Walther von Brauchitsch

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Walther von Brauchitsch (1939)

Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch (born October 4, 1881 in Berlin , † October 18, 1948 in Hamburg ) was a German field marshal and during the Nazi era from 1938 to 1941 Commander-in-Chief of the Army .

Life

Family and origin

Walther von Brauchitsch came from the old Silesian noble family von Brauchitsch . He was the sixth of seven children of the later Prussian general of the cavalry and director of the Prussian War Academy Bernhard von Brauchitsch (1833-1910) and his wife Charlotte Sophie Auguste Bertha, born von Gordon (1844-1906). He was an uncle of the racing driver Manfred von Brauchitsch and, as the brother-in-law of Hans von Haeften, also an uncle of the resistance fighters Hans Bernd von Haeften and Werner von Haeften . His sister Hedwig was a superior of the Protestant deaconess mother house in Frankenstein . His older brother, who died in 1935, was Major General Adolf von Brauchitsch .

On December 29, 1910, he married Elisabeth von Karstedt (March 1, 1881 in Rossow ; † June 15, 1952 in Braunschweig ), the daughter of Achim von Karstedt, Fideikommissherr on Gut Fretzdorf and others, and the Elisabeth von Rohr called von Wahlen-Jürgaß. This marriage, which had three children, was divorced on April 8, 1938 in Berlin. The older son Bernd (1911–1974) later became chief adjutant of the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force Hermann Göring .

His second marriage was on September 23, 1938 in Bad Salzbrunn, Charlotte Rüffer (born July 8, 1903 in Bolkenhain , Lower Silesia , † June 14, 1992 in Braunschweig), the daughter of the district court director Georg Rüffer and Else Wendorf. This marriage remained childless.

Empire and First World War

After his school education, Brauchitsch joined the cadet corps in Berlin in 1895 and served as the personal page of Empress Auguste Viktoria . In March 1900 he was accepted as a lieutenant in the Charlottenburg Queen Elisabeth Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 3 and transferred to the 3rd Guards Field Artillery Regiment the following year . From February 10, 1903 to May 31, 1903 he attended the 2nd course of the field artillery school. From May 1 to May 13, 1905, he was posted to the Spandau rifle factory . From February 5, 1906 to February 28, 1909 he was adjutant of the 2nd battalion of his regiment. In 1909 he - meanwhile first lieutenant  - was temporarily transferred to the General Staff without having previously attended the War Academy , and from April 13, 1909 to March 31, 1912, he served in his main regiment as a regimental adjutant. He was then assigned to the Great General Staff and after his promotion to captain in early 1914, he was finally transferred to it.

During the First World War , Brauchitsch worked as a staff officer in various associations. On August 2, 1914 he came to the staff of the XVI. Army Corps , to the staff of the 34th Division on October 17, 1915 . On March 19, 1917 he was assigned to the General Staff of the German Crown Prince Army Group for special use and a little later was transferred to Oberbaustab 7. On August 23, 1917, he was appointed First General Staff Officer of the 11th Division . From February 19, 1918, he held the same position in the 1st Guard Reserve Division and, after his promotion to Major in July, from August 6, 1918, finally with the Guard Reserve Corps .

Weimar Republic

Brauchitsch was accepted into the Reichswehr and initially employed as a general staff officer in military district II (Stettin) , then in the army training department. He later became the commander of a division of the 6th (Prussian) Artillery Regiment . On April 1, 1925, Brauchitsch was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

On November 1, 1927, he was appointed Chief of Staff in Military District VI (Münster) , combined with the position of Chief of Staff in the 6th Division . On April 1, 1928, Brauchitsch was promoted to colonel . In December 1929 he became deputy head of the army training department in the Army Office of the Reichswehr Ministry , which he took over in early 1930. On October 1, 1931, he was promoted to major general . Half a year later, on March 1, 1932, Brauchitsch was appointed inspector of the artillery .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

v. l. No. General der Flieger Milch , (behind) General der Artillerie Keitel , Generaloberst von Brauchitsch, General Admiral Raeder and (with steel helmet) Commanding General of the XIII. Army Corps Freiherr von Weichs during the "Day of the Wehrmacht" at the Nazi Party Congress , September 1938

A few days after Hitler came to power in February 1933, Brauchitsch succeeded the newly appointed Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg as commander in military district I (Königsberg) and commander of the 1st division . In October of this year he was appointed lieutenant general . With the unmasking of the units, Brauchitsch was promoted to commanding general of the 1st Army Corps in June 1935 and promoted to general of the artillery on April 20, 1936 . On April 1, 1937, Brauchitsch was appointed commander-in-chief of the newly formed Group Command 4 in Leipzig .

