: Jörg Duppler, Gerhard Paul Gross (Ed.): End of the war 1918. Event, effect, aftermath. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, p. 26.
5. ↑ 28.09.01 / Appeal to the Bundeswehr: Against the dismissal of conservative soldiers / The "Götz Kubitschek case". Retrieved July 1, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Klaus Naumann : For little men. A general looks back . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , No. 79, May 3, 2006, p. 8.
7. ↑ Franz Uhle-Wettler: Thoughts on the cardinal error of the Germans ( Memento from November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 401 kB) accessed on December 26, 2015
8. ↑ Niederbayern: Extreme right-wing conference "Time Talks" ( Memento from July 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Antifascist information, documentation and archive office Munich