Walther Wecke

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Walther Wecke , also Walter Wecke , (born September 30, 1885 in Nennhausen , † December 16, 1943 in Gotha ) was a German police officer and officer , most recently a general in the Air Force in World War II .

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Youth, training and the First World War

Wecke was the son of a railroad worker and station master. After attending the secondary school in Rathenow , which he left with the secondary school leaving certificate, he joined the 5th battery of the field artillery regiment "General Feldzeugmeister" (1st Brandenburgisches) No. 3 in October 16, 1903 as a two-year-old volunteer Brandenburg an der Havel, where he stayed until the end of September 1909. During this time he was promoted to NCO on February 27, 1905. During this time he also trained as a fireworker . On October 1, 1909, Wecke was appointed a fireworker. In this function he worked from October 1, 1909 to August 4, 1910 at the ammunition depot in Spandau , then at the ammunition depot in Brandenburg an der Havel , from September 19, 1910 to October 10, 1910 at the ammunition depot in Küstrin and finally from October 11, 1910 to August 22, 1911 at the ammunition depot in Darmstadt . He then worked from August 23, 1911 to September 6, 1913 at the Spandau gun foundry, from where he was transferred to the Neisse ammunition depot on September 7, 1913. He stayed there until August 2, 1914.

In the course of the First World War , Wecke was assigned to the VI as a fireworks lieutenant of the 5th ammunition column . Assigned to Army Corps . On February 5, 1915, he moved within this corps to the 1st Munitions Column, where he remained until July 4, 1915. Wecke was assigned to the 12th Field Artillery Brigade on July 5, 1915 . He had previously received his promotion to fireworks lieutenant on May 22, 1915 . On February 16, 1916, he was withdrawn from the front and transferred to Magdeburg . There he was employed at the artillery depot until March 12, 1916. On March 13, 1916, Wecke was assigned to mortar battery 45, but left it a few months later to be used again at an ammunition depot, this time in Erfurt , from August 9, 1916 to August 20, 1916 . From August 21, 1916 to March 28, 1917, Wecke acted as a fireworks officer in the 2nd Battalion of the Reserve Foot Artillery Regiment No. 14 and in the same position from March 29, 1917 to the end of December 1918 with the 1st Battalion of the Foot Artillery Regiment No. 5.

Weimar Republic and police career

After his unit was demobilized, Wecke served at the Fireworks Laboratory in Spandau from January 1, 1919 to June 24, 1919. During this time he worked at the same time from January 6, 1919 to the end of February 1919 with the Reinhard Brigade , with which he participated in the suppression of the revolutionary turmoil that broke out in the Berlin area after the end of the war and the collapse of the monarchy .

On June 24, 1919, Wecke joined the Berlin police force , where he was assigned to the North Police Group. From September 22, 1920 to December 22, 1920 he attended the police school in Potsdam . He was arrested in 1922 after the murder of Walther Rathenau for supporting members of the Consul organization and was one of the founding members of the Greater German Workers' Party , a cover organization of the NSDAP, which was banned in Prussia at the time.

During the Weimar Republic , Wecke was promoted to lieutenant, police captain and police major. In the early 1930s Wecke came into close contact with the National Socialists, whom he provided with information from the police administration. In March 1932, in anticipation of the imminent takeover of government by the National Socialists, Wecke compiled dossiers on individual officers of the Prussian Protection Police, which were to serve as the basis for a police purge to be carried out at the given time, primarily by providing information about the ideological reliability or unreliability of the persons concerned held tight. In November 1932, Wecke, who was then employed by the Oak Police School in Berlin, officially joined the NSDAP . Immediately afterwards, he took over the management of the protective police department in the National Socialist Civil Service Working Group (NSBAG) in Berlin.

On January 5, 1933, Wecke - an expression of the shift to the right in the police force - was elected chairman of the Association of Prussian Police Officers. A few weeks later, in the turmoil surrounding Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933, he played a notable supporting role: after the rumor went around Berlin on January 29, 1933 that General Kurt von Schleicher and several other leading men in the Reichswehr Ministry would become one Planning a military coup to prevent the formation of a Hitler-Papen government, Wecke was instructed by Hermann Göring on the night of January 30th to be ready to secure the government quarter to protect the government against a possible attack by the Potsdam garrison.

time of the nationalsocialism

Immediately after Hitler's Reich government was formed, Wecke was appointed to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior by the newly appointed Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Göring , to act as a liaison between the NSDAP and the police. Together with Kurt Daluege , Wecke was commissioned by Göring to clean up the Prussian Police in the National Socialist sense, i.e. to remove all police officers who were against National Socialism from the officer corps of the Police.

At the end of February 1933, Wecke was given command of a police force that had been formed at Göring's instigation to protect the Reich government . The unit was initially named after its commander as a department Wecke z. b. V. or staff guard Göring. Later she was only part of the "Landespolizeigruppe Wecke z. b. V. ”(from July 17, 1933) or renamed“ Landespolizeigruppe General Göring ”(from January 12, 1934) before it was absorbed into the General Göring Regiment in September 1935 . As a special instrument of power to secure Göring's position, the number of personnel in the group grew rapidly under Wecke's direction and finally reached an actual strength of 6 battalions. The unit was housed in a barracks in Berlin's Friesenstrasse, which, especially in the first few months of 1933, also served as a torture site for political opponents who were dragged there by the police and the SA . Wecke, who was considered a tough "law-and-order" man, summed up his service concept as follows: "I don't have a noble soul, but I create order".

On February 1, 1933, Wecke was also appointed President of the Institute for Technology and Transport of the Prussian Police.

Wecke retained command of the state police group until June 5, 1934 and was part of the command staff of the Prussian state police from June 6, 1934 to the end of September 1935. According to a letter from Wilhelm Kube to Kurt Daluege in July 1934, Wecke was involved in the Röhm affair on June 30, 1934 , during which the state police group took over the security of the Prussian State Ministry and the guarding of Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen , who was under house arrest . In July 1934, Wecke was entrusted with the provisional management of SA-Obergruppe III (Berlin-Brandenburg), whose leader Karl Ernst had been executed in the course of the purge, for a few weeks .

Wecke returned to the army on October 1, 1935. On that day he took over the management of Group 3 of the Army Feldzeugmeisterei in Munich . On October 1, 1937, Wecke joined the Luftwaffe . There he was given the post of commander of the Reich Air Defense School in Berlin-Wannsee . He held this position until the end of October 1939. This was followed by his transfer to Slovakia , where he was deployed from November 1, 1939 to the end of March 1943 as commander of the "Protection Zone Slovakia" and as commander of the Malacky air force training area.

Due to his deteriorating health, Wecke was released from his command on April 1, 1943 and was given the addition "for use" until the end of May 1943. Wecke died on December 16, 1943 after a serious illness in the Air Force military hospital in Gotha.

Awards

literature

  • Dermot Bradley (ed.), Karl Friedrich Hildebrandt: The Generals of the Air Force 1935-1945. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1991, ISBN 376481701-1 , p. 478 f.
  • Hsi-Huey Liang: The Berlin Police in the Weimar Republic. De Gruyter, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-11-178492-4 . (Publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin; Volume 47).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Schilde u. Johannes Tuchel: Columbia House. Berlin concentration camp 1933–1936 . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1990, p. 22.
  2. ↑ a b The Berlin Police in the Weimar Republic. P. 183. Online
  3. ^ Columbia House, p. 22 Online
personal data
SURNAME Wake up, Walther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wake up, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer and officer, most recently General of the Air Force in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Nennhausen
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1943
Place of death Gotha