George from the ceiling

The title of this article is ambiguous. For other people with a similar name see George of the ceiling .

George von der Betten at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth (1937)

George Friedrich Kurt von der Betten (born March 6, 1898 in Bückeburg , † April 17, 1945 in Spremberg ) was a German officer .

Life

Empire and Weimar Republic

George von der Betten came from the Hanoverian aristocratic family von der 1995 , who settled in Saxony after the war of 1866. According to one source, he had roots in the Guelph nobility. His father Georg Wilhelm Fritz von der Betten (born November 29, 1857 in Stade , † October 23, 1928 in Hanover ) was temporarily the President of the Court Chamber of Bückeburg . In addition, he held the title of princely-Schaumburgisch-Lippe chamberlain. The mother Alexandrine (born April 18, 1860 in Hildesheim ) was born from Anderten. The parents' marriage, which was concluded on May 19, 1892 in Hanover, resulted in two older siblings besides George: Luise Lisette Hedwig Ida (born March 19, 1893 in Hanover) and Friedrich-Adolf Volkmar (born November 10, 1894 in Peine ).

Von derdecke joined the imperial army as a youth . On August 1, 1917, during the First World War , he received his officer's patent. On December 31, 1917, he was made a lieutenant . During the war von derdecke was awarded the Iron Cross II and I classes as well as the Friedrich August Cross II and I classes, the Braunschweig War Merit Cross II class and the Cross for Faithful Service .

After the war and the collapse of the German Empire , he was accepted into the Reichswehr . There von derdecke was first assigned to the 13th Cavalry Regiment . On April 1, 1925 von der blankets was promoted to first lieutenant . In the late 1920s and early 1930s he served as regimental adjutant of Cavalry Regiment No. 13.

National Socialism

Late January / early February 1933 from the ceiling during the personnel change the leadership of the Defense Ministry by the appointed on 30 January 1933 Hitler government appointed army adjutant of the Reichswehr minister. Von der Decken's office was one of five posts in the military leadership that the Hitler government had to fill again immediately after taking office in order to consolidate its position of power: the other posts were that of the Reichswehr Minister, that of the Head of the Ministerial Office in the Reichswehr Ministry, that of the Naval Adjutant of the Reichswehr Minister and that of the Air Force Adjutant to the Reichswehr Minister. Von der Deckens became the new chief and new Reichswehr Minister, General Werner von Blomberg , who was inclined to the National Socialists and replaced General Kurt von Schleicher , who had previously held the post of Reich Defense Minister and the Reich Chancellor (in the post of Head of the Ministerial Office, the pro National Socialist Colonel von Reichenau met the Schleicher supporter Ferdinand von Bredow . Hubert Freiherr von Wangenheim became the new naval adjutant and Karl Boehm-Tettelbach was appointed to the air force. With the replacement of the head of the Wehrmacht department in April 1933 and the replacement of the army chief in the spring of 1934, the reorganization of the leadership of the Reichswehr by the National Socialists was completed.

In the following five years, von derdecke played a key role in organizing the development of the National Socialist Wehrmacht , as one of the Blombergs' closest employees . In recognition of his position, which had become more important, he was promoted to captain on April 1, 1933.

On September 30, 1936 von der blankets was appointed first adjutant of Blombergs, who was entrusted with the coordination of the adjutants for the three branches of the armed forces. On October 1, 1936, he was promoted to major . With the fall of the Blombergs in the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis at the beginning of 1938, the line of the Reichswehr Ministry was also removed from the ceiling.

On August 1, 1938 von derdecke was transferred to the commandant of the Krad-Schützen Battalion No. 2, which he led until February 1, 1939. During the Second World War , von derdecke was used by Panzer Group IIa from May 15, 1941 to October 25, 1941. On January 1, 1942, he was promoted to colonel .

Georg von derdecke died on April 17th, shortly before the end of the war, in fighting. Wolfgang Paul quotes an eyewitness account of von der Decken's death, which suggests that he no longer wanted to live in view of the imminent defeat in the war and that he had consciously sought the “appropriate” death in combat: “Colonel von der Decken climbed onto the embankment and pointed erect, face without emotion, facing the enemy until he received the bullet through which he found the soldier's death and his peace with the world, which was none of his business. "

False report of the Deckens murder during the "Röhm Putsch"

After the wave of political cleansing by the National Socialists in the early summer of 1934 (" Röhm Putsch "), in the course of which numerous actual and alleged opponents were liquidated, von derdecke was also often referred to as one of the victims in the foreign press and in German exile literature for unexplained reasons Called the murder, from which he actually remained completely untouched. Since von derdecke often falsely attributed the position of an adjutant - or an "employee", "confidante" or an "office manager" - to Hitler's Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen and not his actual position as adjutant to the Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg it is likely that his name was inadvertently linked to another person by some observer of the events of June / July 1934 and then appeared as a "wandering error" in one list of the dead after another. This assumption is supported by the fact that several of Franz von Papen's employees, who worked as adjutants or in an adjutant-like position, were murdered and / or arrested - Papen's speech writer Edgar Jung and the head of the press department of Papen's law firm Herbert von Bose were murdered . Papen's adjutants Fritz Günther von Tschirschky and Friedrich Carl von Savigny and press assistant Walter Hummelsheim were arrested .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data according to: Genealogical manual of the nobility. Gräfliche Häuser A volume 1 , (= volume 2 of the complete series of genealogical handbooks of the nobility), 1952, p. 101.
2. ^ Bernhard Kroener: Colonel General Friedrich Fromm. Eine Biographie , 2005, p. 272.
3. ^ Friedrich Christian Schaumburg-Lippe: In the golden evening sun. From my diaries for the years 1933-1937 , 1971, p. 110. For the title of chamberlain, see the Genealogical Handbooks of the Nobility as above.
4. ↑ Ranking list 1932
5. ↑ Cuno Horkenbach: The German Empire from 1918 to today , 1932 [realiter 1933], p. 456.
6. ↑ Wolfgang Paul: The Homeland War, 1939 to 1945. 1980, p. 239: "Adjutants and their commanders fell out of favor."
7. ^ Wolfgang Paul: The final battle for Germany. 1976, p. 399.
8. ↑ For example, Otto Strasser : Die Deutsche Bartholomäusnacht , 1935, p. 123 (“one of Papen's confidants”); Maximilian Scheer Ed .: The German people accuse . Hitler's war against the peace fighters in Germany , 1936, p. 271 ("Blankets, Adjutant von Papens"); again Laika, Hamburg 2012 ISBN 9783942281201 . Robert William Seton-Watson: Britain and the Dictators. A Survey of Post-War British Policy , 1938, p. 225 ("von Bose and von der Betten, the two Chefs de Cabinet [sic!] Of Herr von Papen himself"); Maurice Rostand / Pierre Mille / Georges Imann: Les Oeuvres libres , 1938, p. 133 ("que ses plus intimes collaborateurs, Jung et von der Betten").
9. ↑ Even after the Second World War, von derdecke was mentioned as one of the murdered people in the literature. For example in: Norman Hepburn Baynes [Ed.]: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939 , 1969, p. 331 (“[one of Papen's] advisers and intimates”).