Walter White (General)

Walter Weiß (2nd from left)

Walter Weiß (born September 5, 1890 in Tilsit ; † December 21, 1967 in Aschaffenburg ) was a German colonel general in the Wehrmacht during World War II .

Life

family

Walter Weiß comes from a family of farmers and officers who immigrated to East Prussia at the end of the 18th century . He was the son of Rittmeister Richard Weiß and his wife Anna, née Reisch. Weiß had been married to Elisabeth, née Heyn, since 1918. He had two sons. Helmut, born in 1920, died as a child of the consequences of an accident. Born in 1922, Walter fell on June 24, 1941 the third day of Operation Barbarossa , the Infantry Regiment as a Lieutenant .

Military career

From 1897 to 1901 Walter Weiß attended a private school in Rosenberg . He then graduated from the Cadet Corps and in 1908 was transferred as an ensign to the Infantry Regiment "Hiller von Gärtringen" (4th Posensches) No. 59 of the Prussian Army in Deutsch-Eylau . He was trained at the Potsdam War School. In 1909 he was promoted to lieutenant. From 1914 white was with his regiment as adjutant in the III. Battalion in action in the First World War . He took part in the battle of Tannenberg and was wounded. During the war he was deployed as a troop leader and in staff positions in various theaters of war on the Eastern Front in Poland , Galicia , Russia and Southeast Europe . On July 24, 1915 he was promoted to lieutenant and on July 15, 1918 to captain .

After the end of the war he worked as a captain in the Eastern Border Guard and was accepted into the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic in 1919 . First he was deployed in Berlin in the Reichswehr Ministry. From 1919 to 1921, Weiß was a member of the German-Polish border setting commission in West Prussia and East Prussia. He then moved to the 2nd Infantry Regiment in Rastenburg as company commander of the 11th Battalion. From 1922 he was in charge of Defense District I in Königsberg. Instructions and the exchange of information were carried out by the Defense Department in the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin, which, for reasons of disguise, was run as the T3 statistical department of the TA Troops Office. Since 1920, the head of the defense was Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Gempp (1871–1947). The task of this department consisted of the intelligence investigation of the future enemy and his territory, the protection of German military facilities and the military economy against espionage activities and the monitoring of mail, telegram and radio traffic across the borders of Germany in the territory in question.

In the spring of 1924 Walter Weiß moved to the General Staff of the 1st Reichswehr Division, later as a company commander in Opole, Breslau, Münster and Berlin. On June 1, 1931, he was promoted to major . From 1933 he was a staff officer (Ia) with Infantry Leader II in Schwerin . On September 1, 1934 he became a lieutenant colonel and on March 1, 1937, a colonel . From May 1938 to July 1939 he was in command of Infantry Regiment 1. From September 1, 1939, he was Chief of the General Staff of the 1st Army Corps and was promoted to major general on the same day . From December 15, 1940, he was in command of the 97th Light Division , from January 15, 1941, he was commander of the 26th Infantry Division and from July 1, 1942, he was Commanding General of the XXVII. Army Corps . On August 1, 1942 he was promoted to lieutenant general and on September 1, 1942, general of the infantry . From February 4, 1943 to March 9, 1945 he was Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Army . In this position, Weiß was promoted to Colonel General on January 30, 1944 . From March 12 to April 5, 1945 he was Commander-in-Chief of Army Group North . Because of a dispute with Adolf Hitler , he was the leader Reserve of the Army High Command added. At the beginning of May 1945 he was taken prisoner by the United States. After imprisonment (including in the Neu-Ulm and Dachau camps) he was released in March 1948. In 1948 the Neustadt Chamber of Justice classified it as “not encumbered” during the denazification process .

Assessments

In his assessments by superiors as division commander, commanding general and army leader, he was rated as above average. He was ascribed calmness, circumspection and energy. He was nicknamed "Father White" with the troops.

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decoration
• Iron crescent
• Officer's Cross of the Bulgarian Order of Military Merit with Swords
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Medal Winter Battle in the East 1941/42
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves
  • Knight's Cross on September 12, 1941
  • Oak leaves on November 5, 1944 (646th award)
• German cross in gold on February 19, 1943

He was named in the Wehrmacht report on April 6, 1944 and November 2, 1944.

Web links

• Walter Weiß in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Weiss, Walter . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Gempp, Secret Intelligence Service and Counter-Espionage of the Army, reflections on the defense work in the east, memorandum, BA-MA Freiburg
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 132.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 776.
4. ↑ The reports of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. (5 volumes), Cologne 2004. ISBN 3-89340-063-X .