Charles of Roques

Karl von Roques as a defendant in the Nuremberg Trials (1947)

Karl von Roques (born May 7, 1880 in Frankfurt am Main , † December 24, 1949 in Nuremberg ) was a German officer , most recently a general of the infantry in World War II . During the Second World War he was in command of the Rear Army Area of Army Group South from mid-March to the end of October 1941 . After the end of the war he was sentenced in the OKW trial for shootings and other crimes in his command area to a prison term of twenty years. He died shortly after he was released from prison due to illness.

family

Karl Jerome Christian Georg Kurt von Roques came from a Huguenot noble family. The ancestors of Roques fled from persecution under Louis XIV from 1685 after the Edict of Fontainebleau . In Kurhessen, the male members were initially mainly civil servants and later officers. In the 19th century there were six officers in the family, including grandfather and father. At the time of Karl's birth, his father Theodor was a captain and company commander in the 1st Kurhessian Infantry Regiment No. 81 . His father rose to the rank of major general . His mother Hedwig was born from Tallen-Wilczewska. Up until his Abitur, Karl von Roques changed residence seven times because his father was transferred. Roques graduated from the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Kassel on March 7, 1899 . His first marriage was in May 1905 with Caroline (called Lilly) von Apell, who died in February 1935. In September 1936 he married Marie Gertrud Keib, divorced Hellwig. This had been a member of the NSDAP since February 1932 , which Karl von Roques never became.

Karl von Roques is the cousin of Franz von Roques , who is three years his senior , and later also General of the Infantry and Commander of the Rear Army Area .

Military service until the First World War

Karl von Roques occurred only two days after the High School on March 9, 1899 as a cadet in the Infantry Regiment "Wittich" (3 Kurhessisches) No. 83 of the Prussian army in Kassel one. He was promoted to ensign on October 17, 1899 . Roques was promoted to lieutenant on August 18, 1900 , with the patent dated January 30, 1900. On October 1, 1908, he was assigned to the Prussian War Academy in Berlin for three years . This laid the foundation for a rise to the higher ranks of the military, since in 1909, for example, only 480 officers were assigned to the military academy. On October 18, 1909, he was promoted to first lieutenant at the military academy . He then served as a battalion adjutant in his regiment. On April 1, 1912 he became the General Staff training in the General Staff ordered to Berlin. He was promoted to captain on April 1, 1914 with the Great General Staff.

First World War

With the beginning of the First World War he was transferred to the staff of the VIII Reserve Corps . With this he took part in the western campaign. In 1915 he was employed in the staff of the 8th Replacement Division . In the autumn of 1916 he was then used as the first general staff officer (Ia) in the 215th Infantry Division . These two divisions were also deployed on the western front, more precisely between the Maas and Marne or in the Champagne region. From February 1917 he was employed in the War Ministry in Berlin due to illness . In the War Office of the War Ministry he was busy procuring raw materials and armaments. He was promoted to major on May 18, 1918 . During the war he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd and 1st class. He received numerous other medals.

Between the wars

After the war he was accepted into the Reichswehr . Like only 4,000 other officers, he was selected from around 34,000 officers of the old army. He remained employed in the Ministry in Berlin, now known as the Reichswehr Ministry. In the army training department he worked on training guidelines for the Reichswehr. On October 1, 1921, he was transferred to the staff of the 2nd Division in Stettin as a general staff officer, where he was responsible for training the assistant leaders. The leadership assistant training was a camouflaged training of general staff officers, as this was forbidden according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty . On October 1, 1923, he was then commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 13th (Württemberg) Infantry Regiment in Ludwigsburg . Shortly afterwards, Roques and his battalion were used against supporters of the KPD in Saxony. In his memories of the war he mentions the conquest of Plauen . Details about this mission do not seem to be known. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on August 1, 1924 and transferred to the staff of the 13th Infantry Regiment on February 1, 1927. On April 1, 1927 he was transferred as Ia to Group Command 2 in Kassel . On February 1, 1928, he was promoted to colonel . On April 1, 1929, he was transferred to the staff of the 16th Infantry Regiment in Oldenburg . On October 1, 1929, he was appointed commander of the 16th Infantry Regiment. On May 1, 1931, he was promoted to major general. Roques was appointed Infantry Leader I in Allenstein on October 1, 1931 . Since there were only a few posts for higher officers in the Reichswehr, Roques, like most major generals, was asked to submit his departure. When he retired from the army on January 31, 1933, he was given the character of lieutenant general .

