Konrad Krafft from Dellmensingen

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Krafft from Dellmensingen

Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (born November 24, 1862 in Laufen , † February 22, 1953 in Seeshaupt ) was a Bavarian general of the artillery . He is considered to be the founding father of the German mountain troops and was commander of the German Alpine Corps during the First World War .

Life

The son of a notary received his training in the cadet corps . As an ensign he joined the 4th field artillery regiment "König" of the Bavarian Army in Augsburg on August 6, 1881 and was promoted to second lieutenant on April 1, 1883 . From 1891 to 1894 Premierleutnant Krafft graduated from the Bavarian War Academy , which made him qualified for the General Staff. In 1895 he became adjutant of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade and in the following year he was assigned to the Central Office of the General Staff. On March 17, 1897, Krafft returned to Augsburg to his regular regiment and became the captain of the battery . On September 27, 1899, he joined the General Staff of the 2nd Division as an adjutant . From October 1, 1902, he was used again in the General Staff in Munich and in the following year he was assigned to the General Staff in Berlin as Bavarian representative for one year . Promoted to major on April 22, 1904 , he became department commander in the 9th Field Artillery Regiment in Landsberg am Lech on February 23, 1906 . On February 16, 1907 he became commander of the 11th Field Artillery Regiment in Würzburg and on July 7, 1907, Lieutenant Colonel . On October 16, 1908, he moved to the War Ministry , where he served as section chief. In the same year his son Leopold Krafft von Dellmensingen was born and on December 19, 1909 he was promoted to colonel . On May 25, 1911, Krafft was appointed commander of the 4th Field Artillery Brigade in Würzburg. On October 1, 1912, he rose to major general and chief of the army general staff and inspector of military training institutions.

First World War

When war broke out on August 2, 1914, he was appointed to the Western Front as Chief of the General Staff of the 6th Army under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria . In the autumn of 1914 he was involved in the battle of Lorraine , in the following race of the 6th Army to the sea and in the fighting at Arras . On May 19, 1915, he was promoted to lieutenant general and took over the German Alpine Corps , which was set up to aid Austria and the new theater of war in Italy.

After it was set up, it was in use in the Dolomites (Travenanzes, Tre Sassi, Sief, Col di Lana , Monte Piano , Sexten) and on the Carnic main ridge - before the state of war with Italy existed until autumn 1915 . Equipped for the actual mountain war, the Alpine Corps was only used for a relatively short time.

As early as April 1916, the Alpine Corps was used in the costly major battle of the Battle of Verdun . Relocated to the new Romanian theater of war in September 1916 , it advanced through Transylvania to Wallachia in the new mountain war . The success at the Red Tower Pass during the Battle of Sibiu made Krafft von Dellmensingen popular at the time. On March 7, 1917, Krafft von Dellmensingen handed over the Alpine Corps to Ludwig von Tutschek and became Chief of the General Staff of Duke Albrecht's Army Group in the Vosges.

After eleven Italian offensives in the Isonzo battles against Austria-Hungary, hundreds of thousands were killed. When General Ludendorff visited the front, Krafft von Dellmensingen urged massive German aid for the beleaguered Austrians. On September 9, 1917 he became Chief of Staff of the 14th Army under Otto von Below, which was newly established for this purpose . Krafft had found a previously quiet and comparatively little occupied section on the upper Isonzo , which was suitable for an attack. For the Battle of Karfreit 1,900 heavy artillery pieces and mortars were brought into position and 1,000 gas grenades were prepared for use by special troops . The new warfare agents blue cross and the highly poisonous green cross were supposed to paralyze the Italian positions by means of colored shooting . General Krafft von Dellmensingen was one of the commanding troop leaders during the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo . Between October 24 and 27, 1917, the German and Austro-Hungarian troops broke through the Italian positions at Karfreit, Flitsch and Tolmein and advanced to the Tagliamento river . This breakthrough went down in war history as the miracle of Good Freit . General Krafft von Dellmensingen was awarded the Grand Cross of the Military Max Joseph Order for this.

From February 1, 1918, Krafft headed the General Staff of the 17th Army in the Cambrai area . During the German spring offensive , the troops in this section could not achieve the expected targets. On April 8, 1918, he was promoted to general of the artillery , on April 19, he replaced Otto von Stetten as commanding general of the II Army Corps .

After the war, Krafft was put up for disposition on December 4, 1918 , and in retirement he became the contact point for forces hostile to the Republic in Bavaria. From January 1920 a secret group of conspirators was established; In the Bavarian Royal Party (BKP), plans for a monarchist overthrow matured. A military dictatorship should be established; Krafft von Dellmensingen should take executive power. These preparations for the takeover of the so-called fine cell Bayern were indeed suddenly interrupted when Kapp and Lüttwitz in March 1920 in Berlin staged a coup .

