Friedrich Fromm

Friedrich Fromm (1940)

Friedrich Wilhelm Waldemar Fromm (born October 8, 1888 in Charlottenburg , † March 12, 1945 in Brandenburg an der Havel ) was a German army officer , most recently a colonel general in World War II . From 1939 until the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 , he was in command of the replacement army . It was approved by the People's Court for " cowardice " sentenced to death because he has not been proven a direct involvement in the assassination attempt, and on March 12, 1945 in the penitentiary Brandenburg-Gorden by shooting executed.

Life

Empire and First World War

Friedrich Fromm was born on October 8, 1888 in his parents' apartment at Courbierestrasse 4 in Charlottenburg. His father was the captain (last lieutenant general in retirement) Johannes Richard Fromm (1851-1914), his mother Hedwig Elise Clara Fromm, née Fromm, both of Protestant denominations. After visiting high schools in Mainz , Strasbourg and Berlin studied Fromm first at the University of Berlin , before December 30, 1906 as a cadet in the second Thüringische Field Artillery Regiment. 55 in Naumburg occurred. When the First World War broke out , he was first lieutenant and adjutant of the 1st division. In 1915 he was transferred as an adjutant to the 38th Field Artillery Brigade, and from 1917 Fromm , promoted to captain on April 18, 1916, was on the staff of the 30th Division . Fromm received both classes of the Iron Cross , the Hanseatic Cross (Hamburg) and the Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decoration and the wound badge in black.

Weimar Republic

Friedrich Fromm (left) with Nevile Henderson (center) and Hans von Tschammer und Osten (1938)

After the end of the war he was initially involved in the border protection battles against Poland and was accepted into the Reichswehr . There he was initially employed as a battery chief in the 3rd (Prussian) Artillery Regiment in Frankfurt (Oder) . On April 1, 1922, he was transferred to the staff of the 3rd Division . One month after his promotion to major on March 1, 1927, Fromm joined the 14th Cavalry Regiment and was assigned to the Reichswehr Ministry until May 31, 1932 . As a lieutenant colonel (since April 1, 1931) he was appointed commander of the 4th division of the 5th artillery regiment on June 1, 1932 . At the same time he was promoted to colonel , Fromm became head of the military office in the Reichswehr Ministry on February 1, 1933 .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

From February 20, 1934 Fromm acted as head of the General Army Office of the Reichswehr or Reich Ministry of War and later in the Army High Command . In this capacity he was promoted to major general on November 1, 1935 and then to lieutenant general on January 1, 1938 .

Second World War

Before the outbreak of war he was promoted to General of Artillery on April 20, 1939 and on August 31, 1939 - as a replacement for Joachim von Stülpnagel , who had been deposed by Hitler from this post after only three days - he was appointed Chief of Army Armaments and Commander of the Replacement Army , initially left in his position as chief of the General Army Office . In the latter position he was replaced by Friedrich Olbricht in February 1940 . On July 13, 1940, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , and on July 19, he was promoted to Colonel General.

Fromm and July 20, 1944

It is unclear to what extent Fromm was privy to the assassination plans of July 20, 1944 . He must have known about the conspiracy plans that were forged in his immediate vicinity - the later assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was Chief of Staff at Fromm and the General Army Office, headed by General Friedrich Olbricht , an authority directly subordinate to Fromm - and must have at least tacitly tolerated them . However , he was not prepared to actively participate in the " Company Walküre ". According to Bodo Scheurig , he was “an opportunist addicted to pleasure who only tried to get it right”.

After the bombing of Hitler by Stauffenberg, he received the message early on at his headquarters in Berlin's Bendlerblock through a telephone call with Field Marshal Keitel that Hitler had survived the explosion with minor injuries. Thereupon he vehemently refused to support the Stauffenberg putsch , which he believed had failed, and to sign the "Valkyrie Order", which only he was entitled to. He ordered Stauffenberg to be shot - apparently in the hope of concealing his own complicity. The conspirators then arrested the colonel general and locked him in his office. In the evenings, Fromm was liberated when the building was stormed by troops loyal to the regime and put himself at the head of those who ended the uprising. On his personal orders, Stauffenberg and his three close co-conspirators, General Olbricht, his chief of staff, Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim and Stauffenberg's adjutant, Oberleutnant von Haeften , were sentenced to death by a court martial convened at short notice and shot in the courtyard shortly before or after midnight. His former superior, the former Chief of the General Staff of the Army , Colonel General a. D. Ludwig Beck , gave Fromm the opportunity to commit suicide at his personal and massive urging . When this failed, he had the seriously injured man shot.

death

Fromm's arbitrary decision to immediately shoot the main assassins who could be found immediately angered Hitler. On the one hand, according to the military code of honor, this was a comparatively undignified type of execution; on the other hand, they were spared interrogation under torture by the Gestapo and therefore no information about co-conspirators could be collected. Furthermore, it became increasingly known that Fromm might also have been aware of the overturn plans. On 14 September he was therefore released from the army at Hitler's behest . As a civilian, he could be brought before the People's Court and, since direct involvement could not be proven, he was sentenced to death for cowardice in front of the enemy , and his military worth was denied, which resulted in the loss of all medals and decorations. Fromm was shot on March 12, 1945 on the firing range of the Brandenburg-Görden prison.

Others

Fromm's daughter was the Lower Saxony state parliament member Helga Heinke .

Movies

• He is portrayed by Carl Wery in the film It happened on July 20 (1955, director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst ) .
• In the movie July 20 (1955, director: Falk Harnack ) he is portrayed by Siegfried Schürenberg .
• He is portrayed by Harry Kalenberg in the television film Operation Walküre (1971, director: Franz Peter Wirth ) .
• In the TV movie Stauffenberg (2004, director: Jo Baier ) he is portrayed by Axel Milberg .
• He is portrayed by Hermann Lause in the docudrama The Officers' Hour (2004, director: Hans-Erich Viet ) .
• In the movie Operation Walküre - Das Stauffenberg-Assentat (2008, director: Bryan Singer ) he is portrayed by Tom Wilkinson .

literature

• Arnim Ramm: July 20th before the People's Court. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86573-264-4 .
• Bernhard R. Kroener : The strong man in the homeland war area - Colonel General Friedrich Fromm. A biography. Schöningh-Verlag, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 978-3-506-71734-4 .
• Gene Mueller: Colonel General Friedrich Fromm. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. Vol. 1, pages 71-78. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-083-2 .

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Fromm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Friedrich Fromm in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Friedrich Fromm  in the German Digital Library
• Benjamin Obermüller: Friedrich Fromm - not just a figure around the "20th July". Review of the detailed Fromm biography by Bernhard R. Kroener : Colonel General Friedrich Fromm - "The strong man in the homeland war region". A biography. Schöningh Verlag, 2005. In: Reviews. January 13, 2006

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marriage certificate Wandsbek registry office No. 21, born in 1885; Death certificate Johannes R. Fromm, Wilmersdorf registry office No. 444, born 1914, digitized on ancestry.de.
2. ↑ Friedrich Fromm's birth certificate, Charlottenburg registry office No. 1621, born in 1888, digitized from ancestry.de.
3. ↑ Reichswehr Ministry (Ed.): Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1930, p. 122.
4. ↑ Bodo Scheurig : Henning von Tresckow. A biography. Stalling, Oldenburg 1973, p. 148.
5. ↑ Veit Scherzer : The knight's cross bearers. Main volume, 2nd, revised edition, Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-938845-17-1 , pp. 86 ff., 106.
6. ↑ Friedrich Fromm. In: Munzinger archive . Retrieved July 15, 2008.