Heinrich Kodré

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Heinrich Kodré (born August 8, 1899 in Vienna , † May 22, 1977 in Linz ) was an Austrian officer, knight's cross bearer and resistance fighter . As chief of the general staff in military district XVII, Vienna , he triggered the " Operation Valkyrie " on July 20, 1944 , massively exceeding his competencies , which was strictly reserved for the respective commander in the military district, but by no means a right of the chiefs of staff. Together with Captain Carl Szokoll and Colonel Rudolf Graf von Marogna-Redwitz , he then successfully carried out “Walküre”, which otherwise only succeeded in Paris .

Life

Heinrich Kodré was born in 1899 to Richard Kodré and his French wife Henriette Crochet. His father came from Trieste and was a department head in the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Nordbahn .

His uncle, Franz Kodré, was the director of the prison in Stein and was shot dead on April 6, 1945 by members of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS as part of an end- stage crime because he had allegedly unlawfully released several hundred political prisoners.

Education

After elementary school he attended the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna . Even in the lower grades, he had the desire officer to be . His father was transferred to Olomouc shortly before the start of the war ; Heinrich Kodré attended grammar school there up to sixth grade. After he had shot in the window of his director with a stone, he had to change to the grammar school in Mährisch Schönberg . His father then sent him to the military high school in Mährisch Weißkirchen , because he thought a stricter upbringing was appropriate. In autumn 1917 he was transferred to the infantry department of the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt . During the visit to the military academy, he continued his high school studies outside of the service and passed the Matura during the summer vacation of 1918 . At the end of the war , Kodré was initially unable to realize his wish to become a career officer.

In the Freikorps - law studies

Kodré didn't care whether he could take up the officer's profession in Austria or Germany. In the spring of 1919 he settled in Vienna for one of Freikorps existing army recruit because he was promised by the recruiters, and later in Germany professional officer will be able to. "The objectives of this company were completely unclear to me (and also very indifferent)" he wrote in 1971 about it.

The campaign in the Baltic states ended with the defeat of the Freikorps. Kodré was not accepted into the Reichswehr in the summer of 1920 , but dismissed with the rank of Fahnenjunker-Vice-Sergeant because of his Austrian citizenship .

Now Kodré began at the urging of his father, a jus -Studies in Graz, he also graduated. However, he had no intention of working as a lawyer.

Military career in Austria

In April 1924, Kodré joined the army . After completing the 2nd and 3rd year of the officers' school in Enns , he was appointed ensign in August 1927 at the age of 28. However, admission to the officers 'school was only a disadvantage, as its graduates could only achieve the rank of captain and Kodré was not admitted to the officers' academy as a full-time high school graduate and graduate of law studies. He was assigned to Jägerbataillon 1 in Eisenstadt and promoted to lieutenant on April 1, 1929.

Now the hitherto “apolitical” officer in the federal army of the corporate state under Army Minister Carl Vaugoin faced a very difficult career. He wrote about this time in 1971: “In my conception of my job as an officer, which was not significantly influenced by any political system, I rejected these political actions and refused to join any political union. The result was persecution, punitive transfers and ultimately disciplinary measures. "

Kodré only endured this pressure for a while; In 1935 he finally joined the NSDAP , which promptly opened up a career in the general staff.

As early as October 1936 he was accepted into the "Operative Course" of the "Higher Officer Courses" in Vienna. His course colleagues, who were all around ten years younger than Kodré, included Robert Bernardis as well as numerous officers who were to play an essential role in the Federal Army of the Second Republic, including Erwin Fussenegger , August Rüling, Paul Lube, Leo Waldmüller and Werner Vogl.

War Academy of the Wehrmacht

After Austria was annexed to the German Reich , Kodré was taken over by the German Wehrmacht . He completed the mandatory "retraining" in Landshut , where he was promoted to captain on June 1, 1938. On July 1, 1938, he was transferred to the War Academy in Berlin , where he completed general staff training.

War use - Awarded the Knight's Cross

Kodré's first assignment in World War II was at the command of the Eifel border troops as quartermaster . In April 1940 he was accepted into the General Staff . After the armistice with France he was entrusted with the organization of a supply base for the invasion of England .

