Werner von Blomberg

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Field Marshal General Werner von Blomberg (1937)

Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg (born September 2, 1878 in Stargard , Pomerania ; † March 13, 1946 in Nuremberg ) was Reich Defense Minister from 1933 to 1938 (Reich Minister of War from 1935) and from 1936 the first General Field Marshal of the Wehrmacht .

Life

Empire and First World War

Werner von Blomberg came from a line legitimized in 1771 by the German-Baltic noble family Blomberg , his great-grandfather Julius von Blomberg (1769–1841) was an illegitimate son of the Prussian Colonel Karl August von Blomberg (1726–1793). He himself was the son of Lieutenant Colonel Emil von Blomberg and his wife Emma (née Tschepe).

After visiting the Prussian main cadet institute in Groß-Lichterfelde , he began his military career in 1897 as a lieutenant in the Fusilier regiment "General-Field Marshal Prince Albrecht von Prussia" (Hannoversches) No. 73 . Found suitable for general staff service, Blomberg graduated from the War Academy in Berlin from 1907 to 1910 and was then transferred to the General Staff . In 1911 he was promoted to captain .

Apart from a few troop commands, Blomberg experienced the First World War exclusively in staff service and on the Western Front . First he was employed as General Staff Officer Ia of the 19th Reserve Division , which fought , among other things, in the Battle of the Marne . Promoted to major on March 22, 1915 , Blomberg was one of the planners of the division's attack operations in the context of the Battle of Verdun . On the recommendation of Friedrich Graf von der Schulenburg , Blomberg became the first general staff officer in the 7th Army . Walther Reinhardt was chief of the general staff there , and he made a lasting impression on Blomberg. For his achievements, Blomberg was awarded the Order Pour le Mérite on June 3, 1918 .

Weimar Republic

After the war, Blomberg worked from 1919 to 1921 as a consultant in the Reichswehr Ministry. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1920 , he was chief of staff at Wehrkreiskommando  V in Stuttgart from 1921 to 1924 and was promoted to colonel in this function in 1923 . In 1925, Blomberg advanced to head of army training. In 1927 he took over the management of the troop office , which was the code name of the General Staff during the Weimar Republic due to the corresponding prohibition of the Versailles Treaty , and in the following year he was promoted to major general. After a controversy about the German chances of a two-front war with France and Poland, which the Reichswehr Ministry, unlike him, judged as hopeless, he was replaced by Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord . From 1929 to 1933 he was commander of the 1st division , commander of Military District I ( East Prussia ) and in 1932 headed the German military delegation at the Geneva Disarmament Conference . He prepared Germany's exit from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations , thereby leaving Groener's previous military policy , who had incorporated German armaments policy into the multilateral security system established in 1919. Blomberg advocated the one-sided armament of Germany that was not secured in terms of foreign policy.

His wife Charlotte (née Hellmich), born in 1880, died in 1932, with whom he had been married since 1904 and had five children.

Blomberg was involved in the German-Soviet armaments cooperation in the projects Kama Tank School , Tomka for Chemical Warfare and Lipetsk Aviation School and advocated cooperation with the Stalinist regime. These were armaments projects that were explicitly prohibited by the Versailles Treaty .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

On January 30, 1933, a few hours before Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor , President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Blomberg as Reichswehr Minister and promoted him to General of the Infantry , contrary to the provisions of the Reich constitution , according to which ministers could only be appointed on the proposal of the Reich Chancellor ; it was supposed to contribute to the conservative “framing” and “taming” of Hitler. However, Blomberg teamed up closely with Hitler, becoming his permanent representative on all matters relating to Reich defense on April 4 and, at the end of April 1933, Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr , which was not made public. Werner von Blomberg was also one of the founding members of the Academy for German Law in 1933 . One of the first committees of the Academy for German Law was the Committee on Defense Law.

Blomberg was considered an old-school military professional with no sense of politics. Personally, he leaned towards Rudolf Steiner's worldview . Blomberg was popular in conservative circles of the population, but some officers of the Reichswehr considered him overly compliant with Hitler, whom he had known personally since 1931.

Joseph Goebbels , Adolf Hitler and Werner von Blomberg in conversation before the state ceremony for Heroes' Remembrance Day in 1934 in the Berlin State Opera "Unter den Linden"
Werner von Blomberg (left) with Werner von Fritsch (center) and Erich Raeder (right) in 1936.

During the so-called Röhm Putsch in June and July 1934, Blomberg remained passive despite the murder of the former generals of the Reichswehr ( Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow ). On the other hand, it is known that Blomberg, like his cabinet colleagues Gürtner , Neurath and Frick, campaigned for the lawyers detained by the Gestapo , who represented the widow of the Catholic politician Erich Klausener, who was murdered in the course of the political cleansing in the "Röhm Putsch" . Protests within the officer corps against the removal of Jewish comrades were suppressed by Blomberg. In an article in the Völkischer Beobachter on June 29, 1934, he assured Hitler of the army’s loyalty.

Swearing in of the Reichswehr on Hitler

After Hindenburg's death on August 2, 1934, Blomberg, in consultation with Walter von Reichenau, arranged for the Reichswehr soldiers to be sworn in on Hitler (" Führereid "). In 1935 Hitler gave him supreme command of the entire Wehrmacht ( army and navy and, from 1936, the newly established Air Force ) and in 1936 appointed him - as the first soldier of the Wehrmacht - field marshal. On January 30, 1937, Blomberg received the Golden Party Badge of the NSDAP and on this date was accepted into the NSDAP ( membership number 3,805,226).

