Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb

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Wilhelm von Leeb as Field Marshal General (1940)

Wilhelm Leeb , from 1915 Knight von Leeb (born September 5, 1876 in Landsberg am Lech ; † April 29, 1956 in Füssen ), was a German officer , most recently Field Marshal General and Commander in Chief of various army groups during World War II .

Life

family

He was the son of the Bavarian major Adolf Leeb and his wife Katharina, nee Leeb. The future general of the artillery Emil Leeb (1881-1969) was his younger brother. Leeb married Maria Schrott on July 2, 1913. The marriage had three children.

Bavarian Army

After completing a humanistic grammar school , Leeb joined the 4th field artillery regiment "König" of the Bavarian Army in Augsburg on July 16, 1895 as a volunteer for promotion . After attending the military school in Munich , which he had graduated with the highest commendation, Leeb was promoted to second lieutenant. This was followed by his further training at the artillery and engineering school before he transferred to the East Asian Expeditionary Corps at the end of August 1900 . As a platoon leader with the 1st Mountain Battery, Leeb participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China. After his return to Bavaria in August 1901 he was employed again in the 4th field artillery regiment "König". From 1903 to 1906 Leeb graduated from the War Academy , which primarily gave him the qualification for the general staff and also for the higher adjutantage, the departmental service and the subject ( tactics , war history ). This was followed by his command to the Central Office of the General Staff in Munich and in 1909 to the Great General Staff in Berlin . From March 23, 1912 to January 24, 1914 , Leeb , who had meanwhile been promoted to captain , served as chief of the 3rd  battery in the 10th field artillery regiment . He then worked for almost two months in the central office of the General Staff and was then transferred to the General Staff of the 1st Army Corps .

First World War

In this position Leeb was also at the beginning of the First World War and was involved in the fighting on the Western Front in Lorraine and France. In 1915 he was transferred to the 11th Infantry Division as the first general staff officer and was deployed on various locations. Because of his achievements in the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow , when taking the Przemyśl fortress and crossing the Danube in the campaign against Serbia, he was accepted into the Military Max Joseph Order on May 2, 1915 . Associated with this was the elevation to the personal nobility and he was allowed to call himself Ritter von Leeb after being entered into the class of nobility .

In 1916 Leeb was promoted to major . From May 1917 until the end of the war he was deployed on the Western Front in the staff of the Army Group "Crown Prince Rupprecht" , first as second general staff officer and later as chief quartermaster .

For his achievements during the war, Leeb was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross , the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords, the Military Merit Order III. Class with swords, the Knight's Cross II. Class of the Albrecht Order with Swords, the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown with Swords, the Hanseatic Cross of Hamburg and Bremen and the Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with war decorations and the Iron Crescent .

Weimar Republic

After the end of the war, Leeb came to the Ministry of Military Affairs as head of the army department , participated in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic and, after the authority was dissolved, was transferred to the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin as a consultant in the army department . In the further course of his military career, Leeb held positions in the Reichswehr as a staff officer in military districts II (Stettin) and VII (Munich) , was commander of the 7th (Bavarian) artillery regiment and, from 1929, as major general artillery commander VII, was promoted to lieutenant general in early 1930 , Leeb then became commander of military district VII and commander of the 7th (Bavarian) Division .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

After the seizure of power by Adolf Hitler himself Leeb acted as a conservative Catholic the new regime against reserved. Nevertheless, he continued to rise in the Wehrmacht and on October 1, 1933 became Commander-in-Chief of Group Command II in Kassel . On January 1, 1934 he was appointed general of the artillery . In the following years he wrote his book Die Abwehr , in which he contradicted the prevailing notions of "Blitzkrieg".

In the course of the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis at the beginning of 1938, Leeb was retired on Hitler's instructions by the new Commander-in-Chief of the Army , Walther von Brauchitsch , conferring the character of Colonel General. As early as July 1938, however, he was reactivated in the course of the Sudeten crisis and participated in the occupation of the Sudetenland as Commander-in-Chief of the 12th Army . Immediately afterwards, Leeb was again adopted into retirement.