Maintenance of tradition

In the spring of 1937 the new barracks in Garmisch were named General-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne . On June 25, 1945, the US military government in Bavaria ordered that all streets, squares and buildings be renamed with Nazi-charged names. In Garmisch u. a. the names Ritter-von-Epp-Kaserne and Krafft-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne deleted. On July 9, 1975, this property was renamed Krafft-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne . On March 30, 1994 the 1st Mountain Division of the German Armed Forces moved from the Dellmensingen barracks in Garmisch to the Bayern barracks in Munich. The property was liquidated and the buildings were taken over by the US Artillery Barracks . There are parts of today the German-American George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies and the Bundeswehr - Gebirgsmusikkorps housed. On June 29, 2011, the bronze letters "Krafft-von-Dellmensingen-Kaserne" were removed from the entrance to the property.

Anti-Semitic and racist statements

Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen has made several statements in his notes about Jews and other groups or peoples. When he traveled to Belgrade in 1903, for example, he held fast to “racial figures and heads in much larger numbers than ours” and Serbian peasants showed him to be partly “racial”. Krafft's biographer Müller also notes: “If you compare Krafft's remarks about Jews in personal notes written before 1914/1918 with those made afterwards (and well after the Second World War), Hermann Rumschöttel's statement is also confirmed in his case. 'Such a flourishing anti-Semitism in post-war Bavaria could only have developed from strong buds from the pre-war years. One of the bearers of anti-Semitism was the Bavarian officer corps. ' - and Krafft one of his most prominent representatives! ”At the beginning of the Second World War, the real enemy for Krafft was so-called“ World Jewry ”, which now had“ its great war against its sworn enemies ”. For him it was "the war of the Jews against Germany" - "because all English warmongers are Jews or Jews of origin". According to Krafft, it was not “to avoid” the renewed “heavy struggle”, the “end (...) of which (...) cannot be foreseen until the question of all questions was resolved”, as the “war of extermination against leading world Judaism. "Even after the war ended, there was no reason for Krafft to change his point of view. Müller quotes him, who had just met liberated prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp:" In the morning the concentration camp convicts were raised in bright piles let go of the village. Some of them also quartered in the attic, and we had people from all over the world (... primarily Jews) ”. According to Thomas Müller, Krafft also represented National Socialist ideas after the war: “As far as the 'Jewish question' was concerned, until the end of his life he represented views that any Nazi party official could easily have expressed. He never understood the Holocaust in all of its dimensions, at best he suppressed it as something that Germans could not have done but had done anyway ... "

Honors

Works

  • The breakthrough on the Isonzo. Part 1: The Battle of Tolmein and Flitsch. (24 to 27 October 1917), 2nd edition, Stalling, Oldenburg et al. 1928. ( Battles of the World War . Edited and edited on behalf of and with the assistance of the Reichsarchiv. Vol. 12).
  • The Bavarian Book of the World War 1914–1918. A folk book. 2 volumes, Belser Verlagbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1930.
  • The breakthrough. Study based on the events of the World War 1914–1918. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, edition 1937. A total of 463 pages with 25 map sketches in 3 large leaflets in the appendix.

literature

  • Gunther Langes : Front in rock and ice. The world war in the high mountains. With a foreword by Count Viktor Dankl and an introduction by Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen. Bruckmann, Munich 1931 (recte: 1932).
  • Guido Burtscher: The German Alpine Corps under the leadership of General Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen. Teutsch, Bregenz 1939.
  • Vasja Klavora: Blue Cross. The Isonzo Front - Flitsch / Bovec. 1915-1917. Hermagoras et al., Klagenfurt et al. 1993, ISBN 3-85013-287-0 .
  • Thomas Müller : Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen (1862–1953). Portrait of a Bavarian officer. (= Materials on Bavarian State History. Volume 16), Commission for Bavarian State History , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7696-0416-4 .
  • Ludwig Hammermayer : A Bavarian soldier in the German Empire. Some considerations and notes on the study by Thomas Müller. In: Uta Lindgren (Ed.): Sine ira et studio. Military history studies in memory of Hans Schmidt. Lassleben, Kallmünz 2001, ISBN 3-7847-4207-6 . Pp. 187-202. ( Munich Historical Studies - Medieval History Department. Volume 7).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Othmar Hackl : The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck´sche publishing house bookstore. Munich 1989. ISBN 3-406-10490-8 . P. 499.
  2. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 211.
  3. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 218 f.
  4. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 506 f.
  5. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 554.
  6. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 556.
  7. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 567.
  8. ↑ Thomas Müller: Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , 2002, p. 574.
  9. ↑ Otto von Moser: Die Württemberger in the world wars. Chr.Belser AG, Stuttgart 1928, p. 109.
personal data
SURNAME Krafft von Dellmensingen, Konrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bavarian general of the artillery, founding father of the Bavarian mountain troops
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH To run
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1953
Place of death Seeshaupt