Wilhelm Reinhard (General)

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Wilhelm Reinhard

Wilhelm Reinhard (born March 18, 1869 in Forsthaus Lutau , Flatow district , † January 18, 1955 in Dortmund ) was a German infantry general , SS-Obergruppenführer , "Reichsführer des NS-Kriegerbund" and a member of the Reichstag .

Life

origin

He was the son of forester Wilhelm Reinhard senior and his wife Minna, née von Koenen.

Military career

After completing his school career, Reinhard graduated from the cadet houses in Kulm and Lichterfelde and then from the Metz War School . On March 22, 1888 , he joined the infantry regiment "Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig" (East Frisian) No. 78 of the Prussian Army as an ensign . In 1889 he was promoted to second lieutenant and became a battalion and regimental adjutant. On January 17, 1901, Reinhard became adjutant of the 38th Infantry Brigade in Hanover . In 1902 Reinhard was promoted to captain and on April 24, 1904, was appointed company commander in the Fusilier Regiment "Graf Roon" (East Prussian) No. 33 in Gumbinnen . From 1907 Reinhard was chief of the 7th company of the Schleswig-Holstein Infantry Regiment No. 163 in Neumünster . At the same time as his promotion to major he was then transferred to the 5th Guards Regiment on foot in Spandau on April 21, 1911 , where he initially worked for the staff. After almost two years there, he was appointed commander of the 2nd Battalion on March 22, 1913.

First World War

When the First World War broke out, Reinhard led this battalion in conjunction with the newly formed 3rd Guards Division to neutral Belgium, where he took part in the siege and conquest of the fortress of Namur . Then Reinhard and his regiment were transferred to the Eastern Front. Here he fought in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes and in the Battle of Łódź .

From January 18 to June 2, 1915 Reinhard was the leader of the Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 5 and was then appointed commander of the 4th Guards Regiment on Foot . With this it struggled in the subsequent period on the bridgehead of Jaroslau , in the breakdown battles at Lubaczów and Gródek and Lvov until the regiment finally to the tracking battles over the bow out at the Jasiolda was stopped. From there Reinhard's regiment was relocated to the western front and immediately thrown into the autumn battle at La Bassée and Arras . Reinhard was on April 18, 1916, Lieutenant Colonel and on 20 September 1918 Colonel promoted.

On August 27, 1917, Reinhard was awarded the Pour le Mérite and on October 1, 1918 he was awarded the oak leaves for the Pour le Mérite.

Free Corps Leader

During the March fighting in Berlin from March 3 to 12, 1919, Colonel Wilhelm Reinhard, the commander of the Freikorps regiment deployed in Lichtenberg, made an inspection trip from Friedrichshain.

Returning to Berlin after the end of the war and the revolution , Reinhard called on December 10, 1918 at a meeting in the War Ministry , which Friedrich Ebert and Curt Baake also attended, to punish all civilians who owned firearms with death. Reinhard set up the volunteer regiment named after him at the end of December 1918 . His appointment as city commander of Berlin, operated by Gustav Noske and Walther Reinhardt , was prevented by the resistance of the soldiers' councils. Under his leadership, the Spartacus uprising was suppressed in January 1919 by the troops under his command; During the March fighting in Berlin two months later, there were brief renewed armed conflicts. About 1,200 people, most of them insurgents, died in the fighting, which was carried out "with terrible cruelty".

In June 1919 the "Freikorps Reinhard" joined the provisional Reichswehr and Reinhard was given the position of infantry leader of the Berlin Reichswehr Brigade 15. At his own request, Reinhard resigned from active military service on December 31, 1919.

Member of the Reichstag, federal leader of the Kyffhäuserbund, SA and SS leader

During the Weimar Republic he worked as a businessman. In October 1927 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 63,074). From 1936 to the spring of 1945, Reinhard was a member of the National Socialist Reichstag on the Reich election proposal . Reinhard was the holder of the golden party badge of the NSDAP .

After the transfer of the German Reichskriegerbund "Kyffhäuser" to the Sturmabteilung (SA), Reinhard had been SA-Oberstlandesführer of SA-Reserve II since 1933. In September 1935 Reinhard was transferred to the SS with the rank of SS-Standartenführer (SS-No. 274.104). In the SS Reinhard reached the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer in November 1941 . As an SS honorary leader , Reinhard belonged to the "Staff RFSS " from 1938 .

On January 27, 1934, Reinhard became federal leader of the German Reich Warrior Association "Kyffhäuser" and on March 18, 1938 Reichsführer of the organization now renamed the NS-Reichskriegerbund "Kyffhäuser" (NSRKB). He remained in this position until the NSRKB was dissolved in March 1943. At Reinhard's instigation, men from the Reich Labor Service carried out archaeological excavations at the old Reichsburg Kyffhausen from 1934 to 1938 . Reinhard tried very hard to make the landmark of the Kyffhäuserbund, the Kaiser Wilhelm monument on the Kyffhäuser , NS-compatible. The SS leader had the inconspicuous hall in the monument expanded into a “hall of honor” for the fallen comrades, “the dead of the Freikorps and the Hitler movement”.

