Peter from Butler

This article refers to the officer Peter von Butler. The diplomat of the same name can be found under Peter von Butler (diplomat) .

Peter Richard von Butler (born November 28, 1913 in Heldritt ; † September 25, 2010 there ) was a lieutenant general in the Bundeswehr .

Life

Reichswehr and Wehrmacht

He came from a noble family in Upper Franconia. His father was the chamberlain Carl von Butler (* 1876 in Meiningen).

Peter von Butler joined the Reichswehr in 1932 , where he still had to learn to fence with a lance, was trained as an officer and in 1934 was appointed lieutenant in the cavalry. As a Fahnenjunker he belonged to the 7th Reiter Regiment , from October 1937 to the Panzer Regiment 2. In April 1939 he was in this regiment as first lieutenant chief of the 5th company and was involved in the attack on Poland in September 1939, where he passed through a Polish grenade was injured in the right hand. In 1940 he served as First Ordonnanzoffizier (O1) in the General Staff of the XXI. Army Corps.

From January 6, 1941 to March 15, 1941 he attended the 4th General Staff Course in Berlin and was then transferred to the 6th Panzer Division , where he was deployed as the Division's Third General Staff Officer (Ic). Subsequently, he was from March 1942 as Second General Staff Officer (Ib) "Quartermaster" of the 10th Panzer Division . In October 1942 he was employed in the staff of the XXIV Panzer Corps , before Butler in July 1943 as first general staff officer (Ia) for the LVII. Panzer Corps was transferred. In November of the same year another assignment as Ia followed in the staff of the 14th Panzer Division . On April 1, 1944, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In September 1944, Butler was assigned to the organizational department of the Army General Staff. In the last months of the war he was a member of the Führer Reserve of the Army High Command, briefly commander of the 27th Panzer Regiment and subordinate to the P1 department of the Army Personnel Office . On April 20, 1945 he took over the post as Chief of the General Staff of the XX. Army corps under the command of General der Kavallerie Karl-Erik Köhler , which in turn was the 12th Army under the command of General der Panzertruppe Walther Wenck .

At the end of the Second World War , Butler was Colonel i. G. and after the surrender of the 12th Army in Stendal he became a prisoner of war. In 1947 he returned from captivity, took care of the family's agricultural property and worked in the paper industry.

armed forces

In 1956 Butler, like his brother Ruprecht, joined the Bundeswehr. He was one of the former Wehrmacht officers who supported the concept of Innereführung, wanted to bring a new style to the army and were not caught up in old thought patterns. He was appointed Brigadier General in 1958 and became German National Representative in the NATO High Command Europe. Subsequently, on October 1, 1962, he took command of the 29th Panzer Brigade in Sigmaringen . When that paratrooper battalion, to which the so-called Schleifer von Nagold (a soldier trafficker) belonged, was placed under his command, his address to the officers was short and meaningful: "Gentlemen, something like this will never happen again here."

On April 1, 1964, he was appointed major general and commander of the 12th Panzer Division in Tauberbischofsheim , which under his leadership moved to Veitshöchheim . (Where 41 years later his nephew Carl-Hubertus also became division commander.) After this assignment, he was appointed lieutenant general in October 1967 and moved to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Casteau near Mons as Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and Operations in Belgium. Most recently he was German military representative on the NATO military committee from 1970 to 1974 .

Private

Peter Richard von Butler came from a family whose military tradition dates back to 1170. He had two sisters and three brothers, two of whom died in World War II . He was Protestant and the father of three children, graduated from the humanistic high school Casimirianum in Coburg and studied economics. Peter Richard von Butler was the elder brother of Major General a. D. Ruprecht von Butler and the uncle of Lieutenant General a. D. Carl-Hubertus von Butler , the former commander of the Army Command , and Brigadier General Ruprecht Horst von Butler , the commander of the 37th Panzer Grenadier Brigade . His son Peter von Butler was a diplomat and ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Belgium .

family

He was married to Heinke Iven (born April 5, 1913) for 71 years, who died about a year after him. After the Second World War, the family fled from the Russian armed forces to their farm in Heldritt near Coburg , and the family property in the Soviet occupation zone was lost.

progeny

• Peter (1940–2014) ∞ Maria-Christina Pauline Sigrid Franziska, Countess von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg- Dönhoff
• Carl Joachim (* October 21, 1941; † February 24, 2006) ∞ Monika Renata Countess zu Castell-Castell (* December 20, 1943)
• Katharina (born March 14, 1944) ∞ James J. Delaney ( Ireland , born February 27, 1939)

Awards

Butler was a legal knight of the Order of St. John . On September 14, 1939, he received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and on March 9, 1943 the Iron Cross 1st Class. On July 26, 1944, he was awarded the German Cross in Gold. He was a bearer of the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

literature

• Joachim Käppner : The family of the generals. A German story. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8270-0708-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Süddeutsche Zeitung from 2/3 October 2010, p. 6.
2. ↑ Klaus D. Patzwall , Veit Scherzer : The German Cross 1941-1945. History and owner. Volume II. Publishing house Klaus D. Patzwall. Norderstedt 2001. ISBN 3-931533-45-X . P. 71.
3. ^ Advertisement in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 9, 2010.