Wilhelm Speidel (General)

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Wilhelm Speidel between Kesselring (left) and Göring (right) near Calais (1940)

Wilhelm Speidel (born July 8, 1895 in Metzingen , † June 3, 1970 in Nürtingen ) was a German officer , most recently General der Flieger in World War II . He was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in 1948 in the hostage murder trial , one of the Nuremberg follow-up trials , for acts during his time as military commander in Greece , but was released in early 1951. Wilhelm Speidel's younger brother Hans Speidel was central to the West German rearmament .

Life

Origin, First World War and Reichswehr

Wilhelm Speidel's father, Emil Speidel , was chief forest officer and deputy president of the Royal Württemberg Forestry Directorate in Stuttgart . At the age of 17 Wilhelm Speidel joined the Grenadier Regiment “King Karl” (5th Württembergisches) No. 123 on June 26, 1913 as a flag junior . Shortly after the outbreak of World War I , Speidel was made a lieutenant and went to the western front as platoon leader with his regiment .

The Grenadier Regiment fought within the 27th Division and was used exclusively on the Western Front. At the end of November 1914, Wilhelm's brother, Hans Speidel, who was two years his junior, registered for the 123rd Grenadier Regiment, was promoted to lieutenant a year later and stayed with the regiment until the end of the war. From the end of 1915 Wilhelm Speidel temporarily led a company as chief . On March 22, 1918 Wilhelm Speidel was promoted to first lieutenant , and took over the leadership of the storm battalion of the 27th Division in the course of the German spring offensive . During the war Speidel was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Württemberg Military Merit Order , the Iron Cross II and I Class and the Wound Badge in black.

After the armistice of Compiègne and the end of the war, he was transferred as an adjutant to the Reutlingen district command and then to the Gmünd district command . From July 19, 1919 Speidel acted as adjutant of the 2nd battalion of the Reichswehr Rifle Regiment 26 and from October 1 to December 14, 1920 as a company officer in the Reichswehr Rifle Regiment 25. Speidel was then adjutant in the Stuttgart District Command for a short time . On January 1, 1921, he was transferred to the 13th (Württemberg) Infantry Regiment . Speidel then came on October 1, 1921 as a squadron officer in the 18th Cavalry Regiment and completed an assistant command training with the 5th Division in Stuttgart by April 30, 1923 . He then worked from May 1 to July 31, 1923 as a platoon leader in the 13th Infantry Regiment and until September 30, 1924 was a commanding officer in the 5th Division. He was reassigned to the 18th Cavalry Regiment and then completed the second part of his assistant command training with the 5th Division. From October 1, 1925 to September 30, 1926 he was a member of the staff of the 1st Battalion of the 13th Infantry Regiment and had meanwhile become Rittmeister on April 1, 1926 . As such he came to the Army Organization Department of the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin and from June 9th to September 30th 1927 to the 2nd (Prussian) Cavalry Regiment in Allenstein . He was then transferred to the 11th (Prussian) cavalry regiment in Neustadt / Upper Silesia .

On March 31, 1928 Speidel retired from active service to the USSR at the secret flying school of the army to obtain training. Speidel was reactivated on February 1, 1929 and assigned to the 10th (Prussian) cavalry regiment before returning to service in the Reichswehr Ministry. This time he was employed as a consultant in the Army Statistics Department. On May 6, 1929, Speidel was commanded for a year for observation and training purposes with the US Air Force in the United States . When Speidel returned, he worked again in the Reichswehr Ministry.

Wehrmacht and deployment in World War II

After his promotion to major on October 1, 1933, a month later he was transferred to the Air Force and employed as a consultant in the Reich Aviation Ministry . From March 1 to June 30 Speidel served in the General Staff of the Air Force and then took over as commander of the Fliegergruppe Giebelstadt and the local air base . As a lieutenant colonel (since September 1, 1935) he was promoted to chief of staff of Luftkreis-Kommando III in Dresden on April 1, 1936, and was promoted to colonel on October 1, 1937 . As such, he was appointed Chief of Staff of Luftwaffe Group Command 1 on July 1, 1938. He retained this position from February 1, 1939 even after being converted to Air Fleet 1 .