On August 1, 1934, Roques was appointed Vice President and Chief of Staff of the Reich Air Protection Association (RLB). The RLB was subordinate to the Reich Aviation Ministry and was responsible for civil air protection in the Reich. It had five million members in 1933 and increased the number to 15 million by 1939. On April 30, 1936 Roques was then appointed President of the Reich Air Protection Association. On October 1, 1938, he was promoted to lieutenant general and served in the air force . On June 1, 1939 he was promoted to General z. b. V. appointed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force Hermann Göring and in the Reich Ministry of Aviation. When he retired from active service in the Air Force on June 30, 1939, Roques was given the status of General of the Flak Artillery . After saying goodbye, Roques complained to the Air Force Personnel Office that he had neither received a letter nor a hand-signed picture of Adolf Hitler . Furthermore, he could not have deregistered from Goering and the press would not have reported about his departure either. The Air Force Personnel Office refused his letter. After the war, Roques claimed in the OKW trial that he had advocated the participation of Jews in air raid drills and was therefore released. According to the judges, he could not conclusively substantiate his claim.

Second World War

On December 1, 1939, he was reactivated after 1936 and appointed commander of the 143rd Reserve Division to be newly established . In May 1940 he gave up command of the division again. In mid-May 1940 he was promoted to General z. b. V. III appointed. He was responsible for training the state rifle battalions stationed in Belgium and northern France. From March 15, 1941, shortly before the start of the attack on the Soviet Union , until the end of October 1941 he was in command of the Rear Army Area ("Berück") 103 in Army Group South under General Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt . On July 1, 1941, he was promoted to General of the Infantry.

He perceived the Jewish population in his command area as a security threat. On August 16, 1941, Roques ordered in the rear Army Area South: “Unless the perpetrator can be identified, acts of sabotage are to be charged not to the Ukrainians but to the Jews and Russians ; therefore reprisals are to be used against them. ”In this way he made Jews and Russians the“ scapegoats ”for all acts of sabotage in Ukraine. It was important to him that the murders and massacres of Jews, which he advocated, should be carried out by police and SS units, not by members of the Wehrmacht .

When massacre Kamenetz-Podolsk from 26 to 28 August 1941, a significant role played by Roques. Knowing that the Reichskommissariat Ukraine would be established on September 1st, he wanted to hand over a “pacified” area free of Jews to the future civil administration. So he agreed very quickly with the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Russia South, Friedrich Jeckeln , that these had to be eliminated: “Whether it was Jeckeln who v. Roques proposed the murder or vice versa ”, so the resume of the historian Hasenclever,“ can no longer be traced ”. As a result, 23,600 Jews were murdered under Jeckeln's supervision by his “action staff” and the 320 police battalion during these three days .

In an order issued on September 1, 1941, von Roques prohibited confiscation, looting and execution by soldiers. He made it clear that these prohibitions also had to be observed against Jews: “Any unauthorized shooting of country residents, including Jews, by individual soldiers as well as participation in execution measures by the SS police forces are therefore to be punished as disobedience, at least disciplinary, unless judicial Intervention is necessary ". According to the historian Johannes Hürter , his motivation for these disciplinary threats was that, as a commander concerned about the “male discipline ” of the troops, he wanted to prevent the spontaneous “co-murder” of Wehrmacht soldiers and leave them to the SS. A “wilderness of the troops” through corresponding unauthorized actions by soldiers would have attacked his authority as commander and would have appeared to be a weak leadership.

Roques quickly agreed to work with the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Friedrich Jeckeln and supported Einsatzgruppen C and D in their murders against Jews, Gypsies and other people. Whether Karl von Roques was in command in Kiev at the time of the massacre in the Babyn Yar ravine near Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941, could not be clearly established in the 1949 OKW trial. Roques claimed there that he had no authority in this, the largest single massacre in World War II, with more than 34,000 victims, Jewish men, women and children. He was also not allowed to enter Kiev and had no information about the massacre. According to his biographer, the historian Jörn Hasenclever, it is unclear whether Roques was in command of Kiev at the time, as the command structures in Kiev were very confused at the end of September and were characterized by a veritable “conflict of competence”. But Roques knew "firsthand what was happening in Kiev." He had sent his chief of staff to Kiev. Parts of the 454th Security Division under his command were also located there. She informed him very carefully about the mass murder in general and in detail, for example that women and children had also been killed and that all victims had to remove their jewelry and clothing before the execution. In addition, Roques had announced in a report to the head of the war administration department in the office of the Quartermaster General : “Major measures against undesirable parts of the population” would “prove necessary”.

