Wilhelm Adam (General, 1893)

Colonel Adam (right) during the capture of General Field Marshal Paulus (1943)

Wilhelm Adam (born March 28, 1893 in Eichen ; † November 24, 1978 in Dresden ) was a German politician , Colonel of the Wehrmacht and Major General of the National People's Army .

Life

Time until the Weimar Republic

Adam was born in Eichen near Hanau in 1893 as the son of a farmer . After graduating from high school, attended the teachers' college in Schlüchtern from 1908 to 1913 . From October 1, 1913, he did his military service as a one-year volunteer with the 5th Company of the 2nd Nassau Infantry Regiment No. 88 . At the beginning of the First World War he came to the Western Front as a private on August 8, 1914 , was wounded on September 16, 1914 and taken to a military hospital in a Protestant hospital in Düsseldorf. Just ten days later he was assigned to his regiment's replacement battalion and promoted to sergeant on April 1, 1915 . From April to May 1915 he took part in a course in the Lockstedt camp as an officer trainee and was promoted to lieutenant on May 22nd . On June 14th he was a platoon leader in the 1st recruit depot of the XVI. Assigned to the Army Corps and from October 5, 1915 in the 5th Company of the Infantry Regiment "Graf Werder" (4th Rheinisches) No. 30 . After an illness in July 1916, which he cured in a field hospital near Germersheim, he was transferred to the 1st replacement battalion of the 2nd Nassau Infantry Regiment No. 88. On September 28, 1916, he became the leader of an infantry machine gun company -Regiment No. 424. From October 28th Adam was an orderly officer of the 70th Landwehr Infantry Brigade. He was discharged from the army as a lieutenant on January 31, 1919 after the end of the war.

Weimar Republic

From 1919 to 1929 Adam worked as a high school teacher at a technical college of the army in Langenselbold in Hesse and from 1929 to 1934 as a high school teacher at the Heeresfachschule II in Weimar , Thuringia . At the same time, Adam studied at the University of Frankfurt am Main from 1922 to 1924 and passed the examination as a high school teacher in 1927. In 1919 he became a member of the "Langenselbold Military Association" and in 1920 of the Young German Order . Adam joined the NSDAP in 1923 and was involved in the 1923 Hitler putsch in Munich . In 1926 Adam left the NSDAP and now joined the DVP , of which he was a member until 1929.

Time under National Socialism until World War II

In 1933 Adam became a member of the Stahlhelm and after the incorporation of the Stahlhelm into the SA (February 1934) belonged to the newly formed "SA Reserve I", which was formed from the former Stahlhelm. Here Adam had the rank of SA Oberscharführer and was awarded the blood order . Adam was finally assigned to the "Department for ideological training" at the "Staff of Standard 94" in Weimar.

In 1934 Adams was reactivated to the rank of captain and after a war school course on January 1, 1938, he was promoted to major . Until 1939 Adam worked as a teacher, first at the Döberitz Infantry School and then at the Dresden War School.

Second World War

In 1939 he became adjutant in the XXIII. Army Corps and in 1941 Adjutant of the 6th Army under Army Commander-in-Chief Walter von Reichenau and later Friedrich Paulus . On March 1, 1942, he became a colonel. As an adjutant of the 6th Army, Adam took part in the Battle of Stalingrad . On December 17, 1942, Adam was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross as a combat group leader . Adam came on Jan. 31, 1943, together with Paul in Stalingrad in Soviet captivity . During the handover negotiations, which the Chief of the General Staff of the 6th Army, Schmidt , informed General Field Marshal Paulus about this in the next room.

He spent his prisoner-of-war camp in Krasnogorsk , later in Suzdal and in prisoner-of-war camp 5110/48 Woikowo . In Krasnogorsk he attended the “Central Antifa School ” and was a member of the “ Association of German Officers ”. He took part as a guest at a full session of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD) on August 3, 1944, where he met the "Senior Student Councilor in Officer's Coat, Lieutenant Fritz Rücker ". With Rücker and other teachers, he was involved in drawing up the guidelines for teaching German history in 1944/45 in the former rest home in Lunjowo on behalf of the NKFD.

Adam was sentenced to death in absentia by a German court .

post war period

In 1948 Adam returned to Germany, d. H. to the Soviet occupation zone, back. He is one of the co-founders of the NDPD and was chairman of the NDPD regional association of Saxony. From 1948 to 1949 he worked as a consultant for the Saxon state government . From 1950 to 1952 he was Finance Minister in Saxony and from 1949 to 1963 a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR .

From the barracked People's Police to the National People's Army

Grave of Wilhelm Adam in the Heidefriedhof in Dresden

When he joined the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (KVP) on September 1, 1952, Adam held the rank of colonel and became head of the inspection department for administrative schools. From 1953 to 1958 he was the successor of Major General Walter Freytag in command of the "College for Officers" of the KVP (from 1956 of the NVA ) in Dresden. By resolution of the Politburo of the SED on February 15, 1957, almost all former Wehrmacht officers were gradually released from the NVA and retired by the end of the 1950s. In 1958 Adam was also retired at the age of 65. He continued to work in the " Working Group of Former Officers ". On the 28th anniversary of the founding of the GDR on October 7, 1977, he was appointed major general a. D. appointed. Adam died in Dresden in 1978 and was buried in the Heidefriedhof .

Medals and decorations

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Blood Order - Medal in memory of November 9, 1923
• Service award 3rd level
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver in 1956
• Order banner of labor in 1968
• Honor bar for the Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold in 1978

Fonts

• Germany's unity is sacred to us. National Printing House, Berlin 1951.
• Stalingrad warns. Germans at a table. People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1951.
• The difficult decision. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1965 ( autobiography ).

literature

• Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Adam, Wilhelm . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Rüdiger Wenzke , Klaus Froh: The generals and admirals of the NVA: A biographical manual (= research on GDR society ). Edited by the Military History Research Office . Weltbild publishing group 2003, ISBN 3-8289-0542-0 p. 67

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Adam  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Adam in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gerald Kolditz: Wilhelm Adam (1893–1978) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 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. 188.
2. ^ Wilhelm Adam: The difficult decision , Berlin 1965, 9th edition [1969], p. 430, DNB 454538480 .
3. ↑ Rudolf Bonna: The story in the historical methodology of Soviet zone and GDR , Bochum 1996, p. 92 f. ISBN 978-3-8196-0390-7 .
4. ↑ Handbook of the People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic , Berlin 1957, p. 293 "Adam, Wilhelm"; DNB 573963525
5. ↑ Daniel Niemetz: The field-gray legacy. Links Verlag, 2006, p. 229.
6. ↑ Hans Ehlert , Armin Wagner: Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2003.