Georg von Küchler

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Georg von Küchler (August 1943)

Georg von Küchler (born May 30, 1881 at Philippsruhe Castle near Hanau , † May 25, 1968 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ) was a German field marshal and during the Second World War commander in chief of armies and army groups and knight of honor of the Order of St. John .

In April 1949 he was sentenced to a long prison term in the OKW trial in Nuremberg for war crimes and released early in 1953.

Life

origin

His parents were the Grand Ducal Hessian colonel , wing adjutant and court marshal Karl von Küchler (1831–1922) and his wife Marie, born von Scholten (1851–1924), a daughter of the Prussian lieutenant general Wilhelm von Scholten (1797–1868).

Empire and First World War

After graduating from Ludwig-Georg-Gymnasium in Darmstadt, Küchler joined the 1st Grand Ducal Hessian Field Artillery Regiment No. 25 of the Prussian Army in 1900 . In 1901 he was promoted to lieutenant and after several years of service at the military riding school in Hanover , he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1910 . After attending the War Academy , Küchler was transferred to the Great General Staff in Berlin in early 1914 .

During the First World War , Küchler was employed as battery chief and promoted to captain . He was later transferred to the General Staff and at the end of the war he was appointed First General Staff Officer (Ia) of the 206th Infantry Division and the 9th Reserve Division . Küchler received u. a. both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords.

Weimar Republic

After the war in the west had ended, Küchler became a general staff officer of the "Kurland" brigade and in this function took part in the emerging battles in the Baltic States.

In the Reichswehr , Küchler was transferred to the 1st Army Corps. After a brief activity in the army training department of the Reichswehr Ministry in 1920, Küchler was employed in various training areas up to the 1930s. During this time he was in 1923 for Major , 1929 to lieutenant colonel and in 1931 Colonel promoted.

On October 1, 1932, Küchler was appointed Artillery Leader I in East Prussia .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

After promotion to major general on April 1, 1934, he was appointed inspector of war schools the following year. On December 1, 1935 (meanwhile the Reichswehr had become the Wehrmacht ) he was promoted to lieutenant general.

Prior to April 1, 1937 as a general of artillery to the commanding general of the First Army Corps was appointed Kuchler was six months Vice President of the Reich Court Martial . The 1st Army Corps had its seat in Königsberg .

In March 1939, German soldiers under Küchler's orders entered Memelland for the first time after the end of the First World War , after it had fallen to the German Reich under a German-Lithuanian State Treaty .

Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb (standing on the right) with Colonel General Küchler (standing in the middle) at an advanced artillery observation post on the Eastern Front in October 1941

Second World War

With the beginning of the Second World War, Küchler became Commander-in-Chief of the 3rd Army . For the successful leadership of his troops he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross .

After Küchler ordered a memorial service for the former Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Werner Freiherr von Fritsch , who fell outside Warsaw on September 22, 1939 , and on this occasion uttered critical words about the circumstances under which Fritsch had lost his post at that time, he was promptly responded removed from office. At the intervention of Walther von Brauchitsch , however, he was soon entrusted with command of the 18th Army .

In the western campaign , Küchler's troops occupied the Netherlands ; July 19, 1940 he was appointed Colonel-General conveyed. Küchler, who was well informed about the crimes against humanity in occupied Poland , wrote in his war diary on August 20, 1940 :

“I emphasize the need to ensure that all soldiers in the army, especially the officers, reject any criticism of the struggle carried out in the General Government with the population, e. B. the treatment of the Polish minorities, the Jews and church matters. The ethnic final solution to this popular struggle, which has been raging on the eastern border for centuries, requires particularly strict measures. "

On June 22, 1941, he said in his staff that the campaign that had just begun was not the mere continuation of a struggle between Germanism and Slavism; on the contrary, the struggle between two world views, nationalism and Bolshevism, was imminent .

In the war against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 , Küchler commanded the 18th Army, which was part of the Army Group North . After General Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb's resignation as Commander-in-Chief , Küchler was given command of Army Group North on January 17, 1942, thereby assuming responsibility for the siege of Leningrad .