Hoßbach Protocol

On November 5, 1937, Blomberg took part in a conference between Hitler and the commanders-in-chief of the three branches of the Wehrmacht, Werner von Fritsch (Army), Erich Raeder (Navy) and Hermann Göring (Air Force), and Reich Foreign Minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath . The subject of the conversation recorded in the " Hoßbach Minutes " was Hitler's plans for a war of aggression against Germany's neighboring states. Blomberg and Fritsch doubted that the Wehrmacht could successfully fight a European war - the conference ended in dissent .

Blomberg-Fritsch crisis

At the end of 1937 Blomberg turned to Göring with the request to advise him on his planned second marriage to Luise Margarethe "Eva" Gruhn (born January 22, 1913 Berlin-Neukölln; ​​† 1978), as this has only recently been tightened for members of the Wehrmacht prohibited in principle. Göring nevertheless confirmed his decision, removed a rival who was offered a job abroad, and acted together with Hitler on January 12, 1938 as best man . A few days later, however, Göring confronted him with a police dossier about his wife, who had once been in custody on suspicion of theft and on record as a model for sex photos. Goering asked him to have his marriage annulled or to resign immediately. Blomberg decided to resign and left office on January 27, 1938, officially for health reasons. When he left, he received a " golden handshake " of 50,000 Reichsmarks , which was roughly twice his previous annual base salary. On his farewell visit, he proposed Adolf Hitler as the new Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht.

On February 3, Hitler removed Colonel-General Fritsch, another military critic, from office on charges of homosexuality . Fritsch was charged, but rehabilitated on March 18, 1938 for clearly proven innocence.

Hitler incorporated the War Ministry, previously headed by Blomberg, into the new High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) and entrusted General of the Artillery Wilhelm Keitel with its management. On February 4, 1938, he himself took command of the Wehrmacht. He appointed General Walther von Brauchitsch, who complied with him, to be commander in chief of the Army (OKH) .

Signature of Werner von Blomberg

post war period

In the Second World War without military use, the Allies arrested Blomberg in 1945 on suspicion of having committed war crimes and questioned him as a witness for the International Military Tribunal in the main war crimes trial in Nuremberg (1945-1946) .

Von Blomberg died of colon cancer in an American military hospital in Nuremberg in March 1946 . His grave is in the Bad Wiessee mountain cemetery .

Blomberg's second wife Eva had to answer in 1947 as a “beneficiary of Nazism” before the tribunal in Miesbach. In 1952 she returned to Berlin.

Awards (selection)

Movie

literature

Web links

Commons : Werner von Blomberg  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. According to the death notice in the Hamburger Nachrichten-Blatt of March 14, 1946, Blomberg died on Wednesday afternoon, March 13, 1946. The following literature mentions March 14:
    1. Brockhaus encyclopedia
    2. Werner von Blomberg in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
    3. Kirstin A. Schäfer: Werner von Blomberg - Hitler's first field marshal . Paderborn 2006
    4. Samuel W. Mitcham Jr .: Field Marshal General Werner von Blomberg . In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite . Darmstadt 2006.
    5. Manfred Wichmann: Werner von Blomberg. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
    The following works name March 22nd:
    1. Helmuth Rönnefarth:  Blomberg, Werner Eduard Fritz Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 313 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ^ Kirstin A. Schäfer: Werner von Blomberg - Hitler's first field marshal. A biography. Paderborn 2006. ISBN 3-506-71391-4 , pp. 25-29.
  3. Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946): Reichswehr and War Minister 1933/38 Future needs memory , January 11, 2007
  4. ^ Yearbook of the Academy for German Law, 1st year 1933/34. Edited by Hans Frank. (Munich, Berlin, Leipzig: Schweitzer Verlag), p. 252.
  5. ^ Yearbook of the Academy for German Law, 1st year 1933/34. Edited by Hans Frank. (Munich, Berlin, Leipzig: Schweitzer Verlag), p. 168.
  6. ^ Biographical dictionary on German history , 2nd edition, Munich 1973
  7. Robert Wistrich : Who was who in the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main 1983.
  8. Blomberg's baton is on display today (2011) in the National Museum of American History .
  9. Klaus D. Patzwall : The golden party badge and its honorary awards 1934-1944 , studies on the history of the awards Volume 4. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 19.
  10. ^ Robert S. Wistrich : Who was who in the Third Reich: Followers, followers, opponents from politics, business, the military, art and science . Harnack, Munich 1983, p. 24.
  11. ^ Karl-Heinz Janßen: The scandal: intrigue or breakdown? Die Zeit , March 11, 1988
  12. Ian Kershaw: Hitler. 1936-1945. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-421-05132-1 . P. 96.
  13. ^ Eva von Blomberg Der Spiegel , March 8, 1947
  14. ^ Eva von Blomberg Der Spiegel , July 30, 1952
  15. ^ Kirstin A. Schäfer : Werner von Blomberg - Hitler's first field marshal. A biography . Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 27.
  16. ^ Kirstin A. Schäfer: Werner von Blomberg - Hitler's first field marshal. A biography . Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 29.
  17. Hubert Beckers: Werner von Blomberg (1878-1946) . Zukunft-bendet-erinnerung.de , January 11, 2007.