After the beginning of the Second World War he continued to work there, was promoted to major general on September 22, 1939 and was Chief of Staff of Air Fleet 2 from January 1 to October 9, 1940 . As lieutenant general (since July 19, 1940) he was subsequently head of the German Air Force mission in Romania and as such on January 1, 1942, General der Flieger. From June 15 to September 10, 1942 he was in the Führerreserve and was then appointed Commanding General and Commander of Southern Greece. From September 8, 1943, Speidel was deployed as the Greek military commander . During this time, the Germans committed numerous war crimes for which Speidel was partly responsible. One of them was the Kalavryta massacre , in which, according to Speidel's report on December 31, 1943, 758 people were shot. On April 27, 1944, he was replaced and reassigned to the Führerreserve. From September 10, 1944 to January 22, 1945 Speidel acted as commander of the liaison staff of the Air Force Southeast Command . Afterwards he was briefly reassigned to the Führerreserve and on March 14, 1945 he became the commanding general of Feldjäger-Kommando III.

post war period

Speidel when he was sentenced in 1948

With the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945, Speidel became an American prisoner of war . The Allies indicted Speidel in the Generals in Southeast Europe trial for his role during the occupation of Greece. Speidel was defended by Joseph Weisgerber with the assistance of Erich Bergler. Weisgerber had already gained experience in Nuremberg; his previous client was Wolfram Sievers in the medical process . Speidel was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment on February 19, 1948 for war crimes . In the course of the intensified discussion of the West German rearmament after the outbreak of the Korean War from the summer of 1950, High Commissioner John McCloy converted Speidel's sentence to the time already served on January 31, 1951 on the recommendation of the Advisory Board on Clemency for War Criminals (Peck Panel) . Speidel was released from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison on February 3, 1951, along with 32 other inmates .

Publications

  • Wilhelm Speidel (under the pseudonym Helm Speidel ): Reichswehr and Red Army (PDF; 1.7 MB) . In: “Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte”, vol. 1, no. 1/1953, pp. 9–45, with a foreword by Hans Rothfels .

literature

  • Norbert Frei : Politics of the past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past . Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-41310-2 .
  • Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand : The Generals of the German Air Force 1935–1945, Volume 3: O – Z (Odebrecht-Zoch) , Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1992, ISBN 3-7648-2208-2 .
  • Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. XI. United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950. (Volume 11 of the " Green Series ")
  • Martin Zöller, Kazimierz Leszczyński (eds.): Case 7: The judgment in the hostage murder trial, passed on February 19, 1948 by the Military Tribunal 5 of the United States of America . German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1965.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Stumpf: The Wehrmacht Elite: Structure of rank and origin of German generals and admirals 1933-1945 . Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1982, ISBN 3-7646-1815-9 , p. 263. (Dissertation Heidelberg 1979)
  2. ↑ Martin Zöller, Kazimierz Leszczyński (ed.): Case 7 , Berlin 1965, pp. 224f.
  3. ↑ Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn Verlag , Berlin 1925, p. 166
  4. ↑ Martin Zöller; Kazimirz Leszczyński Ed .: Case 7 - The hostage murder trial ruled by the United States Military Tribunal V. VEB Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1965, p. 172.
  5. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. XI. Washington 1950, p. 763.
  6. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. I. Washington 1950, p. 7.
  7. ^ Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. XI. District of Columbia 1950, pp. 1313-1318.
  8. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Beck, Munich 1996, pp. 222-223.
personal data
SURNAME Speidel, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently General der Flieger in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Metzingen
DATE OF DEATH 3rd June 1970
Place of death Nürtingen