Werner von Fritsch

Werner von Fritsch (1932)

Thomas Ludwig Werner Freiherr von Fritsch (born August 4, 1880 in Benrath , † September 22, 1939 near Praga , Warsaw ) was a German officer , most recently Colonel General and from 1936 until his fall in 1938, Commander-in-Chief of the Army .

Life

Empire and First World War

Fritsch was born on August 4, 1880 in Benrath Palace near Düsseldorf as the son of the later Lieutenant General Georg von Fritsch (1849–1920) and his wife Adelheid (1856–1941), née. von Bodelschwingh , born. His upbringing was shaped by his strict father, who attached great importance to patriotism, loyalty to duty, reliability, honesty and social manners. He acted so much as a "ruthless taskmaster" that his son found it difficult all his life to form close human bonds.

After graduating from high school , Fritsch joined the Hessian Field Artillery Regiment No. 25 of the Prussian Army in Darmstadt on September 21, 1898 as a Fahnenjunker . There he was promoted to lieutenant on January 27, 1900 after training as an officer . Fritsch spent the next few years in service. In October 1902 he was sent to the artillery and engineering school for advanced training , and the following year he became adjutant of the 1st division of his regiment. However, the troop service offered the ambitious Fritsch little chance of promotion and he found it difficult to make friends. His regimental comrade and later General Field Marshal Georg von Küchler was one of the few close acquaintances at this time . Fritsch therefore applied for admission to the War Academy . After he had passed the difficult entrance exam, he attended the War Academy in Berlin from October 1, 1907 as part of his training to become a General Staff Officer . Here he took part in individual courses by Wilhelm Groener and impressed above all with excellent achievements in war history and tactics . He was one of the first in his class to take his final exam on July 20, 1910. Fritsch, who had meanwhile been promoted to first lieutenant , was now transferred to the General Staff on a trial basis , but was finally taken over to General Staff service the following year. From April 1913 to March 1914 he was a member of War History Department II of the Great General Staff, which worked on the wars of Frederick the Great before he was transferred to the deployment department and thus participated in the German mobilization in August 1914.

During the First World War , Fritsch served as a general staff officer in various functions. For some time he was first general staff officer of the 1st Guard Division and 47th Reserve Division . He was temporarily transferred to the General Staffs of the 4th and 10th Army and served with the VI. Reserve Corps . Something completely new for Fritsch was the temporary service in the General Staff of the Commanding General of the Air Force . He was apparently sponsored by Colonel Max Bauer in the Supreme Army Command. Both knew each other from their time together on the General Staff. He was wounded in the head by a shrapnel at the front in 1917 and in the course of the war received both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords.

Weimar Republic

Fritsch was accepted into the Reichswehr and was initially employed in the Reichswehr Ministry. He later became battalion commander in the 5th Artillery Regiment . On February 5, 1923, Fritsch was promoted to lieutenant colonel. On April 1, 1924, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the 1st Division . In 1926 he was made head of the Army Department in the Troop Office and on March 1, 1927 promoted to Colonel . In 1928 he became the commander of the 2nd (Prussian) Artillery Regiment and on November 1, 1930 he was appointed major general . After that he was first commander of the 1st Cavalry Division in 1931 , then in 1932 the 3rd Division and Military District III .

Werner von Fritsch (center) with Werner von Blomberg (left) and Erich Raeder (right) in 1936.

Secret regulation D 81/3 + "Inspection Remarks 1937" - Frhr. v. Fritsch

National Socialism

Pre-war period

Army chief

After Hitler came to power , Fritsch von Hindenburg was appointed head of the army command in January 1934 . In June 1935 he became Commander in Chief of the Army and was promoted to Colonel General on April 20, 1936. He was considered a representative of the old Prussian conservatism, which brought him into conflict with War Minister Werner von Blomberg and the SS .

At a technical meeting on 5 November 1937 at which Hitler for the first time disclosed his war plans to the commanders of the Wehrmacht Heer (Werner von Fritsch), Air Force ( Hermann Goering ) and Navy ( Erich Raeder ) and, among others, the Foreign Minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and explained to Field Marshal von Blomberg, Fritsch in particular expressed his concerns. This discussion was recorded in the Hoßbach transcript . Some contemporaries saw Fritsch's criticism in November as the reason for his later dismissal, but historiography now sees this more nuanced.