In the summer of 1939, Leeb was reactivated a second time and, as Commander in Chief of Army Group C, was given command of the German troops on the French border. At the age of 62 he was the second oldest soldier in the German army after Gerd von Rundstedt . In response to the declarations of war by France and England on Germany, he wrote in his diary "Hitler is a deluded fool, a criminal!"

Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb (standing on the right) with Colonel General Küchler (standing in the middle) on a forward artillery observation post, Eastern Front in October 1941

Second World War

During the western campaign , which began on May 10, 1940, Leeb overran the Maginot Line with Army Group C in June 1940 . After France surrendered , Leeb was promoted to Field Marshal General on July 19, 1940, along with eleven other generals . He had already been awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 24, 1940 .

As part of the preparations for the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Leeb's Army Group Command was transferred from France to Dresden in the autumn of 1940 . In the spring of 1941 he became Commander in Chief of Army Group North .

After June 22, 1941, Army Group North had the task of conquering the Baltic ports, then quickly advancing towards Leningrad and taking the city. The Leningrad blockade began in the winter of 1941/42 . In the east of the deployment area, the Army Group had advanced to Tikhvin . After a falling out with Hitler about the withdrawal to a strategically more favorable position recommended by Leeb, he asked for his replacement as Commander in Chief of Army Group North. On January 16, 1942, Leeb was released from his post, transferred to the Führerreserve and not re-employed.

Despite his critical attitude to the Nazi regime against Leeb took in September 1941 on his 65th birthday of Hitler an endowment of 250,000 Reichsmarks contrary. In 1944 he wanted to buy a piece of land in Bavaria worth around 638,000 Reichsmarks, but received it as a gift following a decision by Hitler. The endowments he received had a total value of 888,000 Reichsmarks. Like some other high military officials, Leeb sent an address of allegiance to Hitler after the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt .

post war period

Final hearing of the defendant Leeb in the Nuremberg trial in April 1948
Grave site at the Sollner forest cemetery (No. 17-W-2)

In May 1945 Leeb was taken prisoner by the United States . Due to the confusion of documents during the trial against the Wehrmacht High Command in Nuremberg in 1948, he was innocently sentenced to three years' imprisonment, which was considered to have been served during the time he was a prisoner of war. The judgment was not overturned, although culpable behavior could not be proven.

Naming

In 1965 the German Bundeswehr named the Ritter-von-Leeb barracks in Landsberg am Lech after the general. The barracks were abandoned in 1992.

Fonts

  • The Kgl. Bavarian 4th field artillery regiment "König". 1859-1919. Augsburg 1937.
  • The defense. Middle. Berlin 1938.
  • Diary entries and assessments of the situation from two world wars. Edited from the estate and provided with an outline of the life of Georg Meyer. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1976.

literature

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Othmar Hackl: The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-10490-8 , p. 508.
  2. ↑ Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Reichswehr Ministry (Ed.) Mittler & Sohn Verlag . Berlin 1924. p. 117.
  3. ↑ The Unknown Marshal - The Notes of Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb. In: The time . No. 46/1976.
  4. ^ Von Leeb: Diary entries and assessments of the situation from two world wars. P. 172.
  5. ↑ 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. 498.
  6. ↑ HD Heilmann: From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam. In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk. Materials on the German perpetrator biography. Institute for Social Research in Hamburg: Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy 4. Berlin 1987. p. 171.
  7. ↑ ... absolutely unworthy . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1997.
  8. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites . Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
  9. ^ Wilhelm von Leeb. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  10. ↑ Erich Keyser: Bayerisches Städtebuch: Handbuch urban history, volume 2. Kohlhammer 1974, ISBN 3-17-210181-9 , p. 315.
personal data
SURNAME Leeb, Wilhelm Ritter von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leeb, Wilhelm von; Leeb, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently Field Marshal General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Landsberg am Lech
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1956
Place of death Feet