Oskar von Watter

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Oskar Walther Gerhard Julius Freiherr von Watter (born September 2, 1861 in Ludwigsburg , † August 23, 1939 in Berlin ) was a German army officer, most recently Lieutenant General of the Reichswehr .

Oskar von Watter (1919)

Life

Pre-war period

Watter's military career began with his appointment on April 14, 1879 as Second Lieutenant in the field artillery regiment "King Karl" (1st Württembergisches) No. 13 of the Württemberg Army in Ulm . With this regiment, after completing general staff training at the Prussian War Academy , he was promoted to Prime Lieutenant on June 16, 1888 and to captain on September 14, 1893 . He then served on the staff of the 31st Division in Strasbourg and from June 20, 1895 on the staff of the 26th Division (1st Royal Württembergische) in Stuttgart . In 1899 he was transferred to the field artillery shooting school in Jüterbog as a trainer . In 1901 he switched back to the general staff, now with the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps in Stuttgart. There he was promoted to major on May 18, 1901 . This was followed by troop service as a department commander in the field artillery regiment "Prince Regent Luitpold von Bayern" (2nd Württembergisches) No. 29 in Ludwigsburg, in the 2nd East Prussian field artillery regiment No. 52 in Königsberg and finally from 1907 to 1909 in the 1st Kurhessischen Field Artillery Regiment No. 11 in Fritzlar . With this regiment he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on December 19, 1907 . Since he had successfully campaigned for the construction of an army provisions office in Fritzlar, the city made him an honorary citizen in 1908 . On April 20, 1909, he was appointed commander of the 2nd Lorraine Field Artillery Regiment No. 34 in Metz . On January 27, 1911, he was promoted to colonel and on April 18, 1912, he was transferred to Posen as commander of the 10th field artillery brigade . In this position he was promoted to major general on October 1, 1913 .

First World War

Watter took part with his brigade in the association of the 10th Infantry Division in the first fighting in France. At the end of August 1914 he became the commander of the entire artillery of the 5th Army Corps . On March 1, 1915, he was appointed commander of the newly formed 54th Infantry Division , which he commanded until March 4, 1918. With this division he was first used in trench warfare in Champagne , then from July 23 to September 19, 1915 on the Eastern Front on Narew , Nyemen and Beresina . Then his division fought again on the Western Front , on the Aisne , in 1916/17 at Compiegne and Verdun and finally in Flanders , Champagne and in 1918 Lorraine . On November 6, 1917, Watter was promoted to Lieutenant General and awarded the Order of Pour le Mérite on December 23, 1917 . On March 5, 1918, he took over command of the XXVI as the successor to General Otto von Hügel . Reserve Corps , which he commanded until the end of the war. A few days before the end of the war, on November 3, 1918, he was awarded the oak leaves for the Pour le Mérite.

Weimar Republic

After the armistice, Watter led his troops back to the Kassel area for demobilization. From December 22, 1918, he was briefly in command of the 17th Army, and then from January 18, 1919, he became the commanding general of the VII Army Corps in Münster. As such, at the end of March 1919, he also took over command of all Westphalian free corps, which, as a common identifier, wore a green, white and black ribbon around the lower part of the epaulette. In the course of the reorganization of the old army into the Reichswehr , Watter became commander of Reichswehr Brigade 7 in Münster on October 1, 1919 and at the same time of the newly formed military district VI in Münster. In this post he played a key role in the bloody suppression of the strikes in the Ruhr area in 1919 and 1920.

Ruhr area strike 1919

The General Command of the VII. Corps had almost immediately after the war ended with the establishment of volunteer corps started from returning from the Western Front units. Among them was the Lichtschlag Freikorps , some 2,500 men , which Watter set out to march against the socialization movement in the Ruhr area at the beginning of February 1919 . After obtaining the consent of Gustav Noske beforehand , on February 11, 1919, he had the General Soldiers' Council for the Corps dissolved and its members arrested. When the Freikorps on 14./15. In February , when striking workers in Dorsten were attacked with great brutality , the situation worsened when supporters of the KPD and the USPD called a general strike in the Ruhr area . On February 16, the Freikorps moved out on his orders to carry out a pacification campaign against Hervest -Dorsten. The so-called February strike, followed by around half of the workforce in the Ruhr mining industry, was violently suppressed by Watters Freikorps in sometimes bloody clashes with the striking workers and ended on February 21. The action of the Freikorps earned him the name "Freikorps Manslaughter".

Bloody fights between workers and Freikorp troops in Witten on March 24th and 25th triggered a new wave of strikes. An open-ended general strike decided on March 30, 1919 was followed by around 160,000 miners on April 1 and by 307,000 strikers on April 10, which corresponds to three quarters of the workforce in the entire Ruhr coal mining industry. The authorities declared a state of siege and announced the use of military to end the strike. The SPD politician and later Prussian interior minister Carl Severing was assigned to General Watter as Reich and State Commissioner to ensure that military force was kept to a minimum. Severing's approach - with concessions, but also hard pressure, arrests of strike leaders and the granting of special rations for those willing to work - was successful, and the number of strikers steadily declined from April 14th. However, a renewed excess of violence by members of the Freikorps Lichtschlag, who shot at a gathering of strikers in the Mettmann district on April 15 , caused a setback when a strike conference subsequently decided to continue the strike. On April 24th, around a third of the workforce was still on strike; the strike was not finally over until May 2nd, 1919.