Kodré did not want to remain in the utility service and applied for a transfer. He was assigned to the 123rd Infantry Regiment of the 50th Division as a battalion commander “for testing in troop service” . After conquering the "Hellas" fort of the " Metaxas Line " on April 7, 1941, Kodré was awarded the Knight's Cross and proposed for use in the General Staff . But he was only transferred after he had recovered from the wound he suffered in Bessarabia on July 12, 1941 .

Subsequently, Kodré was from March 15, 1942 First General Staff Officer (Ia) of the 305th Infantry Division of the LI. Army Corps . The third general staff officer of this corps (Ic) was his friend Robert Bernardis at the time . The order was: advance from Kharkov to Stalingrad . During the battle for the Stalingrad gun factory "Red Barricades" , Kodré was seriously wounded again; as the knight's cross should not fall into enemy hands, he was flown out of Stalingrad on November 21, 1942.

In Vienna

After recovering from the second wound, Kodré was appointed Deputy General Command of the XVII on January 17, 1943. Army corps transferred to Vienna. On February 26, 1943 he became Chief of Staff in the Vienna Military District XVII . On April 20, 1943, he was promoted to colonel in the general staff.

Participation in Valkyrie

As Carl Szokoll reported, from February 1944 Robert Bernardis went to Vienna regularly and visited his personal friend Heinrich Kodré. Bernardis thus had the people he trusted in the Vienna military district for the attempted coup.

The commander of the military district, General der Infanterie Schubert, took a cure in the summer of 1944. The General Army Office in Berlin sent the general of the armored troop Hans-Karl Freiherr von Esebeck to Vienna as a representative. Esebeck and Stauffenberg knew each other from their stationing in Wuppertal and from their joint deployment in Poland .

On July 20, 1944, around 6:20 p.m., long after work had ended, the first telex with the order to initiate the Valkyrie measures was received by the military district command. Kodré, who tellingly was still on duty and had already heard the radio news about the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler , noticed that it was signed by the long-retired Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben and not by the commander of the reserve army , General Friedrich Fromm . In Berlin, like the military district commander General Joachim von Kortzfleisch , he steadfastly refused to sign the orders. In Wehrmacht circles it was known, however, that Witzleben had long been decommissioned, but he hadn't given it any further thought, emphasized Kodré and expressly pointed out that he was complicit in the Walküre plans when he stated: “When I did the Reading telex, I thought of Bernardis (sic!) And wondered if it might not be one of the facts that he had described to me in his spirited manner. ”So Kodré was clearly privy to the plans of the conspirators through Bernardis. Nevertheless, bypassing Commander Esebeck, he immediately passed the keyword on to Captain Carl Szokoll to trigger “Valkyrie” in the entire military district, while he himself took care of the higher ranks and invited them to join the military district command. In doing so he succeeded in preventing the Higher SS and Police Leader Rudolf Querner from using his associations against the attempted coup. Querner didn't even look at the telex, but simply relied on Kodré's statements. Therefore he could not notice the wrong signature by Witzleben. The resulting passivity of the SS in the military district was an absolute prerequisite for the success of the coup. The weak "Walküre" alarm groups in Vienna - as well as in other military districts - would not have had a chance to carry out the "Operation Walküre" if the Waffen SS intervened. Esebeck subsequently approved the measures taken.

These "inconsistencies" in the Valkyrie triggering in Vienna soon led to the arrest of Kodré by the Gestapo . After solitary confinement in Vienna, he was transferred to a "camp in Fürstenberg in Mecklenburg " . From the court of honor in Berlin he was acquitted of the fact of complicity only for lack of evidence. Kodré was initially set free after the acquittal. He was arrested again in November 1944 and was in solitary confinement in the Vienna police prison until January 1945 .

In Mauthausen concentration camp

On January 3 or 4, 1945, Kodré was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp . At first he worked as a "political prisoner" in the laundry. In April he was classified as an "honorary prisoner" and housed with the other honorary prisoners in the camp brothel that had already been cleared . Around May 1, 1945, on the personal order of camp commandant Franz Ziereis , Kodré was transferred to arrest, because the SS would “ be leaving the camp in the next few days” and Kodré, as a high-ranking German officer, was in danger of “being killed by foreigners will " .

