Rolf Carls

Rolf Hans Wilhelm Karl Carls , baptized as Rolf Carl Wilhelm Hans Carls (born May 29, 1885 in Rostock , † April 24, 1945 in Bad Oldesloe ) was a German general admiral in World War II and district administrator of the Stormarn district .

Life

Rolf Carls was born as the son of Lieutenant Friedrich Wilhelm Anton Carls and his wife Martha Victoria Wilhelmine Anna Sophie, geb. Pogge, born and baptized on July 18, 1885 in the Rostock garrison community.

Carl went on 1 April 1903 as a midshipman in the Imperial Navy and received his training on board the cruiser frigate stone . From 1905 he was assigned to the cruiser squadron in East Asia , where he was promoted to lieutenant on September 28, 1906 , and served on the great cruiser Fürst Bismarck and the torpedo boat Taku until 1907 . After his return to Germany in October 1907, he was employed on various ships before he was assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron in 1914. At the beginning of the First World War , Carls initially served as a lieutenant captain on the small cruiser Breslau . With this ship he was on 7 August 1914 at the breakthrough to the Dardanelles involved. After the cruiser was handed over to the Ottoman Navy, Carls stayed on board the cruiser, which was now called Midilli . He acted as the first artillery officer. For his participation in ventures in the Black Sea , Carls was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross , the Iron Crescent , the Imtiyaz Medal in silver with saber and the Osmanje Order of the IV class. In mid-January 1917, he transferred back to Germany and graduated from 15 April 1917, training as a submarine - commander . He received his first own command with the school boat U 9 on March 31, 1918, before he took over the U 124 on July 21, 1918 and thus experienced the end of the war .

Carls joined the Loewenfeld Navy Brigade as a company commander and battalion commander in April 1919 and was accepted into the Reichsmarine in 1922 . On March 18, 1927, he switched to naval management and was initially a department head in the fleet department. In October 1928 he was appointed head of the training department and on October 1, 1930, chief of staff. Carls held this position until he was appointed commander of the Hessen liner on September 27, 1932. From October 3, 1933 he was Chief of Staff of the Fleet and from September 29, 1934 commander of the ships of the line. He kept this position even after being renamed Commander of the Ironclad Ships until November 24, 1936. At the same time he acted until September 1937 as commander of the German naval forces off Spain on the occasion of the Spanish Civil War . At the end of December 1936 he was appointed fleet commander and took over the naval station of the Baltic Sea as commanding admiral on November 1, 1938 . On October 31, 1939, Carls succeeded Conrad Albrecht as Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Group Command East. This authority was relocated from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven in September 1940 and renamed Marinegruppenkommando Nord.

As part of the Weser Exercise company , the occupation of Denmark and Norway , Carls was responsible for the preparations for the Norwegian naval operation as head of the operational command of the Marine Group Command West. For this he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 14, 1940 . Since August 1940 he was also entrusted with the operational management of the German naval forces in the German Bight , Denmark and Norway. In the autumn of 1941, the units under his control took part in the conquest of the Baltic Islands at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa , the attack on the Soviet Union.

When the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder , took his leave in early 1943 after a collision with Hitler , he proposed Carls and the Commander of the Submarines , Admiral Dönitz , as candidates for his successor. Hitler opted for the younger and, in his view, more energetic Donitz. As a result, in early March 1943, Carls was z. b. V. of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and honorably discharged from active service on May 31, 1943.

Local officials and death

Once adopted, Carl was still in May 1943 as Acting District Administrator of the district Stormarn appointed. His official seat was initially in Hamburg-Wandsbek , but had to be relocated to Bad Oldesloe after the devastating air raids on Hamburg in the summer of 1943 ( Operation Gomorrah ) . The district administration moved into the building of the vocational school in Königstrasse. Less than two weeks before the end of the war, Bad Oldesloe was reduced to rubble by 300 Allied bombers on April 24, 1945 . Among the more than 700 dead (the vast majority civilians, including many refugees) was District Administrator Carls, who died with 29 other people in the basement of the school. His grave is in the Kiel North Cemetery .

Orders and decorations

• Silesian eagle II and I level
• Spanish cross with swords in gold
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• German cross in gold on February 28, 1943
• Freedom Cross 1st Class with Star and Swords
• Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy
• Hungarian Order of Merit 1st Class
• Mentioned in the Wehrmacht report on April 10, 1940

literature

• Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 1: A-G. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1988, ISBN 3-7648-1499-3 , pp. 205-206.
• Manfred Dörr: The knight's cross bearers of the surface forces of the navy. Volume 1: A-K. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1995, ISBN 3-7648-2453-0 , pp. 116-121.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rostock church book (garrison), birth and baptism entry No. 13/1885.
2. ^ Klaus Wolf: Gallipoli 1915. The German-Turkish military alliance in the First World War. Report Verlag, Sulzbach / Ts. and Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-932385-29-2 , p. 238.
3. ↑ Michael Salewski: The Germans and the Sea. Studies on the naval history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-515-07319-1 , pp. 310-318.
4. ↑ See e.g. B. http://www.kreis-stormarn.de/aktuelles/pressemeldung/show_entry.html?id=122 . In literature and on the Internet, April 15 is also often mentioned as the date of death; However, it is undisputed that the heavy air raid on Bad Oldesloe did not take place until April 24th.

Web links

• Literature about Rolf Carls in the state bibliography MV