Hans-Jürgen Stumpff

Hans-Jürgen Stumpff (center) with Hjalmar Siilasvuo

Hans-Jürgen Stumpff (born June 15, 1889 in Kolberg ; † March 9, 1968 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German officer (most recently Colonel General ), Chief of Staff of the Air Force and co-signer of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945 in Berlin. Karlshorst.

Life

Like his brother Horst Stumpff , Stumpff joined the Prussian grenadier regiment “Prince Carl of Prussia” (2nd Brandenburg) No. 12 on September 2, 1907 as a flag squire . On November 19, 1908, he was promoted to lieutenant . During the First World War he served mainly in general staff assignments; at the end of the war he was a captain . In the Weimar Republic, too, Stumpff served (with brief interruptions) as a general staff officer, most recently as department head in the Reichswehr Ministry .

On September 1, 1933, he moved to the Reich Ministry of Aviation as a lieutenant colonel , where he was initially head of the personnel office until 1937. From June 1, 1937 to January 31, 1939 he was Chief of the Air Force General Staff in the Reich Aviation Ministry. As such, he was significantly involved in building up the air force and was promoted to General of the Airmen in 1938 . From the beginning of 1939 to the beginning of 1940 he served as chief of the air force .

During the war, Stumpff briefly led Luftflotte 1 , was promoted to Colonel General on July 19, 1940 as Commander in Chief of Luftflotte 5 and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in September 1941. Until the end of 1943 he was in command of Air Fleet 5, which attacked the north of England and Scotland from Norway and later tried to interrupt the Allied supplies to Murmansk. From 1941, his air fleet was also used in the war against the Soviet Union . In January 1944 Stumpff became Luftwaffe commander in the middle (later renamed Luftflotte Reich ) and as such was responsible for the defense of Germany against the Allied bombing attacks .

Stumpff signed the surrender

On May 8, 1945, Stumpff was one of the signatories of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht in Berlin-Karlshorst, representing the wounded Commander in Chief of the Air Force, Ritter von Greim . In October 1947, he was released from British captivity after being acquitted in a war crimes trial.

In 1950 he came into contact with the “ Brotherhood ”, a right-wing underground organization founded by the Hamburg ex-Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann .

His daughter Renate Stumpff (1925–2011) married Karl-Günther von Hase , who later became director of ZDF , in 1945 by long-distance marriage and in 1949 by church .

His grave is in the Bad Godesberg Central Cemetery .

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Bavarian Order of Military Merit IV class with swords
• Friedrich Cross
• Hanseatic Cross Lübeck and Hamburg
• Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decoration
• Knight's Cross of the Bulgarian Military Order of Merit
• Wound badge (1918) in black
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Medal in memory of March 13, 1938
• Medal in memory of October 1, 1938 with a clasp "Prague Castle"
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on September 18, 1941
• Grand Cross of the Finnish Order of the White Rose with swords and breast star
• twice mentioned in the Wehrmacht report
• Pilot and observer badges in gold with diamonds

Web links

Commons : Hans-Jürgen Stumpff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Ralf Schumann: Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff. In: Mars - Yearbook for Defense Policy and Military Affairs 6 (2000), pp. 258–271.
• Short biography - project "Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries"

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d e f g} Hans-Jürgen Stumpff - Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries . In: Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries . March 9, 2018 ( ns-reichsministerien.de [accessed March 30, 2018]).
2. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 604, source BA N 1080/272.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin, p. 122.
4. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 734.