Kapp Putsch and Ruhr uprising in 1920

At the beginning of the Kapp Putsch on March 13, 1920 and after the call for a general strike by the press chief of the Reich Chancellery on behalf of the Reich President and the SPD ministers and parliamentary group, Severing and the Upper President of the Province of Westphalia , Bernhard Wuermeling , stood up clearly the side of the government. Watter put troops on the march, but refrained from making any clear statements against the putschists. After their entry, Watters Freikorps hoisted black-white-red flags, leaving no doubt about their sentiments. A meeting of the commanders in Military District VI held in Münster on the morning of March 13th avoided public support for the putschists, but Watter's statement to ensure "peace and order in the industrial area" was a clear sign of the in view of the strike calls to defend the republic Support the coup. Watter was not alone in this attitude, a whole series of local politicians and considerable parts of the higher civil service in the Ruhr area shared it.

From the general strike against the Kapp Putsch thereupon a general insurgency that developed in the Ruhr Ruhr Uprising , who and under his volunteer corps was directed against Watter. When Watter set up martial law on March 15, the so-called Red Ruhr Army was formed from armed workers against his associations within a very short time . The Freikorps were defeated in bloody skirmishes, and when the putsch had practically failed as a result of the nationwide strikes at the Reich level, Watter officially declared himself part of the constitutional government on March 16. Severing's call on March 21 to return to work after Kapps' defeat was ignored by the strikers: Opposition to the Freikorps and Watter played just as much a role as outrage over the coercive measures for which Severing was responsible. Since the Red Ruhr Army now ruled the entire Ruhr area, neither the Prussian nor the Reich government wanted to respond with full military commitment, but preferred a negotiated solution. However, the Bielefeld Agreement brokered by Severing on March 23 and 24 for this purpose proved to be unsuccessful. On the one hand, important groups such as the Red Ruhr Army, the KPD and the USPD were not invited or not adequately represented; on the other hand, General Watter and the military were insufficiently involved in the agreements and did not feel bound by them. An order from Watters dated March 22, 1920 illustrates the ruthlessness with which he allowed the fighting to be carried out:

“There is no negotiation. As long as a military operation is ongoing, it must not be affected by the objection of civilians loyal to the government, which is usually inclined to give in. [...] The enemy can be seen in every armed man. Unarmed masses have no business in the streets either. They have to be exploded by fire before they can reach the troops. "

- Oskar von Watter

Severing refused to replace Watters, which was also often called for from the ranks of the SPD, because there was no alternative to him and all officers in his military district had shown solidarity with him. Even General Hans von Seeckt , head of the troop office in Berlin and responsible for the unclear position of the military in the first days of the coup in the capital, demanded Watters to be replaced because he had protested against the Bielefeld Agreement. The main success of the Bielefeld Agreement was the withdrawal of moderate forces from the environment of the trade unions, the MSPD , the Democrats and the center of the Ruhr Army, because the Ruhr Army had distanced itself from the original goal of protecting the constitution .

The fighting continued, especially in Duisburg , and even Severing finally saw no alternative to invading troops into the Ruhr area. The Reich Cabinet under Chancellor Hermann Müller left the basis of the Bielefeld Agreement and issued an ultimatum to disarm the Ruhr Army. This was tightened by Watter on his own authority and without consulting Severing with regard to the weapons handover in such a way that it was technically impossible for the rebels to comply with the conditions even if they were willing to give up the resistance. The consequence of Watter's ultimatum was the proclamation of a general strike by the Essen Central Council, which around three-quarters of the miners in the area obeyed from March 29. On April 2, Watter had the Reichswehr and Freikorps march into the Ruhr area, where they put down the uprising with extreme brutality. The use of the troops in the civil war-like fighting was accompanied by mistreatment and often arbitrary shooting of prisoners and suspects with over a thousand dead. Although Reich President Friedrich Ebert had already banned the court martial and professional shootings on April 3rd , Watter gave the order to punish “illegal behavior” immediately on April 12th, when the uprising had already been crushed.

Dismissal and retirement

Oskar von Watter 1936

Watter was removed from his position on April 30, 1920 and put up for disposition and released from the Reichswehr on July 12, 1920. In 1934, after the National Socialists seized power , he had himself and the soldiers and free corps fighters killed in the fight against the workers in the Ruhr area in 1919/20 with the Ruhr Fighters Memorial set in Essen, which transfigured him as a hero and the suppression of the Ruhr uprising as " Struggle for survival against Bolshevism ”and“ forerunner of the national revolution ”of National Socialism stylized. He died a few days before the start of the Second World War and was buried in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin.