Fall as a result of intrigue?

→ Main article : Blomberg-Fritsch crisis

In the course of the Blomberg-Fritsch affair, Fritsch was accused of homosexuality and removed from his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. It came to a trial in which Fritsch was acquitted and rehabilitated on March 18, 1938 for proven innocence of the allegations. The Gestapo was mistaken for a dubious witness. Nevertheless, Fritsch did not get his post back.

On August 11, 1938, Fritsch was formally announced his rehabilitation and his appointment as chief of his old 12th Artillery Regiment in Schwerin (Mecklenburg).

On December 11, 1938 - after the Reichspogromnacht - Fritsch wrote to Baroness Schutzbar:

“Soon after the war I came to the conclusion that three battles would have to be fought victoriously if Germany were to regain power: 1. The battle against the workers, Hitler defeated them victoriously; 2. against the Catholic Church, or better said ultramontanism , and 3. against the Jews. We are still in the middle of these battles. And the fight against the Jews is the hardest. "

A month before the start of the Second World War , Fritsch declared: "The final victory is only possible, as the Führer has emphasized, when the whole people are internally united and are ready to do everything."

Second World War

Grave site at the Invalidenfriedhof , Berlin (2007)

Memorial stone for Werner von Fritsch. Erected in Warsaw's Praga district in 1939 and removed during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 .

At the beginning of the Second World War, Fritsch received no command, unlike other generals who had previously passed; possibly he had refused. In a letter on August 31, he wrote:

“The treatment I have received is such that I cannot carry out any military activity in Germany either in peace or in war. ... I will only accompany my regiment as a target because I cannot stay at home. "

As chief, he accompanied his 12th artillery regiment during the attack on Poland and fell on September 22, 1939 near Praga , a district of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula. Since he was one of the first high officers to die in World War II, the circumstances surrounding his death have been carefully investigated. According to a report from a lieutenant who accompanied him, Fritsch was shot in the left thigh, injuring an artery. With the words “just let it go”, he refused to tie the leg and died a minute later.

State funeral without Hitler

Even after Fritsch's death at the front, the Nazi regime refused to give him public rehabilitation: Although the circumstances of the war did not keep Hitler in Poland, he preferred to stay away from Fritsch's inevitable state funeral. On Hitler's orders, the newspapers were only allowed to report in one column on the second page. A daily order from Brauchitsch to the army, which offended Hitler, was not published. The historian Christoph Raichle interprets this to mean that Hitler was afraid of being overshadowed by Fritsch's death at the front in his new role as "First Soldier" of the Reich; In addition, Fritsch was widely regarded as the "creator of the new Wehrmacht" - a role that Hitler also claimed for himself.

In memory of Fritsch

Honorary monument for Colonel General Werner Freiherr von Fritsch in the former Hoppenstedt ( Lohheide ) (2008)

Memorial stone there

Fritsch was the namesake of several barracks of the Bundeswehr , see Fritsch barracks .

In memory of the Colonel General, the former armored artillery battalion 177 of the Bundeswehr used the "F" as a sign of identification on the battalion's vehicles.

On the fortieth anniversary of his death in 1979, the 10th Artillery Regiment, Pfullendorf, held a memorial service. The regimental commander Colonel Hannemann gave the commemorative speech.

Literature written by Fritsch

• Secret regulation D 81/3 + "Inspection Remarks 1937" of November 7, 1937 - The Commander-in-Chief of the Army 4th Dept. Gen St d H - Frhr. v. Fritsch, ISBN 978-3-7504-5289-3 .

