Günther von Kluge

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Günther von Kluge around 1939/40

Günther Adolf Ferdinand (von) Kluge (born October 30, 1882 in Posen ; † August 19, 1944 near Verdun ; also known as Hans Günther von Kluge ) was a German army officer (field marshal since 1940 ) and during the Second World War he was commander-in-chief of the 4th Army and various army groups.

Life

Empire and First World War

Günther von Kluge was the son of Major General Max Kluge, who was raised to hereditary nobility in 1913, and on March 22, 1901, after leaving the cadet institute, he joined the Lower Saxony Field Artillery Regiment No. 46 in Altona as a lieutenant . In his youth he was called clever Hans by his friends because of his special intellectual abilities at the cadet school, based on a "calculating" horse that was very well known at the time . From this, the first name Hans Günther was later naturalized.

During the First World War , von Kluge was a captain in the General Staff of the XXI. Army Corps . He fought on the Western Front in the Second Battle of Flanders and was seriously wounded in the Battle of Verdun .

Weimar Republic

After the end of the war he was accepted into the Reichswehr , appointed major on April 1, 1923, and promoted to lieutenant colonel on July 1, 1927. The following year he became Chief of Staff of the 1st Cavalry Division in Frankfurt (Oder) , Brandenburg. When he was promoted to colonel on February 1, 1930, he was also appointed commander of the 2nd (Prussian) artillery regiment in Schwerin .

(Pre-war) period of National Socialism

Kluges' next appointments and promotions were major general and inspector of the intelligence service on February 1, 1933 and lieutenant general on April 1, 1934. A year later he was appointed commanding general of the VI. Army corps and commander in military district VI (Münster) . The promotion to general of the artillery took place on August 1, 1936.

Second World War

von Kluge's Marshal's Staff

Von Kluge led the 4th Army in the attack on Poland and in the western campaign . He was also the one who, after the battle for the Polish post office in Danzig , confirmed the death sentences for the Polish defense lawyers in September 1939. On October 1, 1939 he was promoted to Colonel General.

On July 19, 1940, Hitler appointed him - along with eleven other generals - Field Marshal General.

In the German-Soviet war led von Kluge, the 4th Army. His defense methods were and are considered well thought out.

On December 18, 1941, von Kluge was appointed as successor to Fedor von Bocks Commander in Chief of Army Group Center ; a day later he took over the command. On the occasion of his 60th birthday in 1942, he received Hitler's endowment of 250,000 Reichsmarks .

Edwin von Rothkirch und Trach , Commander of the Rear Army Area Center in " White Ruthenia ", turned to von Kluge daily in the summer of 1943 with several reports on the murder of 1,200 to 1,500 Jews at the Malkinia railway junction . Von Kluge did nothing, as he feared losing his position in a protest, as he explained to his orderly officer Eberhard von Breitenbuch .

Henning von Tresckow , his first general staff officer , tried, albeit with little success, to pull von Kluge to the side of the military resistance against National Socialism . On March 13, 1943, Tresckow had come up with a three-part plan: At lunch, Tresckow, Georg von Boeselager and others were supposed to stand up at a sign and fire pistols at Hitler. As Commander in Chief of the Army Group, von Kluge heard about this part of the plan, and the officers of his staff obeyed his prohibition to do something like this “outside his area of ​​responsibility”. A car accident on October 12, 1943 forced von Kluge to take a long break. It was on July 7, 1944 - ie one month after the start of Operation Overlord  - the OB West appointed (abbreviated OB West.) And on July 17 the same year, in addition commander over the army group B . This made him a key figure in the West for the conspirators of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt . Although he wavered at first, he refused to participate in the planned coup when he learned of Hitler's survival. At that time, members of the SS had already been arrested in Paris on the orders of the French military commander Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel . Von Kluge withdrew the order and dismissed General von Stülpnagel.