The end of October 1941 in the Roques Führerreserve the OKH added. On February 14, 1942, he was awarded the German Silver Cross for his services in the rearward army area . On June 1, 1942 he was appointed commander of the rear army area ("Korück") in the area of ​​Army Group South. After the division of Army Group South into Army Groups A and B, on July 20, 1942, he was appointed Commanding General of the Security Forces and Commander of the Rear Army Area of Army Group A. On January 1, 1943, like some other senior officers, he was transferred from the division commander up on the Eastern Front to the Fuehrer's reserve. As part of the “Winter Resistance” campaign, the Army Personnel Office transferred those generals “who are unlikely to be able to cope with the high demands of the Russian winter” to the Führer reserve. On March 31, 1943, Roques was retired from service. After a vacation he traveled to Warsaw in August 1943 as a representative of the DRK . What exactly his tasks were seems to be unclear. After a few weeks he returned to the Reich. After his apartment in Berlin was destroyed in a bomb attack, he moved to Oberurff in Northern Hesse.

After the end of the war

At the beginning of 1946 Roques submitted an application to the district administration for poor relief. In October 1947 he and his cousin Franz von Roques were invited to Nuremberg to testify . This involved the preparation of the OKW process , one of the twelve Nuremberg follow -up processes . Karl von Roques was indicted on February 5, 1948 as one of 14 generals. Three of the defendants in the OKW trial were members of the OKW, the other army and army group commanders in chief.

The focus of the OKW trial was on war crimes and crimes against humanity, in particular the criminal orders of the Wehrmacht leadership, their transmission and compliance, which had led to a large number of outrageous war crimes. In court, Roques's defense lawyer tried to prove that Karl von Roques was free from personal guilt. He would have had no knowledge of shootings and other crimes in his command area. The defense tried to prove when Roques was absent due to vacation and at what point he had no authority over certain associations whose reports were used for the prosecution. On the other hand, Roques had to admit that the SS had personally informed him about the shootings of Jews. On October 28, 1948, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. This was the second highest judgment in the process there. His cousin Franz von Roques, supported by the two large churches, campaigned for a petition for clemency. In May 1949 he was transferred from the war criminals prison No. 1 in Landsberg am Lech to a hospital in Nuremberg, because he a. a. to sclerosis suffered. Two operations were also unsuccessful. He died on December 24, 1949, shortly after he was released from prison due to illness. Roques was the only Rear Area Commanding Officer ever charged.

literature

• Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union: The commanders of the rear military areas 1941-1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010. ISBN 978-3-506-76709-7 . (Text also digitized and put online. [1] )
• Mitcham, Samuel W., Jr. (2007). German Order of Battle. Volume One: 1st - 290th Infantry Divisions in WWII. PA; United States of America: Stackpole Books. P. 193, ISBN 978-0-8117-3416-5 .

Web links

• Karl von Roques with the Infantry Regiment-16 on a private website about the military history of Bremen. (Career, awards, photo)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jörn Hasenclever: The commanders of the rear army areas and the murder of the Soviet Jews . In: Timm C. Richter (editor): "War and crime: situation and intention / case studies". Meidenbauer, Munich 2006. ISBN 3-89975-080-2 , p. 216.
2. ↑ Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 109.
3. ↑ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union: The Commanders of the Rear Army Areas 1941–1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 103.
4. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 542
5. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , 2nd edition Fischer. Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 507.
6. ↑ Jörn Hasenclever: The commanders of the rear army areas and the murder of the Soviet Jews . In: Timm C. Richter (ed.): War and crime. Situation and intention. Case studies. Martin Meidenbauer, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-89975-080-5 , pp. 207–218, here p. 211.
7. ↑ Jörn Hasenclever: The commanders of the rear army areas and the murder of the Soviet Jews . In: Timm C. Richter (Ed.): War and crime. Situation and intention. Case studies. Martin Meidenbauer, Munich 2006, p. 211 ff.
8. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, pp. 529-532, quotation p. 531.
9. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 525.
10. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-58341-0 , p. 569; Hürter refers here to corresponding orders from Roques from July 29th. and September 1, 1941.
11. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 526.
12. ^ Jörn Hasenclever: Wehrmacht and occupation policy in the Soviet Union. The commanders of the rear army areas 1941–1943 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, p. 534f.
13. ↑ Klaus D. Patzwall , Veit Scherzer : The German Cross 1941-1945, history and owner. Volume II. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2001, ISBN 3-931533-45-X , p. 554.