On the evening of May 5, 1945, at the request of Heinrich Dürmayer , the chairman of the International Committee, Kodré took over command of the armed prisoners in order to “prevent the SS or the Wehrmacht from returning to the camp and could possibly cause a massacre among the prisoners ” .

On May 6th at 3:30 am he handed over command to the Soviet major Andrei Pirogov. On May 15, 1945 Kodré left Mauthausen and went to Linz to his sister. The fact that he was not arrested by either the Soviets or the Americans, but remained at large, is one of the most striking evidence of his resistance activity.

After the war

Kodré's application for victims' welfare of April 6, 1946, in which he expressly acknowledges his resistance activities, was rejected because of his membership in the NSDAP. He first worked in the Lambach flax spinning mill in Linz. In 1955 he published a very critical series of articles on "Problems of the Federal Army" in the Upper Austrian News , in which he sharply criticized the party politics in the Army of the First Republic , which is why it was stopped by political interventions. The intended takeover in the new armed forces failed.

In 1958, Kodré was given a position as civil defense officer in the Ministry of the Interior.

In 1964 he retired. He died in Linz on May 22, 1977.

See also

literature

  • Karl Glaubauf : Colonel i. G. Heinrich Kodré - A Linz knight's cross bearer in the military resistance. In: DÖW yearbook 2002
  • Hans Maršálek: The history of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Documentation. 4th edition 2006, ISBN 3-7035-1235-0 .
  • Gerhard Jagschitz , Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.): Stein, April 6, 1945; The judgment of the People's Court of Vienna against those responsible for the massacre in the Stein prison , Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-901-142-24-X .
  • Evangelical Church A. u. HB in Austria (Hrsg.): Robert Bernardis, Austria's Stauffenberg in honor of the memory of his 100th birthday ; Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85073-314-4 (with a photo by Kodrés on page 39).
  • Karl Glaubauf, Stefanie Lahousen: Major General Erwin Lahousen, Edler von Vivremont. A Linz defense officer in the military resistance. LIT Verlag 2005, ISBN 9783825872595 (Photo Kodrés on page 19).
  • Karl-Reinhardt Trauner: With Stauffenberg against Hitler, Lieutenant Colonel i. G. Robert Bernardis (1908-1944) , Szentendre 2008, ISBN 978-963-06-4558-4 .
  • Otto Molden: The Call of Conscience: The Austrian Struggle for Freedom 1938–45 / Contributions to the History of the Austrian Resistance Movement , Vienna / Munich 1958.
  • Ludwig Jedlicka: July 20, 1944 in Austria , Vienna 1965. (Contains Kodrés report in the appendix, main scientific source.)
  • Red-White-Red Book : Justice for Austria! Representations, documents and evidence on the prehistory and history of the occupation of Austria (according to official sources), Vienna 1946.
  • The order under the skull . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1967 ( online - describes the course of July 20 in Vienna).

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Glaubauf: Colonel i. G. Heinrich Kodré ...; P.56.
  2. ↑ General Erwin Fussenegger (1908 to 1986). In: Troop Service 1/2004
  3. ↑ Friedrich Vogl: Resistance in Waffenrock , Europaverlag 1977, ISBN 978-3-203-50635-7 ; P. 76.
  4. ↑ Evangelical Church AuHB in Austria (ed.): Robert Bernardis, Austria Stauffenberg to honoring memory on the occasion of his 100th birth anniversary.
  5. ↑ Ludwig Jedlicka , Appendix p. 119, Kodrés report.
  6. ↑ Original formulation Glaubauf. It is not clear whether it was the men's camp in the Ravensbrück concentration camp .
  7. ^ Marsalek, p. 396.
  8. ↑ Main source of the first version of July 19, 2009. All passages and quotations that are not separately documented are taken from this work.
personal data
SURNAME Kodré, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian officer and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1977
Place of death Linz