von Kluge in July 1944 on the Western Front

After the breakthrough of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Normandy in Operation Cobra , Hitler commissioned von Kluge with a counterattack, Operation Liege , which opened in the late afternoon of August 6, 1944. There were already differences with Hitler in the planning phase. After von Kluge's associations came to a standstill due to fierce Allied resistance, especially from the air, Hitler reacted extremely indignantly and threatened to dismiss von Kluge from the command. Von Kluge left his headquarters on the morning of August 15 and went directly to the front line for a meeting with the commanding officers of the 7th Army , including General of the Panzer Troop Heinrich Eberbach . Because of an Allied air raid in which the radio link was interrupted and some of his companions were killed, he was unable to get to the planned meeting. At this point in time Hitler tried in vain to reach von Kluge by telephone from Berlin at the headquarters of OB West in order to make a decision on how to proceed in Normandy as quickly as possible. With this the limit of patience was reached for Hitler. As provisional commander of Army Group B, Hitler appointed Paul Hausser , SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer and Generaloberst of the Waffen-SS since August 1, 1944, and appointed General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring and General Field Marshal Walter Model as von Kluge's possible successors if he did not return.

Now the voices were again loud that carried Hitler's suspicions of the Secret State Police , which spoke of Kluges' involvement in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. They also assumed that von Kluge could not be reached because he was preparing to surrender his units. The main spokesman for Hitler in this context was Ernst Kaltenbrunner , the chief of the security police and the SD . For all these reasons Hitler decided on August 16 to remove von Kluge from his post and use Model. This directive came into force the following day.

Hitler wrote von Kluge in a farewell letter on August 19 that he had always remained loyal to him and that he saw suicide as the only way to maintain his honor. At the end of his letter he wrote and advised Hitler: "Now show the greatness that will be necessary if it is a matter of ending a fight that has become hopeless." On the drive to Germany by car, von Kluge took poison in the form of Potassium cyanide and died near Verdun.

He was buried with military honors on September 1, 1944, near the town of Böhne , in the Brandenburg province , in the immediate vicinity of the mausoleum of the von Briest and von Briesen families . No political dignitaries were present at the funeral service. He was buried in the ground at his request.

After the war ended, strangers removed the coffin with the body from the crypt. It is not known who initiated this or where the body was taken.

family

Kluge married Mathilde von Briesen (1885–1965) in 1907. The couple had three children: Günther, Ester and Marie Louise. 1936 was von Kluge as commanding general of the VI. Army Corps stationed in Munster; his wife and younger daughter were also there at the time. Kluge and his family lived in the village of Böhne from 1930 until his death. His wife Mathilde inherited the Böhner estate from her uncle Robert von Briesen .

His brother Wolfgang von Kluge (1892–1976) achieved the rank of lieutenant general in the Wehrmacht .

Awards (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : Günther von Kluge  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 318.
  2. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites . Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0
  3. ↑ Eberhard von Breitenbuch: Memories of a reserve officer 1939–1945 . Pp. 210-212
  4. ↑ Eberhard von Breitenbuch: Memories of a reserve officer 1939–1945 . Pp. 86-87.
  5. ↑ Philipp von Boeselager reports: “Kluge was initiated into the assassination attempt on Hitler planned on March 13, 1943 . He agreed in principle. Only when it was certain that [sic!] Himmler would not come did von Kluge prohibit the assassination attempt. He feared a civil war between the army and the SS if Himmler stayed alive. ”( Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager : The Resistance in the Army Group Middle . Contributions to the Resistance 1933–1945, Issue 40, German Resistance Memorial Center , Berlin 1990, p. 18 )
  6. ^ Gene Mueller: Field Marshal General Günther von Kluge . In: G. Ueberschär (Ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2011, p. 135.
  7. ↑ Also on the following orders Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union 1941/42 , Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57982-6 , p. 639.
predecessor Office successor
Gerd von Rundstedt Commander in Chief West Walter Model
personal data
SURNAME Kluge, Günther von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kluge, Hans Günther von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently Field Marshal General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH August 19, 1944
Place of death at Metz