Wilhelm Marshal

Wilhelm Marschall (1934)

Wilhelm Marschall (born September 30, 1886 in Augsburg , † March 21, 1976 in Mölln ) was a German naval officer , most recently Admiral General in World War II .

Military career

Marschall joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman in 1906 and initially served as an officer on watch on the large-scale ship SMS Kronprinz during the First World War . In 1916 he was the submarine - commander constructed and commanded first SM UC 74 and then to the war SM UB 105 .

In the Imperial Navy Marshal was primarily used as a surveying officer and in various staff positions before he briefly as commander of Battleship in the fall of 1934, Hesse was used. After its decommissioning, he was appointed commander of the end of 1934 battleship Admiral Scheer appointed and changed in 1936 as a rear admiral in the High Command of the Navy , where he head of the surgery department was. During the Spanish Civil War , he temporarily commanded the German naval forces off the Spanish coast. In 1938 Marshal was promoted to Vice Admiral and appointed commander of the ironclad ships. In 1939 he was promoted to admiral and appointed fleet commander . On April 30, 1940, his eldest son Gernot died in the collision of the torpedo boat Leopard with the mine ship Prussia .

In the summer of 1940, Marschall transferred to the Navy's educational inspectorate for two years. During this time he was repeatedly called upon to act as a commanding admiral or commander in chief of various high command authorities. In 1942 he was appointed Commanding Admiral France and finally Commander in Chief of the Naval Group Command West . After only six months, Marshal, who had been appointed Admiral General on February 1, 1943, was released from his command again and a little later retired from the Navy.

In the further course of the war, Marschall was reactivated twice, once in 1944 as "Special Plenipotentiary for the Danube" and for the second time shortly before the end of the war as Commander in Chief of the Naval High Command West . From 1945 to 1947 he was in Allied captivity .

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords
• Pour le Mérite on July 4, 1918
• Submarine War Badge (1918)
• Bavarian Military Order of Merit IV class with swords
• Order of the Iron Crown III. Class with the war decoration
• Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decoration
• Silver Imtiyaz medal with saber
• Golden Liakat medal with saber
• Iron crescent
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• German cross in gold on March 23, 1942

literature

• Karl Otmar Freiherr von Aretin :  Marschall, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 254 ( digitized version ).
• Dieter Hartwig : General Admiral Wilhelm Marschall. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. Volume 1, Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-083-2 , pages 162-170
• Helmut Pemsel: Biographical lexicon on naval war history. Sea heroes from antiquity to the present. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1985
• Wilhelm Marschall , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 21/1976 of May 10, 1976, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Marschall  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German Warships: Biographies - A Mirror of Naval History from 1815 to the Present , Volume 5, Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft 1982, ISBN 978-3-7822-0236-7 , p. 222.