In the course of the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis , von Brauchitsch was appointed as a compromise candidate for the various interest groups on February 4, 1938 to succeed Colonel General Werner von Fritsch as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and at the same time appointed Colonel-General himself.

Brauchitsch said in 1938:

"In terms of the purity and authenticity of the National Socialist worldview, the officer corps must not allow itself to be surpassed by anyone ... It goes without saying that the officer acts in accordance with the views of the Third Reich in every situation ."

Nevertheless, from war concerns, von Brauchitsch was involved in planning the so-called September conspiracy at the height of the Sudeten crisis as early as 1938 .

Second World War

Commander in Chief of the Army, Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch (r.), With the Chief of the Army General Staff, General of the Artillery Franz Halder , during the attack on Poland, 1939
Von Brauchitsch and Adolf Hitler at a Wehrmacht leaders parade in Warsaw , 1939

At the beginning of the Second World War , he and his chief of staff, Franz Halder, led the army during the attack on Poland (September 1 to October 6, 1939) and in the western campaign (May 10 to June 25, 1940).

In the run-up to the western campaign, a conspiracy against Hitler broke out in the winter of 1939/40. The trigger was his intention to attack France as early as November 1939. However, the top of the Wehrmacht considered this project to be absolutely impracticable. Brauchitsch and Halder agreed to arrest Hitler as soon as he gave the order to attack. When Hitler disgraced Brauchitsch and threatened to exterminate the "spirit of Zossen " - the General Staff was located there - Brauchitsch cut ties with the resistance. After the victory over France, he was appointed Field Marshal General on July 19, 1940 .

Von Brauchitsch instructed the military commander in France Otto von Stülpnagel and the subordinate military district chiefs in November 1940 to take advantage of the opportunity to promote the Aryanization of Jewish companies in occupied France.

For the setbacks of the Wehrmacht in the war against the Soviet Union ( Battle of Moscow ) in the winter of 1941/42, Hitler blamed the generals and the OKH and decided, in addition to his capacity as Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, to take over the supreme command of the army personally. Brauchitsch, who is said to have repeatedly asked to leave because of Hitler's unauthorized interventions, and who was also in poor health, was finally officially released on December 19, 1941.

Brauchitsch was transferred to the " Führerreserve " and had no further use until the end of the war. From 1942 to 1945 he lived in the hunting lodge Tři trubky ( Dreiröhren ) on the Kammwald military training area in the Central Bohemian Forest Mountains . He had received this as an imperial donation .

post war period

Brauchitsch was interrogated as a witness at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and died of heart failure , now almost blind, on October 18, 1948 before a trial against him was opened in Hamburg in British military custody.

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Walther von Brauchitsch  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldatisches Führertum . Volume 8, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1941], DNB 367632837 , p. 384, no. 2658.
  2. ↑ Barbara von Haeften: Nothing written about politics - Hans Bernd von Haeften . A life report, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42614-X .
  3. ↑ gens-prignitz.de (PDF; 75 kB).
  4. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. , 2nd edition, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, p. 71. (Adaptation of the quotation to the ref. German law)
  5. ↑ The appointment took place at the same time as eight other generals of the army and three generals of the air force; see here .
  6. ^ Raul Hilberg: The Destruction of the European Jews , Volume 2, Fischer Taschenbuch 1990, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 650
  7. ↑ Götz Aly: Hitler's People's State: Robbery, Race War and National Socialism , Fischer Verlag 2013, ISBN 3104026068
  8. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 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. 240.
personal data
SURNAME Brauchitsch, Walther von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brauchitsch, Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, Commander in Chief of the Army in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 18, 1948
Place of death Hamburg