After the NSKRB was dissolved, Reinhard became President of the newly established Kyffhäuser Foundation. In the final phase of the Second World War , Reinhard moved his residence due to the advance of the Red Army . After the end of the war he was interned by the Western Allies for a few months and after his release lived with a nephew in Opmünden near Soest. In September 1952 Reinhard re-founded the Kyffhäuserbund in Dortmund , which had been banned in 1945 by the Control Council Act No. 2 . He took over the chairmanship of the Kyffhäuserbund until his death on January 18, 1955.

Works

  • 1918/1919 The labor pains of the republic. Brunnen-Verlag, Berlin 1932 DNB

Awards

Reinhard's military and SS ranks
date rank
March 22, 1888 char. Ensign
October 15, 1888 Ensign
September 21, 1889 Second Lieutenant
August 18, 1897 First lieutenant
April 18, 1903 Captain
April 21, 1911 major
April 18, 1916 Lieutenant colonel
September 21, 1918 Colonel
September 15, 1935 SS standard leader
November 9, 1935 SS-Oberführer
November 9, 1936 SS Brigade Leader
April 20, 1937 SS group leader
March 22, 1938 Character as major general a. D.
March 18, 1939 Character as General of the Infantry a. D.
November 9, 1941 SS-Obergruppenführer
March 1, 1943 General of the Infantry zV

literature

  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Tuviah Friedman : The three oldest SS generals Himmler. SS-Obergruppenführer August Heyssmayer , SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Reinhard, SS-Obergruppenführer Udo von Woyrsch . A documentary collection published by the Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa. Compilation: Friedman. 1998.
  • Hanns Möller: History of the Knights of the Order pour le mérite in World War II , Volume II: M – Z, Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Berlin 1935, pp. 178–182.
  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War , Volume 3: P – Z, Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2011, ISBN 3-7648-2586-3 , pp. 99-102.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 488, and Michael Buddrus (ed.): Mecklenburg in the Second World War. The meetings of the Gauleiter Friedrich Hildebrandt with the Nazi governing bodies of the Gau Mecklenburg 1939-1945, An edition of the minutes of the meeting , Bremen 2009, p. 1057. Deviating from this, the Old Prussian Biography , Volume 4, Part 3, 1995, p. 1471 as Place of death called Opmünden .
  2. ↑ Degeners Who is it? , Volume 10, Verlag Herrmann Degener, 1935, p. 1280.
  3. ↑ a b Wilhelm Reinhard in the database of the members of the Reichstag
  4. ↑ Wilhelm Reinhard in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  5. ↑ See Berthold, Lothar, Neef, Helmut, Militarismus und Opportunismus gegen die Novemberrevolution, 2nd, expanded and revised edition, Frankfurt am Main 1978, p. 91.
  6. ^ Case of Colonel Reinhard
  7. ^ A b Albert Grzesinski : In the struggle for the German republic. Memories of a Social Democrat. Published by Eberhard Kolb , Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich 2001 (series of publications by the Reichspräsident-Friedrich-Ebert-Gedenkstätte Foundation 9), p. 102.
  8. ^ A b c Michael Buddrus (ed.): Mecklenburg in the Second World War. The meetings of the Gauleiter Friedrich Hildebrandt with the Nazi governing bodies of the Gau Mecklenburg 1939–1945, An edition of the minutes of the meeting , Edition Temmen: Bremen 2009, p. 1057
  9. ↑ a b 5000 heads - who was what in the Third Reich. Kiel 2000, p. 340.
  10. ^ Diana Maria Friz: Where Barbarossa sleeps - the Kyffhäuser: the dream of the German Empire , Beltz Quadriga, Weinheim / Basel 1991, p. 178, 199
  11. ↑ http://www.karstwanderweg.de/kyff/burgbru.htm
  12. ↑ Monuments. Burp satisfied . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1996, pp. 35 f . ( online ).
  13. ↑ Old Prussian Biography , Volume 4, Part 3, Elwert, 1995, p. 1471
  14. ↑ Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Publishing House. Bissendorf 2011. ISBN 3-7648-2586-3 . P. 101.
  15. ↑ a b c Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg Army Corps for 1914 , Ed .: War Ministry , Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1914, p. 157.
personal data
SURNAME Reinhard, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German general, SS-Obergruppenführer, Reichsführer of the Nazi Warrior League, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Forsthaus Lutau
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1955
Place of death Dortmund