Wilhelm von Ditfurth (General, 1874)

Wilhelm Börries Hans Otto von Ditfurth (born August 7, 1874 in Minden ; died May 20, 1949 in Lemmie ) was a German professional soldier, landowner, politician of the DNVP and general of the Wehrmacht in World War II.

Life

Wilhelm von Ditfurth was the eldest son of Amalie von Hattorf (1851-1934) and the Prussian district administrator and owner of Gut Lemmie (from the property of his wife) and co-owner of Gut Lübrassen and the forest estate Ditfurth Franz von Ditfurth (1840-1909).

Von Ditfurth became a soldier and belonged to the Prussian cadet corps . He was promoted to lieutenant in 1894 and attended the Prussian War Academy from 1905 to 1907 . He was then a member of the General Staff from 1908 to 1913 . During the First World War he became a general staff officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the IX. Army Corps . In 1919 he retired from military service. In the Weimar Republic he became a member of the German National People's Party and from 1922 to 1935 he was co-publisher and chairman of the supervisory board of the DNVP organ Niederdeutsche Zeitung . From 1924 to 1928 he was a member of the DNVP in the Prussian state parliament for constituency 16 South Hanover and was a member of the committee for agricultural settlements and the committee for maintaining physical exercise.

Von Ditfurth was an officer in World War II and in 1940 became the commander of the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag XI B in Fallingbostel and, after the Western campaign in 1940, commander in prisoner-of-war camps in France and Belgium. At the end of 1940 he became Chief of the General Staff in occupied Denmark and in 1941 Chief of the General Staff of Command XXXVII with the rank of major general . In 1943 he was transferred to the Führerreserve at the Army High Command.

Von Ditfurth married Elisabeth Freiin von Münchhausen (1879-1959) in Windischleuba in 1898 , a daughter of Börries von Münchhausen (1845-1931) and sister of the poet Börries von Münchhausen .

Von Ditfurth was a knight of the order Pour le Mérite , knight of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern and legal knight of the Order of St. John .

literature

• Ditfurth, Wilhelm von , in: Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz: Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 . Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , p. 86f.
• Ditfurth, v., Wilhelm Börries Hans Otto , at Historischer Verein Lemmie