Johannes Fink (General)

Johannes Fink (born March 28, 1895 in Pfullingen ; † June 1, 1981 ibid) was a German officer , most recently General der Flieger in World War II .

Military background

Fink joined the 9th Württemberg Infantry Regiment No. 127 on June 30, 1914 as an officer candidate . He was deployed with the regiment on the Western Front at the outbreak of World War I and was wounded in September 1914. After a stay in a hospital, he was appointed ensign on October 30 and promoted to lieutenant on December 24, 1914 . From April 4, 1915, he returned to the front as platoon leader in his old regiment and became company commander on July 18, 1915 . On September 19, 1915, Fink was appointed battalion adjutant. Since January 29, 1918 he was employed as a regimental adjutant and as such was promoted to first lieutenant on October 18, 1918 .

In the Reichswehr he had various uses a. a. as an intelligence officer in the 13th Infantry Regiment, before he was trained as a pilot from 1926 to 1931 and then accepted into the Air Force in the Wehrmacht .

At the beginning of the war in 1939, Fink was a colonel and commodore of Kampfgeschwader 2 . On October 1, 1940, he became major general and moved to the Air Force High Command as General of the Fighter Aviators . Promoted to Lieutenant General on October 1, 1942 , Fink took over command of the 2nd Air Division in November. On April 1, 1944, he became General der Flieger , after he had been appointed Commanding General of the Air Force in Greece on February 10, 1944 . From December 1944 to the beginning of February 1945, Fink was in command of the Second Air Corps and, for a few days, was also Commander-in-Chief of Air Fleet 1 .

Fink was in the Führerreserve when he was taken prisoner of war by the French on April 21, 1945 near Heggbach / Baden . The French transferred him to the English, so that from April 30, 1945 , he was imprisoned in the English general camp at Trent Park . In 1948 he was released.

See also

• Air War in World War II

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the Württemberg Military Merit Order on January 4, 1918
• Wound badge (1918) in black
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 20, 1940
• German cross in gold on October 1, 1944

literature

• Sönke Neitzel : bugged - German generals in British captivity 1942–1945 . Propylaen, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-549-07261-9 (edition of intercepted conversations in the prisoner of war camp (selection))

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 147.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 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. 308.