Küchler expressly welcomed the commissioner's order :

"If it becomes known that we will immediately bring the political commissioners and GPU people to a field court and judge, it is to be hoped that the Russian troops u. free the people themselves from this bondage. We want to use the remedy in any case. It saves us German blood and we are making rapid progress. "

On December 26, 1941, Küchler submitted or supported an application by the XXVIII. Army Corps to have around 230 patients in an institution in the former Makarevskaya Pustin monastery killed by task forces of the Security Police and the SD because of the risk of epidemics . In the Nuremberg General Trial he denied this and spoke of an error. In the similar Makarevskaja case, in which about 1200 patients ( insane ) in a large psychiatric institution were handed over to the task forces for killing in November 1941, later research revealed that he was jointly responsible.

On June 30, 1942, Küchler was appointed Field Marshal General . On August 21, 1943, he received the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . After a little more than two years in the post of Commander-in-Chief of Army Group North, he was relieved of his command by Hitler on January 29, 1944 (after a disagreement with Hitler ) and replaced by Walter Model . Around this time the Red Army made progress on the Leningrad Front (→ Leningrad-Novgorod Operation ).

Until the end of the war, Küchler was no longer employed.

post war period

Küchler was a member of the Operational History (German) Section of the Historical Division of the US Army in 1946 and 1947 . In his directive of March 7, 1947 for the field reports and treatises to be written in his area of ​​the Garmisch camp, the principle should apply that the presentation of historical truth should be combined with praise for one's own army:

“The German deeds are seen and determined from the German point of view and a memorial is set for our troops [...] The achievements of our troops are to be duly appreciated and highlighted. The truth must of course not be disregarded by this. "

However, working there did not protect him from prosecution, as he had hoped. As a defendant in the trial against the Wehrmacht High Command , Küchler was sentenced to 20 years in prison on April 14, 1949. The prison term was reduced to 12 years; In 1953 Küchler was released from the Landsberg war crimes prison .

Georg von Küchler was buried in the old cemetery in Darmstadt (grave site: IH 29).

family

He married Elisabeth von Enckevort (1888–1966) in Darmstadt in 1921, a daughter of the Prussian major general Eduard von Enckevort (1845–1924). The son Dieter (1926–1951) and daughter Sybille (* 1929), who married the diplomat Rudolf Hahn, emerged from the marriage.

literature

Web links

Commons : Georg von Küchler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  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. 641 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2nd edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 347 with reference to Nbg. Doc. NOKW – 1531.
  3. ↑ quoted from Johannes Hürter (2007): Hitler's Heerführer - The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42. P. 219.
  4. ↑ Speech of April 25, 1941, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv , the abbreviation in the original, according to Fritz Römer: "Criminal orders." The Wehrmacht and the commissioner's guidelines. In: insight. Bulletin of the Fritz Bauer Institute , No. 6, Fall 2011, pp. 32–39, ISSN  1868-4211 . There also the archive no. With several illustrations, latest ref.
  5. ↑ Johannes Hürter: The Wehrmacht before Leningrad , Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2001 issue 3, p. 435 ff. ( PDF ).
  6. ↑ Marcel Stein, Field Marshal General Walter Model. A reassessment. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2008, ISBN 3-7648-2312-7 , pp. 119-123.
  7. ↑ Bernd Wegner : Written victories. Franz Halder, the "Historical Division" and the reconstruction of the Second World War in the spirit of the German General Staff . In: Ernst Willi Hansen, Gerhard Schreiber, Bernd Wegner (eds.): Political change, organized violence and national security . Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-486-56063-8 , pp. 287-302, here p. 294.
  8. ↑ Bernd Wegner: Written victories. Franz Halder, the "Historical Division" and the reconstruction of the Second World War in the spirit of the German General Staff , p. 290.
personal data
SURNAME Küchler, Georg von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Field Marshal General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Philippsruhe Castle near Hanau
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1968
Place of death Garmisch-Partenkirchen