Awards and honors (incomplete)

Ruhr Warrior Memorial

Ruhr Warrior Memorial

On Watter's initiative, the so-called Ruhr Warrior Memorial was erected southeast of Haus Horst in Essen in 1934 , dedicated to the memory of the military, police, resident services and free corpse soldiers who were killed in the suppression of the Ruhr uprising and the earlier struggles of right-wing Freikorps against revolutionary and revolting workers in the Ruhr area were. The memorial was inaugurated on November 4, 1934 in the presence of Watter with a National Socialist mass march. The street that then led directly to the memorial was called General-von-Watter-Straße . The monument was declared a memorial in 1985 ; from 1989 there was an explanatory board on the square. After its destruction and theft in 2011, a redesigned information board was set up in November 2015, but it was also stolen after just under a year in October 2016.

literature

  • Heinrich August Winkler: From Revolution to Stabilization. Workers and labor movement in the Weimar Republic 1918 to 1924. JHW Dietz, Berlin 1985. ISBN 3-8012-0093-0 .
  • Hanns Möller: History of the knights of the order pour le mérite in the world war. Volume II: M-Z. Bernard & Graefe publishing house. Berlin 1935, pp. 469-471.
  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Publishing House. Bissendorf 2011. ISBN 3-7648-2586-3 . Pp. 495-497.
  • Rainer Pöppinghege: Republic in civil war. Kapp Putsch and counter-movement on Ruhr and Lippe in 1919/20 . Ardey-Verlag, Münster 2019 (= compact regional history , vol. 2). ISBN 978-3-87023-443-0 .

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Gustav Riebensahm: Infantry Regiment Prince Friedrich of the Netherlands (2nd Westphalian) No. 15 in World War 1914-18. Minden 1931.
  2. ↑ The military district comprised the Prussian provinces of Hanover and Westphalia and the states of Braunschweig , Bremen , Oldenburg , Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe .
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Niess: The Revolution of 1918/19 , Europa-Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-95890-074-5 , pp. 353-354.
  4. ↑ In the afternoon, the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) and the Working Group of Independent Salaried Employees' Unions (AfA) joined the call . The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) spoke out against the putsch, but initially asked the proletarians to wait before taking part in actions.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Niess: The Revolution of 1918/19 , Europa-Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-95890-074-5 , p. 426.
  6. ^ Günter Gleising: Kapp Putsch and March Revolution 1920. Volume I: Events and locations in Bochum and the surrounding area. (Series of publications on the anti-fascist history of Bochum, issue 10). 2nd, corrected edition, RuhrEcho Verlag, Bochum, March 2016, ISBN 978-3-931999-15-5 ( excerpt with pages 9-24 ), p. 15.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Niess: The Revolution of 1918/19 , Europa-Verlag 2017, ISBN 978-3-95890-074-5 , p. 426
  8. ↑ Quoted in: Frank Joachims: On the way to a democratic police. Gelsenkirchen police force 1918–1928. In: Stefan Goch (ed.): Municipal society and police. Contributions to the social history of the police in Gelsenkirchen. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2005, pp. 98–153 (section “Der Kapp-Putsch”, from p. 123). Taken from: Andreas Jordan: The Red Ruhr Army in the Ruhr War 1920. Online publication, July 2010. Accessed on August 29, 2016.
  9. ↑ Winkler: From revolution to stabilization. P. 331.
  10. ↑ General Walther Reinhardt , who in 1920 was the only member of the Reichswehr leadership to want to take military action against the putschists, then resigned from his position as head of the army command. Hans von Seeckt became his successor.
  11. ↑ Cover name for the general staff banned in the Versailles Peace Treaty .
  12. ^ Heinz Hürten: Reich President and Defense Policy. On the practice of personnel selection. In Eberhard Kolb (Ed.): Friedrich Ebert as President of the Reich: Administration and understanding of office. Oldenbourg, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-486-56107-3 , pp. 189-206 (200).
  13. ↑ Winkler: From revolution to stabilization. P. 330.
  14. ↑ Watter demanded the delivery of four heavy and ten light cannons, 200 machine guns, ten mine launchers, 20,000 rifles, 400 rounds of artillery ammunition, 300 rounds of mine throwing ammunition and 100,000 rounds of infantry ammunition by 11 a.m. on March 30th at the latest (files of the Reich Chancellery, Weimar Republic: Das Cabinet Müller I: March 27 to June 21, 1920, No. 2, cabinet meeting of March 29, 1920, Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard 1971, ISBN 3-7646-1558-3 , p. 5).
  15. ↑ a b c Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg Army Corps for 1914 , Ed .: War Ministry , Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1914, p. 69
  16. ↑ Otto von Moser : Die Württemberger im Weltkriege , 2nd expanded edition, Chr.Belser AG, Stuttgart 1928, p. 121
  17. ^ Württembergisches Kriegsministerium (Ed.): Königlich Württembergisches Militär-Verordnungsblatt. No. 4 of January 27, 1918. p. 23.
  18. ↑ Directions from the Hessian Justice Administration to the branch office (Building B) of the Fritzlar District Court , accessed in November 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Watter, Oskar von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Watter, Oskar Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lieutenant general
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludwigsburg
DATE OF DEATH August 23, 1939
Place of death Berlin