Awards

• Red Eagle Order IV class
• Prussian service award cross
• Bavarian Order of Military Merit IV class with swords and crown
• Knight's Cross First Class of the Frederick Order with Swords
• Knight's Cross II. Class of the Grand Ducal Hessian Order of Merit of Philip the Magnanimous
• Hanseatic Cross Hamburg
• Wound badge (1918) in black
• Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decoration
• Iron crescent
• Order of St. John , honorary and legal knight
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Golden party badge of the NSDAP ( membership number 3,805,227) on January 30, 1937

literature

• Hinrich Baumann: The Heidmark. Change of landscape: the history of the Bergen military training area. Oerbke 2005, ISBN 3-00-017185-1 .
• Karl-Heinz Janßen , Fritz Tobias : The fall of the generals. Hitler and the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in 1938. Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 978-3-406-38109-6 .
• Graf von Kielmansegg : The Fritsch Trial 1938. Process and background. Hamburg 1949.
• Horst Mühleisen: Colonel General Werner Freiherr von Fritsch. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. Volume 1. Primus, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-083-2 , pp. 61-70.
• Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014. (Chapter "The death of Fritsch and Hitler's reaction to it", pp. 206-213)
• Thilo Vogelsang :  Fritsch, Werner Thomas Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 625 f. ( Digitized version ).

Movies

The intrigues of the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis were filmed in 1988 by BR and ORF in the two-part television series " Geheime Reichssache ", directed by Michael Kehlmann . Hans Schulze played the role of Werner von Fritsch .

Web links

Commons : Werner von Fritsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Werner von Fritsch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Werner von Fritsch in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Benrath 1933–45 - A project of the Haus Spilles youth center in Düsseldorf-Benrath (accessed October 9, 2009)
• Freiherren von Fritsch - Website of the von Fritsch family (accessed October 9, 2009)
• Werner von Fritsch's biography on rosa-winkel.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Horst Mühleisen: Colonel General Werner Baron von Fritsch. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Hitler's military elite , vol. 1. Darmstadt 1998, p. 61.
2. ^ ^{A b} Williamson Murray : Werner Freiherr von Fritsch. The tragic general. In: Ronald Selser, Enrico Syring (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 154.
3. ↑ Dermot Bradley (ed.): The Generals of the Army 1921–1945. Vol. 4. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1996, p. 115.
4. ^ Williamson Murray: Werner Freiherr von Fritsch. The tragic general. In: Ronald Selser, Enrico Syring (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 155.
5. ↑ Biography on rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017.
6. ↑ Biography on rosa-winkel.de , accessed on April 4, 2017.
7. ↑ John W. Wheeler Bennett: The Nemesis of Power. Düsseldorf 1954, p. 402.
8. ↑ Nicholas Reynolds: The Fritsch letter of December 11, 1938. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Vol. 28 Issue 3, Munich 1980, pp. 358-371. Quote here p. 370 ( PDF ).
9. ↑ Jakob Knab: False Glorie - the traditional understanding of the Bundeswehr. 1st edition, Berlin, Ch.-Links-Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-86153-089-9 , p. 73.
10. ↑ quoted in John W. Wheeler Bennett: The Nemesis of Power. Düsseldorf 1954, p. 404.
11. ^ A »SPIEGEL« page for Robert MW Kempner. In: Der Spiegel , issue 34/1948 of August 21, 1948, p. 18 (accessed July 27, 2010).
12. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014, p. 213 .
13. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014, p. 206 ff .
14. ↑ Christoph Raichle: Hitler as a symbol politician . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2014, p. 209-212 .
15. ↑ The memorial stone in Hoppenstedt has the inscription: “Colonel General Freiherr von Fritsch, born on August 4th, 1880, died on September 22nd, 1939, Commander in Chief of the Army from February 1st, 1934 to February 4th, 1938. Example for the German officer corps from January 27, 1900 to September 22, 1939. Died before the German army by his heroic death in front of Warsaw. ”
    Another memorial stone has been erected in the former Achterberg by the workers of the Achterberg estate behind the manor house. It says: “Here in Achterberg, Colonel General Freiherr v. Fritsch was born on August 4, 1880, fell on September 22, 1939. “He liked
    Achterberg and its surroundings so much that from 1935 to 1938 he regularly spent four weeks there with his adjutant and his horses in the spring and autumn. Source: Hinrich Baumann, (see literature), pp. 232–235.
16. ↑ Hoppenstedt is north of Belsen - see this map .
17. ^ HJ Krug: 25 years of artillery in the Bundeswehr. ISBN 3-7909-0184-9 , p. 205.
18. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1930, p. 108.
19. ^ Klaus D. Patzwall : The Golden Party Badge and its honorary awards 1934-1944. Studies of the history of awards. Volume 4. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 19.